At first, the title sounds pretty nuts, akin to the numerous nonsensical words that Square Enix jumbles together to create names for their staple series (take any Kingdom Hearts game in the last five years). Theatrhythm isn't even a word. It's two words, theater and rhythm, that are smashed together. But once the game starts up, it makes sense.
Theatrhythm is the Nintendo 3DS's first rhythm-action game, in similar fashion to games like Elite Beat Agents (or the DS Guitar Heroes, if anyone played those), where the basic object is to tap and swipe the bottom screen to beat of the music. There are colored prompts that come across the top screen that note the type of stylus action to input. The music in question is what makes the game work: it takes signature tracks from the soundtracks of the first thirteen Final Fantasies.
The game starts off with a meager offering of tracks to play in Series mode, where players play though selections separated by each game in the Final Fantasy series. There's the Field Music, where players sway the stylus to the beat of what's generally the Outworld theme from the FF game. There's the Battle Music, which is either the battle or boss theme. Then there's the Event Music that's generally a signature piece of music (think the dance scene from Final Fantasy VIII) accompanied by various video clips from the specific FF game. In Series mode, these three tracks are bookended by the Opening and Ending theme tracks, where players can tap to the beat at their leisure if they choose so, since these sections are purely optional.
It wouldn't be a Final Fantasy game if there weren't Japanese RPG elements to it. Players are initially given a choice of each of the main characters from all 13 FF games to build a 4-person party out of (My team generally consisted of Zidane, Lightning, Cecil and Vaan). As players progress through the game, these characters gain experience, stat upgrades, and stronger abilities like magic spells, stat boosts and powers that affect the gameplay of the music sections. The higher level the party is, the likelier they'll push through to the end of particularly tougher portions of the game. As players complete sections, they're awarded items to add to the party (and collectible cards, which don't really do anything). It's certainly easy to neglect this aspect of gameplay early on, which is probably why Series mode is particularly easy.
When sections of music are completed in Series mode, they're added to the Challenge mode, where players can go back and play certain, trickier tracks to improve their score and heighten the difficulty by playing them on "Expert Mode," and if they're really good on a song, "Ultimate Mode." None of the higher difficulties are required play, but completing them will boost the amount of experience that the character party acquires. It also adds a greater amount of game content since leveling up the character party higher will eventually make the simpler difficulties more mundane to play.
As the game goes players collect "Rhythmia," which is an unlock currency of sorts. Every 500 Rhythmia will unlock various things, like songs to play in a music player, the videos that accompany the Event music section, options for the Streetpass card, and colored "shards" that, when enough are collected, will unlock more characters to add to the party.
After playing a certain amount of the game, the Dark Note portion opens up in the Chaos Shrine part of the game. This is where the real challenge of the game lies. Dark Notes are sections where a random Field music track is followed by a random Battle music track, and the difficulty is ramped up considerably. While most of time the tracks are repeats of the ones found in the normal sections of the game, there are a few tracks that only pop up here. I found myself dying and failing a lot when I attempted this early on, but as the characters level up and get better stats and abilities and acquire better items (Phoenix Downs, 'natch) the Dark Notes become at least beatable. Beat a Dark Note, and another one unlocks. The Battle music section has a designated "boss" that, when defeated, will sometimes cough up a colored shard. Since collecting Rhythmia doesn't give out enough of these shards on its own, playing through the Dark Notes is required to unlock characters, it seems.
The game has quite an extensive amount of content to keep players occupied for a good while, but Theatrhythm offers up even more tracks, at a price anyway. Theatrhythm is the first 3DS game that has paid downloadable content. For a dollar a song, players can add more music to what's already a pretty badass library of tunes.
Theatrhythm isn't for everyone. It's restricted to a system that very few people own. It's got a really stupid title. At a glance, it's just another Final Fantasy cash-in. But Theatrhythm is charming, and caters to the nostalgia factor that Final Fantasy has in a unique way. Going back and hearing these soundtracks is quite fun (I hate to say it, but I was outwardly giddy when I unlocked the battle theme from Final Fantasy VII), and the gameplay grows rather addictive. There's no ridiculous story or unjustified sense of failure for not completing a track. It's simple, it's fun, and it's surprisingly deep. So if you have a 3DS and love classic Final Fantasy music, it's a disservice to pass on this game. If you just like fun games with just enough challenge that it isn't mind-numbing, Theatrhythm is worth checking out.
-C.
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