Rhapsody : A Musical Adventure (DS)

[abigsmurf]

The DS continues to have an immense catalogue of RPGs.

This is a port of the PS1 RPG but there's a big change to the battle system. From what I gather the PS1 original had a grid based battle system (I'm sure to be correct if I'm wrong) but this has a bog standard turn based system where the only slight USP is that you can build up a special attack meter by using healing spells and you can recruit puppets to fight with you. The battles are horribly easy to the point where you can auto-battle through everything with no trouble. But then this is an RPG aimed at little girls (that's not to say they're the only ones who'll enjoy it mind)

The graphics are fully 2D but colourful and detail, the sprites and character portraits are nice and expressive.

The story is incredibly fluffy, about a girl who wants to marry a prince but the dialogue and character interactions are great. They share a similar style and level of humour as NIS' disgaea and it raises a chuckle every now and then.

Probably the most unique thing about this is a focus on music. There's a lot of vocal music sung by the main cast and it adds a huge amount to the charm. It's in subtitled Japanese (would be a bit much offering two language options on the DS) but, despite the limited animation to these scenes, they're really touching.

If you can put up with having no challenge whatsoever in fights and want an RPG with nice graphics and likable characters, you should enjoy Rhapsody. Only other annoyance is that, outside of the music, the sound effects are incredibly beepy which contrasts a lot with the music.

I'm not sure if the EU version has fixed the crash bugs in the US version (hopefully they have given the delay), I haven't experienced one yet.

[toythatkills]

From what I gather the PS1 original had a grid based battle system (I'm sure to be correct if I'm wrong)

Yeah it did, and it was quite cool too, it's a shame if they've dumped it. It was always easy, though, it's a really short game too, something like eight hours. A lot of fun while it lasted, but it's by no means a good game

[abigsmurf]

I'm still enjoying it. Nice light fluffy game free of melodrama. I laughed at Marjoly's song.

One criticism is that the game seems to like making you go through a dungeon to the end, leave the dungeon, then go all the way through again.

[abigsmurf]

aaaaand I've encountered a crashbug that I can't get past. If I use the grave in the ice temple, the game crashes. You need to do this to go forward in the story.

I've a save an hour or so before it but without knowing what's causing it, I could just be wasting my time. It's a disgrace having game ending bugs in games at all, let alone when you release a new version months after the crash bugs became known and still include them.

[SuperBeatBoy]

Picked this up for a fiver new the other week. Only now finally got into it. When i first started it i was immediatly turned off by it, the audio quality has been compressed quite badly, probably to make room for the numerous songs. It just sounds really jarring, like you won't hear some of the ally's attacks hitting etc and the music in towns ect sounds snowy.

However, after putting 2hrs into the game i'm quite enjoying it. Its very easy to play and the humour and tone of the game is quite refreshing.

[abigsmurf]

It doesn't get enough credit in my book. Yes it has an insane encounter rate and the battles are horribly easy but it's incredibly charming. Nice to have an RPG free of melodrama.

It's a real shame the sequels won't ever make it out here.

Incidentally : Marjoly - is that her actual name or a poor romanisation of Margery?

[SuperBeatBoy]

It had sequels? Thats a right shame, would have loved to play more of them in english. Still really enjoying it, just got on a pirate ship. ^^

[abigsmurf]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marl_Kingdom

Really frustrating there are no localised versions of any but the first.