Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call

I want to make note that I have not spent a full game amount of time with Theatrhythm because like other Final Fantasy titles, you are meant to spend hours upon hours with it and it never actually has an endpoint. I have however played a very large amount of the original Theatrhythm and have spent more than enough time with all types of music games to make me feel comfortable to write this in a timely manner to help fellow dooders interested in picking up the game. Also while I've tried, I've never successfully completed a Final Fantasy game so this comes from someone who doesn't have a strong affinity for the name Final Fantasy but someone who has an extreme fondness about music games and the mechanics they use.

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call is a game that took the good foundation of the original title and built upon it to make it a great game. I would recommend this to anyone who has an interest in tapping in time and with the additions made, makes it a great portable game for the upcoming holiday travels. The main aspects to touch on is the way the game constructs the Final Fantasy world into a music game with it's RPG elements, how the game functions mechanically as a music game, and the improvements made over the problems that held back the first game which makes it more appealing and entertaining to play.

Beyond it being a music game, Theatrhythm adds several RPG elements that without, would certainly put into question having Final Fantasy in the title. From the start of the game you build the typical 4 person party using characters from throughout the Final Fantasy series. Playing the game will level up the party improving their stats which in typical RPG fashion increases the amount of HP (Missing notes cause damage) damage, and Skill Points for your characters to use on abilities. Abilities you assign to your party which can restore HP or increase damage allows players to excel further than they would by playing a raw music game. This is a great addition to the game because it adds RPG strategy to a music game which validates Theatrhythm as a true Final Fantasy game while at the same time helping to resolve a fundamental problem that exist with all music games.

Like in nearly all music games there is a failure bar that after you miss too many notes will stop the game and make you insert more quarters or hit restart song. By introducing the consistent RPG elements into the game allows for external influences to affect progression beyond passing or failing a song. With all music games there is a smooth to punishing learning curve where you teach yourself to sightread the note chart. There’s a couple different schools of thought on how to convey the notechart to the user and Theatrhythm sticks to a Taiko style where there is a single lane with different colors and icons to convey the different actions the user is to perform and then when the notes scrolls to the timing bar on the right side of the screen, they then tap the screen or buttons in the right way. It changes it up in a couple unique and interesting ways with the most prominent way has it separated to 4 different lanes to represent the 4 members of the party in battle. Learning to read a note chart is typically the biggest barrier to learning a music game and with the combination of simplified and color coordinated notes with the assistance of the RPG elements creates a smooth easy path for players to improve at the game while continuing to have a sense of progression even if the player runs into a bit of trouble passing a song. This continued praise of the RPG elements comes from one of the biggest improvements from the first game. They made the game about more than the music gameplay.

In the first game the RPG element seemed like a throwaway feature with any effects the characters have feel negligible. I would contribute this to a lack of modes to take full advantage of the character progression. The previous alternative mode for Chaos Shrine has been replaced by the far superior Quest Melodies. In the original, the Chaos Shrine was basically the same as the default mode only you played 2 songs paired together at a moderate to challenging difficulty level. Now you select a single quest and have your party go on an actual quest to destroy the boss. You get multiple branching pathways, unique items to be used between songs, and with the way the mode works, emphases the importance of leveling up your characters to be able to beat the boss monsters. This adds the much needed gravity to the RPG system that in the first game seemed completely arbitrary and failed to make the game feel any larger than the horrific iOS port. The default StreetPass function of exchanging the dark notes for the Chaos shrine in the original has nicely converted to exchanging quests for this new mode so you can once again prove to strangers you’re the hardest moogle in town by attaching the hardest quest you have to swap with people who you pass by. (Moogles are a Final Fantasy thing right?) In addition they also added a dedicated Vs mode with local and finally online play which behaves as a welcome edition rather than a tacked on one. Playing online was slow to get a match on launch day but the connection was smooth and was programmed in a way as to not interfere with the actual gameplay. Building up your characters has more weight here because they can use abilities to assist or effect you and your opponent while they do the same. I can’t say with any certainty the level of the characters will or will not overrun if matched with an overleveled opponent. With it being on launch day I never played anyone who was too far over me and it never matched me with anyone who would be too low leveled.

One of the most welcome changes added was the addition to playing the game with the directional pad and buttons in addition to the defaul stylus and touchscreen with you tapping and flicking in time You can now play with the pad and buttons or any combination of touchscreen and buttons and the game will recognize and display your choice at the end of a song. This is what I would consider to be the most important and yet most flawed part of the game. Playing a portable game on the go you may not have a steady surface to play with the touchscreen only and adding buttons provides a more consistent way to play the game. This enforces the most important feeling to any game which is that if something goes wrong, you feel that it’s your fault and not faulty touch control or being jostled around if playing in a car, bus, or plane. Now while that’s true most of the time, the main fault with this is that the tactile controls that have to conform to this gameplay system that was already established in the first game with the player using nothing more than the aforementioned stylus and touchscreen. This can cause problems that goes against that feeling of the player being problem but it’s really only on the higher difficulties that this problem arises. I feel that instead of allowing for hybrid play where you can mix how you play the game between buttons, control pad, and touchscreen on the fly, they should have made you chose in the options which style of control to use and then altered the gameplay slightly to optimize for whichever choice you made. Times of frustration when you have to use the directional pad to move a slider up and down rapidly then have to move the same pad in a direction at a pricise time will absolutely cause misreads and on the max difficulty settings which make some notes seemingly impossible to play correctly. Even with this problem it’s a much needed addition to make Theatrhythm one of my favorite 3DS games I’ve ever played.

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call is a wonderful game that I’m happy to have purchased. While not 100% solid control wise such as a Beatmania or Amplitude game, it’s without a doubt solid enough to satisfy both fans of music games and fans of the Final Fantasy series. The music exceeding 200 tracks in the game without DLC is a near astronomical amount of songs in comparison to most home release games. This revision combines both original tracks with how they sounded in the game and modern arrangements together. This should be the main factor in what determines if you should buy this game or not. Most of the music consists of modern arrangements with only a few tracks that break this mold to be Pop, Rock, or Techno. Because I'm not a FF fan I don’t have that sort of affinity where I hear a track and remember back to playing the game when I was so much younger so all I mostly hear and feel is the music and the motions it conveys alone. I can say with the little bit I have played of FFX, FFXIII, and technically… I watched my sister play through all of Mystic Quest when I was a kid… I can say that if you do have a history of enjoying the music in the series it greatly influences the game in a positive way. Only about 10 tracks apply to me in that setting but if you aren’t interested in listening to modern arrangements for 90% of the game and you don’t have a connection to the series music then you won’t like playing this game at all. Not having a more diverse soundtrack is an issue to a lot of people and a completely impossible problem to resolve as well. Nobody want’s to listen to crappy happy hardcore techno remixes of the Victory Theme and thank god Square Enix has enough respect for their property to realize that would be such a large fallacy to add those types of songs for the sake of diversity. There are also collectable cards which you obtain through gameplay and unlockable characters and songs to use the more you play to keep adding more content the longer you play. These should be seen as dressing and not part of the core experience. It’s wonderful that it constantly gives you a slow drip of new content as you play but it’s not a required part to make the game what it is. It’s worth noting that the production quality in the menus, art style, collectible cards, and scenes that play when you tap along to the music, is very well done as expected and rounds out the game to a very solid package that, as long as you completely ignore what they do on iOS, makes me understand that deep down Square Enix actually does care about making quality games that people will enjoy playing. It may not be for everyone but I absolutely love playing this game. Calling it a Curtain Call is correct and wrong at the same time because while they probably won’t make another one since they added so much music to this game they would have to do so much retreading; the changes that were made brings it to such a higher level where without a doubt, this is the best part of the show.