Theatrhythm Final Bar

[dazza_cole]

Demo was released a couple of days ago, sank a few hours into it tonight and really enjoying it. There’s a quest mode where you can play through the songs for a given FF title - there’s a fair bit of content available in the demo, I’ve still to unlock everything.

Biggest change is the move away from the stylus and touchscreen, took a good hour to get used to the new controls. Found that using the shoulder triggers enabled me to easily manage quick transitions to the sticks, as well as the double button presses. The undulating notes in the field stages also took a little while to click, rather than following the gradient with an equivalent movement you really just have to do a full up/down motion.

The charm is as appealing as before, there looks to be a wealth of content....roll on the 16th!

[Cepp]

I thought it was just two songs at first but there really is a lot here, plus three difficulty modes for each song. I just finished my first run through of all available tracks and need to go back to replay them on the harder difficulties. I used the shoulder buttons for double presses as well, will be interesting to see how that holds up as stages become harder. The new control system was easy enough for me to adapt to, I switched to button controls on 3DS IIRC as I couldn't keep up using the stylus on more difficult songs.

All in all, this seems like a nice evolution for the series and I'm all in for the full release.

[Cepp]

Jumped into the full game today and explored a bit. Tried some online where you compete against your teammates which seems fun but I didn't quite understand it. At times I couldn't enter inputs, maybe some kind of item the other players can use against you? Everyone was level 99 even though it's launch day of course.

I wasn't able to beat the quests quite as easily in the full release even when acing everything. Need to level up my characters some more and learn moves and such.

The FMV tracks are interesting but a little distracting with the difference in framerate between gameplay and the background video. It's chill at easier difficulties but could be a bit of a pain when things ramp up.

I didn't notice before but there's three ways to play each stage and they all have their own score / rank tracking. There's normal, simple and coop. I don't have anyone I could try coop with sadly but I gave simple mode a try and enjoyed the easier pace of everything. It's a good accessibility option to have, I'll probably play through all difficulties in that mode too.

DLC is already out of course. £3.99 for 7 Saga tracks. Not bad I guess but I know it's all going to add up in the end.

[fuse]

Played a little of this today. Started with FFXIV because, you know, it is the best and all, but jeez there's a lot of songs in there for that game! I've gone on to FFVI after and the course is about a third of the length by comparison!

It's still a fun enough concept paired with some heavy fan service, but they've wrung the formula out a few times already and if you've spent time playing it before on the 3DS it's slightly less attractive a prospect. I remember being excited to see some of the other games - Nier! Live-a-Live! - only to now realise that of course these are DLC. Silly me.

[fuse]

I ended up playing a lot of this on the weekend. Got to the credit roll and just carried on going. It's nice, no commitment fun that is just what I need right now.

If I'm being more critical though, while it is fun I don't think it's a particularly great rhythm game. I've always found that 'button' mode in these has been slightly reductive - you don't have to coordinate anything other than the timing of whatever button's most convenient, and as there's very little in the way of pattern recognition, it's just a bit more simplistic than I want.

It's also dependent on how much you care about Final Fantasy and its music - which might sound like it goes without saying, but by having 300+ tracks you end up with a lot of less memorable numbers as well as your favourites. Some of the music here is totally suitable for a rhythm game, but is a low-bpm village theme you heard maybe a couple of times 20 years ago really that suitable? Making you play through all of one game's music is also a very good way to also remind you how a lot of the soundtracks like to toy with variations on the key melodies from that title.

My last moan is the blending of RPG into the formula too. There's a big thing about completing 'quests' for each stage, and trying to gauge how best to handle them is more heavily focused on how you tinker with your party makeup than it is how you actually perform. It bugs me that often you can play perfectly but still get penalised for not meeting some arbitrary goal.

I have enjoyed myself with it, honest, I just needed to get some of this "why is every rhythm game not Bemani" frustration off my chest.

Fun thing: I totally forgot how hard the music for Mystic Quest goes.

[fuse]

Since Feb when I played this last, I've played through FFs 1-6 and 16, all to 100% completion. So it felt like a nice little exercise to return to this with a newfound appreciation, and do the same. Should be a nice little exercise to round things off, right? Oh sweet summer child.

My last moan is the blending of RPG into the formula too. There's a big thing about completing 'quests' for each stage, and trying to gauge how best to handle them is more heavily focused on how you tinker with your party makeup than it is how you actually perform. It bugs me that often you can play perfectly but still get penalised for not meeting some arbitrary goal.

Now that I'm actively gunning for these quests, you begin to realise that this 'tinkering with party makeup' is much deeper and far more central to the game than the rhythm game element that sits on top. Once I began accepting this I began to find it a lot less frustrating - it's almost like there are two entirely separate levels upon which you can play the game, and how well you do in the rhythm action bit has separate outcomes (mainly: score) to your overall success, quest outcome, items gained and so on.

There are hundreds of potential party members - and even when splitting them down into individual classes there's a lot of difference between them. One stage might have a condition that halves physical damage and screws your fighters, but even then you might find that the mage you've trained doesn't have the right spells to capitalise on the weaknesses of the enemies on that stage. Trained a hunter to boost your find rate? That's great, but their find rate relates just to items. If you want new summon stones or cards, you'll need to train different ones. At the higher ends of things, level 99 is the starting point for these characters being viable - speccing in specific skills and stat boosts from rare items, and training 'star levels' beyond this is mandatory and much more time consuming.

In short: for a quick go it's a fun enough, fairly basic rhythm game with lots of Final Fantasy music. If you're wanting to go for completion? It's a big game with a lot of depth, and though you're less hands-on, it still requires a lot of grinding and a pretty creative approach to problem solving, building a range of teams that can handle every situation. Arguably one of the more strategic FF games I've played, even?

Also: lots of DLC kicking about for this now, but until any of it gets discounted I've got plenty to be getting on with slogging away at the quests. There is a very notable omission here of any of the Pixel Remaster music, nor is there a cross-promo FFXVI pack: whether this is still coming, or whether it's being kept back for another full release later on I couldn't say, but I'd be stunned if they're not thinking about it.

[Dogg Thang]

I can only apologise in advance but, now that I’ve finally got a new Switch, I’m likely going to be bumping old threads. Like this one. I bought this because I loved the first two, with Curtain Call I think being my most played 3DS game. Right away, I miss the touch controls but I’m already getting used to the buttons and it’s actually no less fun, I think.

There are a stupid amount of tracks, which is great. Even with CC being my most played, I think I only played a lot of the tracks once and the favourites maybe five times - there was just that much in it. This one will be the same. There may even be tracks here that I never play.

I know this is probably the wrong way to approach this game but I have to admit I’m missing things already. And so I do wonder if I’ll ultimately feel this one is a step down. Some unique backgrounds are just gone, for example the one for the Gold Saucer track in FFVII. I’ve spotted others missing too and that’s a real disappointment because having them evoke the feeling of the original games was so important. And the other thing is that the field tracks now have enemies which pretty much makes them the same as the battle tracks and also means certain elements are missing - such as chocobos and airship sections. Now it’s possible these things are unlocked as you play through, I don’t know.

The maps feature seems to be missing too so I do wonder what the play options are after going through the series sections. Again, maybe that’s unlocked down the line. I do remember reviews on release being very positive and saying this was full of stuff so it’s possible all of these things are either present later or it won’t matter because there is so much else here.

Anyway, I’m already really enjoying it regardless. FF music is so good.