Rhapsody

Rhapsody came as a pleasant surprise to me. Its press materials and screenshots had me expecting a game aimed at young girls (and Mark). However, after playing through it and experiencing the lush graphics, original songs (in both Japanese and English for you purists out there) and the excellent writing, I'm not so sure about this game's target market anymore. Rhapsody is, for all intents and purposes, a love story. You play as young Cornet, a country bumpkin who dreams of someday meeting a prince. Through a strange and hilarious string of events, it ends up happening. Of course, the forces of evil always need to screw up a good thing, and thus Cornet's musical adventure starts. See. Cornet has three amazing talents: She's an incredible singer (as are most characters in the game), she can converse with puppets (who become her party members, a la Pokemon), and she can play a magical horn that powers up her companions. What we have here is pretty standard role-playing fare, except that the battles play out much like Shining Force. You move a character within a certain range and decide whether to strike or perform another task. Unfortunately, the mundane fights, repetitive dungeons and brief 13-hour quest drop the score a little. But the awesome dialogue, gorgeous hand-drawn graphics and delightful story make this a game that RPG purists might find worth checking out.

Maybe I'm spoiled by games like Final Fantasy VIII and Vagrant Story, but Rhapsody just doesn't do it for me. Ves, it is a very solid RPG with a unique angle (it's a musical, duh!) and a lot of charm, but it's not what I look for in my "role-playing." I really wonder who this is supposed to appeal to, since it's so girly. I don't see a Final Fantasy fan picking this one up. Atlus has been gaining ground as a respected RPG publisher, often straying beyond their own Japanese first-party titles, but this is just bizarre. The different puppets you control are pretty neat, and like I said, Rhapsody's a solid game, but this is for select tastes only.

Greg is right--Rhapsody is a fine-looking game that should please any RPG fan. But I find it extremely difficult to get past the sappy story and decidedly girly dialogue (although it's written really well, and can be humorous). However, this doesn't mean it's a bad game. I imagine Rhapsody will bring the RPG genre to a lot of people who normally wouldn't play such games--namely, girls. And that's a good thing for the industry as a whole, because if a company can get new people hooked on games who normally wouldn't play them much, it'll create a whole new segment of gamers. Yeah, this thing is lighthearted but it'll keep some entertained for hours.