Rhapsody II: Ballad of the Little Princess Reviews

Soul.

Better than the first one in every way. Really fun.

Hello Friends, Today I will review the game Rhapsody 2 : Ballad of the Little Princess. This is a direct sequel to Rhapsody 1. So if a player is interested in playing them, it is very RECOMMENDED to play the first game in the series first, as there are many characters from the first game in this game. In fact almost all the puppets from the original game can be found in the second game, if a player can find them. They tend to be usually hidden in areas off the beaten path. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1866430/Rhapsody_A_Musical_Adventure/ As for the characters, these are the children of the main characters from the original game. Kururu is the child of Coronet and Ferdinand. And Creature is the child for Etolie. If you want to learn about their families more, there are hidden quests you can find that explain more about their backstories. The fighting in the game is now pure turn based rpg. This means that unlike the first game, it has been changed to be more difficult. For example, to use puppets require money, which is called Irodium in this game. Each move done by the puppet requires money to use. So if the player does not have enough money, it makes the game even more challenging. Another change from the first game is that the game is done in chapters. This means some things found in one chapter can not be there later. For example, locations need to be told to the main characters to be found, and if missed in one chapter, the players will be locked out of that area for the rest of the game. Easy thing to do to prevent this is to visit all places all over in each chapter, and talk to every npc character in even chapter. This also prevents missing certain puppets. The music is back from the original game, but now it is untranslated. Although there are subtitles, they will be sung in Japanese language only. There are no English versions of the songs like the original game. Unsure why the developer went this way, but perhaps they ran out of budget to make the games, or could not find the right voices to do the English versions of the songs in this game. Anyways, here is the pro and con lists: PROS: - A direct sequel to the original Rhapsody game. If players want to truly enjoy this game, it is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED to play the original game in the series, also available on steam. - More world building of area's and histories of the world. This makes the world feel more flushed out. - Make sure to find the missible items and entries for the observation data and diary entries. These add more world building and can be funny if players go thru the entries and read them. They add more world building and fun to the game. There is a decent guide that explains the missing items per chapter here. It is generic enough it is pretty spoiler free. You can find the guide here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3029966046 - Leveling up is more important in this game than the previous game. It is needed to help out in the later chapters. This makes it more dynamic when fighting, especially using money to use certain moves. The stronger the move, the more money it requires to use. This requires strategy if you want to save to buy xxx equipment or item, or use a puppet move to finish a fight easier. - Hidden quests that add more depth to the character backstories. - Works on windows 11 OS. - Works with controllers. I used a Zen Pro switch controller. CONS: - The songs are not translated into English. I thought perhaps since the original game had English versions of the songs, this one will too. Apparently they did not either have the time to do English versions of the songs, or ran out of budget doing it. The voice lines for characters are at least in English. Note that the music does have subtitles in English. - The method of how fighting is done has changed since the first game. No longer a "lite" tactical rpg. The game is now fully a turn based rpg. This might upset some players as the playstyle has changed from each game. Do I recommend the game? Yea, it is not a too hard rpg. Although several things were changed from the original game, this game is a direct sequel to the original game. The children of the main heroes are the main characters now. On their own adventure, they explore the same places the original heroes did, with some areas showing changes. The fighting battle type has changed from lite tactical fighting, to full time turn based rpg fighting. The music is also untranslated in English except for subtitles, and is only voice sung in Japanese. At least the normal voice lines are done in English for the characters though. It can be hard near the end, so players need to level up their characters and puppet levels.