Rhapsody: Marl Kingdom Chronicles Preview – the musical RPG remaster you didn’t know you needed
thesixthaxis.comThe rise of video game remasters and remakes over the past decade is often about so much more than making a quick buck from a publisher’s back catalogue. The further back in time we go for a game remaster, the more important they are for preserving a game from being lost to the consoles of the 90s and before, but they can also have a huge impact in bringing an older classic to a whole new audience.
Few people would have picked the Rhapsody series for such a treatment, the musical-themed RPG trilogy having released around the end of the PS1 and start of the PS2 era, and with only the first of these games seeing a Western release in North America. Thankfully NIS America is righting this grievous wrong.
Following on from the remaster of the original that arrived last year, Rhapsody: Marl Kingdom Chronicles brings the second and third games to the West for the first time, and we went hands-on with a development build of this duology. The funny thing is that each of these three games is a thoroughly different take on the RPG genre, pushing new ideas and experimenting in fun and interesting ways, both in terms of gameplay and narrative structure. The main thing that runs through these games is the musical theme, and off-kilter tone.
Rhapsody II: Ballad of the Little Princess tells the story of the young princess Kururu, looking to follow in the footsteps of her mother Cornet, the heroine of the first game, and venture forth to find a prince.
Where the first game was a tactical RPG, this shifts to a more traditional form of JRPG turn-based battling. Now, instead of marshalling a small army of puppets to battle alongside you, they’re summoned as abilities to peform and cast magic. There’s still a musical twist here, as using a
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