Eternal Sonata/YMMV

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• Alternate Character Interpretation: Is Prince Crescendo a kind and wise ruler, or is he an idiot who can't even come up with the most basic of competent plans?
• Anvilicious: The game is not particularly subtle. During the credits, the characters break the fourth wall and impart their beliefs to the player..
• Awesome Music: As might be expected in a game revolving around music, there are many possible choices, but some of the stand-out themes are: The mediocrity sought out by everyone, A flicker which divides light and darkness, Leap the precipice, I bet my belief, and The boundary between snow and ice. Sakuraba really outdid himself for this game. And then, of course, there are the Chopin pieces themselves, which were performed by professional pianist Stanislav Bunin. "Heaven's Mirror" also qualifies for many fans.
• Cliché Storm
• Complete Monster: Count Waltz is definitely this considering the fact that he willingly turned his whole country into a bunch of mindless slaves for his own ambitions. He also ordered Legato to destroy the world with his last breaths, slapped Polka at one occasion and completely destroyed the protagonists in a political debate in the last encounter with him.
• Designated Hero: Allegretto is the onscreen avatar, despite Frederic ostensibly being the main character.
• Designated Villain: Legato, who seems to be an actually reasonable person whose only real crime was serving Count Waltz. Even after going One-Winged Angel, he still remains a Designated Villain, as all he does is run away to a distant tower in a desert on the moon where he can't really harm anyone. The Play Station 3 version makes it even clearer that Legato is just serving Waltz, who is the real villain.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Captain Dolce, leader of the Terrible Trio Goldfish Poop Gang, has gained some popularity over on the GameFAQs forums. Guess why... Well, for that reason, and also her sexy, seductive voice ("Oh, you've been naughty, haven't you?").
• Evil Is Sexy: Captain Dolce and Rondo, all the way.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Chopin and Polka have better chemistry than the Official Couple... despite the fact A) she's analogous to his real-life Dead Little Sister, and B) he's twenty-five years older. A lot of this depends on what version you're playing though. The Play Station 3 Updated Rerelease goes a long way to improve the chemistry between Allegretto and Polka by adding a number of new interactions between them and compleltely altering others. One of the most notable is that in the Xbox 360 release, Allegretto does not so much as mention Polka when Beat and Frederic first return to Ritardando. In the PS3 version, however, he most certainly does ask after her and then starts to head off to Tenuto to go after her before grudgingly agreeing to stay and give Frederic a tour of the town. Later, when he actually does slip away on his own, in the PS3 version, he shows great concern for Polka's health, as well as frustration at the idea that she doesn't want to do things for herself. In the Xbox scene, he doesn't express any concern about her illness and instead of the sequence being about his feelings for Polka, it's just a lot of moralizing about the suspicious nature of human beings.
• Faux Symbolism: Though the events of the game are supposed to be representative of Chopin's life experiences, there are some events that just do not make sense in this context, yet are given the air of being symbolic of something. Most noticeably, the final scene of the game is a tête-a-tête between a snail and a caterpillar. Some of that is possibly reflecting what Chopin himself would have thought about. Particularly, conflict and good people needlessly suffering. His little sister died of tuberculosis at the age of fourteen and quite a lot of conflict occured in Poland during Chopin's lifetime.
• Fetish Fuel Station Attendant: Viola and Claves.
• Game Breaker:
  • Harmony Chains at Party Level 6 can be exploited to greatly reduce almost all difficulty you may encounter after that point. Level up Polka to 48 (40 in the PlayStation 3 version) so that she learns Blossom Shower and, for her sake, since she is admittedly squishy, keep her as far away from the action as possible and in sunlight. Once you're able to consistently pull off a 5 or 6 Harmony Chain, Polka can use Blossom Shower to heal everyone for a sizable amount at infinite range every turn. It also works with Viola and her Heal Arrow, but the trade off is that while Viola can deal absolutely absurd damage from long-range, Heal Arrow isn't as powerful as Blossom Shower.
  • Selling photographs can net you ungodly sums of money early on, making a mockery of the cost of curatives and equipment for 99% of the game.
  • Alegretto's final weapon in Mysterious Union critically hits every time, making him hit max damage with every attack. Combine that with his multi-hitting attacks along with the Werewolf Choker accessory, which doubles the amount of echoes you make and see how easily bosses go down.
  • The Werewolf Choker accessory is also a Game Breaker itself, if you give it to fast characters like Falsetto, it just destroys most bosses in a matter of minutes.
• Idiot Plot: Prince Crescendo, Count Waltz (see What an Idiot! below), Chopin (his rationale for attempting to murder all the party members), the entire population of the world (check the Fridge Logic subpage).
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks: The game is a strictly traditional Eastern RPG: people who went in with other expectations shouted this.
• Memetic Sex Goddess: Captain Dolce, so much that she has been renamed "Captain Sexy" by the fandom. Viola, also.
• Moe: Polka, Salsa and March.
• Narm Charm: But then again, many agree that the second-to-last cutscene was surprisingly well done and incredibly effective. And sometimes the game's narmness somehow loops around to be oddly awesome, including the scene when Fugue meets his end. He gets eaten. By a glowing powderpuff. And it's surprisingly satisfying.
• Older Than They Think: The game received a lot of praise for the originality of the Chopin storyline, though the basic premise has been done before in works such as The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.
• Padding: Why else would you need to get special water from the end of a graveyard to give to a child to feed a plant; defeat a ghost in the basement of a church; have to board a pirate ship to defend a military vessel that has its own guards and guns; or climb a temple/tower as requested to by a priest.
• Purity Sue: Deconstructed with Polka. Polka knows she doesn't have long to live, and so only keeps up her Pollyana act because she doesn't want to drag the party down. When it's just her and her mother though, the waterworks come on.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The game tends to shuffle your battle party of three around before certain boss fights, which makes a few of them even more difficult, especially if it kicks out your healers.
• That One Boss:
  • Count Waltz definitely counts for this: crazy fast, crazy strong, and positively brutal specials, if you don't block. Volcano Concussio can KO even Jazz. This is also when you have to fight Legato at the same time, who's been turned into a dragon thanks to the mineral powder.
  • Tuba, mainly because the first time you fight him, Beat (if he's in the party) gets forced out. The second time, Beat is forced in. Either way, it can seriously screw up your formation from the start, and if you haven't been levelling Beat for that second fight...
  • Captain Dolce counts for this in your first fight with her due to the fact that the characters you have to fight her with are completely under-leveled, and you don't have access to any good healing at the time. She also has strong and quick attacks, and has two minions who are both powerful and will revive each other if one is knocked out, meaning you have to kill both them quickly, all while holding off Captain Dolce.
  • Fugue, who's capable of inflicting Stop? Check. Fast? Check. Gets two turns in a row? Check. Capable of killing Salsa in a single round if you're unlucky? You bet your ass!
  • Rondo, due to the fact that she's VERY difficult to guard against, due to her speed. And she can inflict status, damn her. Plus, Falsetto gets forced into the third slot of your party moments before the fight, which can screw up your formation, and if your healer gets kicked out...
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: One of the most original concepts for a game (the dying dream of Fredrick Francois Chopin) given one of the most unoriginal executions ever. That Chopin is mostly Out of Focus for the majority of the game (except for his not-so-subtle monologues that come out of nowhere) does not help either.
• Toy Ship: Beat and Salsa.
• What an Idiot!:
  • Prince Crescendo's plan to surrender himself to Card-Carrying Villain Count Waltz would, rather than ending the war peacefully, have allowed Forte to invade a weakened and confused Baroque. Everyone else seems to understand this, and tells him so.
  • Although that's nothing compared to what happens next: Count Waltz, rather than ordering his men to fire and kill the heroes, instead decides to take them all on himself for 'fun', accompanied only by a dragon that's extremely easy to defeat. He is then brutally killed. Unless you're playing the Play Station 3 version, in which case he survives. And for some reason, the entire dragon ARMY that accompanied him is gone afterwards, without any explanation!
  • And then Waltz's advisor decides to drink the super mineral powder and turn himself into a giant monster for no apparent reason, even though he knows it will eventually kill him even if the heroes didn't. Unless you're playing the Play Station 3 version, in which case, it is Count Waltz who orders him to drink it. In fact, this whole fiasco is averted in the Play Station 3 version: Waltz survives the fight as every other major villain, orders a reluctant Legato to drink the poison, then orders him to kill the dragons to try his new powers, and finally, they run away because Polka's astra stops their lethal strike against the group. Everything is explained, everything makes sense, and it allows for a harder pre-final boss battle and a kickass Hannibal Lecture from Waltz explaining his motivations.
• The Woobie:
  • Polka. If you end up liking Polka, then, by the end of the game, you'll likely wish that you could give her a hug.
  • Beat also counts considering he gets occasionally insulted by Allegretto, knocked around by Tuba, and constantly pestered by Salsa. At least Allegretto and Salsa still care about Beat though.