It’s been a while since we’ve gotten news from Aksys.
Last year saw a ton of new games from Aksys, especially otome games, but since they skipped their usual summer showcase, we don’t know much about what they have coming up this year.
Well, our wait for news is almost over. Aksys announced that their next All Aksys showcase will be on February 1 at 10 AM PST / 1 PM EST.
Aksys usually handles these showcases by giving updates on previously-announced titles first and then moving on to new announcements. I’d expect a new trailer for Death Mark II, a release date for Tengoku Struggle (it’s been announced for April, but has no specific date), and a release date for Blazing Strike.
As far as I know, that’s all Aksys has announced for 2024 so far, which means most of the showcase should be about new releases. I don’t want to get my hopes up too much, but after their 2022 Anime Expo showcase where they announced Norn9, Norn9: Last Era, Radiant Tale, Virche Evermore, and Death Mark II, along with a couple others, I can help but hope for a showcase that matches or even surpasses that.
We’ll find out next week, because February is almost here!
I played it as part of the NIS Classics Volume 3 collection and finished it on the weekend.
Rhapsody is a cute, charming game. You play as Cornet, a girl who has the ability to talk to puppets and recruit them to join her party. You can also befriend monsters to use as party members, although I mainly stuck with the puppets once I had a few good ones.
Cornet dreams of winning the prince’s heart, and all looks like it’s going well… until he’s kidnapped. Cornet then sets out on a quest to save him, no matter what obstacles stand in her way. The premise feels almost like a fairy tale, although the writing also has a good dose of humor that kept me smiling throughout it.
And while it’s fairly straightforward, there are also secrets and side quests related to the puppets you recruit, which made it feel like I was regularly discovering new things despite it being pretty short for an RPG (it took me 12 hours).
Battles play out similarly to a strategy RPG, with Cornet and her party on a grid to fight the enemies, although I’d say it feels more like a regular turn-based RPG with movement. It’s also easy. Very easy. There was a slight difficulty spike at the end of the game, but until then I rarely had to worry about anything.
Now, you might be wondering about the “musical” part of the title. Does that just refer to the horn Cornet plays to recruit puppets? No, not at all. It is literally a musical. At key points in the story, characters break out into song (fully-voiced, too, despite the game’s age).
As an example, here is the antagonist’s musical number:
The musical aspect adds even more charm to what is already a charming game, and it makes me wonder what they could do with a modern sequel.
While I’ve praised it a lot so far, there is one thing I have to criticize it for, however – the dungeon design. Rhapsody has some of the most mind-numbingly boring dungeon design I’ve ever seen. Not only does it employ the “maze full of identical rooms and dead ends” approach, but there are exactly two visual styles that almost every dungeon in the game falls into. A new dungeon will be either a dungeon-like room with stone walls or a cave. That’s it. I can only think of two dungeons that had different designs, and they were also much shorter. The one saving grace is that since combat is so easy, at least getting lost in a maze of identical rooms isn’t too dangerous.
With that gripe aside, I quite enjoyed Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure. I’m happy they released it as part of NIS Classics Volume 3 for new players like me, and I look forward to trying the sequels!
One of the best surprise announcements from the Game Awards last year was Visions of Mana, a brand-new entry in the Mana series.
Yesterday, it was one of the games shown at the Xbox Developer Direct.
I didn’t watch the whole thing, but I did tune in for the Visions of Mana segment, which included a behind-the-scenes look at monster designs as well as other details and gameplay from the upcoming title.
The game looks beautiful, and the dog-like “pikul” you use as your mount is adorable!
The trailer ends with a Summer 2024 release window, narrowing it down from the general 2024 window given when it was announcement.
(It only lists Xbox and PC at the end, but that’s because it was from an Xbox event. The game is coming to PS4 and PS5 as well.)
To date, the only Mana game I’ve played is Sword of Mana on the Game Boy Advance. I’d like to play the recent collection and remake, and I’m definitely interested in this new one. 2024 is really shaping up to be an amazing year for JRPGs, and Visions of Mana is one more to look forward to!
It’s been a while since we’ve gotten news from Aksys.
