Theatrhythm Final Bar Line

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Story
• Gameplay
  • Game Modes
• Graphics
• Cast of Characters
• Difficulty
• Music
• Replay-ability

Introduction:

Ah yes, Theatrhythm Final Bar Line, Final Fantasy. The musical rhythm game swept everybody off their feet once we tried it! Square Enix had no problem in risking coming out with a game that isn’t your typical turn-based, exploring Role-playing game, exploring dungeons, doing fetch quests and/or side missions; They were right on the money. It is a game where the music of Final Fantasy comes together into one game.

The back of the box reads: “A Rhythm-Action Game packed with 385 carefully selected music tracks from across the whole Final Fantasy Series”.

In this review, I'll go over every aspect of the game and share my experiences after 55 hours of gameplay and if it’s worth your time and hard-earned money. Let’s go!

Story

Due to the nature of the game, it lacks its own story or plot. Do not worry though, since the game does not need a story to entertain its audiences. I have always said it, and will continue to say it: What makes a game great is its Music Score. While this game lacks a story, it more than makes up for it with 385 music tracks from all the Final Fantasy games, keeping long-time Final Fantasy fans engaged for a good while.

Let us delve deeper into the game’s Mechanics.

Gameplay:

Let me ask you two questions: How good is your timing? How good are your reflexes? The gist of the gameplay revolves around these two core abilities united.

The setting: you form a team of 4 party members; once the music stage starts, they will begin to fight monsters, whether attacking or performing abilities the player has set before starting the music stage. All this is automatic; where the player comes in is the note-hitting. While the battles ensue, you are tasked with timing the notes at the right time as they appear on the screen from left to right as they pass through the beat circle(s) on the other end of the screen.

Some notes are just touch, which means a tap of the button, and some others are hold notes, where you must hold the button and release it as soon as the note ends. Another one is called a slide note; these are tricky, as the player must flick the control stick in the direction the note faces once it passes through the beat circle.

Then we have the hold-slide notes, similar to hold notes, but aside from holding the button down, the player must slide up or down with the control stick, as shown on the screen, to avoid failing that note and breaking the chain.

The player gets a perfect chain if they do not fail a single note from start to finish. At the end of the music stage, you are scored accordingly.

Scoring:

Depending on how good your timing was, each note is scored in different categories:

• Rainbow Critical
  These earn you the most points.

• Critical
  Getting only criticals in a music stage earns you the “All Critical” achievement!

• Excellent
  You didn’t miss the input, but it didn’t land in the center of the Beat Circle.

• Good
  It shows up in green, and while it doesn’t break your perfect chain, the player missed hitting the input and landed right outside the Beat Circle.

• Bad
  When you hit the input too early or too late, or incorrectly, it will result in a bad rating. If you get this, your chain will break, and you can no longer achieve the perfect chain for that run.

• Miss
  Well, are you even trying? Hahaha.

Every time you fail to hit a note successfully, your party takes damage, not individually but as a whole. If you take enough hits, it’s game over, and you fail the Music Stage. There is an HP bar down to the right with the picture of the party leader being displayed, and this is important because the game fails to explain this. The party leader is always the character you place in the first slot from left to right in the Edit Party Menu.

Edit Party Menu: Here, the player can swap members in and out, assign abilities learned, use skill-learning items and stat-raising items, assign a Summon Stone (Calls a summon to aid you in battle), an Airship (for aesthetics, used to drop your party off in FMS, Field Music Stages), and a Moogle outfit.

Game Modes

The game offers three Game modes. From the main menu, once you hit start, you are greeted with the following:

• Series Quests: Here, you are going to play music Stages but with challenges set to each for prizes and to test your party's skills. Prizes can be Silver and Golden Eggs( used to double or Quadruple Experience gained), Items like Potions, High Potions, Phoenix Downs, Mog Amulets, and Collectacards.
  
  The games Included are 29 In total:

  • Final Fantasy 1-15 (16 is available but as DLC)

  • Final Fantasy Tactics

  • Final Fantasy Series

  • Mobius Final Fantasy

  • Final Fantasy Fables Chocobo’s Dungeon

  • Final Fantasy VII Series

  • Final Fantasy VII Remake

  • Final Fantasy Record Keeper

  • Final Fantasy Mystic Quest

  • Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles

  • Final Fantasy X-2

  • Final Fantasy XIII Series

  • Final Fantasy Type-0

  • Dissidia Final Fantasy Series

  • Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Series

  • Endless World

The more you play this mode, the more songs AND characters you unlock. Last I checked, I had a whopping 102 characters. My attack team comprises Cloud, Sephiroth, Vivi, Aeris (Aerith?). All-star level 9.

• Music Stages: Search and play your favorite Final Fantasy Music and enjoy the Tracks. There are no Quests to perform or worry about. You will get five suggestions daily to play for a Rhytmia Bonus. Rhytmia is the global music points to farm and accumulate across your experience with the game. Here, you can also create three separate playlists of your all-time favorites, and it also has a music Player. So fire up that volume and start jammin’!
• Multi Battle: You can go up against a random player online. Each will play the same random song, and whoever scores the highest is the victor. When the battle finishes, you can exchange Profi Cards (Profile Cards you set up in a different menu) and a Summonstone.
  
  Up to 4 players can participate in online battles for complete mayhem. Online is not dead at the time of writing this, I got into a couple of friendly battles and got to exchange some summonstones, so get out there and get those rare Summonstones.

Graphics

Charming Aesthetic: The graphics in "Theatrhythm Final Fantasy" adopt a charming and whimsical aesthetic, combining 2D and 3D visuals.

Character Design: The characters are represented in a chibi-style format, featuring adorable, miniature versions of beloved "Final Fantasy" characters from various titles.

Iconic Settings: The game showcases visually stunning scenes from different "Final Fantasy" games, from serene landscapes to epic battles, beautifully reimagined for the rhythm gameplay.

Cast of Characters

The immense cast of characters is more significant than Dissidia Final Fantasy! Here are all the Base characters with no DLC (If there are any more):

Original Game Character(s)

Final Fantasy

• Warrior of Light
• Princess Sarah
• Garland

Final Fantasy II

• Firion
• Minwu
• Maria
• Guy
• Leon
• The Emperor

Final Fantasy III

• Onion Knight
• Cid Haze
• Cloud of Darkness

Final Fantasy IV

• Cecil
• Kain
• Rydia
• Rosa
• Edge
• Golbez

Final Fantasy V

• Bartz
• Lenna
• Galuf
• Faris
• Krile (Cara)
• Gilgamesh
• Exdeath

Final Fantasy VI

• Terra
• Locke
• Edgar
• Celes
• Mog
• Kefka

Final Fantasy VII series

• Cloud*
• Barret
• Tifa*
• Aerith
• Red XIII
• Yuffie
• Vincent
• Zack
• Sephiroth

Final Fantasy VIII

• Squall
• Seifer
• Rinoa
• Laguna
• Edea
• Ultimecia

Final Fantasy IX

• Zidane
• Vivi
• Garnet
• Eiko
• Kuja

Final Fantasy X series

• Tidus
• Yuna*
• Auron
• Rikku
• Paine
• Jecht
• Seymour

Final Fantasy XI

• Shantotto
• Prishe
• Aphmau
• Lilisette

Final Fantasy XII

• Vaan
• Ashe
• Balthier
• Fran
• Gabranth

Final Fantasy XIII series

• Lightning*
• Snow
• Vanille
• Hope
• Serah
• Noel
• Cid Raines

Final Fantasy XIV

• Y'shtola*
• Yda
• Thancred
• Alphinaud

Final Fantasy XV

• Noctis
• Gladiolus
• Ignis
• Prompto
• Aranea

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest

• Benjamin

Final Fantasy Tactics

• Ramza
• Agrias
• Orlandeau

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles

• Ciaran

Final Fantasy Type-0

• Ace
• Machina
• Rem
• Kurasame

Final Fantasy Record Keeper

• Tyro

Mobius Final Fantasy

• Wol

Dissidia Final Fantasy

• Cosmos
• Chaos
• Materia
• Spiritus

Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon

• Chocobo

Difficulty:

Its difficulty is based on the player's decision. There are three styles of Gameplay along with three and sometimes four Music Stage Difficulties.

Styles:

Simple: You can complete any stage with one hand. There isn't much of a challenge here, and there isn't a track you will struggle with if you play in this mode, as long as you´re trying to play. No Slide Triggers appear in this mode.

Hold triggers still require you to hold the button down, Hold and Slide triggers slide automatically so you don't need your other thumb on your joystick. The double Notes (Hitting two buttons simultaneously) can be cleared by pressing only one button.

SUPER IMPORTANT: If you like your mages or spellcasters, do not play in this mode because there aren't any slide triggers (yellow notes with arrows) essential in activating spells and magic. I played Vivi for the longest time, wondering why I had Thundaga and Firaga on him and not casting a single spell! Hours into the game I realized that I needed the Slide Triggers to show up on my music stage, please don't do what I did.

Standard: The good news is that slide Notes appear. The bad part is it gets a little more challenging. I'll call it normal difficulty. Here, you'll need to put in a little more work and use two hands unless you config the control in a way you still can do it in one hand, but I have yet to try that out myself.

Slide notes sometimes require two sticks to be flicked, either in the same direction or opposite directions.

Hold-Slide Notes still require the player to hold down the button and also follow the bar up and/or down with the control stick.

Double notes, the player must hit two simultaneous buttons at the same time.

Paired: in this mode, you can play with your friend or sibling; you can also hit “Y” (on the Switch) before starting a music stage to enter settings and set it where one person can play as Paired. I have yet to try it since I have no one to play with, but it sounds fun!

Now, moving on to the actual difficulty of a Music Stage. On any music stage, you can set the difficulty by pressing the triggers on your controller:

• Yellow is BASIC: Baby Difficulty. Anybody with a brain and human-level timing should and can beat these stages.
• Blue EXPERT: Anybody can do it as long as they focus and have a little experience with the game. It helps if you played the previous game, Curtain Call. Some newcomers may find some stages more difficult than others, but overall, it's enjoyable. Nothing would make you rage quit. The speed of the inputs is normal, and there are not too many combinations.
• Red ULTIMATE: Okay, here things get crazy. The difficulty spikes up, and the amount of note inputs gets crazy. Some songs are impossible, and others are doable. To play at this level, you´ll need some excellent experience, a solid understanding of video games, good focus and reflexes, and nerves of steel because if you mash, you lose. I completed some stages on Ultimate, but getting a perfect chain is challenging, let alone making it past the 9 million points in a stage.
• Purple SUPREME: Sheer madness. I am trying to understand why this mode exists. Some super-humans may enjoy this mode, but for me, oh my! My gamer eyes cannot follow the sequence of inputs; they go so fast and so many at a time, not to mention the crazy combinations it demands; it's so easy to game over. I yet have to complete a single stage on Supreme. And as I mentioned above, only some stages have SUPREME.
  
  If people out there feel comfortable with this difficulty, hat´s off to you. I salute you. Fortunately, you can play on something other than this difficulty to unlock everything in the game: music tracks, characters, collectacards, etc.

Overall, the difficulty is enjoyable, and when you're confident, turn up that difficulty dial. I like to play In Expert.

Music:

The music is the heart of this game. Just imagine playing a rhythm game with no or bad music, it would be outrageous! Unfortunately, I have played some games with terrible music that made me regret playing them. Sometimes, the music was completely unrelated to what was happening on the screen and even inappropriate. The game's music is absolutely amazing. Even if the game had no visuals and only a simple music player in the center of a black screen, it would still be worth playing!

After all, who doesn't enjoy listening to:

• Final Fantasy VII Main Theme: The most inspiring world map theme out there. Every time I hear this track, it makes me nostalgic about the first time I got out of Midgar—a powerful track over 6 minutes long.

• Final Fantasy IV Within the Giant: An inspiring track for an ultimate Final Battle—a joy to listen to.

• Final Fantasy IV Battle theme: A powerful track.

• Final Fantasy X: Contest of Aeons: I loved Yuna´s expression of pain and sadness when being forced to battle the Aeons that accompanied her throughout the journey. I lived the moment and loved it.

Honestly, I can go on and on. There are a ton of memorable tracks that are well worth your time and money. If one game has excellent music, imagine 29 games together in one cartridge/disc. It's overkill. Enjoy its fine music.

Replayability:

This game may not have a story mode, but it has a lot of reasons to keep you hooked in playing it for hours on end:

Collectacard Farming: Earlier, I mentioned Collectacards. What are those? Well, Just like Pokemon cards, but with final fantasy Characters, monsters, and summons. You can collect over 400 categories of cards, and it's a ton of fun!

Here are the card categories:

• Character cards: These have four levels: Normal, Rare, Premium, and Special. The higher the class, the harder it is to get.

• Summon Cards: Same as characters, but are fewer.

• Enemy Cards: There are 102 of these. The more duplicate cards you pick up, the more experience enemies give you since they all stack up.

• Memory Cards: Go down memory lane with these unique cards and relive all those final fantasy Moments!

The way to collect these cards is drops from enemies you defeat in music stages. Once the stage ends, you are shown the items, cards, and summon stones you picked up during that stage. Some characters have many card-finding and boosting abilities, so have fun discovering those! Happy farming!.

Character leveling: If you´re a long-time Final Fantasy Fan like me, you´ll enjoy leveling your favorite characters to max level 99. However, it doesn't end there. You may continue garnering more EXP points until you unlock a Feat, which is my next point.

Feats Unlocking: If you are a Completionist or a trophy hunter on PSN like I was, then you know of the joys of unlocking everything! There are 100 Feats to unlock; naturally, some are easier, and some are a pain. In the 55 hours I have played so far, I already have 86/100 unlocked. These aren't Dark Souls-level challenges so that you can chill.

The Music: If you like listening to Final Fantasy Music without much effort and no YouTube ads interrupting, look no further! There's a mode where you can shuffle your best tracks and create playlists, so fire away!