I didn’t like Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, so what made me think I’d enjoy its sequel? Answer: nothing. Which is why I didn’t bother giving it more than 2 hours and 30 minutes of my time. I have a poor track record when it comes to enjoying Nippon Ichi Software games anyway, so I find it pretty easy to give up on their games. Speaking of which I’m supposed to give Disgaea a last chance this year, aren’t I? Hmm… We’ll see.

Since I didn’t waste too much playing Antiphona no Seikahime, I’m not going to waste much time reviewing it either. Instead I’ll make do with the few points below.

What was good

+ The story was simple and quickly-told: the bad guy has stolen Miabelle’s sister’s voice and she’s going to get it back with a little help from her friends.
+ Bright, happy colors!
+ Cute character designs
+ The characters themselves are okay.
+ The world looks fun and laidback.
+ Even the monsters are cute.
+ It’s easy and is probably aimed at pre-teens rather than people like me.

What wasn’t so good

– Random musical sequences break the flow of the game.
– Quests are a pain to fulfill but are the best way to earn money to buy new skills. Many of them involve going to a map and pressing O on random squares and pixels in the hope of finding what you were sent to retrieve.
– The battle system made no sense and was hard to follow. Regular attackers all jump into a big ball of dust and losers go flying out of from either side. You can’t tell who’s doing what damage to whom or if your attacks are even hurting the enemy.
– Level ups don’t make you feel any stronger. The game is probably all about skills rather than levels, but skills are pain to get. Combined with the zero-feedback battle system and it would have been better to make this a visual novel rather than an RPG.
– The complete lack of any sense of urgency gave me zero motivation to continue. There’s no real danger or pressure or sense of impending doom, so there’s no reason to take the story seriously at all.

So I liked the look of Antiphona no Seikahime, but the actual feel of playing it left a lot to be desired. It doesn’t have the kind of story that makes you want to see it through to the end either, and none of the characters are interesting enough to be worth playing an entire game for. Dropped without a second thought.