Rhapsody: A musical Adventure Review (DS)

…whatever blows your horn…

Some of the more hardcore Japanese RPG fans out there may recognise the title of this latest offering by Square Enix. This game was originally seen on the original Playstation. When it first came out it was known as one of the first musical RPG`s , in that instead of the usual anime style cut scenes, this game had full musical numbers.
This is still the case in the latest DS reworking. One thing that has changed is that the gameplay during the battles in the original version was more tactical turn based, somewhat like FF tactics, or Nippon Ichi`s own Disgaea. In the new DS version, it back to old school, turn based RPG battles, like Final Fantasy 7 and the like.

Rhapsody is a short, easy sickly sweet JRPG, yet it has become my guilty pleasure

So to the story in Rhapsody, well like all tings in this game, the story & characters are very girlie. Now I don’t want to get all-stereotypical on you, but it doe seem that the makes have tried very hard to tailor their game towards young girls. The man character you play is a young, simple girl from a small village called Orange (the village is called Orange, not the girl) the girl is called Cornet and her best friend (and playable character) is a cute fairy – like puppet called Kururu.

Cornet has a magical horn (steady!) that she can blow to make other puppets come to life and fight by her side. Whilst in a battle screen you can fight, use magic or an item- much like every other RPG. Although instead of magic, Cornet can fire up some special moves such as hitting the enemy with a battalion of cake slices or even a pancake the size of a house! Very surreal, and surprisingly effective. The reason behind the game, is for the girl to get the prince, and in this case, said prince is called Ferdinand.

Now after reading the above, I`m sure 90% of people reading this will have decided not to bother with this game, but are confused by the score, so will read on anyway. Rhapsody is a short, easy sickly sweet JRPG, yet it has become my guilty pleasure. Yep, I had to play this little gem until the end, and enjoyed every minute of it, the reason being is that it is by Nippon Ichi. And one thing they do ever so well is telling a cracking story, with believable, and likable characters. Also they know how to make 2d sprites jump out of the screen and look just divine.

This game seems absolutely perfect for the DS, as it is simple yet addictive, and can be played in small chunks, yet has enough interest to keep you coming back, and you cant ask for more than that for a cart for the little DS.