Theatrhythm Final Fantasy

Genre: Music-Rhythm

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local Wireless)

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Review:

Theatrhythm, released on Nintendo 3DS and mobile devices in 2012, is a Music-Rhythm game released as a celebration of the Final Fantasy franchise’s 25th anniversary, containing songs and characters from throughout the series.

Given the Final Fantasy franchise’s rich backlog of spectacular music, the notion of a Music-Rhythm game drawing from the series is a delightful notion. More specifically, Theatrhythm contains a small handful of music tracks from each of the first 13 numbered Final Fantasy games, further attempting to balance those between more fast-paced battle music, slower calm “field” music, and more dramatic music from some of the games’ more emotional moments, as well as intro and closing songs. It’s tough to imagine whittling down the soundtrack of each of these games to 6-7 highlights, but mostly the selections here are sensible. Additionally, those wanting to expand this library of music have a selection of over 50 paid DLC tracks to choose from (at least until the Nintendo 3DS eShop shuts down)… though don’t go breaking out your credit card just yet – there’s an even better option I’ll get to later.

I will note one point of frustration here. This game’s menus feature beautiful remixes of classic themes, but the actual gameplay here only includes the original versions of the songs. Perhaps this is greedy of me, but I would have preferred to have both included in the game itself. However, for a $40 game that already has 70 musical themes (including menu music), I feel like this is a minor complaint overall… well, except that better option I just mentioned and will elaborate on later…

Theatrhythm’s 2D visuals use simple chibi versions of characters from throughout the series backed by either simple 3D backgrounds, video footage of the game the song belongs to, or a mix of still images and quotes from the game. I could do without the still images and text, and the simple 3D backgrounds were okay, but the in-game footage was actually quite nice, both doing a great job fitting this game’s nostalgic theme, as well as giving some pretty nice visual flair if you’re playing songs from the latter games.

As for that gameplay, I have mixed feelings about it. There are some similarities here to the phenomenal Nintendo DS Music-Rhythm game Elite Beat Agents and its Japanese counterpart Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, having players tapping a touchscreen in time with a beat and occasionally dragging the stylus in a direction as indicated. However, Theatrhythm has all of these gameplay cues shown only on the top screen, making for a bit of a disconnect when you need to slide a cursor in a specific pattern. To compensate for this, the game is very forgiving about where you tap the touchscreen, literally letting you tap anywhere so long as you can move the cursor in the proper direction relative to where you started. This works well enough, but it still makes for brief moments of awkwardness.

Another issue is that this game breaks up its gameplay into four different types of Music-Rhythm gameplay based on the type of song playing. In theory, this is quite sensible – it wouldn’t make sense to have “tap to the beat”-style gameplay in a slow melodic song without any beat to speak of, after all. However, this fracturing of the gameplay doesn’t really address this issue. Opening and closing themes simply have you tap to the beat in a different way that’s harder to judge the timing, and “Event Music” focusing on emotional scenes likewise has you following the cursor around the screen in a way that makes it harder to judge timing. Only “Field” and “Battle” music, which both play similarly, seem to feature sensible gameplay that makes it easier to parse the timing. Opening/Ending and Event music is still playable, it’s not outright bad, it just feels like they changed the gameplay for the sake of changing it rather than making it better, and as a result it’s actually a bit worse.

Another element here that feels like this game overthinking things is its RPG elements, which are poorly-explained, overcomplicated, and ultimately make it difficult to see just how it affects the actual gameplay. Players form a party of multiple classic Final Fantasy characters, each with their own abilities you can swap in and out… but during the gameplay itself, you rarely feel like “I’m doing so much better now that I have Cloud in my party!”

Of course, writing this review in 2022, everything here comes with a major caveat – this game is pretty much made obsolete by its sequel, Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call. That game contains all but one of the songs in this game and its DLC, plus roughly a hundred more, fixes some of my complaints about the controls, and gives players much more freedom to select the songs they want right from the start. And while it’s lacking the video footage of classic Final Fantasy games that this game has, the tradeoff is overwhelmingly in favor of Curtain Call. And then of course there’s the upcoming Nintendo Switch sequel Final Bar Line, which will bring even more songs into the mix, as well as the return of these video sequences.

It’s this last issue that really sinks the first Theatrhythm game. On its own, this is a solid Music-Rhythm game with an outstanding soundtrack and excellent (if a bit uneven and at times unnecessarily over-complicated) gameplay. However, there’s just no reason to bother with this game now that it has been so thoroughly outclassed by its sequel(s).

tl;dr – Theatrhythm is a Music-Rhythm game featuring music from the first 13 numbered Final Fantasy games. The music here is still as outstanding as it ever was, though only menu music is remixed. And the gameplay makes use of solid touchscreen mechanics that are vaguely comparable to Elite Beat Agents. This game overcomplicates that gameplay with different modes and mechanics that do little to improve the experience, but overall this is a satisfying way to experience the music of the Final Fantasy series… but one that there’s zero reason to bother with when the game’s sequel, Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call, is better in nearly every way (and that’s not even mentioning the upcoming Nintendo Switch sequel, Final Bar Line). With this being the case, my recommendation is that you skip this game and go straight to one of the sequels.

Grade: C+

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