My first thought of Final Fantasy: Theatrhythm was that the subtitle was impossible to pronounce. I wasn’t too familiar with the game at all when sitting down to play it at PAX East this year. The most notable point to this game should be that it isn’t really the J-RPG type that fans of the series know and love, and is instead a rhythm based game that uses the touch screen. That isn’t to say the game isn’t worth playing.
For fans of the series (especially those who loved the music) it’s a treat to go through older Final Fantasy titles and play through their music. The only Final Fantasy game I have had the pleasure to play was Final Fantasy VII, and that was my focus in the demo.
The game is controlled by using the touch pad, and you have to tap or swipe in a certain direction in sync with the music being played. Sometimes you have to hold down and follow a line and then release at just the right moment. Some music is slower than others, so the challenge is just trying to keep up and remaining accurate.
Besides the music, there are also visuals that go along with this rhythm play. There are several different sequences that you will find yourself playing along to aside from just hitting things on screen. How well you are able to keep rhythm with a song directly effects these sequences. Some of them will be battles in which the better you perform, the better you do in battle. Others will be side scrolling levels in which your performance with the on screen prompts determines how fast you go in the level to get to the end.
For those that aren’t super familiar with the series, this game will probably be just a maybe. But for fans, this is a little treat that was actually pretty fun to play.
