Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call Surpasses Expectation

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There sure are a lot of crossovers available to 3DS owners this holiday season.  Persona Q, Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney, Super Smash Brothers, Theatrhythm. All four of these games leverage the player’s affection for past titles and then mix and match characters.  As a rule, I’ve never been much for this sort of fanservice.  I would rather play something original or a sequel that substantively adds to an existing universe.  Crossovers can feel like a victory lap for a successful brand—only the most popular brands get invited to crossovers and the content is often meaningless.

 

On paper, Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call seems like the sort of crossover I don’t like.  The narrative is loosely defined nonsense that exists solely to justify bringing a lot of popular characters together.  Neither the gameplay nor the art is reminiscent of the strengths of the original games. Turns out, though, that Theatrhythm is a blast to play.

 

Theatrhythm is a rhythm game that allows the player to tap through three difficulties of note lines for over 200 songs drawn from all along the Final Fantasy family tree.  The presentation of the note line changes depending on if the song is up tempo or more peaceful, but the rules of the game never change.  Tap red dots, swipe in the direction of the arrow on yellow dots, hold down on green dots.

 

The rules of the game don’t need to change, though.  Every rhythm game is built on simple mechanics.  What separates the good from the bad in this genre is the quality of the music and the incentives for the player to experience it.

 

Theatrhythm nails both.  The music part is easy; Final Fantasy has a musical pedigree unlike any in the video game medium.  It would be hard to find 200 tracks not worthy of revisiting.  Everyone will have his/her own favorites and of course not every favorite can be present, but the obvious bases have been covered and an awful lot of less obvious bases as well.

 

As for the incentives, there are a lot.  You are always unlocking things in this game.  You’re unlocking characters, you’re finding items, you’re collecting character cards (like Smash Bros trophies but with the ugly Theatrhythm art), you’re unlocking randomized adventure mode maps, and through all of it you’re collecting experience to level up your party.  Very rarely, you’ll even unlock a new song.  At the end of any note line the player is almost sure to have gotten something of value, and the next goal will be only a song or two away.

 

 

Oh, and did I mention you can use your collected cards to power up your character’s stats independent of their level?  That’s in there, too.  Oh and yes—you can reset a character to level 1 once they hit the maximum of 99, and remax them as a slightly more powerful version of themselves.

 

Honestly, there’s almost too much going on. The potential to build massively powerful parties by leveraging all of these variables is appealing, but there’s little reason to do so.  Short of super-competitive multiplayer or very high-end adventure mode maps, just a collection of my favorites was fine for everything.

 

And really, shouldn’t everyone be playing as their favorites in a crossover game anyway?  Lemme tell you, my party of choice was NOT optimal.

 

Extra options around the periphery don’t hurt the game, though.  I appreciate that this game allows the player to take it as deep as he/she desires.  If you want to play a very difficult rhythm game to test your skills, the ultimate difficulty is there for you.  If you want to get deep into the stats and leveling up side of the game to maximize your party strength and interface more with the RPG side, you can do that.  If you just want to chill on a reasonable difficulty with some classic Final Fantasy tunes, that’s there as well.

 

Food for thought:

 

1. 2014 3DS holiday season crossover scorecard:  I really wanted to like Layton X Ace Attorney but ended up disappointed.  Theatrhythm I was ready to write off as more poorly titled self-indulgent Square Enix nonsense, but hooked me hard.  Two down, two to go.  Feeling optimistic about Smash Bros but Persona Q is a real enigma.  We’ll see if my expectations continue to be upset.

 

2. I absolutely adore the music in Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII, but there’s no denying that the symphonic scores to those games don’t translate well to a beat happy rhythm game.  Most of the MMO tracks do okay though.

 

3. Okay, I know I said that not everyone’s favorite songs can be in the game, but how do you possibly justify not having “Endless Sky”?  They dropped the ball on that one.

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