A love letter with typos.

I played the first Theatrhythm about a decade ago while it was still on 3DS, and I remember being very fond of it. A lot of the games on that system didn’t really strike relevant with me; the general over-reliance on technical feats like the 3D screen-doubling or Play Coin collecting usually left other elements feeling kind of weak, unless they completely ignored the hardware gimmicks and went all-in on the game proper (ala Shin Megami Tensei IV). Theatrhythm was one such game where it felt like the gameplay wasn’t compromised by its platform, rather being enhanced by the system’s hardware and touch-screen capabilities. There were clear compromises in the amount of songs that could make it in, or how long said songs could be played for, but it was solid. When Final Bar Line was announced to be dropping on the Switch, I was excited. A Theatrhythm entry no longer bound by being on a handheld, joyous day! Surely now we’ll get even more songs, and they’ll all be their full length, and the charts will be the most solid yet, and the controls will feel great!

Two of those four things were true. Maybe I had unrealistic expectations.

Gameplay remains strong even after its transition to a controller format, and the core divide of FMS and BMS stages still feel fresh as the two main methods of playing the game. Getting to pick any buttons on the controller for your hits and flicking whichever analog stick you want at a given time leads into a free-form playstyle where you can basically play the game however you want at no penalty to yourself. Charts are less consistent. There are some that are incredible, and your fingers will be dancing along the buttons in perfect sync with every thump and crash; there are some that are really, really bad, swapping between melody and rhythm at what feels like complete random, rushing your oncoming notes at such a weird pace that you will inevitably wonder how what you’re playing even remotely relates to the music that you’re hearing.

For what’s clearly intended to be (and often successfully is) a celebration of the history of Final Fantasy, this game is revisionist enough to make Eduard Bernstein blush. Why are there so many arranges of the classic songs? When I put on some tracks for Final Fantasy III, I want Final Fantasy III. What I don’t want is to hear the composition rerecorded three decades later with more modern instrumentation and bombastic orchestral hits. No! No, don’t do that! Make it sound crusty! Give me all five channels of the Ricoh 2A03! Let me hear it the way that it was, not the way that it could have been! These are games that struggled against their budgets and technical limitations and came out on top. If you make them indistinguishable from the new titles, you roll right over the legacy that they’ve left behind. This philosophy extends to a lot more than just the music in Final Bar Line — I can’t imagine a more boring way to play the original Final Fantasy than by slogging through the new remakes that fix all of the bugs and jank and NES-era graphics — but it’s blatant enough that I expect even people who have never heard these tracks are going to be put off by the inclusion of arranges over the originals.

Furthermore, I get why the developers are hesitant to include the full versions of a lot of these songs — the ones that don’t loop, at least — but come on. Not being able to play the entire Dancing Mad fugue is one thing (though I maintain it should be an option for the people who want to), but clipping off both the starts and ends of massively-popular, fan-favorite tracks like Answers or Who Brings Shadow is strange. The concatenated versions of these songs often stop just in time for them to get to “the good part”, and it can lead to some pretty flat-feeling conclusions. A full-version toggle would be more than welcome here. I know that Square Enix can’t afford to let the people in the arcade get fifteen minutes of playtime off of a single quarter, but this is the home version of the game. It costs a hundred dollars for the Premium Digital Deluxe Version. Let the console owners indulge in the full tunes.

The skeleton of Theatrhythm is still here, and these are strong, healthy bones from a body that got a lot of calcium. It just also happens to be a game that doesn’t feel like its evolved much in the past decade in ways that would have made it truly shine. As it stands, Final Bar Line is just more Theatrhythm, for all of the good and bad that entails.

And Quest Medleys were way cooler than Series Quests. Endless World does not fill the void.

Easily my favorite entry in my favorite rhythm game series. While I have some minor criticisms about character availability (basically only the characters from All-Star Carnival made it) and mechanical transparency (detailed below), the complete experience more than makes up for it with a staggering 400+ tracks (as of this writing), entertaining multiplayer, and a very easy quick-play game flow. With that, on to my main gripe:

Although Theatrhythm's signature RPG mechanics do take something of a backseat to the core loop -- you can still clear songs and score points completely independently of a party comp -- nearly every song in the base game has an accompanying quest to complete. They range from simple (clear this song on xyz difficulty) to grueling (complete with a perfect chain), with some even falling back on proper setup of a proper RPG party to clear (i.e. defeating bosses with a weak element, activate x abilities, beat y enemies). For those, there's a surprising lack of transparency about what actually gets you there. Abilities tell you exactly what they do, but stats' effect on beating enemies or travelling through the game's field stages is otherwise ambiguous, and there's no bestiary to cross-reference enemy patterns and weaknesses other than a stage highlight showing you ONLY the boss's weakness. It often results in having to repeat a song, sometimes multiple times, to see how to sequence abilities and even just to hope for the best. Plenty of times I'd full combo songs and fail quests despite having a jacked party, just because I was missing a key ability or two. While it isn't outwardly -frustrating- (i.e. I'm still very much enjoying playing the rhythm game), it did occasionally leave me scratching my head wondering why there wasn't some quick reference for status effects outside of very short load screens, or why the developers couldn't just tell me that Shinra grunts are weak to fire in a side page. THAT BEING SAID...

This and the character/song availability seriously didn't detract from my experience in a debilitating way. Final Bar Line is JAM packed with excellent music from all across the Final Fantasy (and soon to be non-FF Square Enix) series, giving me much-increased appreciation for music from titles like Record Keeper and FFXIII, regardless of my feelings of the games they came from. It runs perfectly clean on the Switch, with friendly load times and a clean 60 FPS for every music stage without really sacrificing too much visually. Multiplayer PVP is a blast with bursts on, and rewards thoughtful party composition, which was a huge surprise for me. Charts are very carefully crafted with clever enemy placement (TFF has always been quite good about the "if-you-know-you-know" enemy layouts appropriate to each music track) and the return of Supreme difficulty from the Arcade-only All-Star Carnival means players are sure to have their work cut out for them if they want to take on every challenge FBL has to offer.

Make no mistake -- this is the full package Theatrhythm game I'd always hoped for, and it has a bright future with planned content for the next few months bringing the likes of Chrono, Mana, SaGa, and other SE mainstays into the fold. Absolutely well worth your time if you're an FF fan or if you simply enjoy an excellent rhythm game with a little extra.

Every time that a new Theatrhythm has come out, the developers at indieszero say "yeah we probably won't make another one, this'll be the last", only to come back onstage for another encore, and every time I applaud even louder than last time.

They made song unlocking kinda quirky in this one. Series Quests are the mode you'll be spending the most time in. You pick a Final Fantasy title and are given a linear set of songs to play through, chronologically ordered by the events of the game. For example, if you pick Final Fantasy 7, you'll start out playing "Opening - Bombing Mission", and end on "One-Winged Angel". Every song has an optional "quest" objective, and many have gameplay modifiers to suit the mood. The kicker is that you can't play a song normally until you've beaten it in Series Quests mode, with one exception.

"Music Stages" mode lets you play any song you've unlocked under conditions of your choosing. After you finish a song though, a menu pops up with suggestions on what you should play next. This is how you unlock more songs without playing Series Quests, but be forewarned. This basically locks you into playing song after song after song by default, and it matches whatever difficulty you started on. If you want to unlock songs this way, brace yourself for a challenge.

This is a complaint that I don't think is Theathrythm's fault at all, but the controls of the Switch really don't feel very pleasant to me for this kind of game. The control sticks or face buttons+dpad not being parallel to each other really fucks with my head. I use the shoulder buttons in place of the face buttons so I can keep both my thumbs on the analog sticks, but it still feels kinda wrong in my head. I mostly get hung up on dual-analog inputs and analog+button inputs. I very much preferred the touch controls of the 3DS entries.

All in all, gotta be one of my favorite rhythm games. Hoping they keep making more of these, whether it be Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, whatever. Hell, let them branch out from Square Enix properties, they've apparently shown a desire to do so. I still have not played a proper Final Fantasy game, but I can feel the respect and passion pouring out every second I spend playing this game.

There's not a whole lot to say about this game. The RPG mechanics feel almost completely superficial, tacked on and pointless (Though unlocking characters and being able to make your dream team of 4 does have its novelty) and the graphics/art style/presentation make it look like a cheap mobile game, but that doesn't change the fact that Theatrhythm has always been a celebration of Final Fantasy's history and music and Final Bar Line is the absolute best version of Theatrhythm to experience to date with over 380 songs available and more DLC featuring music from NieR and Octopath Traveler among others as well.

This is the ultimate love letter to Final Fantasy and its musical history spanning over 35 years, If you like FF and its music and enjoy rhythm games this should honestly be a no-brainer to get, I've sunk over 20 hours into it in just a few days already. My only complaints are the charting on some songs could definitely be better (No surprise with the sheer amount of songs though) and I also just wish they would've implemented a long or short version of songs option instead of just cutting every song down to a 'radio edit' version because some of us are crazy enough to want to play the entire 17 minutes of Dancing Mad, thanks.

I wish this could naturally be the definitive Theatrhythm experience for me, but it's more by circumstance of platform. The series is easily one of my favorite rhythm game experiences, a loving tribute to RPG music, most obviously Final Fantasy but also Square as a whole. And while I haven't necessarily needed the progression systems that they've included, I do find them charming and engaging, and I would say of the Theatrhythm Final Fantasy games this one handles that side of it the best. More character variety built in, significantly more appealing ways to unlock them, shedding the AP requirements of skills, more "loot" variety with the summons, and so on. I do ultimately take issue with some of the choices they made with this release, most notably that they would take an emotional centerpiece of one of their games [Final Fantasy X's "Zanarkand"] and lock it behind the more expensive versions of Final Bar Line [gross!], but also simple things like the way you unlock songs.

The "easiest" way to unlock a game's songs is to complete its quest mode, and you only get access to a new title by playing three or so songs in a title you've already unlocked to acquire another key, encouraging you to either stick to individual titles to unlock your favorites in their entirety more quickly, or sample every game enough to get keys and prioritizing unlocking all titles so you can hop between them later for variety's sake.

I suppose you could also unlock songs by hoping people select them in online multiplayer [and that their songs actually get selected for the battles]. Alternatively, you could fast track unlocking the endless mode--which takes decent effort, finishing seven full game quests, and then the Theatrhythm quest that opens up--which would be a miserable way to optimize [especially if you intentionally pick games you don't like as much because their quests are shorter] but does seem to pull from all songs in the game, not just what you have immediate access to. But again, song unlocking would be up to random chance at that point.

In Curtain Call, unlocking all the songs was as simple as finishing like 4 or 5 songs, which is so much better. There's already incentive for unlocking more game quests here [primarily getting new party members], so the awkward song unlocking isn't necessary. Yes, if you're buying Theatrhythm you likely already love Final Fantasy music so what's the problem of being "forced" to complete the game this way, but that's a pretty weird backwards stumble to me.

The other significant downgrade for me is that, frankly, I just find this more engaging as a rhythm game with stylus controls. It works well with buttons and analog sticks [an option that existed in the other games anyway], and obviously since this isn't a Switch-exclusive game and they designed the notes around a controller this time around, it's something I can accept. In the end, it's still Theatrhythm. I've still found myself thinking I'll play for a quick couple songs only to end up playing for a few hours. It's still a lovely way to experience a lot of classic RPG scores, and the preservation of the series beyond the 3DS is important to me, so I'm grateful to have it.

If you liked the 3DS games then it's pretty much the same thing, just with a couple of changes here and there, and even some omissions of some features (but the addition of many many more). The most obvious change is that touch controls are no longer a thing. Curtain Call did ease players in to this by making both buttons and touch screen an option, so if you're like me, you already switched to button inputs over using the stylus anyway. In any case this change allows them to make good use of the fact everyone is using a controller by allowing more inputs at a time. Double triggers, slides and triggers, quadruple inputs at once. All this even allowed for an entire extra difficulty mode (which technically existed in the arcade games first, but how many people played those?).

Unless you lived and died by the touch controls, this game offers a bigger, better experience than before. I could go in to everything great about this game, but a lot of it would just be parroting my review of Curtain Call. Instead I'm going to talk about my favourite aspect: Series Quests.

Rhythm games, for people like me (who are not very good at them) are fun, but generally end with a whimper, because if we can't 100% them, where do we end? Just kind of decide one day that we're done with the game I guess. Series quest changed that by being a full-on single player experience. It does sound very basic - it's basically just "play every song in the game", but it's the "quest" part that makes it fun. Every single song in series quest has an attached challenge. It could be something focusing entirely on the rhythm part of the game, like "get a perfect chain" or "get 70% rainbow criticals". But then there's the ones that require you to build a party around them, such as "deal X amount of damage with a summon" (so you want to use a team that has abilities to boost summon power) or "activate X or more abilities" (so you want a team with a lot of easily spammable abilities). Sometimes the mission may even be a hybrid, like if it's "finish the stage with at least 80% health", you may be good enough to do that just by not missing any notes, but if you struggle you can fill your party with healers.

Some quests also have an extra element to them, like bosses have more HP, or the triggers move faster.

The last song in each series is generally "defeat the boss", but the boss doesn't show up immediately, so you need a team that is good for both clearing the mobs beforehand AND nuking the boss before the time runs out. What makes this harder is that Final Bar Line changes how abilities work - many of them now have a limited use per battle, and you can only equip 3 per character. Add in things like bosses weaknesses and resistances and you really have so much more team building in this game than you ever had to do before.

And the best part is it's all optional. If you literally just want a Final Fantasy rhythm game without the RPG stuff, all these quests just give bonus collectibles, or items that enhance your characters. You can unlock every song without ever invested in the characters or clearing any quests. I would still suggest just filling your party with defensive and healing characters though just because it will help you survive longer in harder difficulties so you're not constantly kicked out of the song for missing too many notes.

By the way clearing all quests can be done on any difficulty - minus a small handful that require you to play the stages on a higher one, but those can be cheesed by simply doing what I said above and building a party that makes it impossible to die. It's also worth noting that the quests only ever ask you to play on the 2nd highest difficulty level, so you'd never need to play on supreme to finish the "campaign". So no matter your skill level, there's a fun, lengthy single player experience here for everyone.

There's honestly so much more to talk about, from the changes to how field mode works, to the change in how event stages play, but I think I'll leave it here because review writing as a hobby shouldn't take me all night!

An incredibly inventive way to combine rhythm games and classic jrpg combat together to create something unlike anything in either genre, plus it has final fantasy music so that's already a major plus. The song selection is great, with my only real complaint is there's way too many final fantasy 7 songs but that's hardly surprising considering the series. Every game in the series is covered from your mainline games to tactics to mobile spin offs that are dead as hell. I kind of wish I waited till I played a few more Final Fantasy games before playing this, but it was still a fun game I will definitely keep going back to. Only other complaint is why is there multiplayer in this game when Final Fantasy players don't have any friends?

been waiting for years and it was everything I ever wanted.

a minor gripe is to do with directional/stick inputs and how every direction and combination share the exact same appearance, spoiling more than a few perfect combos, which could very well just be a problem with my own perception.

aside from nitpicking slightly disappointing song and unit selections (those ff3 units...) and the above issue, an otherwise flawless release.

Very happy that we have a new Theatrhythm on modern platforms, especially since All-Star Carnival was only in Japanese arcades. I logged it as mastered due to getting the platinum trophy on PlayStation, but I have not FC'd every song on Ultimate or even beat every song available on Supreme, so there's still more for me to work towards in the game. I only have one complaint, which is that the EMS charts can be disorienting, splitting the player's attention between the cinematic in the background and the notes falling from above. It may have also been my mind playing tricks with me, but it did frequently appear the the notes weren't falling as smoothly, meaning possibly that it runs on a lower or inconsistent framerate when playing on EMS charts. Those are only a small fraction of the tracks, however, and they are still enjoyable as is, so I let it pass. The tracklist is enormous, meeting close to 400 tracks in the base version and around 440 at launch if you invested in the Premium Digital Deluxe Edition, which will reach 500 tracks when the first three season passes are finished. The gameplay is very simple, but can still manage to be a challenging experience at it's highest difficulties, enticing both rhythm game veterans or people that just like Final Fantasy/Square Enix titles.

Despite the title simply being called Theatrhythm instead of being inserted with a series name like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, the title completely consists of Final Fantasy music if you opt to not purchase any of the DLC. The DLC may not cover all your bases either, even within the Final Fantasy series. As it stands, there are no Dragon Quest tracks currently announced to be in the game, nor does it seem like there will be. Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory was released recently, so it's doubtful that you'll see any songs from the series in the game. In addition, developer interviews have confirmed that there are currently no plans to add Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker or Final Fantasy XVI tracks, so those are in the air, dependent on how long SE wants to support the game. That being said, it's still a new game with a lot of possibilities to be explored, especially if they intend on treating this game like All-Star Carnival and continue supporting it long term.

Overall, it's definitely worth the purchase. I think the game probably lends itself better to the Switch than it would for the PlayStation, considering the portability and the fact that you spend the majority of the gameplay looking at the right or bottom of the screen is likely preferable on a smaller screen. That being said, I can personally confirm that the PlayStation version works perfectly well, so either purchase should work out well for you.

A RHYTHM GAME WITH FINAL FANTASY MUSIC UNSURPRISINGLY MAKES FOR A GREAT GAME

Not a whole lot to say about this one. It's got a massive amount of songs to choose from (it even has Type-0 music!) and it was delightful from start to finish.

Only minor gripe I have is that I can gleam the potential for something real substantial and interesting in the party setup and levelling systems and that could hopefully be fleshed out in a future installment as opposed to its cute but largely irrelevant presentation you see in this one.

Go play it if you like rhythm games and final fantasy music

Full disclosure: I did not pay for this (a "friend" "gave" it to me and I played it on a "nintendo switch"), so I have no fuckin' clue if this game has some dogshit payment model or whatever in terms of DLC, so that's not really something I'm bringing into consideration here.

Anyways, it's kinda cheating making a rhythm game for a series with a musical pedigree as monumental as Final Fantasy's; huge fucking shout out to Uematsu and his music teams once again coming making a game way better than it would've been otherwise. Moving from the 3DS to full button controls has made certain aspects of play awkward, but you get used to it after awhile.

Can't say I'm that amazing at this game; a lot of the higher difficulty tracks kinda enter the Taiko no Tatsujin zone of "damn there's probably some inhuman individual capable of doing this perfectly" level of complexity. But I wasn't really here for that, I just needed a comfy game to decompress with after work and it let me have a party of all the PS1 FF girlies and press buttons to my favorite video game music so it's a pretty amazing game for that alone.

Minus half a star for not including To The Edge, and then put that half a star back for actually acknowledging that Xenogears exists.

Sempre minutei em minha mente o que há de tão atraente nos JRPGs para mim. É algo que ao meu ver é uma hipocrisia minha; gêneros de jogos são referências apenas, e não fatores determinísticos em uma obra. Entretanto, não posso negar que há algo que me atrai aos JRPGs; uma espécie de encanto que cada JRPG parece carregar em si. Desse modo sempre minutei, sempre refleti, o porquê de os amar tanto dessa maneira; o porquê de ao ouvir um tema, que seja de personagem ou de batalha, uma emoção surge de forma espontânea em mim, um sentimento terno, algo que talvez seja semelhante ao amor ou ao carinho. E o único modo de compreender isso é refletindo sobre as minhas experiências passadas e contemporâneas. O que une Grandia e SaGa para mim? Por que Omori me emocionou tanto? Como Live a Live conseguiu ser tão impactante para mim? E as únicas respostas que encontrei são representadas sob uma única palavra: Momentos.

Momentos, ou melhor, as tais chamadas Set Pieces. Que seja a sua interpretação sobre momentos, um aspecto está intrínseco na essência de tal palavra: partes. São essas fragmentações da obra a minha possível resposta para uma questão tão íntima minha.

Toda vez que penso nos jogos mencionados o que vem em minha mente são momentos presenciados nelas; lembranças as quais carrego com tanta ternura como algo querido meu. Nisso chego ao cerne de como eu enxergo os JRPGs: uma experiência que vai além da própria noção comum de RPG acerca do roleplay. Ser parte daquilo; sentir aquele mundo; ver aqueles NPCs como pessoas a ponto de imergir em seus conflitos íntimos e se importar com eles. Em síntese, estar vivo. E portanto, cada momento passado ali naqueles jogos, pequeno ou grande, foram para mim uma vivência. É algo que pode soar ambíguo, porém é algo que não só faz sentido para mim como me faz continuar vivendo sabendo que novas lembranças calorosas iram surgir na minha vida.


Bem, agora surge uma nova pergunta: O que caralhos isso tem haver com um fodendo jogo de música de uma franquia tão cacetuda chamada Final Fantasy? E a resposta é bem simples: é um jogo que conseguiu evocar em mim muitos dos momentos mais marcantes que tive com a mídia. Spira Unplugged retoma em mim as visões paradisíacas do mundo de Final Fantasy X; You Are Not Alone traz à mim um momento de superação e amizade que me marcou tanto no Final Fantasy IX; Liberi Fatali reconstrói em mim o choque de ver pela primeira vez a abertura do Final Fantasy 8; e já os temas finais como Dancing Mad, One-winged Angel, The Extreme, The Dark Messenger, e Otherworld conseguem perpassar em mim os sentimentos que senti nos embates finais. Com essas trilhas eu só não pude sentir novamente àquelas memórias tão queridas para mim, como também senti a vontade de vivenciar elas novamente. E honestamente, esse é um jogo pelo qual sou grato à sua existência, tanto por ter reacendido uma paixão minha, como também por ter me lembrado que estar vivo é o mesmo que contemplar novos momentos...


E pensando bem, talvez seja por isso que eu amo tanto essa mídia eletrônica chamada vídeo game.

Um presente pra quem ama a musicalidade de Final Fantasy!

Pra quem curte tanto FF, quanto jogos de ritmo, esse título é um prato cheio. Possui uma biblioteca enorme, que vai do primeiro jogo da franquia até alguns extras, como Dissidia e Tatics, cada qual com dezenas de músicas presentes em cada um. Chega a ser emocionante revisitar essas trilhas sonoras.

Algo que me agrada muito é a ideia de T:FBL conter missões específicas e opcionais para cada estágio, estas que vão além de somente completar as músicas, o que acrescenta no fator replay. Outro destaque positivo tem a ver com as trilhas especiais, que possuem um compilado das cenas originais dos respectivos jogos - só é um pouco difícil de ver completamente tudo o que está por trás dos botões sem perder o timing de apertá-los. Se beber, não jogue Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line! kkkkkkk

Nota final: 90/100 - Mais uma oportunidade de jogar com a Tifa 😍💜

I love Final Fantasy music so obviously I'm gonna at least somewhat enjoy a Final Fantasy rhythm game.
The rhythm game itself is kinda weird at first but cool, I just don't really vibe with any of the difficulty options for most songs.
The rest of the game (the fighting monsters and leveling up stuff) is kinda weird and feels a bit pointless.

The track and character selection is far from perfect but aside from XIV it's fine.
For XIV it's awful though. I've seen reviews saying that there's too much XIV which is just absurd to me. That's 5 entire games! (or 4 I guess since they didn't bother with Endwalker, don't come at my about the release date, Endwalker was released months before Strangers of Paradise)
I will agree that maybe there was a bit much ARR but there are 4 entire tracks for Shadowbringers and Stormblood each, that is, imo, unacceptable for one of the most successful games in the series.
Also the selection of characters from XIV just being the same characters as from the arcade game from 2016 is such a massive disrespect.

Despite all of what I just mentioned the game would have still been a great game if it wasn't for the fact that long songs are cut down. At least make it an option to play the full length songs if you don't want to "force" (most songs that would have been long aren't required to unlock anything major) people to play all 17 minutes of Dancing Mad.
Especially Answers being cut down to three minutes(!) feels like a final spit in the face of XIV.

Man, I loved the DS games. When I heard that a new one was coming out for modern systems, I was over the moon. My friends were all excited about other games announced at the same time, but all I could think/talk about was Theatrythm and how much fun I had with it. I even still have the special stylus it came with.

I had just as much fun with this one as I had on the DS, all my expectations were met, and it was a joy to play. If you like Final Fantasy and rhythm games (a Venn diagram that I had no idea intersected), definitely give this a go. Controls are intuitive, the menus are snappy, and there's customization aplenty to adjust timings to your specific needs. I especially appreciated simple mode, which turns the swipes into normal triggers, when ramping up into the harder difficulties.

It's not a perfect game, but what game is? I didn't like the Event Music Stages (EMS), because it felt like the background was way too busy/flashy/jittery to pay attention to the triggers. You can toggle off the movie sequences (which is a nice touch if you're concerned about spoilers for games you haven't played yet), but that feels like a band aid that shouldn't be necessary. The song selections for some of the titles were also uneven. Most of the mainline Final Fantasy titles have 12-18 songs, some have much less, and inexplicably Final Fantasy 14 has over 30 tracks. It's understandably an evolving MMO, but it felt like we could've seen more from other titles and less from 14 and still been fine. Some key tracks from titles were missing, and did we really need a million versions of Battle at the Big Bridge?

Still, super fun game, I'm glad for the time I put into it. It made me smile.

It's all I ever wanted. The mapping is excellent, there are a comical amount of songs, which can all be played in the co-op multiplayer AND in one-button mode and the presentation and RPG 'mechanics' are cute and entertaining, while never getting in one's way of enjoying the game.
The amount of intrinsic motivation I have for this title because of the sheer quality of it's content is still quite unfathomable to me. This is really up there with my fav rhythm games like P4 Dancing.
Even though I was super hyped for this release it didn't disappoint in the slightest and IndieZero did an amazing job, bringing together all these different Final Fantasy experiences, expanding on what they learned with the prior 3 installments.
Actual GOTY contender and I'm not even kidding in the slightest. See y'all in the online multiplayer

I've technically "rolled credits" on this one by beating most of the songs in the Theatrhythm section of the game. I like the game a lot overall, and it's by far one of the more unique rhythm games out there, but if you're not an ultra-fan of FF, this one may leave you in the dust.

The gameplay is divided into two different levels: Battle Music Stages (BMS) and Field Music Stages (FMS). Field Music Stages already leave a lot to be desired as they're annoying side-scrollers that occasionally have your party stumble upon combat. BMS's are great and it's your party versus some of Final Fantasy's greatest foes. Props to the development team for making so many models as well, there's almost every boss from the series in the game.

I was mainly centered on the story-quest side of things, which is where a lot of love for the game grew, but also decayed. The extra challenges on each level varied significantly in difficulty - some would involve just playing with a character from the game itself, others would demand pure perfection, and even worse, maxed-out characters.

So much of my hatred goes there. This game is absolutely huge, with over 350 songs and I'd wager nearly 100 FF characters to play, mix and match with, etc. The antithesis to this whole game and wanting to have fun while mixing and matching is the fact that past level 99, characters can take tens of hours to level up their "Star Level", which in turn grants them even more power. The payoff doesn't feel earned after you reach 99 with Cloud in an hour or two, just to realize a Star Level 9 Could take a good 30 hours of straight gameplay, maybe 20 if you have a good grind party setup.

I never felt encouraged to mix and match or try other characters in the game. I feared that if I switched my party, I'd then be behind for all future BMS encounters as my Noctis was dealing a majority of most of my damage. In general, characters in this game are hit-and-miss as well. Some are essential to the party, while other classes like the Support classes or Tank/Gladiator classes feel absolutely useless as the best players will just FC the song and enjoy their mega damage output.

This review may have harped on some sore spots, but I think they could have done a lot more with progression to make this game cohesive, especially because the game is a genius idea and a wonderful idea of a rhythm game to have combat effected by it. But at full price, it's pure-blood, all games played FF fans only. At half off? I think anyone would be stupid not to pick it up, it's damn enjoyable for what it is.

Review PT/ENG

Final Fantasy: E os Guerreiros da Musica.

Começo essa analise deixando claro o óbvio, apesar de não ter jogado do inicio ao fim varios JRPGs, acho que posso dizer que o genero é um dos meus favoritos no mundo dos games(se não for O favorito), e é claro que eu AMO a saga Final Fantasy que moldou MUITO meu eu gamer junto com outros classicos como Chrono Cross e Xenogears. Dito isso....oque falar desse jogo que reune literalmente as MELHORES musicas já feitas para video-games? Se contar com as musicas das DLCs nós temos os maiores nomes da game music envolvidos em um jogo desde o lendario Nobou Uematsu(Final Fantasy) autor da maioria das musicas do jogo até nomes como Yoko Shimomura(Front Mission, Kingdom Hearts), Yoshinori Mitsuda (Chrono Cross/Trigger e Xenogears), Kenji Ito (série Mana) e tantos outros. E por falar em musicas....o jogo conta com um numero literalmente gigantesco de musicas de Final Fantasy(e outros jogos da Square se contar com as DLCs) só no jogo base são ao todo 385 musicas de todos os Final Fantasys, desde o 1, passando por classicos da era 16 e 32 bits como Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII até jogos mais recentes como Final Fantasy XIV, Final Fantasy XV, Final Fantasy VII Remake, até o mais novo Final Fantasy XVI(esse via DLC) até mesmo spin-offs como Crystal Chronicles e Type-0. E nesse mar de musicas, como não se enctar com varias delas? Como não ficar maravilhado com a Terra's Theme(Final Fantasy VI), empolgado com os temas de batalha de Final Fantasy VI, VII, X, XV, etc...., se emocionar com o tema da Aerith(Final Fantasy VI), se sentir vitorioso com os temas de vitória, apaixonado com o Theme of Love(Final Fantasy IV), sentir vontade de sair dançando com o Mambo de Chocobo(Final Fantasy V), se sentir triste ou reflexivo com o tema da Celes(Final Fantasy VI), esperançoso com Answers(Final Fantasy XIV), maravilhado com o Scars of Time(Chrono Cross), etc...
O jogo não brilha só em termos de musica, sua mecanica de gameplay que consiste em uma mistura de jogo ritmico com RPG eleva a experiencia a um outro patamar, sempre tentando tirar o melhor de nós nas musicas e nos recompensando com personagens desbloqueaveis de toda a série, magias, poções e tudo o mais que é comun de um FF. O jogo tambem é muito acessivel, possuindo varios niveis de dificuldade e modos que vão desde o Basic(facil), expert(médio), Ultimate(dificil) e Supreme(dificilimo) até modos como apertar apenas um botão(simple), apertar dois botões ao mesmo tempo(standard) e pair(que é pra jogar com outra pessoa) fazendo com que o jogo seja indicado para todos os tipos de jogadores, sejam novatos no genero até experts em jogos ritmicos.
O jogo ainda conta com um multiplayer que consiste basicamente num modo versus pra ver quem se sai melhor em determinada musica.
Uma coisa legal é o sistema de RPG do jogo, já que alem de nos preocuparmos em acertar as notas das musicas, nos precisamos ''combater'' inimigos que surgem na tela com os personagens que desbloqueamos no jogo e pra isso contamos não só com eles mas tambem com magias e um sistema de fraquezas dos inimigos, poções de cura e afins.
Aqueles que gostam de jogar jogos de cabo a rabo irão passar MUITO, mas MUITO tempo nesse jogo, visto que é preciso de muita dedicação pra masterizar as musicas nos seus niveis mais dificeis, e o jogo ainda incentiva que você sempre esteja tentando se superar nas musicas atraves de uma infinidade de colecionaveis que vão desde figurinhas dos personagens estilo chibi até artworks de cada um dos jogos da série, só de artworks são mais de 1200 pra colecionar, uma verdadeira ode a historia de Final Fantasy e aos artistas que já passaram pela série.
Enfim...esse com certeza é o melhor jogo de musica/ritmico que já joguei de longe, com certeza o mais divertido superando games como taiko no tatsujin e até o meu amado Kingdom Hearts: Melody of memories.
Se você é fã da saga Final Fantasy esse jogo e literalmente OBRIGATORIO pra você, na verdade eu diria que é obrigatorio pra todo mundo que curte uma boa musica, porque na real não há uma musica ruim nesse jogo.

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English

Final Fantasy: And the Warriors of Music.

I begin this analysis by stating the obvious: although I haven't played through many JRPGs from start to finish, I believe I can say that the genre is one of my favorites in the gaming world (if not THE favorite), and of course, I LOVE the Final Fantasy saga, which has greatly shaped my gamer self along with other classics like Chrono Cross and Xenogears. That said... what can be said about this game that literally brings together the BEST music ever made for video games? With the addition of DLC music, we have the biggest names in game music involved in a game since the legendary Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy), the author of most of the game's music, to names like Yoko Shimomura (Front Mission, Kingdom Hearts), Yoshinori Mitsuda (Chrono Cross/Trigger and Xenogears), Kenji Ito (Mana series), and many others. Speaking of music... the game features a literally gigantic number of Final Fantasy music tracks (and other Square games if you count the DLCs). In the base game alone, there are a total of 385 tracks from all Final Fantasies, from the first one, through classics of the 16 and 32-bit era like Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII, to more recent games like Final Fantasy XIV, Final Fantasy XV, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and even the newest Final Fantasy XVI (this one via DLC), including spin-offs like Crystal Chronicles and Type-0. In this sea of music, how can one not be captivated by several of them? How can one not be thrilled by Terra's Theme (Final Fantasy VI), excited by the battle themes of Final Fantasy VI, VII, X, XV, etc..., moved by Aerith's Theme (Final Fantasy VII), feel victorious with the victory themes, passionate about the Theme of Love (Final Fantasy IV), feel like dancing with the Chocobo Mambo (Final Fantasy V), feel sad or reflective with Celes's Theme (Final Fantasy VI), hopeful with Answers (Final Fantasy XIV), amazed by Scars of Time (Chrono Cross), etc...

The game shines not only in terms of music; its gameplay mechanics, which consist of a mix of rhythm game and RPG, elevate the experience to another level, always trying to bring out the best in us in terms of music and rewarding us with unlockable characters from the entire series, spells, potions, and everything else that is common in an FF game. The game is also very accessible, with various difficulty levels and modes ranging from Basic (easy), Expert (medium), Ultimate (hard), and Supreme (extremely hard) to modes like pressing just one button (simple), pressing two buttons at the same time (standard), and pair (for playing with another person), making the game suitable for all types of players, from genre newcomers to experts in rhythm games.

The game also features multiplayer, which basically consists of a versus mode to see who performs better on a certain track.

A cool thing about the game's RPG system is that besides focusing on hitting the notes of the songs, we also need to "battle" enemies that appear on the screen with the characters we unlock in the game. For this, we count not only on them but also on spells and an enemy weakness system, healing potions, and the like.

Those who like to play games from start to finish will spend A LOT, but A LOT of time on this game, as it requires a lot of dedication to master the songs at their most difficult levels. The game also encourages you to always try to surpass yourself in the songs through a myriad of collectibles ranging from chibi-style character stickers to artworks from each of the games in the series. Just in artworks, there are over 1200 to collect, a true ode to the history of Final Fantasy and the artists who have contributed to the series.

In conclusion... this is definitely the best music/rhythm game I've ever played by far, certainly the most enjoyable, surpassing games like Taiko no Tatsujin and even my beloved Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memories.

If you're a fan of the Final Fantasy saga, this game is literally A MUST for you. In fact, I would say it's mandatory for anyone who enjoys good music because in reality, there is no bad music in this game.

The game you always make a typo when trying to write about it

Already spent more than 70 hours doing all the tracks in normal and hard difficulties as well as all the quests and lost my wife and kids in the process.

Felt weird not playing with the touch screen at first but after a few hours I felt right at home again.

I just wish the curation of tracks for FF14 was better, too many Alexander vocoder madness in there.