My husband has volunteered to do some Entertainment Reviews for FFF. I hope you enjoy his perspective (as well as his awesome writing!) and that you find it helpful.
What’s it about?
Theatrhythm is a recent addition to the decades-old video game music genre, this one centered around the cherished Final Fantasy franchise. Go ahead and pronounce the title however you want, I get the feeling there aren’t many out there who truly know how to or care. In fact the ridiculous title reflects the whimsical, almost self-deprecating attitude the game presents to the player throughout the experience when you consider the typical melodramatic overtones of the series.
With regard to the music it may be that your child is unfamiliar with many of the tunes across the 13 Final Fantasy games represented in Theatrhythm. It may be more likely that you yourself grew up either occasionally hearing a few of the major themes at a friend’s house or you went to bed with a battle track or intro score composed by one Nobuo Uematsu rattling around in your head. With nearly as many units sold in the franchise as Bruce Springsteen has sold albums worldwide, a lot of this music has been popular for a while and it was inevitable Square Enix would release a product like this to take advantage of it.
How does it work?
The good news is they did a pretty solid job at it. First off, gone are any vestige of hardware complexity from other music game franchises of this generation you may be familiar with – there are no plastic instruments to buy this time around. The interface is simply your stylus to the touchscreen across three different game modes, tapping notes to precise timing via indicators on the screen above, thankfully giving you the freedom to tap anywhere you want on the lower screen as your eyes stay glued to the top and your blood pumps to the rhythm. Audio cues chime out when you’re successful with your timing but if they hinder your appreciation of the music their volume can be dampened or muted completely in the Settings menu which is a nice touch.
Your actions consist of three different types of inputs with the stylus including a simple quick tap, pressing on the screen for the duration of a note, and a quick slide in a specified direction. These actions rack up points and keep the song going until it ends or you fail. As you finish songs in one mode you unlock tougher difficulties for them in another. Play long enough and you’ll unlock hours and hours of more content as you go along.
Some of that may sound familiar and expected for this type of game. The twist is that before you can even start playing a song when you fire up Theatrhythm for the first time, you pick a party of four from amongst the lead characters in each of the 13 numbered Final Fantasy games. As you complete songs your party gains skills and acquires items that can be equipped to help make tough songs easier, and they also gain experience points to improve their stats.
If that makes this sound like dyed-in-the wool Final Fantasy material like any other, you have equal reason to let yourself get excited if the idea pleases you or jump in intrepidly if it sounds daunting. The importance of managing this unique feature seems entirely up to the player. If you play the hardest difficulties or struggle with a tempo you may find careful management of your party’s equipped items and skills essential, but otherwise it seems geared for enthusiasts of the franchise or the RPG genre as a whole to let them tinker with their setup and feel that familiar, triumphant satisfaction of perceived efficiency. You’re further encouraged to take it all less seriously as your party trumpets a four-part randomized exclamation of hubris or worry before each song that often had me chuckling up until the moment I realized I needed to focus.
Anything Else I Should Know?
Theatrhythm is rated E10+ (Everyone 10 and older) by the ESRB and is only available on the Nintendo 3DS.
The presentation is lively and colorful with a sensible interface. There’s no content that I’d find inappropriate for children under 10 and the menus are easily navigable with little to no reading skills required. The base content can be accessed simple enough at least, and there are a few hours of gameplay there that have a low degree of challenge. Plus, in my opinion, games like this can be a good tool for boosting hand-eye coordination, quick thinking, and short-term memory application.
As far as a lasting value, even if you manage to unlock everything available over dozens of hours you also have the option to purchase additional songs for a dollar each. Unfortunately the purchasing interface for DLC doesn’t allow you to preview what you’re buying, so unless you can recognize an item from a particular Final Fantasy’s tracklist by name, you’ll have to resort to YouTube to help guide your spending.
If you’re just there for the base experience, Theatrhyhtm doesn’t offer a ton of variety in terms of how you’ll interact with it. If you advance past that towards optimizing your party loadout and going after those tough difficulties to unlock more songs, characters, items and collectible cards, you’ll appreciate the standalone package all the more. With some pretty creative game mechanics, charming style, and a non-reliance on the player having any awareness of Final Fantasy to enjoy themselves, I think Square Enix cast a wide net with this offering, and successfully so.
You can purchase Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy
anywhere video games are sold.
Disclosure: No one was compensated to write this review. We rented the video game from Gamefly to facilitate this review (Use Coupon Code TENDAY To Start Your 10-day Free Trial Today To GameFly!
). All opinions are my own. This post does contain affiliate links.
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