I've been interested in this game since it was announced because of the possibility that Rhythm Thief could resemble Elite Beat Agents. Now that it's out, though, there's practically nothing on Giant Bomb about it. Checking the Metacritic score, it currently has a 76, which is good, but I'd like to hear some Giant Bomb impressions if there even are any.

@FluxWaveZ: Yes, I've had it for a couple of months (came out in UK), I haven't finished it yet. It's pretty good. It feels very layton-y the way you go around town to get to the story parts and instead of there being puzzles you have music games. It even steals the tap on the background to find coins thing (in this case notes)

It has a bunch of anime cutscenes and they're ok, a lot of nonsensical stuff about Napoleon and running about Paris. Some of the games use the gyroscope and theyre kinda awful, but there's a game where you slide the stylus like a violin which is cool, as well as stealing from a museum by hiding behind coloured statues to avoid guards seeing you. It's cool, but not as good as Theatrhythm.

Also, another thing I want to add is that it can be reeeeeally unforgiving with the grade you get at the end of the song. You can mess up the last couple of notes on a song while being perfect for the rest of it and end up with a really bad ranking.

@FluxWaveZ: Yeah its been out in the UK for a while, my friend has it and I played a bit, pretty cool.

@GunstarRed: Thanks for the impressions! I'll try it out when I get a DS, but I guess I should actually consider Theatrhythm given all the positive buzz surrounding it.

It's been out in the UK since April. I own it and have completely finished it.

I really enjoyed it but the game has a few flaws.

The difficulty of certain stages jumps around considerably. For example, you'll pass a stage easily and the next will be significantly more difficult.

There are stages where you have to tilt the whole 3DS to play. These are very poorly done but thankfully there aren't very many of these stages.

The voice acting is terrible in a charming way and the music in the game is rather catchy. Story isn't that great but for a story to accompany a rhythm game it's okay.

Also the ranking system is broken. If you miss just before the end of the song you won't get an A as a miss will often take you down a grade. You know what Rank you will get as there is a bar on the top of the screen as you are playing the stage.

Also with regards to rank the following is how the system is broken. In order to unlock a hidden stage you need to get an A rank in every stage. It is possible to get a higher rank on a stage but not a higher score. For example there was a stage I got a B and missed right at the end. I tried to get a higher rank later. Missed earlier in the stage but got an A. Still saved it as having a B as the score for the B rank was higher than the A. In order to fix this I had to get a perfect. Keep this in mind when playing the stages.

Other than that the overall mechanics are fun. The game is a combination of games that involve tapping a certain part of the screen, sliding in a direction and pressing either the A button or any directional button. There is also an overall map and you move around paris looking for stages and hints. Kind of like Professor Layton in that regard. Overall a rather fun game. The overall game is about 4 - 6 hours long if you manage to not get stuck on the stages but it has a lot of replay value to just go back and play a stage to get better scores. Also there are 4 endless stages based on 4 of the stages in the game and there is a hard difficutly which is the same as normal but you need to be more acccurate with the timing,

@FluxWaveZ: It's okay, but yeah, Theatrhythm is wayyyyyyy better. In fact I'd just say get Theatrhythm and don't bother with Rhythm Thief; they scratch the same itch but one of them does it way more satisfyingly.

I'd say get both if you can.

If you love Rhythm games (like me), they're both excellent.

played the demo last night. i am impressed, but i have some other games i want to finish first.