Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure (PS1)

Review by: Delfeir

Reviewers Score: 5 / 10

Posted: June 12, 2007

Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure
System: PS1
Genre: RPG
Difficulty: Ridiculously Easy
Score: 5/10

Nippon Ichi. While not quite as big or as well known as some developers, like SquareEnix, they are nonetheless incredibly good at what they do. And what they do is make some of the quirkiest, funniest, and cutest games in existence. Rhapsody is one of the first they've ever made, and since I'm such a fan of the company I picked it up. Here's my thoughts on it.

Graphics (6/10)

These graphics are very simple, as is the case of all the Nippon Ichi games. It could probably have been done on the SNES without too much difficulty. What's here, however, is nice and colourful and fairly vibrant. The characters are nicely animated, and compared to some of the grittier and unpleasant looking 3D forays of the humble Playstation, it does look fairly nice. But that's only the presentation... getting into the game reveals the flaws. The attack animations are really quite woeful... very basic, somewhat inappropriate at times (a holy spell unleashes fireworks?!), and disappointing uninteresting. It really doesn't help that there's little originality in the game design - all the dungeons are palette swaps of two templates, and many of the monsters are palette swaps too. Definitely not the greatest.

Sounds (7/10)

There is a fair bit of good music in this game, for one unique reason - Rhapsody is called A Musical Adventure because that's exactly what it is. Someone at Nippon Ichi decided that they were going to make a musical in video game format, and thus this game was born. At various times in the storyline, the characters will stop what they're doing and burst into song. You can choose which language you want to listen to at the beginning - Japanese or English - and both have decent singers. There are a fair few songs, and many of them are really quite nice. As with the graphics, though, that's only part of it. When you get into the vast majority of the game, you'll find minimal amounts of music. Many songs are repeated a lot, and they really aren't very good in the first place. Perhaps Final Fantasy spoiled me, but the battle music made me want to rip off my ears after the first half hour or so. So points for the singing, not for the music.

Storyline (7/10)

As mentioned above, Rhapsody is in fact a musical turned video game. As such, the storyline is very reminiscient of that. The story begins with the character Cornet and her guardian puppet Kururu starting a regular day in their country town, after Cornet has a pleasant dream about being saved by a handsome prince... see what's happening here? Cornet's grandfather will ask her to journey into the nearby woods to fetch a certain substance called Red Inotium. After a brief foray into the woods, Cornet is attacked by a catgirl (yes, really) and manages to defeat her cronies. Not pleased with this, the catgirl calls out her pet Dragon to kill Cornet. And then, out of nowhere, it's David Hasselhoff! Or rather, the local Prince Ferdinand, who beats up the Dragon and saves Cornet. Instantly smitten, Cornet spends the next few days trying to catch the eye of the prince despite her common status.

Just when it seems like she's about to succeed, however, a witch named Marjoly kidnaps the prince! From then on out, the storyline follows the typical idea of a fairy tale - you have to embark on an epic and noble quest to save the princess! ...or, in this case, prince, which is a nice little role reversal there. It's a simple story, and because I'm a sap and a hopeless romantic, it appealed to me somewhat. Not for everyone, but what's here is done okay... even if it is ridiculously fast.

Gameplay (4/10)

OUCH. Most games that I review don't get a Gameplay score that low. Well, sadly, Rhapsody doesn't have much going for it here. This is a by-the-numbers RPG with a few little twists. For a start, your main character is the only human character you'll have in this game. She can, however, animate puppets by blowing a song on her horn and willing them to life. Throughout the game you'll find these puppets and play the song, and thus they'll join your party. Nothing big, but it does fit the nature of the game. Likewise, some monsters you defeat will get back up and ask to tag along with you, though this tends to happen either very rarely, or repeatedly with a couple of breeds of monster. If nothing else, you're given plenty of choices of who to take with you.

The game does attempt to be original in the battle system, but this attempt quickly proves to be rather tedious and dull. Every battle plays out like a very, very toned down Strategy/RPG battle, akin to Final Fantasy Tactics (or most of the later Nippon Ichi games). Your characters move around the board and can only attack or use their moves on creatures they can reach. Aside from that, battles are the usual affairs of turn-based RPGs. This attempt at variety is nice, but quickly becomes a chore.Ggiven how easy this game is - more on that in a moment - these battles quickly just become encounters that you breeze through mindlessly. The movement only serves to delay things and draw out an already short game.

While I'm still on the battle system, I'll just say that every puppet or monster develops their own skills. However, none of them are that special... attack spells, healing spells, and the like as we know them from other games. Cornet, the main character, is completely different from this. Like with recruitment, she uses her horn once more. Her basic attack just hits them as normal, but she has no other ordinary spells. Instead, she can play her Horn, and all the friendly puppets in the immediate vicinity get a power boost to their next attack. Additionally, for every puppet affected, a note fills up on a scale that is marked on the top-right of the display. When you get six notes, a number will be added to the side of the scale for every bar you fill up. Depending on how many you have, Cornet can unleash her devastatingly powerful (and delicious - you'll see) special moves. It helps shake up the monotony if nothing else.

All these battles occur within dungeons, obviously, save a few event battles. The dungeons are lackluster affairs in their own right, however... REALLY lackluster. For example, there are only TWO kinds of dungeon - a ruin, or a cave. Every single dungeon you find will just be a palette swap of these two templates. That wouldn't be so bad if they were remotely interesting... but they're not. You'll advance to the next screen, and then have between one and three pathways to choose from - one on each edge of the screen. Nothing of interest is EVER in the dungeons save the rare but unnecessary chests. Just mindless paths and annoying repetition as you tick off all the dead ends and make your way through. Very quickly you'll come to hate these dungeons, and by the end of it you'll just wish the game would hurry up and get to the point.

Yet again, this isn't helped by the ridiculously low difficulty. There is no challenge in this game, at all. All the enemies are ridiculously easy and most can be beaten with just one or two hits from a decently levelled character. And you WILL be decently levelled, because the game is incredibly generous with experience. Taking a Level 1 new recruit into my party, I entered one random battle and left with a Level 6 veteran. You can level up just as quickly in the beginning areas as the final ones! So all up, I waltzed through this in a short time without ever encountering the Game Over screen. What's worse? I used a grand total of TWO healing items in the entire game. That's it. There are a few accessories you can get to boost your character's stats, and plenty of money scattered around that you can use to stock up on... but there's no reason to. And the scariest thing is that this was on Normal difficulty... an Easy mode is available! And a little test of Hard mode shows that everything is pretty much the same!

Still, if the difficulty had been any higher, I imagine the dungeon crawls would have been so much worse. Yet perhaps in that event they might have made them a little more interesting. Whatever - we'll never know. All I can say is that for all the interesting things about this game and the nice storyline, it's really not a very good game, gameplay wise. Just be glad that it's short so you can see the whole story quickly.

Longevity (2/10)

Rhapsody is really, really short. That's all that can be said. The game will take you anywhere between 8 and 12 hours to finish, and that's it. Most of the time will be spent getting lost in featureless dungeons and figuring out where to go next. There is only one side quest, and that is fairly poorly marked and serves little purpose except to give you just a little more closure on the story. You could play through the game again, and the option to change the songs between Japanese and English for each playthrough might convince some... but then, it's really not a very big motivator. So odds are, you'll play it once and forget it. The story is good, but not good enough to warrant repeated playthroughs.

Overall (5/10)

I like this game. Really, I do. But I understand that it's really not for everyone. The story is enough to sate a sap like yours truly, and the idea of a musical turned video game is a rather original notion. But the repetitive gameplay and uninteresting dungeons will get to you pretty quickly. Take care when trying this one out.

Worth Buying?: Probably not. If the idea sounds appealing to you despite my review, then give it a shot, but don't pay much for it.

If you liked this game, try: Most other Nippon Ichi games have a similar style, although they're full-blown Strategy RPGs... still worth looking at though. Just about any other RPG with a vaguely interesting story should grab you, too.