Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure (Nintendo DS)

[aruljothi]

Release Date: 09/23/2008
ESRB Rating: Everyone
Genre: RPG
Publisher: NIS America
Developer: Nippon Ichi

Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure isn't your typical role-playing game. Pivotal plot points don't unfold via CG cut-scenes; rather, the cast bursts into musical numbers. And the heroine, Cornet, has the ability to flatten enemies with giant pancakes. Yep, this is a weird game.

Aside from dull dungeons that all look the same, the cute character sprites and wonderfully bright towns and backgrounds hold up very well on the DS. But the game is 10 years old (it debuted for the PS1 in Japan back in 1998), and even with the few changes, newcomers to this playful fairy tale will need to adjust their expectations accordingly.

This version changes the original's tactical battles to match the more accepted -- and arguably more enjoyable -- turn-based template. Your characters line up on one side, while enemies line up on the next. And as your party uses magical spells in combat, you build up a combo meter of sorts (represented by a musical staff that fills up with notes). Depending on what level this combo meter reaches (up to five), Cornet gains access to increasingly powerful abilities (including the aforementioned pancake power). As with many old-school RPGs, you wander around dungeons and get pulled into random battles. These encounters happen frequently, so the rudimentary dungeon map on the top screen is extremely useful, given the prevalence of dead ends in every dungeon.

But Rhapsody still suffers from many of the PS1 version's quirks. It's quite short for an RPG, clocking in at about eight to 12 hours -- and made that long only by the compulsory need to collect party characters. These lovable puppets -- a trio of egg brothers, some fairies, armored knights, a dragon, two in-love frogs, and many others -- all have side quests that, once completed, grant Cornet new magical abilities. But this aspect's tainted by the need to grind in order to level these characters up -- and for no reason other than to complete the side quests, as you've no other real incentive to change out party members. The puppets still gain experience points even when they're not actively in the party, but (despite the fact that your main party members will very quickly outpace the enemies due to frequent random battles) catching up the lower-leveled puppets is still a slow and tedious task.