Thank God for demos. Demos save us all from dropping sixty smackers on a game we hate. I wish all games had demos on all three of my next-gen consoles. So far, the Wii doesn't seem to offer them, and the Xbox and PS3 provide quite a few, but rarely the games I'm looking for. Today I downloaded and tried out Eternal Sonata and Valkyria Chronicles. Both got huge raves in the review circuit, and both look very pretty. I'm in for the demo.

Eternal Sonata and I had a rough start. I got mad at the type of turn-based system it implements and quit after a couple of minutes. Instead of your partymembers standing in a pretty line waiting to take their pretty turns, you actually move your members towards an enemy and fight them during that member's turn. The length of the turn is determined by the action gauge, which starts to run as soon as you make your member move. If you accidentally touch the analog stick, better keep moving, because the action gauge is running. After I calmed down, thought about how useful this system could be, how pretty the graphics are (albeit a little too cutesy), and how I really like the whole classical music overlaying theme, I gave it another shot. I didn't get as frustrated this time, and I may actually think about purchasing it. I'll play through the demo one more time before committing. Not that I don't have any other RPGs ready to play or anything. >_<

I played Valkyria Chronicles for a grand total of thirty seconds. It's a FPS combined with a RPG, and I'm not a fan of firing guns, especially guns I have to aim myself. If I have to play turn-based combat, give me magic spells and big freaking swords. Yes, give me Final Fantasy. I'm not even going to rethink this one, even though I find it more beautiful than Eternal Sonata. I've already deleted it off of my drive.