This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

Let me just start by saying that I am a big fan of Final Fantasy. Let me re-phrase that, I am a big fan of old Final Fantasy. I have played through all of the first 10 games, some of them multiple times, and more then one of those 10 games are in my personally top 10 games of all time. I, being an old man, fell off the series as it moved on. I don't really jive with MMOs (so 11 and 14 are out), 13 was interesting, but didn't really click with me, and when they continued pumping out 13 sequels I kinda just stopped playing them. I used to be in the boat that a new FF game was a day one purchase for me, but I can admit that I haven't played any since 13.

However, there was a game that wanted to capture my nostalgia, bottle it up, and re-sell it to me in 3DS form and I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. That was the original Theatrhythm game (now abbreviated as TR). I was late to the 3DS lifecycle, so when I finally got the first TR game, I was only a year away from the sequel, so while I put my time in.. I instead anxiously awaited a newer game, with more and more nostalgia to keep me going. Now after finally, finishing it, lets talk about TR 2: Electric Boogaloo (or Curtain Call, as it is known in the whole world).

TR Final Fantasy Curtain Call, is a rhythm game that comprises hundreds of songs from the games and allows you to play them back like you would any rhythm game. With the 3DS you can play it with a stylus which involves you tapping, holding, or swiping in specific directions to complete songs, or by using button inputs. It feels like the game prefers you to play with the stylus in mind, but both playstyles work. Most songs are divided into two types (there are more, but the majority of what you play fall into these two), there are battles and field songs. Field songs, show your party walking while the song plays across a single note lane. When doing the 'Hold' section of the songs, the line will move up and down and you need to follow its path for your note to register. For battle songs, the song is divided amongst your four party members and notes will appear on 4 different lanes. While you do not need to manually change the note lane you are on in order to hit the notes, you do have to spread your focus more, so that you don't miss something that is on a note lane you weren't glued to.

I played my fair share of levels and I will say that you adapt quickly to both, and that I didn't notice my performance dipped on any song type. The game scores pretty generously as you are playing the song, ranging from "Critical" (the highest), to Great, Good, Bad, and Miss. These also have their own benefits. In battles, your characters are actually fighting during the song, with each successful hit of a note, the character who had that note in their lane is doing damage to the enemy. Land all criticals and you do the most damage, get a bunch of Bads or misses and the enemy damages that player. For field levels, your goal is essentially racing across the world, Critical make your character run at their fastest speed, while bads and misses can make them trip, get injured or, get replaced by someone else in your party. However, what I mean by it scoring pretty generously is that you can land criticals, through good, as long as you are playing something resembling on beat with the song. I really only scored Bads or misses on the hardest difficulty songs, or if I really flubbed a note like swiping in the wrong direction, or releasing a hold when I shouldn't have. I obviously only have my own ability to go off of, and one that might have been honed in college with Rock Band, so take that with a grain of salt, but I did feel I would land crits even if I knew I could have timed something better.

When the game starts you only have access to play songs through its single song picker, but the game slowly starts opening up the more that you play. Eventually turning from a single song rhythm game to a RPG rhythm game. What I spent nearly all of my time doing, was a quest mode, where you take your party on multiple song quests where they can level up, fight bosses, gain items, and work on unlocking more characters all while furthering the narrative with the game. Quests were grouped in short, medium, long, and epic length and each quest has multiple paths where you get to have some semblance in what songs you want to play. They also have a level suggestion tied to them, but I found that there is about a 10-15 level wiggle room where you can maneuver without too much difficulty. Beating a quest (beating the final boss at the end of all the songs) unlocks another quest at a harder difficulty, and usually gives you a reward that can unlock a new character. It is an endless cycle as one quest begets another quest until eternity (or maybe it ends, but I never maxed out all the quests).

The levels of course are referring to your individual characters. The game starts you off with a few, but you can unlock more and more as you beat bosses, get rewards, or simply by reaching a certain crystal level (more on that later). Every character you unlock is from a past Final Fantasy game, and you can mix and match characters from any series to build your dream team. What I appreciated is that the game includes more then just the main popular characters. I liked seeing characters like Jecht, or Cid (not FF7 Cid) who aren't characters that are playable in their actual mainline game, be playable here. There is a lot to unpack with characters as to how they impact songs, from the strength of their attacks to the abilities you have equipped (yep you have to learn and equip abilities) to also where they are in party placement. However, a lot of this stuff can be ignored if you are just looking to have fun with the game, and listen to the music. I personally, always just swapped characters in and out to try and level up my lowest level characters, and I only adjusted their abilities every 5 to 10 levels just to see if they learned anything new. If you are the type you want to micro manage the characters you can, by not only maxing out their levels, but by feeding them collectable cards to boost stats, prestige-ing them, and working all the way back up the chain so they get even stronger. Unless you are competing in some blood sport with this game, where lives hang in the balance, I don't advise taking it to this extreme.

How you actually 'beat' the game is by earning enough crystal points to trigger a final boss fight. You get these crystal points literally every time you complete a song. The better you do on the song, the more points you can earn. There are some bonuses that can be tossed in there if you are truly looking to maximize your growth, but ultimately as long as you are playing the game you are making progress.

Which actually brings me to my biggest negative with the game, it kinda feels completely pointless. Now don't get me wrong, I love Final Fantasy's collection of music. There are songs that warm me up inside and just generally make me happy, I also enjoyed playing them, but there is no real track to feel like you beat the game. For some people that may be a good thing, if you wanted to play the FF 1 overworld theme 10,000 times in a row, you could eventually roll credits without engaging with any other aspect of the game. You could do this all from the single song selection menu, and you can roll credits. However, I wanted something a little more substantial, it is the reason why I put all of my time into the Quest mode, because it gave me some semblance of progress, but quest mode has its own problems. While I never really struggled to complete any quests on the first or second pass, I did find that despite playing different quest numbers that I felt a lot of songs got repeated, and despite some 200 songs available, I would play the same battle theme from FF 13 or the same Field theme from FF 11 in back to back quests. While you do get to pick a path to go on, unless you have played that very specific quest before, you don't know what song is coming up next. and not every song has a path around it, so you might pick a path to play a FF 6 Field theme over a FF 10 theme, but the very next song might be that FF 13 battle theme that you would have avoided if you knew it was coming up. I may have saw credits, but I certainly didn't play every song in the game. There is nothing preventing me from going back and playing those songs now that I beat the game, but I probably won't.

As addressed earlier, but it bears repeating, this is a game that kind of wants you to micromanage every aspect of the team, between every song. There are abilities and characters to swap out based on the song type you are going into, items to equip or use ahead of each battle to use different summons or heal characters, collectable cards to earn that can be feed to characters or to other cards to increase their rarity, team makeup that will earn you more crystal points upon the completion of the song, speed stats to take into account for field levels, and strength and magic stats to think about for battles. All of this for a rhythm game that doesn't need any of it. I was able to ignore all of these things to different degrees and still complete quests mainly on first passes, beat the final boss on one attempt, and rarely have a team member fall or "die" during any sequence. I focused solely on playing the rhythm part of the game well, and that is all you need to do.

I can understand that having the name Final Fantasy, means that expectations are going to be different, and they perhaps felt they couldn't just make a standard rhythm game without the RPG mechanics that FF is known for, but they might have swung a little too hard in that direction for me personally. With that said, I still think this is a fantastic game, for me, and yes that qualifier has to be in place. The enjoyment out of this game comes exclusively from the player's love of the final fantasy music, if you have no nostalgia for the songs or you simply don't care for the music in any of the FF games then this game is absolutely not for you. I remember when I got the game, was enamored with it, and had my wife play it. She, at that time, had only played FF8, and FFX-2, and you can believe that she didn't get nearly the same level of joy from playing songs she has no attachment to. This is a game, that was made exclusively for the hardcore fans of a series and I can respect that aspect and know that it applies to me, but I can also see why many people might not have played, nor enjoyed playing the game.

It does make me question why there hasn't been one more designed for the Switch yet, and maybe one is coming (who knows), but I feel like they could revisit this series and do it bigger and better. My advice would be to just make it a Square/Enix music TR and not pigeon hole it into just FF. They could pull music from all sorts of franchises, old and new, give you chibi characters of Squall right next to Lara Croft or the Quiet Man and let us play through a collection of 250-300 songs of their greatest hits. Sure maybe we lose some of the deep cuts of Final Fantasy songs or characters, but I'm ok if they are mixing in the Chrono series, Kingdom hearts, Dragon quest, and more into one playlist.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: No

Where does it rank: I enjoyed most of my time with TR FF CC, even if I wanted more out of it. I feel I was only half of the person they designed the game for (someone with deep nostalgia for the music, but not the micro managing) and would love for them to revisit this series again. Hell even if it is just another FF one, update it with songs from the newer games (FF14, 15, 7 Remake, etc.) add in a basic story mode, more characters and they could sell it again as a complete collection. This 3DS game has great DLC songs for it as well, but outside of buying some of my favorites, I couldn't justify putting more songs in just for them to be in single song collection mode. If you have a deep love for FF music, this game is worth seeking out and playing, but as for the greatest game of all time, I can't assume everyone would love it. I have it ranked as the 26th Greatest Game of All time,out of 103 games.It sits above "Super Mega Baseball 2" (27th) and right below "Yakuza Kiwami 2" (25th).

Up Next

1. Figment (Switch)

2. Goof Troop (SNES)

3. Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot: The First Cases (Switch)

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion). Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

I think that this is the first Final Fantasy game I've enjoyed since like, playing 5 for the first time on GBA. Love it. Can definitely appreciate the valid negatives though.

Super curious how you'll feel about Goof Troup. My cousin and I loved it so much we rented it two weekends in a row, but that was in the 90s and I haven't played it since. So I'm curious what a more modern opinion of it might be.

@sethmode: it's a great game, and they nailed what they set out to achieve. It's why I want a newer one, because I enjoyed it so much that I would be willing to dive into more, but I'm also a person who needs a driving force for me to stick with a game. I am 100% going to get more attached to a game that has me working towards something rather then just getting a high score.

Sure could I go back, max level my characters, play every song, and finish my open quests.. yes, but to what point.

As for Goof Troop, this will actually have been my first time playing it, I missed it when it came out on the SNES and it only popped on my radar because I heard someone say it's like a top 10 co-op game of the generation.

Loved Curtain Call. Would've been great to see Chrono Cross or whatever RPG soundtrack you prefer in a new game.

Fantastic game. I always wanted to see Zelda get the same type of treatment.

@csl316: thanks for the read don't get me wrong Final Fantasy is the best soundtrack they could have used, I'm just saying for a future game I want the smash Brothers equivalent, all properties in one game.

@nophilip: Zelda kind of got that with cadence of hyrule.. but yeah I would be happy with a zelda TR. Thanks for the read.

@imunbeatable80: Don't get me wrong, Cadence of Hyrule is great. But I appreciate Theatrhythm's commitment to presenting the tracks as they originally were, not remixing or remaking them with full instrumentation.

I love Final Fantasy music. Much more than FF games, to be honest. I've played up through FFIX, but only completed through FFV. But I could listen to the music all day. That's why I think I prefer the simplicity of the first Theatrhythm over all the meaningless excess of this one. This one does have a larger music library, so it ultimately wins.

Man, I want a new one of these so bad. They made an arcade version that was (is?) regularly updated and had a bunch of 14 music up through Stormblood (I think also Nier music?) and I just want a way to play that stuff at home.

I totally get the desire for something like a story though. I liked the Kingdom Hearts game they did, which had something kinda like that, same with the Persona ones.

@redwing42: thanks for the read.. FF music is top tier and I can listen to it on its own while I am doing other stuff, but for me it's because I played and enjoyed the games and can place myself in all of the scenes to match the music. I do have the first TR but haven't put the time into it to review, but that might come up soon.

@epidehl: I did look it up after writing and square did register a trademark in 2021 for TR, but that doesn't always mean a new game is coming.

I am on board with them making a new game, I stand by a best of square/Enix collection would be top tier.

Great read as always. There is a Theatrhythm Dragon Quest that was released in Japan. I haven't played it much since I don't have the same history with DQ as I do with FF. But it was real cheap when I found it so I couldn't pass it up.

@chamurai: Thanks for the comment.. I did see the DQ game one as well, but like you, I don't really have any connection to that series. I would be totally cool to mix it into future games, just don't think I would buy a "all DQ version."