A pretentious mini-game, overdressed behind cutesy characters and a pseudo RPG system
User Rating: 8.5 | Theatrhythm Final Fantasy 3DS
Theatrythm is a music rhythm game, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Final Fantasy series which spans 13 games. First you must choose a party of four which can be switched at any point. Small, cute characters represent each games' lead character making a total of 13, although there are a several more bonus characters to unlock too. There are 3 game modes; Series, Challenge and Chaos Shrine. The 40+ tracks are classified as either Field, Battle or Event songs. Each of these varieties displays the notes differently but the game-play mainly remains the same. Red notes are 1 tap, Yellow notes need a directional slide, and Green notes are held. In Field, a character walks and the notation scrolls. In this mode, the held notes are more frequent, and you need to slide your stylus up and down to match the notation. In Battle, you have a separate row for each of your party members. It does not matter which character has the notes, but the way it is represented poses a different challenge. Battle music features the most energetic songs so you need to react faster. In Event, the notation moves around the screen and changes tempo. As the song plays the background shows a in-game video sequence from the actual game. In Series mode, you play 3 songs plus optional Opening and Ending songs. The Opening/Ending tracks are very basic where you just tap when the bubble reaches the crystal which soon becomes boring. Challenge mode is where you choose 1 track only. Chaos Shrine has a arbitrary pairing of one field song and one battle song, and allows you a higher gain of items. The difficulties are Basic Score, Expert Score, Ultimate Score and once each song is completed, you are awarded both Rhythmia and Experience. To complete the "story", you need to acquire 10,000 rhythmia which takes about 5.5 hours, and by that point you will have completed the all songs on Basic Score and a select few in Challenge mode. Obviously, there is much more to do in the game. In terms of experience, this levels up your characters to unlock new abilities. Missing notes reduces your health, so abilities like Cure can recover it. Attacking abilities and magic can defeat enemies quicker in the battle songs. Removing all abilities gives you a 2 million 'stoic' bonus allowing you to achieve the SS rank. You will need to have the abilities to get the Feature Drive sections. This equates to riding the Chocobo on the Field songs, summoning in Battle songs, and playing the extended version of the song in Event songs. In terms of difficulty, once you get used to the game, the Field and Event songs on Ultimate aren't that difficult, but the Battle songs are often insane, with all sorts of combinations of notes appearing at some tempo without many slow parts to give you a break. You will need a combination of rapid reactions and high levelled characters with strategically planned abilities to even finish these songs. Graphically, the game is really impressive, with the 3D effect put to good use to separate the graphical user interface from the backgrounds. There is certainly a lot of charm, and obviously fans of the games' music will enjoy themselves, but for non-fans it may seem like a very pretentious mini-game, overdressed behind cutesy characters and a pseudo RPG system. Which obviously it is; but it's very good at what it wants to achieve. Personally, I don't care too much about game music, and have only played half the Final Fantasy games, but I still thoroughly enjoyed the game anyway. 
