What is Rhapsody?
The Rhapsody series, also known as the Marl Kingdom series, is a trilogy of RPGs developed and published by Nippon Ichi Software, who are perhaps better known as the developers of Disgaea and the publishers of the Danganronpa series. The games all take place within the Marl Kingdom, a charming, lighthearted fantasy setting.
It's a bit vague which time period the games are meant to take place in — while many of the aesthetics seem to be inspired by the Victorian(?) era, basic computers have been invented by the time Rhapsody II takes place (only 12 years after the first game). Oh, well. I don't worry about it, and you shouldn't either.
Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure is the first game in the series, as well as the first of the games NIS developed to be released overseas. (They published the SNES game Pieces in 1994, but weren't responsible for developing it.) It was released on the original PlayStation on December 17, 1998 in Japan and July 30, 2000 in North America — the original game did not release in Europe or Australia, although the Nintendo DS remake eventually did.
The game follows Cornet Espoir, an energetic 16-year-old girl who dreams of one day finding her prince... oh, and she can talk to puppets. And her horn grants wishes when she plays it. (I actually think it's a really unique take on recruiting party members in RPGs.) She's accompanied by her best friend Kururu, who's the only puppet who isn't actually accessible as a standard party member.
However, she is a party member in the DS version, and she has unused character data that suggests she may have been intended to be playable at some point...
That's not what this page is about, though! I'm getting ahead of myself.
Cornet does finally encounter her prince when the dashing Prince Ferdinand saves her from certain death in the Wonder Woods, and she falls in love at first sight. However, the evil witch Marjoly has fallen for him as well, and attempts to put him to sleep to take him back to her castle... except oops, she accidentally turns him into stone. (She takes him back to her castle anyway, because what the hell else do you do in that situation? Leave him there?)
Vowing to rescue her prince, Cornet decides to venture across all of Marl Kingdom to find the Heartstones required to access Marjoly's Beauty Castle and save Prince Ferdinand with true love's kiss.
That's not all, though. It's called Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure for a reason, and it's not because it's a rhythm game. That's right, this game is quite possibly the only RPG (or video game in general) that I've played that has multiple fully-voiced musical numbers. I think they're cute! They fit the vibe of the story pretty well — maybe a tad cliché, but still fun.
I think most people prefer the original Japanese vocals over the localized English ones, but I played through the first Rhapsody game with the song vocals set to English and still found the songs pretty entertaining. (I haven't played Rhapsody III yet, but Rhapsody II only has the Japanese vocals available — I assume because the games didn't release in English until August 2023.)
From a gameplay perspective, Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure is a good game in theory. I find the battle mechanics very interesting, and being able to recruit monsters and puppets alike is pretty cool. I'm also a huge fan of the puppet lore we get over the course of the game: puppets were once living beings that now have unfinished business in the world of the living, and by helping them with their sidequests, they can be reincarnated.
Every puppet has one of these quests — some of them, such as the Egg Brothers, have a shared quest. As far as I'm aware, there's technically no gameplay benefit for doing them (aside from achievements if you're playing the Steam port), but it does make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. (The Nintendo DS version gives you a more tangible reward in the form of a new skill for Cornet.) Luckily, once the quest is over, the puppet will leave behind their... puppet, I guess, so you can still use them in your party. Perhaps it'd be more fitting to call them poltergeists, but I don't want to call Koro that. He's just a little doggy!
However, the way Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure executes some of its gameplay mechanics isn't the best. The combat system is incredibly promising, which is why it's so sad to me that it's... well, kind of underwhelming? There are all of these wonderful techniques you could employ, but they feel significantly less rewarding when you could just repeat the same move and get the fight done in the same amount of time, receive the same amount of EXP, and lose the same amount of health (which is to say, none). As far as I could tell, the only difference selecting the hardest difficulty makes is that you receive less EXP per encounter. Enemies don't have better moves, smarter AI, or higher stats. You just have to kill more of them to level up.
Don't get me wrong, I understand why the fights are easy. It makes sense — it's a game intended for beginners to the genre, of course it would be easier than other tactical RPGs. I appreciate the fact that a game like this exists to introduce people to the genre — I love RPGs, and I love the fact that more people can play them because of games like this! This is more of a personal gripe than anything objectively wrong with the game.
I had a whole thing written here about how much I disliked the way A Musical Adventure does its dungeons specifically, but I realized it kind of just made me sound like a hater who's not good at navigating mazes. Which is true, but I don't want people to think that.
Luckily, NIS fixed a lot of the issues I had with the first Rhapsody game in Ballad of the Little Princess. Dungeons are no longer sprawling grids containing dozens of identical rooms, and combat actually presents some semblance of a challenge. I do miss the tactical RPG elements, but I think they were a necessary sacrifice in order to streamline gameplay.
In my opinion, Rhapsody's story is where it shines. It may be a bit cheesy and cliché, but it's unapologetically earnest. I'm a sucker for "power of friendship" stories sometimes, sue me. Also, the game is genuinely funny sometimes! I love Marjoly's comic relief henchmen, especially the Nyankos. They're like if Paddington Bear was a cat. And evil. And if there was like 50 of him.
Also, A Musical Adventure has a special place in my heart as the first game I learned how to make my own Cheat Engine codes for. (I played the Steam port first.) So there's that.