Review - Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy

Do you like Final Fantasy? Do you like music games? If you said yes to both, I'm sure you've heard about Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy already. Read on to see whether if this game is worth the time saving the crystals, or if you should save your money.

Story - Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy brings many popular Final Fantasy music from the main FF games from 1 to 13. As far as the story goes, in the game of Theatrhythm, the crystal has lost its shine. In order to restore the crystal's shine, you must collect Rhythmia. ... That's it. That's all there is to say about the story of Thearthythm, which is nearly non-existent. If you were expecting something interesting and unique like what Dissidia: Final Fantasy had to offer, unfortunately, all you're getting is disappointment.

Gameplay - The whole game is based around tapping, sliding, and holding the touch screen with your stylus to the rhythm of Final Fantasy music as the game instructs, much like any rhythm based games like Dance Dance Revolution, or more closely to this game in particular, Elite Beat Agents and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!. The game consists of three different types of Music Stages. They are...

• Battle Music Stage (BMS)
• Fast, uptempo battle songs.
• Field Music Stage (FMS)
• Happy, relaxed field songs. 
• Event Music Stage (EMS)
• Vivid, emotional event songs.

All three music stages uses the same three types of triggers; Touch, Slide, and Hold. The timing of your touch screen action to the music will determine your grade for each trigger. From best to worst, they are... Critical, Great, Good, Bad, and Miss. Depending on the grade for each trigger, you will get a certain number of points. The points you gain for each trigger varies on the song and difficulty you're currently playing on, as a perfect score will always be 7,999,999, or 9,999,999 with the 2,000,000 Stoic Bonus. It makes keeping track of what songs you've perfected easier, I suppose.

One thing to note about the difference between Theatrhythm and Elite Beat Agents is that the triggers are on the top screen instead of the bottom, and how where you touch doesn't matter, as long as you touch the touch screen at the right timing. Due to this, the game doesn't feel like it gets as difficult as EBA games do, so difficulty may not be all that hard if you are good at music games. Speaking of difficulty, the game has three different difficulties you can select for songs in Series and Challenge Mode; Basic, Expert, and Ultimate Score. The higher the difficulty, the more triggers you'll get, and they move faster as well.

During a Music Stage, you will encounter Silver Triggers during Feature Zones. Completing the Silver Triggers without too many misses will extend the Feature Zone with Gold Triggers that provides additional bonuses like summoning a Chocobo to ride on during FMS, a summon during BMS, and extend the endings of EMS.

All that is very basic rhythm game gameplay, but what makes this different is the incorporation of RPG elements. You first choose a party of four from the main characters of each of the 13 Final Fantasy games. Each character has their own stats and abilities that you can choose to equip, and by playing through Music Stages with them, they gain EXP and level up. Here are what each stat does.

• HP (Hit Points) - Increases your life bar, allowing you to continue songs with more bad or miss ratings on triggers. 
• Strength - Determines how much damage your physical attacks do to enemies in BMS.
• Magic - Determines how much damage your magic spells do to enemies in BMS.
• Agility - Determines how fast you run in FMS. 
• Luck - Increases the likelihood of encountering Moogles in FMS, and chances of getting rarer items.
• CP (Capacity Points) - Used to equip abilities on your characters. 

During a BMS, you want to have characters with high STR and MAG to deal more damage to the enemies you fight. By defeating a certain number of enemies in a BMS, you will encounter a boss, which will drop an item if you defeat it. While in FMS and EMS, AGI and LUK helps you increase your chances of finding items by covering more ground. HP is useful in all modes, especially in harder songs so you are allowed more mistakes before you fail the song.

These stats are most useful in Dark Note Mode where you have a FMS first, then a BMS with bosses. Depending on how far you've traveled in the FMS, as well as your performance in the BMS determines which of the three bosses you fight, and each boss drops specific items. This is where you will most likely spend most of your time playing, other than playing your favorite songs in Challenge Mode, as it is the more mechanically interesting mode. However, the reason why you will be playing your favorite songs in Challenge Mode more than Dark Note Mode is because of how there are only 10 FMS and 10 BMS songs available in Dark Note Mode.

The unlockable characters from each Final Fantasy games are cool, but some of them seem to be questionable choices for the cameo. They can be unlocked by collecting crystal shards of a specific color, often dropped by bosses in Dark Notes, or through accumulating Rhythmia. Apparently the iPhone version has more songs and unlockable characters than the 3DS version, which is kind of a let-down for people who would prefer playing this on the 3DS than having to buy packs of songs and characters through the iTunes store.

Note: There have been reports of frame rate issues, and DLC costing twice as much on the iPhone. Also, the game lacks character customization and items, which also removes the stoic bonus as well. Other features may be missing, and other differences have been noted between the 3DS and iPhone version. This review focuses on the 3DS version, so if you are interested in the iPhone version, you might want to do some additional research.

Graphics - The characters, I'm sure you've noticed, is very simplified, and certainly goes for the "cute" look over the "cool" look they all had in Dissidia: Final Fantasy. However, the cutesy look is more appropriate for Theatrhythm considering the gameplay. There are no flashy action like in Dissidia, nor cutscenes that would portray them in a serious manner. The simplified look just works out in the end.

However, the backgrounds are nicely detailed in the game. During a FMS, you will see several landmarks and interesting details of each Final Fantasy world, such as the meteor at the beginning of the game of FFV, Figaro Castle in the desert in FFVI, and some later-game things that you might see floating in the sky. During a BMS, you will be fighting in a background resembling the areas you would be fighting in in the FF games as well. As for EMS, there is a video for each FF game with either snippets of events in the game, or major cutscenes, giving a sense of reminiscence while playing through them.

3D effects in the game is very weak. Usually, triggers will be in the foreground, and everything else is in the background. Not very good use of 3D, but it's there. Ultimately, 3D does not provide any improvements in your gaming experience in Theatrhythm. 

Sound - The songs that you play are mostly the original versions of each song; not remixes, which is good if you want to let nostalgia carry you through the game and not get thrown off by new beats. With that said, there ARE a very select few that are remixed, like Mt. Gulg from Final Fantasy 1, which is okay; works for the sake of gameplay, I suppose (albeit not as interesting as other songs IMO). The menu screens in the game all contain remixes of other songs, which is definitely a nice touch and doesn't interfere with your actual performance since they aren't songs you get to play but actual BackGround Music. Do note however that the 3DS' speakers aren't the best speakers, so some parts of songs may sound not-so-clear at max volume. Either tone it down or use earphones to bypass the issue.

As for the sound effects in the game, they are very basic. The chimes for when you hit a trigger can be toggled on and off, as well as adjust its volume in the options screen. Normally the chimes won't be an issue, but with some quieter songs, usually in EMS, you will hear the chimes louder than the music themselves, which may bother some people. Very minor issue however, since you can adjust this.

Replay Value - Like most music games, it is a game that is designed for you to play over and over. However, with how lenient the game's timings are for scoring a Critical on triggers, the difficulty not challenging enough for veteran music game players, and a level cap of 99 on characters, the end of the game's lifespan may be clearer than other music games out there. In the end though, it all comes down to how much you enjoy Final Fantasy, and how interested you are in rhythm-based gameplay. The max Rhythmia you can collect is 99,999, and any in-game objectives beyond that are only in-game achievements. If you are also interested in leveling up all the characters the game has to offer, it will also add some more play time as well, as there are 29 characters in total (in the 3DS version).

The DLCs help if you're willing to spend 99 cents each for a song, and might be worth it if you're truly searching for a challenge in difficulty as I have found that some of the DLC songs are much harder than those that comes with the game. It's unfortunate that they are only available in Challenge Mode, since Dark Note Mode is more interesting to play.

Overall - The game best excels at nostalgia and being a time sink. The game has little to offer otherwise with no story, simple graphics, and limited songs to play (77 in-game, which includes not-so-interesting, skipable opening and ending songs during Series Mode which only consists of tapping for rhythmia, and 52 DLC songs that are only available in Challenge Mode.). The RPG elements of Theatrhythm is fairly optional, especially for Series and Challenge Mode, especially since there are more emphasis in getting a higher score in these modes. The RPG elements become more meaningful in Dark Note Mode as score doesn't matter for getting better rewards as the focus is more on killing bosses found in them, but due to how some characters are designed, there is little variety to be had in your party if you wish to be efficient at farming Dark Note bosses.

As for the final verdict, this game is for people who really enjoys Final Fantasy and rhythm games, and even then it is something to consider. Sure, it's a fun game, but there are better music games out there, and I'm sure StepMania has some community-made Final Fantasy songs to play on there, if you don't mind the old fashioned arrows. Too bad the free demo on the Nintendo e-Shop only has 2 songs available in Challenge Mode, as well as the character customization taken out. Depending on your interest in buying DLC songs, check out how hard Man With the Machine Gun is on the Ultimate difficulty, and decide whether if the game will be challenging enough for you to be playing it enough. If you have any friends that has the game though, ask to give it a try to see if you would be interested in the game. The game DOES have a multiplayer feature as well as StreetPass, but unfortunately, I have yet to experience either of them. If you're looking to expand your 3DS game library, this would be fine, but this probably isn't a title you'll want to buy a new 3DS for.