Rhapsody III is a very different game from the first two games in the trilogy. It reminds me a lot of Sky the Third (to those Trails fans) and one part even reminds me of Trails to Reverie. The game consists of multiple separate side stories. Most of them aren't particularly relevant, but add a little extra to the lore and world.
The highlight stories are the 2nd which continues from where Rhapsody II's epilogue left off, the 5th which follows the MVP of the trilogy through multiple periods of their life and the 6th which sort of ties everything together.
Despite the minor relevancy of some of them, they are all humorous and at times, emotional which is expected for a Rhapsody game. Most are on the short side at just about 1-2 hours of actual story.
The combat have also changed. It takes the simple turn-based combat from Rhapsody II, but adds 4 rows of party members. Each row has a leader and they get a stat boost from the other three in their squad. You can potentially bring 16 party members into battle at the same time and they will all attack.
This brings me to a major issue that I had with the game. It has a strong dungeon crawling and combat emphasis and with the large party size, there's a lot of grinding needed to get everybody geared up and to an appropriate level. Straight grinding was pretty much optional for the first two games so having it here kind of drags down my experience.
The game took me 18 hours to complete even though there isn't a lot of story and the dungeons aren't that long.
Overall, Rhapsody III does have some important stories to tell here and does provide a good conclusion to the trilogy. While I'm not a fan of how some of the gameplay execution was here, it's another entry worth playing even if the game's structure is pretty different from the first two games.
The highlight stories are the 2nd which continues from where Rhapsody II's epilogue left off, the 5th which follows the MVP of the trilogy through multiple periods of their life and the 6th which sort of ties everything together.
Despite the minor relevancy of some of them, they are all humorous and at times, emotional which is expected for a Rhapsody game. Most are on the short side at just about 1-2 hours of actual story.
The combat have also changed. It takes the simple turn-based combat from Rhapsody II, but adds 4 rows of party members. Each row has a leader and they get a stat boost from the other three in their squad. You can potentially bring 16 party members into battle at the same time and they will all attack.
This brings me to a major issue that I had with the game. It has a strong dungeon crawling and combat emphasis and with the large party size, there's a lot of grinding needed to get everybody geared up and to an appropriate level. Straight grinding was pretty much optional for the first two games so having it here kind of drags down my experience.
The game took me 18 hours to complete even though there isn't a lot of story and the dungeons aren't that long.
Overall, Rhapsody III does have some important stories to tell here and does provide a good conclusion to the trilogy. While I'm not a fan of how some of the gameplay execution was here, it's another entry worth playing even if the game's structure is pretty different from the first two games.
Toppis
8 months ago