Past meets present: Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure

The "Musical Adventure" part isn't just for show, but is at the center of everything the game is and does.

This column is “Past meets present,” the aim of which is to look back at game franchises and games that are in the news and topical again thanks to a sequel, a remaster, a re-release, and so on. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure tells you what it is right there in the title. Music plays a central role in the game’s narrative — both as part of the narrative itself and as a vehicle for advancing it. The main character, Cornet, is a young girl dreaming about young love, who also happens to be able to grant wishes to puppets through the use of a song she plays through her horn. These puppets, like a whole bunch of Pinocchios, want to be real boys and girls, a goal they can achieve through being reborn that way if they can help make the world a better place in their puppet form. Which Cornet’s ability to animate these puppets and bring them into her service allows for.

Cornet’s weapon is also that same horn, though, she won’t spend much time attacking with it. Instead, it’s used to constantly rally the puppets, raising their stats in battle to make them more effective. And, eventually, enough power has been built up in the horn through Cornet’s use of it this way that she can also do things like, say, attack all of the enemies in the battle with enormous pancakes that fall from the sky. Music truly is powerful.

In addition to how it works here, music also plays a central role in the storytelling. At a time when role-playing games were going big on CG cutscenes that the Playstation’s inexpensive CD-ROM format allowed plentiful space for, Rhapsody, instead, used all of that storage for songs. Cutscenes are replaced with singing, with characters sharing their interiority with other characters and the audience, as it were, to advance the plot and the narrative, to foster relationships, to simply share feelings, or end up engaging in a duet with another character who has seen their opportunity to spill their guts through song, as well. It comes off very much like a theater production, in that sense, especially since these songs are performed in the same rooms, from the same top down perspective, as whatever else was going on prior to the moment before the musical cues began. Whereas Square and Final Fantasy were going for cinematic, Nippon Ichi Software and Rhapsody went for the stage. The game is both musical and a musical.

Rhapsody received criticism — both in its original Playstation form as well as its DS remake — for being overly easy, too much of a starter role-playing game, and so on. That’s not an inherent good or bad thing, however, in terms of quality, so much as a statement about what the game is doing. Rhapsody isn’t concerned with difficulty, no, but it is concerned with telling a fun, comparatively low-stakes story in a genre where the end of the world is often the bare minimum. Cornet is a young woman, embarrassed about her growing romantic feelings for a young man, and then said young man gets turned into a statue because an old witch — non-derogatory, she actually is an old witch — screwed up a spell she was using because she decided she had the hots for this kid. There is a person trying to take over the world in here, but he’s basically in the background for most of the game, and stopping him is somewhat incidental to the central plot: he just happens to be there at the end while you’re figuring out the “how to make my boyfriend not be made of literal stone anymore” arc, so you take him down since hey, you’re already here, anyway.

There’s also a personal reason to want to see that joker’s plan fail, but going into detail there would take away from the connections the game itself builds up over time, so it’ll be left to you to discover, instead. The point is more that Rhapsody, very intentionally, ended up different than what else was available and popular at the time, to try something different on a number of levels. Oh, and it clocks in at about 10 hours even if you’re trying to do pretty much everything there is to do. Of course there would be some pushback to that.

There was also enough acceptance and praise, however, to generate a pair of sequels, as well as a universe in which some other NIS games take place — Rhapsody occurs within the Marl Kingdom, and La Pucelle: Tactics (or La Pucelle Ragnarok, depending on which version you play) occurs within this game, with a descendent of characters from Rhapsody, too. All three Rhapsody games are available on Windows and the Switch now, thanks to Nippon Ichi Software re-releasing so much of their back catalog in recent years: the Windows edition of Rhapsody is nearly identical to the original Playstation incarnation, only in the North American version, any references to previous publisher Atlus USA have been replaced by Nippon Ichi Software, instead, since NIS America handled duties this time around. (The DS release of Rhapsody made some changes to better align the game with its sequel, which had altered the formula a bit.)

Gameplay-wise, Rhapsody has you controlling Cornet in various towns, caves, dungeons, towers, and so on. You walk around, spending most of your time exploring, talking to NPCs both for color and to progress the plot, opening chests, and fighting random battles. Dungeon design is intriguing for the format, because it has more in common with first-person perspective RPGs than its top down brethren. You’re walking one screen at a time, which is, shape of the rooms in the screen aside, basically just moving from one grid on the map to another. There are tons of dead ends, with everything designed in a labyrinthian style where going way off the path can lead to extra treasures, or also just getting lost. Lots of doubling back, lots of having to map things out in your head in order to know where you are, where you came from, and where you need to go next. And so much of what you’re looking at is intentionally similar in its design, to further confuse you and reemphasize that need to pay attention to your surroundings.

Battles, though, are a simple affair. Not boring, although a little rote, but they also happen quickly, and the encounter rate isn’t outrageous by any means. They are top down, as well, and somewhat tactical in nature. They occur on a grid, and each character has a set of commands, including a movement range, to choose from. Move a character where you want to, either to attack or try to avoid conflict or to heal, then rinse, repeat until you win. You gain levels in a hurry, to help offset the fact that, like with something in the Dragon Quest Monsters vein, you’re constantly recruiting characters at level 1 who need to be brought up to speed with the rest of your crew. This lets you test out new puppets you’ve brought on board in your quest to form the best possible team, for the moments you do need to put a little more thought into what you’re doing in battle. At least one character with powerful attack magic is a positive, another who can heal, and someone who can do heavy physical damage can’t hurt. Cornet can help on offense, but you shouldn’t be in a position where you have to rely on her: this is the puppets’ show, and she’s there to buff as much as possible. At least until she can attack with pancakes or flan, anyway.

If the pancakes weren’t enough of a hint, Rhapsody is here to have some fun. It’s charming, it’s goofy, but it’s also not afraid to get a bit sincere. Again, this is a musical: from the premise alone it’s going to be a little weird and off, but if you let yourself enjoy through a little suspension of disbelief, it delivers. Cornet can talk to puppets, which is not a normal thing even in the Marl Kingdom! She attacks with breakfast foods and pastries when the puppets she animates with her magical horn isn’t enough to take down monsters! Her best friend who isn’t a puppet is her rival, Etoile, a very rich young woman who is also Cornet’s age, and really has the best in mind for Cornet all the time, even if she’s going to torture her into finding her happiness.

The game is often rude to Cornet, and though usually it’s all in good fun, there are a few moments where, like with 30 Rock and Liz Lemon, you have to go “alright let’s stop pretending that Cornet would not be considered attractive.” For the most part, though, the Liz Lemon/Jenna Maroney thing between Cornet and Etoile works. Such as in the above screenshots, when a creepy old man compares teen girls and makes both of them the punch line in different ways. It’s ridiculous — well, okay, Etoile is certainly a snob even in her best moments — but also more of a reflection on this guy than Cornet herself. Don’t worry, Cornet, in Cleveland, you’d be a model.

It’s the game’s insistence on goofing around that makes it work so well. Every town has its little weirdos, its optional dialogue with NPCs worth having — in one village, a woman greets you with what she calls a “direct translation” of the original Japanese the lines were written in, to show off how bad of an idea that sort of thing is. In another, a young girl who can also hear puppets plots against her mother, who drowned said puppets. Every scene with Etoile in it has at least one line that’ll get you cackling either at or with her. Oh, and also Cornet shows up to a competitive pageant to win the prince’s heart dressed like this:

Hijinks ensue. The villains aren’t really evil so much as just standing in opposition to you, and they’ve got their own weird goofs and foibles to deal with, as well. These are also mostly well done — the old witch wanting a young boyfriend mostly because she’s concerned about her multi-century age, even if she doesn’t look a day over 30, the younger witch who dresses like a cat and refuses to utter a single sentence that doesn’t also have “meow” in it — but there’s a little bit of an “oh right this game was made in 1998” present with the stretch where Gao, a muscular woman, is repeatedly mistaken for a man as a gag. At least Kururu, the winged puppet always flying with Cornet, just confuses her for one of those “wrestling chicks”. The 90s sure were reactionary — go watch any popular sitcom from the day that you haven’t seen in years if you want a reminder of how casually stuff like this popped up.

Anyway, it’s not harped on, and it’s a misstep, but the entire game isn’t built around gags like that, at least. It’s just a bit disappointing when so much of the game’s humor does hold up a couple of decades and change later. Modern Disney movies wish they could pull this kind of thing off:

It won’t take you very long to get through Rhapsody, as said, unless you’re constantly getting extremely lost in the many labyrinths. You’ll find bonus illustrations of the characters — some lovely portraits of various main players in different settings and poses — as well as pretty much every equippable item you need just lying around in chests waiting to be discovered and opened. You can run from battles, but you don’t really need to, since they don’t happen that often as far as 1990s RPGs go, and you will eventually need experience and levels for (1) the optional quests that see you help your puppet pals realize their dreams, which is sometimes done via battles with enemies they won’t be able to defeat if they haven’t built up their strength at least a little, and (2) the multi-stage final boss, which will take more than Cornet to handle, for sure, given it can actually hit you pretty hard, and with one attack, even your entire party at once.

Rhapsody might not be for everyone, such as those who crave challenge in battles, or are looking for, at least, a more demanding tactical combat system. It’s loaded with charm and personality, however, and you’re open to taking a short trip through a goofball kingdom full of song to see what’s on offer here, you won’t be disappointed with what you find.

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