Theatrhythm Final Fantasy review

Also during these stages, you'll be able to utilize your character's skills, such as increased strength or a fire spell, that activate automatically throughout each level. You're also able to equip your party with a single item that can be the difference between success and failure. For example, a potion will restore back a portion of your HP gauge if you're about to fail at a song. A Phoenix Down will give you a second chance after your party has been completely defeated. Other items include Giant's Tonic, which increases your party's HP, Miratete's Memoirs, which raises the EXP your party receives, and more.

Aside from the Series mode, you can take part in Challenge mode, which lets you pick any song and set a high score and eventually unlock higher difficulties. Chaos Shrine houses the game's Dark Notes, which are higher difficulty songs sometimes made up of songs that don't appear in the Series mode. Completing these will net you higher rewards, however, and some really rare items. You can even save your favorite Dark Note and share them with fellow Theatrhythm players. The only problem I had with Dark Notes is that since the music attached to them is random, you can get stuck with playing a bunch of repeats. I've had five straight Dark Notes end with the ending theme to Final Fantasy XII. Great song, but come on.

Chaos Shrine also allows for up to four players to take part in playing, although they all share a single HP bar; so if one player messes up, it will bring the entire team down. I wasn't able to get any time with multiplayer however, since there was no one else to try it out with.

Even though the main game will take you about six hours to complete, and by complete I mean seeing the ending credits, there is tons, and I mean tons to unlock. You can keep on playing to raise your Rhythmia and unlock more songs, level up your heroes and raise their stats, collect colored crystal shards which eventually form into a new playable character once you collect eight pieces, unlock the music and cutscenes in the game's music player and theatre respectively, hunt for 81 (or 243 when you count Holofoil and Platinum) CollectaCards which are essentially trading cards with various info on Final Fantasy characters and monsters, gain trophies for various in-game achievements, or gain stars whenever you reach a milestone in the game's record book. Let's just say if you're a completionist, you'll be playing Theatrhythm for a long time.

If you're worried that the game won't include your favorite song, you can rest fairly easy. Square did a pretty good job with picking the right songs to represent each game of the series, though not all of them hit the mark however. There is already a batch of DLC on the way that is sure to please those looking to expand their musical libraries further.

The look of the game itself is brilliant as well. All of the games look vastly different from each other, giving them a unified, almost doll-like feature which is ultimately cute and charming. It's an art style that absolutely works for the type of game that it is. I initially thought the 3D effect would be wasted in a game like this, but as it turns out, it works quite nicely. The background is always made up of your characters on screen or the currently playing cutscene, while the foreground shows the tracks of notes to hit.

There are some minor issues I had with the game, which just could have been way more streamlined. For example, switching your leader character with another character already in your party should have been a simple drag and drop. Instead, you literally have to switch them out manually, as if they weren't in your party to begin with. Secondly, even though the emphasis is on collecting various items to help your party out, you have the option to strip your party of any items or abilities, putting them in Stoic Mode. This allows you to gain an extra 2 million points at the end of the round, allowing you to score an SS rank or higher. Essentially, you have to make the choice of "Do I want to collect better items, or am I going for the top score?"

This 25th Anniversary celebration of Final Fantasy should be treasured amongst fans of the series, but even beyond that. It's a complete package of nostalgia, fun gameplay, charming visuals, and breathtaking compositions that equally make up what Final Fantasy is all about.

It's been 25 years since the birth of Final Fantasy. Since 1987 (or 1990 for the US) gamers took it upon themselves to rescue princesses, ride airships, collect crystals, wield towering swords, defeat many evils and save the world. Square Enix saw it fit to celebrate this occasion with a compilation. Sadly, not a compilation of every single Final Fantasy game in one convenient package, but rather through the amazing musical compositions that the series is equally known for. Theatrhythm takes all 13 core Final Fantasy titles and presents them to fans in a brilliant rhythm game package that is absolutely overflowing with nostalgia.

Cosmos and Chaos are at it again, and have once again summoned every main hero and a myriad of side characters to the fray in order to restore balance to the Rhythmia crystal, which is now teeming with darkness. The only way to do this is to travel the lands, battle enemies and reminisce through musical pieces that feed the Rhythmia crystal. It's a silly premise, but given that the game revolves around music, it works.

There is more to Theatrhythm than meets the eye. On the surface, you have a seemingly uncomplicated rhythm game that relies on taps, slides and holds. Even a generally non-rhythm centric gamer can easily get through the basic difficulty of songs. Digging deeper and further unlocking harder difficulties or taking on the Dark Notes, which I'll cover later, proves that you not only have to have rhythm, but you also need to have great hand-eye coordination.

You're given the choice to build up a dream team of four characters comprised of any main hero from the 13 games, or eventually unlockable characters as well. These characters then level up, gain abilities, equip items, raise their stats and more. An RPG system in my rhythm game you say? It actually ends up working beautifully in conjunction with the overall gameplay, which I'll get into next.

The game's Series mode allows you to select any of the 13 games in the series, and then break them up into five separate sections. The beginning and ending songs are mostly there to provide backstory and conclusion, although you can tap along to the song whenever music notes fly over the crystal in the middle of the screen for some extra Rhythmia points.

The crux of the experience is in the three event stages. The Field stage (FMS) is a walking stage where your leader character walks along a field while you play along to the given field music. While your character's level isn't dependent on you completing the level, it does factor in how far they can walk, and therefore what items they can acquire. For example the main stat point that's important for Field stages is agility. The higher the agility, the further they'll go, simple as that. Having high Luck also helps with finding rare items.

Event stages (EMS) are stages that are the most nostalgia evoking. They are comprised of popular cutscenes or gameplay from each title which plays in the background, while you tap, slide and hold to the beat on the foreground. I can't tell you how excited some of these made me. I remember having a save file specifically right before the Waltz for the Moon segment in Final Fantasy VIII that I wanted to be able to rewatch whenever I wanted. It's great that this cutscene, along with many others, are included in the game.

​Lastly, Battle stages (BMS) are battles which pit your four heroes against an onslaught of enemies one after another. The governing attributes are Strength and Magic, since it helps you defeat monsters more easily. The more of them you kill, the better the rewards. Battle stages are definitely the most frantic of the three, since they always are comprised of up-beat, popular battle themes. These on Ultimate difficulty are quite hard to master.

Sprinkled between each of these stages are Feature Zones. In FMS, they'll turn your character into a fast walking Chocobo if successful. In BMS they'll call forth a random summon to do massive damage. Lastly, in EMS they'll extend the last 20% of the song to give you the chance to score more points.