The DS continues to have an immense catalogue of RPGs.
This is a port of the PS1 RPG but there's a big change to the battle system. From what I gather the PS1 original had a grid based battle system (I'm sure to be correct if I'm wrong) but this has a bog standard turn based system where the only slight USP is that you can build up a special attack meter by using healing spells and you can recruit puppets to fight with you. The battles are horribly easy to the point where you can auto-battle through everything with no trouble. But then this is an RPG aimed at little girls (that's not to say they're the only ones who'll enjoy it mind)
The graphics are fully 2D but colourful and detail, the sprites and character portraits are nice and expressive.
The story is incredibly fluffy, about a girl who wants to marry a prince but the dialogue and character interactions are great. They share a similar style and level of humour as NIS' disgaea and it raises a chuckle every now and then.
Probably the most unique thing about this is a focus on music. There's a lot of vocal music sung by the main cast and it adds a huge amount to the charm. It's in subtitled Japanese (would be a bit much offering two language options on the DS) but, despite the limited animation to these scenes, they're really touching.
If you can put up with having no challenge whatsoever in fights and want an RPG with nice graphics and likable characters, you should enjoy Rhapsody. Only other annoyance is that, outside of the music, the sound effects are incredibly beepy which contrasts a lot with the music.
I'm not sure if the EU version has fixed the crash bugs in the US version (hopefully they have given the delay), I haven't experienced one yet.
This is a port of the PS1 RPG but there's a big change to the battle system. From what I gather the PS1 original had a grid based battle system (I'm sure to be correct if I'm wrong) but this has a bog standard turn based system where the only slight USP is that you can build up a special attack meter by using healing spells and you can recruit puppets to fight with you. The battles are horribly easy to the point where you can auto-battle through everything with no trouble. But then this is an RPG aimed at little girls (that's not to say they're the only ones who'll enjoy it mind)
The graphics are fully 2D but colourful and detail, the sprites and character portraits are nice and expressive.
The story is incredibly fluffy, about a girl who wants to marry a prince but the dialogue and character interactions are great. They share a similar style and level of humour as NIS' disgaea and it raises a chuckle every now and then.
Probably the most unique thing about this is a focus on music. There's a lot of vocal music sung by the main cast and it adds a huge amount to the charm. It's in subtitled Japanese (would be a bit much offering two language options on the DS) but, despite the limited animation to these scenes, they're really touching.
If you can put up with having no challenge whatsoever in fights and want an RPG with nice graphics and likable characters, you should enjoy Rhapsody. Only other annoyance is that, outside of the music, the sound effects are incredibly beepy which contrasts a lot with the music.
I'm not sure if the EU version has fixed the crash bugs in the US version (hopefully they have given the delay), I haven't experienced one yet.
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