Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure

Rhapsody stands out to me on concept alone for many reasons. Not only are girly games like this a lot more rare in action-oriented genres such as RPGs, but it's also combining a JRPG with musical theatre - including fully voiced musical numbers.
This game is quite easy, even on normal. A small amount of grinding is usually all you need to progress through the story mode, and even the first puppets you find in the game are quite useful. I ended up using Sharte through my entire playthrough, for instance. This game is also sort of ahead of it's time for allowing you to change difficulties on the fly.
The story is a little cliche - saving the prince and finding 5 magical macguffins across the land. However, the humour was pretty funny and honestly a little mature for what you may be expecting, and the character arcs were well done enough that I felt myself really connecting with it.
All in all it's awesome that this game is even available on Steam, considering both the playstation and DS releases of Rhapsody can be quite pricey. 25$ is a fair price, and it often goes on sale, so if anything I mentioned in this review interests you, I'd recommend picking it up at some point.

Hello Friends,
Today I will review the game Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure. This game was originally on PlayStation 1. This version is a recreation of that version, with updated translation from the DS version. This game also tends to not like it when you open up the steam overlay, or ALT-TAB the game. It will crash and show a black screen. This happened twice to me only when i was chatting with someone using the steam overlay in the game.
This game is a very easy tactical rpg. I would even say it is a beginner type tactical rpg. If a new player is interested in trying out a rpg tactical, then this game would be perfect for them. It is very easy and not overly difficult, even on the most difficult mode. But there are some difficult sections, not saying the game is fully a easy game. But compared to other tactical rpg's on steam, i would say this one is on the easy end of the scope.
As for the story, without going into too many spoilers, it is a about a young woman protagonist who has the ability to use her horn to talk to and befriend puppets and monsters and grant wishes to puppets. This basically the whole game, but very cutesy. There are also hidden puppets and quests to fulfill for each puppet. Depending on the player, this may require grinding on certain areas.
There are also songs that are song by each character, some silly, others serious. There are also illustrations the player can find through the game in different chests. Some of these can be miss able, so make sure to fully explore each area and sub-dungeons. These can be viewed in the gallery after finishing the game, or seeing the basic ones already opened before playing the game. Anyways, here are my pros and cons list:
PROS:
- A light hearted tactical RPG.
- Hidden quests for each puppet.
- This particular version is based off the PlayStation 1 version, not the DS version. It does include the updated translation from the DS version though.
- A great starter tactical RPG for those who want to see what the genre is like.
- Works on windows 11 OS.
- Can use a controller. I used a ZEN PRO switch controller.
CONS:
- Do not Alt-Tab the game or chat in steam chat while playing the game. This will cause the game to crash and freeze up your pc. The music will still be playing in the background. If this happens players will have to hard reset their pc to fix the issue.
- The game graphics are older, so not everyone will enjoy them. In fact in the game in more higher resolutions, players may see pixelation on many of the characters and maps.
Do I recommend this game? Yes. It is light hearted enough to be silly and somehow serious at the same time. There are many silly jokes also in the game. The music song in the game by various characters adds it's own charm, making the game like a musical. I believe the game was going for the musical thing, like movies that have music in them with characters singing, like the original beauty and the beast movie by Disney. In fact it came out around that time. I enjoyed the game, minus the crashes i had when going to alt tab or steam chat during playing the game.

peak childhood game. gameplay may be mid but the story & characters make up for it trust me

Review: ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure is such a charming and fun RPG! The story is interesting, even if it feels a bit confusing at first when you’re not sure where to go — but the game makes it clear enough after a while. The normal battle theme at the start is an absolute banger, seriously one of those tunes that sticks in your head!
The game can be a bit too easy since enemies appear often and leveling happens quickly, but overall it’s a really lovely, heartwarming experience with great humor and music.
And remember everyone — we are not soldiers though! >_>

Rhapsody is a supremely adorable game. The story follows a girl that can speak to puppets as she pursues her dream to marry the prince. The writing is funny and heart warming. Being a musical, there are several fully vocalized songs in both English and Japanese (either can be selected) which I found to be catchy and cute.
Mechanically, the game is an RPG, but the difficulty is almost non-existent. On normal, enemies didn't start surviving more than a single hit until nearly the end of the game, not even bosses.
In short: This game is princess-core. Buy it for a princess.

There's not a whole lot to say about Rhapsody, it's an old game with some visual improvements and three choices of visual style, CRT, Smooth and one other option that I believe is original, the gameplay is simple, each time you get into a random encounter you have a small grid based arena to fight on and four units to fight with, again it's an old game so there's not a huge amount of environs and a few of them will have physical obstacles in the way dood.

You have physical attacks, physical specials, various elemental magic and status effect magic too but you also have Cornet with her special horn that can go up to 5 levels of which has 5 unique special spells of varying damages and uses, all with fun visuals to them dood.

During combat you use dolls or monsters or both, depends on how you want to play and what you want to use, dolls are generally way more powerful with some exceptions and also can be boosted and in turn used to build up Cornets special meter, monster don't have that advantage to them but they can have various ranges and unique skills to them and sadly unlike dolls if they die they are gone forever! The only way to catch them is to hit them as Cornet and hope they ask at the end of the battle dood.

The story is a sweet one with a lot of that classic NIS era writing of great funny moments, real teary moments and some great happy times too but as the name implies it's a musical adventure, there are 7 songs, technically 10 when you consider the variation of one and the end credits song and they come in both English and Japanese and I adore them because it was just...fun! Something not too common these days without an unnecessary message/influence/agenda to them, truly a missed era dood.

And that's it really, it's an easy enough game, on normal I'd say level 50 is all ya really need and any doll can do the job overall although I do suggest a healer with you, honestly if you're an achievement hunter and want more challenge I suggest hard mode, still it's a fun chill game with a nice enough story, I have no idea if the future games improved on combat such as magic damage and range being a little nerfed but for the era it was a fun game and still is to a degree and if you buy it I hope you feel so too! Thanks for reading dood ^-^

The old school Nippon Ichi Software charm is off the charts. Nostalgia googles not required, IMO.