This is a ~10 hour RPG that seems more intent on telling a story rather than being a fully fleshed out game. If you're a die-hard FF fan, you'll be sorely disappointed if you're looking for a challenging system with summons and multi-digit numbers for damage, HP, and MP. If you're looking to be told a story, then this game is for you.

To sum up, you are Cornet Espoire (oh my god, a FEMALE is a leading role in an RPG, who would've thought?!), a girl who has the innate ability to communicate with puppets. You also posess a horn that allows you to animate puppets you hear into actual living beings. These puppets become your party members who fight alongside you. You end up picking up a lotta whacked out stuff as the story progresses, most notably toy eggs, a giant costume, and two royal frogs.

At first the story appears to be a classic fairy tale style love story, where the main female role ends up falling for the Prince that everyone and their mother wants to marry. Of course, that won't happen so easily. A crazy lady named Majorly turns your beloved Prince into stone and whisks him away to her funky castle in the sky (literally). With the funny role change, it is up to you to rescue him from the crazy woman and undo the stone spell so that you can live happily ever after with him.

Gagging yet? If you're still in there, as I was as I played through the game, you'll come to enjoy the story if you expect it to be like your standard fairy tale. Expect a novel with fully fleshed out characters and an engrossing plot and you'll be sorely disappointed. It seems the plot was geared towards a younger (not necessarily female) audience to keep it relatively understandable.

The translation was done very well, and you can tell that Atlus USA took some liberties upon the translations, using the occasional American pop reference to keep the game from feeling too foreign. Either way, you know what's going on, and you don't get the funky pre FFX dialogues where characters seem to say almost nonsensical things. Lots of humor everywhere. Start the game and let the scene run out and you'll know what I mean.

The hand drawn anime-style art and designs were done very well. You'll end up unlocking a fairly extensive gallery that has some wonderful art. The in-game character portraits are also done differently from your standard RPGs, as characters change expressions based on their situation, rather than being a static face.

And it can't be a musical adventure without the music, and man is there music! Well composed, and even if it's done by amateurs, the lyrics are sung fairly well, by BOTH the JP and English singers for this game. Although "Let's Go Again" is the primary theme for the game, there are several other tracks that are done pretty well, and key points in the game results in scenes where these tracks are executed in a Broadway musical style format, which I think is very, very innovative for an RPG.

Lastly, is the gameplay. Like I said before, if you're expecting a well developed FF-style system, you'll be sorely disappointed. Characters move around on a grid like system, much like Final Fantasy Tactics, but much of what you do is like a typical FF - casting magic, using skills, and attacking. Nothing incredibly deep, as the game is extremely easy. In general, you'll be 2x the level of the stuff you're fighting, and you'll usually do one hit kills, but you'll still be able to level about every 3 - 5 fights. Game isn't too item centric - not too much stuff one can find that would be totally game breaking. Even the final boss is a cinch because of the basic gameplay. In short, don't expect a challenge.

The bottom line is this - If you want a cute love story with a happy ending, this is the perfect game for you. The characters are the ultimate definition of "kawaii" and the overall game does a refreshing exit from the large genre of "dark, gloomy, and depressing" RPGs. Even though you get a measly 10 hours (sometimes less!) of gameplay out of this, the simple story is enough of an offset (for me anyway). While it does fall short in the gameplay department, I believe the reason why the game was made this easy was because of the general audience this game was geared towards, a much younger crowd that isn't addicted to the FFs yet and still believes that everything can come to a happy end. Top that off with the nice gallery you get as you play along and well composed music, and you end up with a gem that is unfortunately going to go unnoticed by your typical male hormone-driven hack and slash loving teenager/college student. Another pity that a sequel hasn't been made, as there are a few loosely explained story facets that would be better off if it fleshed out in the sequel.

Btw, this game is hard as heck to get, considering it's about 3 1/2 years old. I've seen used complete copies of this game sell for about $50 - $70. It's that rare, considering it comes with collectibles that you may not be able to get if it's used. It's an awesome collector's item, if anything else. And if you're lookin' to get the Japanese version of the game, it's called "The Adventure of Puppet Princess". Good luck finding it, and let me know if you do... 'cause I don't know who to ask or where to start.

I won't give scores for specific categories because 1) I'm too lazy to, and 2) This game would take huge hits if I actually broke it down. This is what I feel the game should get from just playing it, period. I already see all of you raising your pointy sticks at me again, but do remember, this is my opinion. Everyone's standards for video games are different... no one's is far superior or inferior.

Overall: 8