You can tell straight away that is was made for fans who love the Final Fantasy series.
There isn't really much of a story plot for Theatrhythm but it's a little similar to the Dissidia series, where Cosmos and Chaos both created a crystal that controls music, Chaos causes the crystal to become disrupted and the only way to return it to normal is to increase a music wave known as "Rhythpo". It's up to various Final Fantasy characters that have been bought together and harness the power of Rhythpo.
Gameplay: Like most rhythm games you're either tapping or pressing various buttons to follow the sounds and beats. Theatrhythm uses the touch screen on the 3DS where you can have 4 characters in your party team; there are three main types of main stage styles to play through. On Music Play you can play through 4 themes in each Final Fantasy game from I - XIII and each of the main titles will have Opening/Ending theme, Field Music, Battle Music and Event Music.
Using the touch screen to tap various notes which will be the Red notes which are known as Touch Triggers, Slide Triggers which are the Gold notes are for sliding if you use the stylish pen to slide the notes and the Green note are used for holding down on the touch screen and lifting or moving them in a direction.
Opening/Ending involve simply tapping the screen in time with music notes as they move into the centre of a crystal on screen. Field music is where you'll be walking across the screen travelling across various lands across each Final Fantasy game such as Cloud's Theme (World Map) or the World Map theme from Final Fantasy IV.
Battle Music works like a lot like the 2D battles that you'd seen in various Final Fantasy games, where you and three other characters are in your team tapping and sliding notes that come across. You'll see a monster on the left side of the screen more combos and notes you play, you'll defeat a monster and another will come straight after, if you see sliver notes floating by you can summon Eidions such as Shiva, Ifirit or Odin which help you get rid of any monsters easily.
And last there's Event music where one or more scenes from the Final Fantasy game you select, and will play the scene onscreen in the background. Characters' stats and abilities other than Hit Points do not affect these stages. If you make a few mistakes the music will end, at the end of each stage you'll gain points which can unlock crystal shards which can unlock more characters and music from other Final Fantasy games. You'll also gain EXP for your characters which can level, so it does play like a normal RPG game but with music in the background.
Graphics and Sound: There's no escape when it comes to the animation and graphics for the characters just too cute to watch on your 3DS, Square did use animated GIF's which look a little similar to the ones that you might have seen for various avatars from Kingdom Hearts Mobile or Re: Coded. Even the enemies and monsters look really cute to look at when it comes to Battle music, the CGI cutscenes on Event music are really impressive to see and watch making it hard to look and play on the screen at the same time.
The best part throughout the whole game is the soundtrack from the past Final Fantasy games until now they have had some of the best music for anyone to listen too. With composers like Nobou Uematsu, Masashi Hamauza, Junya Nakano and Hitoshi Sakimoto they really have given its hard-core fans something to enjoy but you can actually say that this feels more like a fan service game.
It would have been nice if they added more music to Theatrhythm, you can unlock more music on the number of points you obtain from each music you play through, however if there was more Final Fantasy music it would have been the perfect game for fans.
Overall: I've already mentioned about that you can play through various music tracks from various Final Fantasy games, on the Nintendo Store you can buy and download certain music which you can play on your 3DS. There are plenty of things to unlock from Trading cards and various trophies for completing certain challenges and music on higher difficulty settings. Street Pass is also available which you can exchange Data back and forth with other players.
You can play up to 2-4 players if they have a copy of the game where you can play as a team by keeping up with the music notes that come across and seeing who can get the highest score. It is shame that you can't play this game online with other players which could have been a nice idea but it wasn't added.
Some hard-core Final Fantasy fans might be putting off with the idea of a music rhythm game being added to a Final Fantasy game but it's hard not to ignore the game for its music, cute characters and addicting gameplay.