It's been about a month since I last posted one, and I finally figured out what I should post!
For this episode of Side Post, I'm going to be making a quick and informative review of a Final Fantasy title. To be more specific, I'll be reviewing the newest title in the series. It's an off-title, but it still counts more or less.
The title....is Theatrhythm Final Fantasy.
Recurring Fantasy Side Post Theater Proudly Presents
Theatrhythm Final Fantasy - Tapping the Fantasies!
First off, I'd like to apologize for the tacky and overly long headline above. Next, to fully clarify, the game I'm reviewing is Theatrhythm Final Fantasy for the Nintendo 3DS. So before getting anywhere, the title has already alienated itself soley to the 3DS (although I bet it would run on the regular DS). However, I am jumping ahead of myself. Theatrhythm Final Fantasy (going to abbreavite it TFF from here on) is a music rhythm title featuring Final Fantasy music and characters. For the review, I'm going to cover three game aspects: game play, audio and visual appeal, and extras. Let's start off with the biggest point here...the game play!
The point of the game is basically just rhythmically tapping the touch screen to popular Final Fantasy songs. That summarizes the entire game in a sentence, but there is more to the game than simply music. Aside from song choice, you also have a selection of characters available to you. Why would you need characters? You use a team of four characters to play through the songs. WHY DO YOU NEED A PARTY!? This allows them to throw in an RPG-aspect of leveling, items, and abilities. More aspects means more fun right? It can, and this game wouldn't really be a Final Fantasy title without at least basic RPG aspects. Even their fighting titles have to have some form of stats! (Dissidia...for those who didn't know)
I'm going to try and make this explanation simple and understandable, but please bear with me! Your party is composed of four Final Fantasy title all stars. The starting selection is just the headliners. Each character has a level, HP, four basic stats (Attack, Magic, Agility, and Luck), and a selection of abilities at their disposal. As you level, you gain better stats and new abilities. The stats and abilities affect your character's progress as you play the game. There are even items that offer all forms of useful effects like healing. I won't go into it a whole lot more since it can get a little complicated, and I'm not even fully sure if I understand what all is affected. (Also don't want to waste a bunch of space...)
Now, there are three kinds of songs that you can play, and they each play in their own way. The types are Field, Battle, and Event. Field features your character walking across a field styled after the music's home game. As long as you successfully "tap" during the song, your character continues to walk. Failure causes them to trip and the next character takes their place. Failure also slowly depletes your total HP, which is the sum of all four characters HP. While you are walking, it is possible to meet Moogles (who give you treasure) and fully walking the span of the field grants you an item given to you by a selective character for the game (varies based on game obviously). Battle songs show you a battle going on between your four characters and selective monsters from the Final Fantasy series (Cactuars, Esther soldiers, and lots of memorable bosses and enemies). Successful tapping allows you to constantly attack the enemy and eventually defeat them! On occasion, an enemy will even drop an item! Failure to tap allows the enemy to attack you and deplete your HP. The enemies are infinite in number, so you never truly destroy them all. The final type, Event, is just timed tapping with the icon going all over the screen. In the background, there is simply a video showcasing select scenes, battles, and cutscenes from the games. Failure at this part...simply drains your HP. It doesn't do anything aside from that. Besides just succeeding, it is possible to gain bonus portions of each type. Bonus on the field gives you a chocobo, bonus in battle brings in a summon, and the bonus on event simply extends the song.
Time to discuss more details! Being a rhythm game, the entirety of the game play is timing and reaction. The beginner's setting is pretty easy overall and offers a challenge without going crazy. Harder modes are...well, they're harder! Generally, it doubles the number of notes (easiest way to label them) thrown at you and makes them go almost twice as fast. I've put in nearly 6 hours into TFF, and I've already finished the main grouping of songs. They have a "Series" mode where you play each title with a selection of three songs per title (one of each type). They also have a challenge mode where you can freely select songs and play them at any of the three difficulty settings (Basic, Expert, and Ultimate). There is also a third game mode called Chaos Shrine. This offers an upgraded challenge to the regular gameplay (about Expert difficulty). You play a pair of songs, called a Dark Note, at Expert level (I think...), and by winning, you can unlock other Dark Notes as well as other items. It's also possible to get new Dark Notes through Street Pass (strange Nintendo wifi thing by walking around with your 3DS...pretty meh). That's all there is to play really. There are lots of unlockables, but I'll discuss that later. Next up...the audio and visual factor!
Ah presentation! The staple of all Final Fantasy staples! If Final Fantasy almost always does something right, it's generally the overall beauty and look of the title. However, in this game's case, it goes in a bit of a different direction. Considering it is a rhythm game, the art direction is aimed towards a more "cutesy" look. It does mean that the game doesn't look even remotely serious, but at the same time, the look does work well for the game as it is. It's simple yet well done visuals. The different songs feature backgrounds and enemies from the games, all of which designed in the TFF fashion. The event song type shows off portions of the game as well as cutscenes from the later portion of the series. Coming into the game, you can't expect anything amazing and spectacular as far as the visuals go, but for what it is, they do work quite well for the game. As for audio...
This game oozes audio! Of course, one would hope a musical rhythm game would be good in the audio department. If it wasn't, wouldn't it be a huge pile of failure? In TFF's case, it goes above and beyond in musical selection! You get a nice showcase of music from all across the series. Each game gets 5 songs...3 from in-game plus the intros and outros. (I said earlier they only get three because the intros and outros are more of bonus games) Before playing it, I figured that this title would make heavy use of remakes and remixes as far as the music is concerned, but I was greatly mistaken! The game uses the original format of each song (the NES FF titles have the 8-bit music and all). This offers a great variety of different sounds. Overall, it's pretty cool seeing the evolution of the Final Fantasy music. Of course, all of the music sounds quite related when you hear it all together. The audio makes this game what it is...and it is good. Of course, this is limited to those who greatly enjoy the FF series's music. Overall, the visuals get a pass because they work, and the audio more than succeeds where it should. Now we come to my final point...EXTRAS!
This title does have one big thing going for it...That thing is the extras! To define what I mean by extras, I mean anything you can unlock for either game play, viewing, listening, or otherwise just purely decoration aside from the meat of the game. TFF doesn't disappoint in this category. There are all forms of unlockables available such as new characters, Dark Notes, collectible cards, and more! Although I haven't unlocked any new characters, I've looked over a list of those you can unlock, and it seems fairly decent. It's mostly just one extra character per title, but it is nice that they exist. Some of the choices seem funky (like Cid from FF3 or Princess Sarah from FF1), but there are obvious choices as well (Sephiroth from FF7 and Vivi from FF9). Dark Notes (see above) offer challenging and interesting combinations of songs to play. This is cool since the only other pairings in-game are by series.
After all this unlockable talk, you might be wondering..."How do you unlock them?" Well, it's a slow and agonizing process honestly. Every time you beat a song, you are rewarded with Rhythmia. Once you hit a certain preset amount, it unlocks something. However, the unlock marks are at five hundred and thousand marks (IE 3500 or 2000). The average Rhythmia reward for beating a song is anywhere from 90 to 150+. This means you'll have to play anywhere from 6 to 10 songs to unlock one thing. This does add replay value, but I've put in around 6 hours, and I've already beaten the Series mode. This means that dozens of hours will be necessary to unlock people and things...and I have yet to even unlock any characters!
The collectible cards showcase the art of the title, but they also give a brief yet detailed synopsis of the card's featured character/monster. The cards vary from main characters to summon monsters and even include popular enemies and bosses from throughout the series. Cards are picked up as treasure during gameplay. Multiple earnings of the same cards upgrade them to two different levels of rarity. This changes how they look as well as their design. On top of all this, you unlock a music and video gallery which feature a plethora of listening and viewing material. The music is generally composed of the songs you play throughout. The videos are overviews of each title and are very much like the event music stages. It's a nice additive to the rest of this fun and easy title.
Besides all this in-game unlockables, TFF offers DLC songs. It's the first 3DS title with purchasable DLC. With this, they are able to offer a larger selection of songs (playable in Challenge mode). I went ahead and tried this out by downloading a few extra songs (mostly FF9 songs...). This is a nice touch to it all, but I really only want a few of the songs. Each song is about a dollar each (which isn't bad), but I find myself wanting a pack deal instead. I realize this isn't as feasible as people would want specific songs per game as opposed to random pairings for a bundle. They already have over 10+ songs available! I don't want very many of the ones listed either. That's all for DLC though...and for extras in general!
I realize that my "review" has turned out to be super long and fairly unorganized, but I hope (if nothing else) to give people a small glimpse into the entirety of the game. But all things must come to an end, and so I'll try to wrap it up fairly soon. Up next would be my complaints section. Hoping for the best, I plan to wrap it up in a final paragraph following that. So...let's get to complaining!
TFF is a fun and simple game, so if I were to have a problem with it...It would probably be that it isn't enough. The story is explained in a few sentences, and it honestly doesn't exist. I realize making a retarded mixture of a story wouldn't be good, but they did it for Dissidia! As for TFF, it explains that the world is run by the two gods (Cosmos and Chaos). The world is kept aloft by a crystal (BIG SURPRISE!), and that crystal is starting to lose its glow (Chaos did that). The heroes must band together and refuel the crystal with rhythm energy (Yeaaaah, really summed up but still the basic idea). I realize that can't do much with the story seeing what it is, but this story feels stupid. They could have just had zero story...That would have been better.
The actual game play is generally well done and feels tight, but I sometimes find the sliding note hard to pull off. It wants you to slide it across the screen and not flick, but you don't always have enough time to slide it. I tend to flick them, and then I miss them all together! This is probably more of my fault than the game's fault, but I still wanted to bring it up. The unlocking process of the game...is too much. At the rate I'm going, I figure I'll have to play at least 30 hours (if not more) to unlock a majority of the things available in this game. A rhythm game...demanding like 30 hours. The worst part of that 30 hours is that I'll have to play each song like a hundred times to accomplish anything! At most, the game should allow me to unlock everything by about 15 hours, but that definitely isn't going to happen. Around 6 hours of gameplay, my main party (Zidane, Bartz, Squall, and Warrior of Light) has been my main crew for the majority of that. They are only in the mid-20s, and I figure this game has a max level of 100. It will only grow harder as it goes farther! That's all I've got though for complaints though, so let me wrap this bad boy up.
Apart from these mild complaints of sorts, it's a fairly good game. It's most definitely aimed at hardcore fans above anything else though. I couldn't really recommend it to anyone outside of either 1. diehard FF fans or 2. desperate rhythm game fans. The game play is fun and addictive. The audio is really well done, and the visuals accentuate the flow and style of the game. There's enough stuff to unlock that you could easily keep busy with the game quite a while. The only true downfall among it all is the lack of songs. Sure, there are quite a few (50+), but you'll have to play them all like a dozen times each to unlock everything. The DLC looks to rectify this, but it can only do so much. If I had to recommend the game...I'd probably still say yes. Of course, I would refer you back to the third sentence in this paragraph.
To make it simple...
If you answered yes to at least 2 of those questions, you should go for it. Of course, the first question of 3DS is probably the most important...since the game is impossible without it.
Theathrhythm Final Fantasy. It takes your favorite Final Fantasy music and throws it at you with tapping and rhythm and fun. If you stood through this review, you'll probably want to go buy it. If you didn't, then you aren't reading this part, so I don't care what you think! Looking over what all I have typed, I see that it's a great big mess, but hopefully, someone out there will find this at least moderately amusing before closing the page. To those people I say...KUDOS! Thanks for reading! Tune in for my next Side Post that should be coming up as soon as I can figure out what it should be about.
~May the Crystals Guide Me~ (This time, they're doing it rhythmically with song!)
Now, there are three kinds of songs that you can play, and they each play in their own way. The types are Field, Battle, and Event. Field features your character walking across a field styled after the music's home game. As long as you successfully "tap" during the song, your character continues to walk. Failure causes them to trip and the next character takes their place. Failure also slowly depletes your total HP, which is the sum of all four characters HP. While you are walking, it is possible to meet Moogles (who give you treasure) and fully walking the span of the field grants you an item given to you by a selective character for the game (varies based on game obviously). Battle songs show you a battle going on between your four characters and selective monsters from the Final Fantasy series (Cactuars, Esther soldiers, and lots of memorable bosses and enemies). Successful tapping allows you to constantly attack the enemy and eventually defeat them! On occasion, an enemy will even drop an item! Failure to tap allows the enemy to attack you and deplete your HP. The enemies are infinite in number, so you never truly destroy them all. The final type, Event, is just timed tapping with the icon going all over the screen. In the background, there is simply a video showcasing select scenes, battles, and cutscenes from the games. Failure at this part...simply drains your HP. It doesn't do anything aside from that. Besides just succeeding, it is possible to gain bonus portions of each type. Bonus on the field gives you a chocobo, bonus in battle brings in a summon, and the bonus on event simply extends the song.
Time to discuss more details! Being a rhythm game, the entirety of the game play is timing and reaction. The beginner's setting is pretty easy overall and offers a challenge without going crazy. Harder modes are...well, they're harder! Generally, it doubles the number of notes (easiest way to label them) thrown at you and makes them go almost twice as fast. I've put in nearly 6 hours into TFF, and I've already finished the main grouping of songs. They have a "Series" mode where you play each title with a selection of three songs per title (one of each type). They also have a challenge mode where you can freely select songs and play them at any of the three difficulty settings (Basic, Expert, and Ultimate). There is also a third game mode called Chaos Shrine. This offers an upgraded challenge to the regular gameplay (about Expert difficulty). You play a pair of songs, called a Dark Note, at Expert level (I think...), and by winning, you can unlock other Dark Notes as well as other items. It's also possible to get new Dark Notes through Street Pass (strange Nintendo wifi thing by walking around with your 3DS...pretty meh). That's all there is to play really. There are lots of unlockables, but I'll discuss that later. Next up...the audio and visual factor!
Ah presentation! The staple of all Final Fantasy staples! If Final Fantasy almost always does something right, it's generally the overall beauty and look of the title. However, in this game's case, it goes in a bit of a different direction. Considering it is a rhythm game, the art direction is aimed towards a more "cutesy" look. It does mean that the game doesn't look even remotely serious, but at the same time, the look does work well for the game as it is. It's simple yet well done visuals. The different songs feature backgrounds and enemies from the games, all of which designed in the TFF fashion. The event song type shows off portions of the game as well as cutscenes from the later portion of the series. Coming into the game, you can't expect anything amazing and spectacular as far as the visuals go, but for what it is, they do work quite well for the game. As for audio...
This game oozes audio! Of course, one would hope a musical rhythm game would be good in the audio department. If it wasn't, wouldn't it be a huge pile of failure? In TFF's case, it goes above and beyond in musical selection! You get a nice showcase of music from all across the series. Each game gets 5 songs...3 from in-game plus the intros and outros. (I said earlier they only get three because the intros and outros are more of bonus games) Before playing it, I figured that this title would make heavy use of remakes and remixes as far as the music is concerned, but I was greatly mistaken! The game uses the original format of each song (the NES FF titles have the 8-bit music and all). This offers a great variety of different sounds. Overall, it's pretty cool seeing the evolution of the Final Fantasy music. Of course, all of the music sounds quite related when you hear it all together. The audio makes this game what it is...and it is good. Of course, this is limited to those who greatly enjoy the FF series's music. Overall, the visuals get a pass because they work, and the audio more than succeeds where it should. Now we come to my final point...EXTRAS!
This title does have one big thing going for it...That thing is the extras! To define what I mean by extras, I mean anything you can unlock for either game play, viewing, listening, or otherwise just purely decoration aside from the meat of the game. TFF doesn't disappoint in this category. There are all forms of unlockables available such as new characters, Dark Notes, collectible cards, and more! Although I haven't unlocked any new characters, I've looked over a list of those you can unlock, and it seems fairly decent. It's mostly just one extra character per title, but it is nice that they exist. Some of the choices seem funky (like Cid from FF3 or Princess Sarah from FF1), but there are obvious choices as well (Sephiroth from FF7 and Vivi from FF9). Dark Notes (see above) offer challenging and interesting combinations of songs to play. This is cool since the only other pairings in-game are by series.
After all this unlockable talk, you might be wondering..."How do you unlock them?" Well, it's a slow and agonizing process honestly. Every time you beat a song, you are rewarded with Rhythmia. Once you hit a certain preset amount, it unlocks something. However, the unlock marks are at five hundred and thousand marks (IE 3500 or 2000). The average Rhythmia reward for beating a song is anywhere from 90 to 150+. This means you'll have to play anywhere from 6 to 10 songs to unlock one thing. This does add replay value, but I've put in around 6 hours, and I've already beaten the Series mode. This means that dozens of hours will be necessary to unlock people and things...and I have yet to even unlock any characters!
The collectible cards showcase the art of the title, but they also give a brief yet detailed synopsis of the card's featured character/monster. The cards vary from main characters to summon monsters and even include popular enemies and bosses from throughout the series. Cards are picked up as treasure during gameplay. Multiple earnings of the same cards upgrade them to two different levels of rarity. This changes how they look as well as their design. On top of all this, you unlock a music and video gallery which feature a plethora of listening and viewing material. The music is generally composed of the songs you play throughout. The videos are overviews of each title and are very much like the event music stages. It's a nice additive to the rest of this fun and easy title.
Besides all this in-game unlockables, TFF offers DLC songs. It's the first 3DS title with purchasable DLC. With this, they are able to offer a larger selection of songs (playable in Challenge mode). I went ahead and tried this out by downloading a few extra songs (mostly FF9 songs...). This is a nice touch to it all, but I really only want a few of the songs. Each song is about a dollar each (which isn't bad), but I find myself wanting a pack deal instead. I realize this isn't as feasible as people would want specific songs per game as opposed to random pairings for a bundle. They already have over 10+ songs available! I don't want very many of the ones listed either. That's all for DLC though...and for extras in general!
I realize that my "review" has turned out to be super long and fairly unorganized, but I hope (if nothing else) to give people a small glimpse into the entirety of the game. But all things must come to an end, and so I'll try to wrap it up fairly soon. Up next would be my complaints section. Hoping for the best, I plan to wrap it up in a final paragraph following that. So...let's get to complaining!
TFF is a fun and simple game, so if I were to have a problem with it...It would probably be that it isn't enough. The story is explained in a few sentences, and it honestly doesn't exist. I realize making a retarded mixture of a story wouldn't be good, but they did it for Dissidia! As for TFF, it explains that the world is run by the two gods (Cosmos and Chaos). The world is kept aloft by a crystal (BIG SURPRISE!), and that crystal is starting to lose its glow (Chaos did that). The heroes must band together and refuel the crystal with rhythm energy (Yeaaaah, really summed up but still the basic idea). I realize that can't do much with the story seeing what it is, but this story feels stupid. They could have just had zero story...That would have been better.
The actual game play is generally well done and feels tight, but I sometimes find the sliding note hard to pull off. It wants you to slide it across the screen and not flick, but you don't always have enough time to slide it. I tend to flick them, and then I miss them all together! This is probably more of my fault than the game's fault, but I still wanted to bring it up. The unlocking process of the game...is too much. At the rate I'm going, I figure I'll have to play at least 30 hours (if not more) to unlock a majority of the things available in this game. A rhythm game...demanding like 30 hours. The worst part of that 30 hours is that I'll have to play each song like a hundred times to accomplish anything! At most, the game should allow me to unlock everything by about 15 hours, but that definitely isn't going to happen. Around 6 hours of gameplay, my main party (Zidane, Bartz, Squall, and Warrior of Light) has been my main crew for the majority of that. They are only in the mid-20s, and I figure this game has a max level of 100. It will only grow harder as it goes farther! That's all I've got though for complaints though, so let me wrap this bad boy up.
Apart from these mild complaints of sorts, it's a fairly good game. It's most definitely aimed at hardcore fans above anything else though. I couldn't really recommend it to anyone outside of either 1. diehard FF fans or 2. desperate rhythm game fans. The game play is fun and addictive. The audio is really well done, and the visuals accentuate the flow and style of the game. There's enough stuff to unlock that you could easily keep busy with the game quite a while. The only true downfall among it all is the lack of songs. Sure, there are quite a few (50+), but you'll have to play them all like a dozen times each to unlock everything. The DLC looks to rectify this, but it can only do so much. If I had to recommend the game...I'd probably still say yes. Of course, I would refer you back to the third sentence in this paragraph.
To make it simple...
- Do you have a 3DS?
- Do you enjoy Final Fantasy?
- Are you okay with the idea of a rhythm game?
If you answered yes to at least 2 of those questions, you should go for it. Of course, the first question of 3DS is probably the most important...since the game is impossible without it.
Theathrhythm Final Fantasy. It takes your favorite Final Fantasy music and throws it at you with tapping and rhythm and fun. If you stood through this review, you'll probably want to go buy it. If you didn't, then you aren't reading this part, so I don't care what you think! Looking over what all I have typed, I see that it's a great big mess, but hopefully, someone out there will find this at least moderately amusing before closing the page. To those people I say...KUDOS! Thanks for reading! Tune in for my next Side Post that should be coming up as soon as I can figure out what it should be about.
~May the Crystals Guide Me~ (This time, they're doing it rhythmically with song!)
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