Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure

"A Nice Break From Die-Hard RPG's"

PREFACE:
Rhapsody was a game that I had looked forward to playing for a long time. It was developed by Nippon Ichi Software (the developers behind Disgaea and La Pucelle) who had impressed me immensely with their humor in their more recent games. Rhapsody also had the Atlus logo, which for me, is enough reason to buy the game. It was difficult to find, expensive to boot, and incredibly short. So in the end, was it worth it? I would have to say yes.
Rhapsody is a light-hearted RPG with a psuedo-strategy battle system. The game is laugh out loud funny with zany characters and more sexual innuendos than anything I have seen since the 80's. Let's get on to the actual review.

STORY: (7)
I give a 7 because the story is not very deep and the characters (barring the main two or three) go through little to no development. Normally this would be very detrimental to the game, but I still was able to connect to the characters very well and they each seemed unique in their own special way (something I feel most Final Fantasy games cannot say). The dialogue could not have been switched to a different character without it not making sense. What few twists the story has are thoughtful and the humor (in my mind at least) is more than enough to make up for the overall watered-down premise. The main story (in a nutshell) is that a young girl, named Cornett, falls in love with a prince and tries to become his queen. But when she is close to doing so, a disaster happens which sends her on a journey to prove her love for the prince. What is innovative about the story is that Cornett has the ability to talk to puppets and recruit them throughout her quest. The puppets have some of the deepest insight into the characters in the game. I applaud the developers for this idea and think the execution was near perfect.

GAMEPLAY: (7)
I give another 7 because of the insane amounts of repetition involved while playing this game. The battles are a dumbed-down Final Fantasy Tactics style with a grid in place. The battles are also frequent and random. Most people who have played a strategy battle based game will realize that these sort of battles often take thirty to forty-five minutes to complete. This is not the case in Rhapsody though. Thankfully Nippon Ichi added an auto-battle system to speed through the battle (to about a minute or two each). Combining this with the lack of challenge present in this game (I never even had a character die), and it gives battles very little overall enjoyment and importance. I didn't dislike the battles, but I was not truly impressed with them either. They were something to break the exploration involved in this game. The controls for the game are fine. The characters move well, and my only complaint is the one second delay between seeing a menu and being able to select something from it.

GRAPHICS: (8)
The overall look to Rhapsody is very good. It still holds up well today. I liked the animation and character models a lot. Facial expressions are shown in a dialogue box which also are very well drawn. Also the backgrounds are almost as good as Saga Frontier 2. The bright colors used create a very good atmosphere and an visually pleasing look as well. One complaint I have are the spells used in battle. Some of the spells could have easily been done on the regular nintendo, and others look passable and are only enjoyable because of the randomness of the attack. It makes me feel like the spells were an afterthought for this game. Also many of the backgrounds are used way too many times. What do I mean by this? Some dungeons are about 100 screens long, but only have a few different backgrounds, each which is used ten or fifteen times. It doesn't ruin the game, but I wish the time would have been spent to make more backgrounds, given the talents the artists obviously had.

SOUND: (10)
I love the music in this game. There are several musical interludes, all of which are very well done. I loved almost all the music in this game and only wish there was more of it. The voice acting is good, but sparsely used. If you can, get the music CD that was bundled with this game. You'll thank me later.

FUN FACTOR: (9)
This game is fun. It has been years since I have wanted to continue playing a game so badly. I simply couldn't put it down. I would have given it a 10, but after a few hours, the dungeons become a chore just so you can see the next hilarious exchange between characters. The humor alone makes this game fun. It doesn't try to take itself seriously and it shouldn't. It was a pleasure to play.

OTHERS:
This game is short. I beat it in seven hours. Even if you play it on the hardest setting and get every puppet, it should not take you more than ten hours to beat. That is okay though, because you will play it again. Some moments are too enjoyable not to see again. Also this is not a kids game. Yes they might enjoy it, but they will not get many of the hidden jokes in Rhapsody.

OVERALL: (8)
A very fun game with some flaws. If you are in the market for a short but fun game that doesn't try to pass itself off as a super serious adventure, pick it up. The warm feeling you will get from the story and characters will more than make up for its shortcomings.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/15/04