Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy is exactly what its contrived portmanteau of a name suggests: it is a game that involves theatrically performing attacks to the beat of the music from the mainline Final Fantasy games. The game has a fine selection of tracks, that, coupled with the charming graphics that vaguely evoke the classic SNES and Playstation era Final Fantasy games, will probably leave all Final Fantasy fans nostalgic, and aching for the now long gone glory days of the franchise.

It’s a lovely, charming game, like so many games on Nintendo hardware often are. The music and the graphics, as stated. All the animations, especially for the classic spells. And even the prompts to press the correct buttons to the beat, bright, red circles for tapping, and green circles for pressing. Everything about it is dripping with charm.

In a shocking departure from the trend for Final Fantasy, little to no attempt has been made at providing the game with a narrative framework. There is a cursory paragraph right at the beginning of the game, that somehow tries to justify the premise, but honestly, you forget about it as soon as the action begins. And what action it is.

The game has three game modes: a Series mode, which has you go through three tracks from each Final Fantasy game at a time, a Challenge mode, which enables you to play any song of your choice, at any difficulty level; and there’s also a third mode called Chaos Shrine, a harder mode involving sets of two songs. Chaos Shrine mode also has tracks not available in the other modes, so the only way to access some of the tracks is to play a neverending, randomly generated list of two songs at a time.

Once you do decide which mode to play, the basic gameplay is easy enough, especially if you have played rhythm games before, although there are variations based on the kinds of track being played. World music is probably the most basic, with the notes appearing on a single line, for you to either tap (red circle), press (green circle), or swipe (yellow circle). Event music makes it a little but harder, by allowing only a few notes to scroll across the screen, slowly at a time.

By far the best and most chaotic variation, though, is Battle Music. As series veterans already know, the battle music in Final Fantasy is top class, and probably amongst the best of all the music in the series. The tracks are faster paced to reflect the added tension of battles, meaning you have to scramble to hit all the notes just right. Adding to the chaos, however, is the fact that each of your party members (there are four) gets his own line of notes, and you have to tap the notes correctly across all four lines.

Adding to the satisfaction of getting the notes right in Battle Mode is the fact that correct timing will launch some classic attacks from the series against the featured villain in the song – usually a fan favorite from the game in question. The battle mode also gives the game a chance to showcase the RPG elements that it cleverly introduces into the mix. Genre conventions such as an HP bar, which determines how many notes you can miss, character equipment, which can be used for temporary advantages and buffs, persistent character level, and collectible character cards, all make it into the game, and make it that much more attractive and alluring for repeated play throughs.

Not that the game needs any such help. Beneath all the RPG fluff, the half hearted narrative, beneath the ‘battle’ against the monster, there is an excellent, excellent, excellent rhythm game, that qualifies amongst the best in its class, and kicks off what will hopefully be a new line of rhythm games from Square Enix. All the game’s distractions, such as the ones mentioned above, and the wholly unnecessary StreetPass and SpotPass modes, do little to detract from the game’s underlying excellence.

Really, there isn’t much to fault the game for. One could argue that the game’s wide selection of tracks is eventually bound to get old, but then, new tracks are already on their way via DLC, and fan favorites and requests have been promised to be taken into consideration.

When Final Fantasy was announced for the 3DS, Theatrhythm is not what any of us had in mind. However, I’m glad that it exists: it’s a wholly excellent game, and it deserves a good chance from every fan of Final Fantasy and its music, and anybody who wants to celebrate the 25th anniversary of one of the most hallowed game franchises of all time.

This game was reviewed on the 3DS.

Square Enix today announced that brand new demos for Kingdom Hearts 3D and Theatrhythm Final Fantasy are now available to download in the Nintendo eShop for the 3DS.

These demos bring two of the biggest franchises in gaming, Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy to the Nintendo eShop for the first time in Europe.

In the demo for Kingdom Hearts 3D, players will take control of Sora, harnessing the power of the all-new Flowmotion action system to swing, slide and smash through the world of Traverse Town. The Theatrhythm Final Fantasy demo will guide players as they tap, swipe and slide along to the rhythm of a classic Final Fantasy soundtrack across a variety of different music stages.

Kingdom Hearts 3D releases in Europe and PAL territories on 20th July 2012.

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy releases in Europe and PAL territories on 6th July 2012.

Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more news and updates.

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy gets a new DLC in shape of Final Fantasy: Versus XIII. People will be shocked and confused at this, but there’s no need to be because its just a piece of music composed by Yoko Shimomura.

The game’s theme song will be available as a DLC update. The reason for this shouldn’t be surprising , though, but it doesn’t mean Versus XIII will announced any time soon.

We also have a sample song for you, and it will give you an idea as to how it will sound. You can check it out below (courtesy of Andriasang).

Theatrythmn Final Fantasy will be released later this year for the 3DS, and for Versus XIII… what Versus XIII?

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

If you’re confusion is related to the game’s very being, rather than how to play it, then I apologise for misleading you with that sensationalised headline there; sloppy journalism. For those of you still reading: Square-Enix have released three gameplay videos in a bid to demonstrated the three gameplay modes (event, battle, and field) featured in the game. Youtube user FinalandMedia  has kindly merged all three into one convenient video, so sit back and enjoy the gameplay in one seamless sitting.

Check out the gameplay video from ATRYTHM Final Fantasy which shows how the game will play. In the first scene the party fights ULTROS!

The game has four modes of play Music Game, SpotPass and Museum. You can see the Music Game in the video.

Select Music Game, and you’ll be presented with three submodes: Series, Challenge and one unidentified mode. These options are shown alongside your current party, listed with HP and level. It also looks like you can swap out characters from your party here.

Now for the gameplay details. As you might have guessed from the screenshots that were released yesterday (see below), the basic gameplay involves icons moving across the screen. There are three types of icons:

Red: Touch the screen briefly.
Yellow: Slide in the direction of the arrow or line of movement of the icon.
Green: Touch and hold down on the screen..

It was previously revealed that the game will have “field,” “battle” and “event” stages for each of the numbered Final Fantasy titles. Of these, field and battle are introduced in the magazine.

Field:

Play to field, town and dungeon music. There’s just one rhythm line here. The difficulty is lower, and there are some more relaxed songs that require you to slide the touch pen up and down.

Battle:

There are four rhythm lines here. The music is higher tempo and the difficulty higher. It appears that you’ll be able to get critical attacks by timing your inputs perfectly. Yesterday’s screenshots confirmed the presence of chains.

Tell us what you think of the video in the comments section below.

Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy is an upcoming 3DS Rhythm game produced by Square Enix and Indies Zero, the folks behind Retro Game Challenge. The game almost covers all the numbered Final Fantasy games with Heroes from I – XIII appearing. Players pick a party of four and go through three stages – field, battle, and events, all of which are music games. Characters will also level up, JRPG style, though Square Enix plan to expand on this point later.

The game will draw upon the vast library of Final Fantasy music with the Final Fantasy theme, “Battle on the Big Bridge” (Gilgamesh’s theme) from Final Fantasy V, “One Winged Angel” from Final Fantasy VII, “To Zanarkand” from Final Fantasy X, and “Sunleth Waterscape” from Final Fantasy XIII. having been confirmed by Square as appearing in the game.

Thanks to Siliconera for the info.