Rhapsody: a musical adventure may be a pretty niche JRPG from a somewhat niche developer, but like all good games it has its fandom. And fans were thrilled when it was announced that the game, rare as it may be, would be made in half of Prinny Presents Volume 3 alongside La Pucelle: Ragnarok.
Now available on Switch and PC, Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure can expand that fandom to include people who have wanted to play it for decades, or who have never heard of it. Whether we’re fresh-faced gamers looking back at the classics or hardened veterans of the genre, there are plenty of things we’re tempted to do once we boot up Rhapsody for the first time. And they are recognizable, piece by piece.
6 Control everything, everywhere
There are three kinds of RPG, right? The one where you’ll never find anything in people’s homes, the one where you get lucky every now and then, and the one that keeps on rewarding curious intruders non-stop. Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure belongs to the latter group, and we couldn’t be happier about it.
From the moment a player discovers their first hidden item – often in Cornet’s bedroom in the first few minutes of the game – we’re all going to do the same. Prick everything with the confirmation button. Everywhere. And always. We are like mice led to cheese. Once we found that first nibble, we knew there had to be more.
There’s a lot of cheese in Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure.
5 Humming along, intentionally or otherwise
Make no mistake. Rhapsody is indeed a musical adventure. Some have compared it to a Disney musical disguised as a JRPG, and they’re not far off the mark. Combat is pretty easy, and the few times you get lost, it’s probably because a dungeon is mind-bogglingly twisty.
So many numbers appear during the game. More than a dozen in fact, and almost two dozen in fact. These come in place of what other RPGs of the day would have conveyed in more straightforward cutscenes. These are the flashy segments, the sing-alongs that do as impressive work of conveying a character’s emotional state as any quasi-philosophical harp you might have gotten from one of Rhapsody’s contemporaries.
And you can’t deny it, friends. You, like the rest of us, can’t help but sing along.
4 I wish you had bought more teleporters
How bad can Rhapsody’s dungeons be? Well, they’re not terrible. We wouldn’t say these are the worst dungeons a JRPG has ever delivered. They are not stupid, nor do they require abrupt puzzle-solving skills. But that’s kind of the crux of the problem in the end. It’s none of these things; they are just winding paths with numerous dead ends, and most of the rooms look no different from any other.
Fortunately, the game offers a brilliantly simple solution. Like the Warp spell in a 2D FINal Fantasy, or the Escape Ropes from Pokemon’s past, Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure provides us with Teleporters. They are a cheap buy at most stores. You really can’t miss them. But you can, and almost certainly will, underestimate their value.
That is, until the first time you realize you’ve already been in the same part of a dungeon three times. You’ll figure it out, we promise. It’s not That difficult. But you’ll be stocking up on Teleporters in the future. That’s for sure.
3 Say yes to useless monsters
The battle is over. You’ve seemingly wiped out the opposition, which consisted of multiple monsters whose sprites did what they all do in Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure. You know, where it looks like they’re ascending to heaven. Or something.
Only, one of those monsters descended back to Earth. Or whatever. And it wants, desperately, to join your party. The problem is it’s a Jelly. Or a Toad. Or an equally worthless weakling condemned to roam the Marl kingdom, all worthless and weak. But you say yes. Because it looks at you with those strange beady eyes. We feel you.
2 They sell to the Monster Collector just seconds later
But there is a solution! You don’t have to worry about them taking up space in your team. You can go to that man in Orange Village who will keep your samples safe for as long as you need him. He’s a kind old man, and he’ll take care of that Jelly, don’t you know? And everyone will be happy, even the weakling.
But you don’t. After all, you haven’t looked at the monster since you added it to the team, and now that it’s no longer in your direct line of sight, you can remind yourself that it’s just a piece of code in a vintage Japanese role-playing game, and it has no feelings.
Instead, you hightail it to Mothergreen, where you quickly raise a modest sum of money. Whatever that boy has in store, it’s none other than his.
1 Laughing at the cost of Cornet
Of course, she’s the main character. And she’s a lot of gal too, it’s worth encouraging, she believes in all that jazz. Cornet is a great protagonist and we love her spunk.
She’s also a bit of a country bumpkin, a fact that other characters point out repeatedly throughout her journey. Sometimes Cornet’s mind works in, shall we say, mysterious ways. And thank goodness, Etoile goes overboard to mock her “boyfriend” for everything, even going so far as to call Cornet ugly several times in the beginning.
While that might not be the coolest thing to say to a person, the way Etoile delivers these lines makes it hard not to chuckle. In fact, it’s pretty hard to contain all our laughter every time someone says something derogatory to Cornet, which is why we’re sure you’ve laughed at her expense at least once.
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