First Look: Final Fantasy Theatrhythm

When I heard there would be a 3DS Final Fantasy title, I was stoked. On July 3rd, my dreams were that much closer, and I headed out to get this new game.

Unfortunately, my dreams of a 3D Final Fantasy RPG were crushed. No, Theatrhythm is not "that" game.

Theatrhythm is TapTapRevolution for you Final Fantasy die-hards. Extreme fans of nostalgia, Nobuo Uematsu, and NES pixels are going to want this game. It's not easy though, after hours of play I'll definitely say it's a challenge of sorts.

First off, you get a bonus. In each case of Theatrhythm is an extended grip stylus. At the end of the stylus is a small circle, to which you can apply a sticker of your favorite Final Fantasy sticker. There's a character from each of the 13 games, as well as a Moogle, a Chocobo, Cosmos and Chaos. If you're not familiar with Chaos and Cosmos, you haven't played the PSP game, Dissidia. Don't worry, they're in this game as well.

There is basically no plot to this game, so there's no sappy love story or long drawn out chain of events. Between Chaos and Cosmos is Rhythm, location of the Music Crystal that fills the world with Harmony. As Chaos grows, harmony is disrupted and the crystal dims. To restore the crystal, Rhythmia is needed, and that is where our heroes step in...Well, at least that's the "point" of the game.

Anyway, anybody who picks up this game has one thing in mind- musically playing through their favorite Final Fantasy tracks in a tapping fashion. There's three types of stages, but they all basically play the same, with some minor differences. The first is Field Music Stage, which is your selected character(s) walking through a field reminiscent of a field from a Final Fantasy. The second is a Battle Music Stage, which is your character(s) fighting a series of monsters to the beat of the music. The last is the Event Music Stage, which is just a montage of scenes from the given Final Fantasy playing in the background as you do your musical tapping business. For later games, the montage is entirely CG scenes, while in earlier games scenes from a Japanese version of the game play-through are shown.

Next, there are different kinds of tapping, limited to three though. First is the basic tap, shown by a Red circle. You just need to tap the lower screen as the red circle hits your black circle. Second is the yellow directional tap, shown above, in which you swipe the lower screen in the direction shown as it hits the black circle. The last kind are hold taps, which are green, and when it hits your black circle you hold the stylus to the screen until the end of the green bar, at which point you let go. Sometimes you need to end it with a swipe, shown by a directional tap instead. These are the basics, of course. On Field Music stages, you'll need to trace the hold on the bottom screen to correspond with the path on the top screen.

Each level also has a feature zone, and if you hit all or most of the notes, that will give you access to a special part of the stage. For Field Music stages, you ride a Chocobo; for Event Music stages, you get a longer song; and for Battle Music stages, you summon a powerful summon, such as Ifrit, Shiva, or Odin.

Lastly, there's three types of play. The first is Series play, in which you select a Final Fantasy game and play a series of stages relative to the game. The second is Challenge play, which you get to select individual songs you beat in the Series play to play. Lastly is the Chaos shrine, which you unlock 2 randomly selected songs to play. This feature is accompanied by Streetpass, which you can pass your pairs of songs on, and play the pairs with local friends.

After each level, you get experience, and like every other game the characters level up and improve in their stats. Additionally, each character can gain abilities or items to help in your levels. You can also receive shards, which when enough are collected unlock new characters, collectible in-game cards, or unlock new movies and songs for your entertainment pleasures. You can also purchase select tracks from Nintendo's eStore within the game to expand your collection.

Unfortunately, there's not much more to this game outside of nostalgia and music. Some of the scenes look neat in 3D, and for me I found a use for the 3DS stand I got back when I bought Kid Icarus. If you can, pick it up when it drops in price, it's not worth the $40 price-tag, maybe $25 or so would suffice. Since it's a 3DS only title, it's a little bit of a let-down. If you do get it, at least you can enjoy the character sprites of the game, which make even Safer Sephiroth seem as harmless as a fluffy bunny...