When it came to popular J-RPGs there was no denying Square Enix's Final Fantasy series. However ever since Final Fantasy X-2 came along back in 2004 the series has had a tremendous down fall with a huge list of horrible sequels as the series progressed onwards with the exception of the remakes on the handhelds. Spinoffs of the games were questionable besides Tactics. Unfortunately there is now a rhythm game with the exact soundtrack from each of the represented games. What I have to say is that unlike Sega's Rhythm Thief, Theatrythm is just another reason to why Square Enix is losing so much of it's magic to bring the series back together again.
Theatrythm takes place in the two worlds of Cosmo and Chaos in which in between the 2 worlds there is the world of Rhythm. It gives birth to a crystal that has the ability to control the music in the world. Chaos soon causes the crystal to become disrupted and the only way to return it to normal is to increase a music wave known as "Rhythpo" To do this the game brings together some of the series cameos such as Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII, the Onion Knight from Final Fantasy III (NES Version), Bartz Klauser from Final Fantasy V, Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII, and Warrior of Light from Final Fantasy I. The storyline is bound to be light hearten that the storyline approaches too and the deformed art style that the characters look like.
You can play this demo for about 30 uses before the demo expires.
In this demo there are about 2 different music tracks that you can play. The tracks are The Man with a Machine Gun from Final Fantasy VIII and The Sunleth Waterscape from Final Fantasy XIII. In the full game you get to chose from a track from Final Fantasy I to XIII in the main series and you can select a track that is placed at 3 different stage types. They are BMS which you play in a mock battle against the monsters, FMS where you play the field music and the EMS where you play event tracks from the series. There is also a Challenge Mode where players can chose any tracks that they have completed to beat their previous records and there is also a Practice Mode where you practice any track on any difficulty setting. Speaking of which there are 3 difficulty settings for you to select and play through. There is also a Chaos Tower mode where it goes on for 99 levels which makes it the most grovelling mode to be had in a video game. There are also downloadable content in which you can download extra songs and stages from Nintendo Eshop. The Question is that will the downloadble content be worth it?
Instead of Turn Based Battles or using the Kingdom Hearts battle engine it utilizes Time Based with each note appearing on the screen and you have to tap the Touch Screen at the right time to score the note over wise your timing has failed. There is a Health system in place and characters do gain experience and eventually level up at the end of each stage. If you make plenty of mistakes during the track then you fail and have to retry it again.
There are different kinds of notes that you need to touch carefully with timings, you can touch anywhere on the Touch screen to activate each note but it is much easier if you keep the stylus in the center of the Touch screen. Notes range from simple tap notes, notes where you hold for a brief second and then releasing afterwards, sliding the direction where the note points out and a special feature note. Some Holding notes will have mid points in the Field stages where you need to hold down and move the Stylus up and down to hit all the mid points. The special feature notes in sliver are notes activate a special feature which some of them will summon a beast to your aid. The main problem is the precise timing that you need. While most of the timings can be done without much problems on Basic Mode but when played on Expert or Higher each track adds more notes simply making nearly impossible to progress. Each note becomes way to fast and sometimes you'll end up missing so many times simply because you couldn't react fast enough to get the next note. The Battle stages are the absolute worst to be had in the game because each battle track is faster and also there are also 4 characters to keep an eye on while each note. Compared to playing a guitar instrument on Guitar Hero on the DS or other rhythm games like Eilte Beat Agents, Rhythm Thief or Rhythm Heaven pressing notes with precise timings is very difficult to get without screwing up. There are some accessory items which help increase your HP while others increase your chances of stealing collectible items like character cards and Some even boost statistics such as strength or agility and increasing the power of your attacks in Battle tracks. Even with these you going to have an extremely hard time dealing with each of the tracks with the weak controls and overwhelming difficulty.
Another thing is the annoying Ranking system. Even if you accidentally missed like 2 or 3 notes in the game you'll be ranked with either a E or a D which you'll easily get frustrated with the results. While the game can connect locally through spotpass up to 3 other players to share favorites or join in a game together with each player playing as their single line of strings, however the game has no online play or any online rankings. For online rankings properly some people might not even care if the game itself can't get it's strings correct.
Theatrhythm's graphics places characters and monsters in their deformed state which doesn't make them not half bad. They do look cute and cherry and on the loading screens they do say some laughable lines. Character animations are quite stiff while moving attacking or cheering on the other hand. You'll easily recognize the famous scenery from many of the games using the graphics of how they looked originally during the Event stages. For the most part the game looks alright with the 3D slider off but when turned on the Event stages look incredibly blurry and the notes look far to bright to see. Characters look very flat and the environments during the battle and field stages are very rough on the edges. When playing you'd really want to pay this with the 3D slider off. The main attraction however is the soundtrack which shares plenty of nostalgic memories of famous tracks such as One Winged Angel from FFVII as well as Aerith's Sad Theme, The Man with a Machine Gun from FFVIII and Real Emotion from FFX-2. What's amazing is that these tracks have all aged progressively well and through the sound speakers of the 3DS the tracks still sound amazing even till this day. You'll either find yourself either humming to them or maybe crying to the sad tunes as each tune you'll remember has plenty of emotions stuck into it.
It's just a shame that the memorable soundtrack can't save Theatrhythm from it's gameplay that hasn't got much rhythm to redeem themselves. It's just another bad excuse of a Fantasy game that fails to try and celebrate 25 years of the franchise that was once good suddenly turning bad. Unless you're willing to try your luck and get the Fantasy Rhythm down and even want to bring some memories of the franchise then maybe you'll find something worthwhile in Theatrhythm. For me I already seen enough bad games in the franchise and I'm glad I turned away from Final Fantasy and looked at the Tales franchise instead. At least Namco Bandai knows what they are doing with their future localizations.
Game Title: Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Genre: Miscellaneous, Rhythm, Music
Developer: Indies Zero
Publisher: Square Enix
Demo Released: June 22 2012 (Europe)
Date of Full Game Release: February 16, 2012 (Japan), July 3, 2012 (North America), July 6, 2012 (Europe)
Age Rating: CERO: A, ESRB: E10+, PEGI: 12+
Written by Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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