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1* AnnoyingVideoGameHelper: If you're in a VS match and the the score remains just 1 note shy of a tie (such as 1 person having a single Great vs. all Critical notes), expect Mog to endlessly announce, "They've taken the lead, kupo!" until the difference in scores becomes much greater since the score needle repeatedly touches the exact center then dips towards the one in the lead and the AI is programmed to make the announcement once the needle leaves the center spot rather than cross over entirely after leaving it once.
2* AntiClimaxBoss: The FinalBoss of both 3DS games, [[spoiler:Chaos]]. The chart used is a Basic chart, so depending on your skill level (some players are regularly playing on Expert at this point) this "final battle" can feel like an anti-climatic comedy of just whaling on the boss for the duration of the track until he suffers the defeat blink at the very end of the track. ''Curtain Call'' is a bit better about this: at 40,000 Rhythmia (double of what you need for the final boss and credit roll), [[spoiler:[[TrueFinalBoss Feral Chaos]]]] challenges you and the track uses the Expert chart.
3* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: A given considering it's a celebration of its music, but Theatrhythm also sends love letters to the original tracks with its arrangements.
4** The remixes of the Kingdom of Baron, Hunter's Chance and Loss of Me/Something to Protect repurposed for menus perfectly fit and get you ready for a song.
5** The final boss theme is a remix of the original Chaos Shrine theme, given much more grandeur and intensity to make it suitable for your final battle. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvYlMeMmBbc And it is glorious]].
6** A Hi-Fi remix of fan favourite ''Battle on the Big Bridge'' plays at the song select screen of the iOS version.
7* BaseBreakingCharacter: In ''Curtain Call'', either you find Mog's voice in the VS to be annoying and very distracting (though thankfully, for those people, it does have an off option) or you find it adorable (as well as adding to the atmosphere) and quite useful. Then again, Moogles have always been one of the biggest "You love them or hate them" in the fandom and the usefulness of Mog's voice is situational as he's very helpful when announcing what EX Burst is being used against you (since looking away from the action to see makes it very easy to miss a note) while endless repetitions of, "They've taken the lead, kupo!" during a very close match make one want to strangle him. ''Final Bar Line'' allows you to adjust Mog's volume so you can outright mute him and not deal with his chatter.
8* BrokenBase: Some fans enjoyed Creator/SquareEnix experimenting something new, but others would have rather liked a port of ''VideoGame/Dissidia012FinalFantasy'' or ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'' on the 3DS instead.
9* DifficultySpike:
10** Basic Scores are the perfect introduction to the genre for a complete beginner. Expert Scores are more challenging, with a faster pace and more intricate patterns. Ultimate Scores are instruments of Satan that wish only to ''destroy you''. And ''Final Bar Line'' adds the [[HarderThanHard Supreme Scores]], on top of adding completely new button prompts absent from previous games.
11** ''All-star Carnival'' and ''Final Bar Line'' are harder to score high on due to the introduction of the rainbow Critical judgement and the resulting tweaks to the scoring system. However, ranks are tweaked to accomodate this; whereas in ''Curtain Call'' you need 9,750,000 points for an SSS, in ''All-star Carnival'' and ''Final Bar Line'' you just need 9 million.
12* EvenBetterSequel: The first game is already a good one, though with some odd mechanics here and there. ''Curtain Call'' refines these mechanics and more than ''triples'' the number of non-DLC songs.
13* FanNickname: "Final Fantasy Tip Taps"[[note]]Tip Taps was the name of a long-dead mobile rhythm game during its early years.[[/note]] for the game itself. Another is "Dissidia: The Musical."
14* GameBreaker:
15** Each of the original 13 base characters has a LimitBreak type ability learned at Level 40. For Warrior of Light, Firion and Terra, it activates when you chain so many notes in BMS, and respectively reduces damage by half, restores HP for every successful note trigger, or triples the damage of offensive Magic. Lightning got an ability to boost Strength and Magic by 75 each, and the other nine got a super-attack that they use against bosses and do heavy damage based on their stats, and they will use it against every boss if you do well enough to meet more than one. If it sounds like these abilities are good, they are. With as little as two of the damaging abilities on the right characters at Level 99, the bosses that are supposed to be the toughest enemies in the stage will die on arrival, Warrior of Light and Firion make stages much easier, and Terra's offensive magic is brutal. The developers took notice how good they are, because these abilities were removed from the iOS port. However, every character with one in the first game still has theirs in the sequel, and a large number of the new characters have one as well, although since the Quest Medley boss stages require you to defeat said boss at least once or you lose even if you finish the song, they're more of a necessity as opposed to something that trivializes bosses.
16** The [=CollectaCards=] in the sequel. Unlike in the first game, where they existed only for [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin collecting them]], you can now use them to boost characters' stats far beyond what normal leveling up with allow, especially if you group them together to guarantee higher boosts. With high enough stats, you can basically create a team based entirely around tanking constant enemy attacks from missing every note and using counterattacks to defeat them to gather a huge amount of drops without actively playing the game at all, but doing this is an extremely time-consuming process.
17** Terra is even more broken in ''Curtain Call'' thanks to the opportunity to raise max CP to 99. With at least 68 CP she can equip Trance, Dualcast and Ultima, which is cast when a boss appears. With 6x the normal magic damage she can not only one-shot the boss but do enough damage to kill the enemies that appear after it as well! And with 91 CP, you can equip her with Trance, Firaga, Thundaga, and Blizzaga to guarantee that nothing survives for long in a BMS. Team her up with three characters that have Added Cut and there will rarely be an enemy that lasts for more than a few seconds.
18** ''Final Bar Line:''
19*** Terra loses the Trance ability, so she isn't quite as broken as she is in ''Curtain Call'', but she can still Dualcast Ultima whenever a boss appears, making her incredibly viable for dispatching them on a "Kill the boss" quest, especially since her third ability can be rotated out depending on the situation. Put her in the party behind others who can reduce a boss's stats on appearance, and even the ones with double/triple HP for high-level quests will go down in no time.
20*** Shantotto is similar to Terra in that her Playing Rough ability multiplies her magical damage output by 250% and she can also use Ultima, both of which trigger on a boss appearance.
21*** Most abilities that trigger when a boss appears became limited-use, but not for everyone. Both Noctis and Aranea have skills that trigger every time a boss appears and have unlimited uses, making them indispensable for songs that have several or nothing but boss enemies.
22*** Bartz and his Job Mastery ability will increase all of his stats by 150 for the rest of the battle and can trigger twice. Put him and anyone with the Mimic ability (including himself) in the same party and the Mimics will most likely mimic the Job Mastery, giving them the same boosts and turning most trash mobs into wet paper to be torn apart. Even after maxing out Bartz's stats, the ability is still very useful as the cap can be broken during a song.
23*** Terra, Bartz, Ramza, and Spiritus in that order form the "Terra Go Boom!" party as coined by fans. At the start of a battle, Spiritus will boost Terra's Magic by 170% with his Tolerant Wisdom, which both Bartz and Ramza will Mimic. Halfway into the song, Spiritus can boost Terra's Magic a second time with Mystical Aura from a scroll, which Bartz and Ramza will Mimic ''again''. If the boss hasn't already appeared by then, it will face off against a Dualcast Ultima from Terra that has had her Magic stat boosted by 170% a total of ''six'' times!
24* HilariousInHindsight: When it was first released on the Platform/Nintendo3DS, there were many jokes to be had about how many of the games featured (Specifically, ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' onwards) originated as exclusives for the [[Platform/PlayStation PS1]], [[Platform/PlayStation2 PS2]], and [[Platform/PlayStationPortable PSP]], were being honored on a game released exclusively for the Nintendo 3DS. Not only would [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII they]] [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII port]] [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX most]] [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyX of]] [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyX2 those]] [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII games]] to the Platform/NintendoSwitch years later, but Cloud, whose game in particular marked the separation of ''Final Fantasy'' and Nintendo, ended up in two ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'' titles.
25* ItsShortSoItSucks: The most common complaint, though some of the unlocks might suffer the [[FakeLongevity opposite complaint]]:
26** Defeating Chaos and seeing the end credits requires you to get 10000 Rhythmia in the first game, which can be done in a few hours. However, unlocking all the content in the game takes much, much longer: you keep getting new stuff every 500 Rhythmia until you reach 99999, and you can only get around 130+ per song if you do well. While you might be able to get all the shards to unlock every character much faster from Dark Notes and silly titles, songs for the sound test and movies for the movie player might not hold much value for you, you still need at least 45000 Rhythmia to unlock the last extra song in Challenge mode.
27** In ''Curtain Call'' as well as ''Final Bar Line'', this is both improved and made worse: Chaos doesn't challenge you until you reach 20000 Rhythmia and due to the vastly increased number of songs, you probably haven't gone through more than half of them at that point. Furthermore, the first 10 character unlocks are essentially free once you reach the respective Rhythmia amounts, and every Quest Medley you beat for the first time is guaranteed to drop at least 3 shards of any given color. On the other hand, everyone outside of the initial party of 4 needs to be unlocked seperately and Rhythmia goes up to 6 digits, with the last unique unlock gotten at 300000. Thankfully there's a number of ways to get increased amount of Rhythmia per song and the last song unlock has been moved to 40000 Rhytmia.
28* ItsTheSameNowItSucks:
29** Some people don't like the fact that the tracks are not remixed except for only a few exceptions such as Mt. Gulg, with this particular example being taken from the various remakes of the first game instead of the original 8-bit version. Given that the game is meant to be a tanker truck of nostalgia fuel though, this is intentional.
30** With ''Final Bar Line'', ''XIV'' fans were not amused to find that their game's reps were Y'shtola, Thancred, Yda, Alphinaud, and...Y'shtola. For whatever reason, Y'shtola got two characters for her ARR and HW appearance, beating out other major characters like Alisaie, Urianger, Papalymo, etc. With such a wide roster to choose from, ''XIV'' fans weren't particularly impressed.
31* SugarWiki/MostWonderfulSound: The "Quest Clear" sound in ''Final Bar Line'' upon clearing the conditions of a particular song's quest, especially the higher-difficulty ones that require specialized teams and multiple attempts.
32* NintendoHard: While the Basic difficulty is normal/easy depending on the song (though getting an SSS Rank is still challenging regardless of the difficulty selected), the games can get surprisingly ''brutal'' on the later difficulty settings, especially Ultimate and Supreme. And Cosmos help you if spinning arrow notes are included. It's to the point that by the developers own admission, [[https://finalfantasyunion.com/theatrhythm-final-bar-line-interview-w-ichiro-hazama-masanobu-suzui/ even they only play up to expert themselves and can’t really do anything higher than that]].
33* PlayerPunch:
34** As revealed in the Jump Festa trailer for the game, one of the Event music tracks is [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII "Aerith's theme".]] The FMV lets you relive the gut-wrenching cutscene where [[ItWasHisSled she is stabbed and killed in her own game]].
35** Curtain Call has "[[Videogame/FinalFantasyType0 We Have Arrived]]", the background FMV being the opening with Milites's [[WarIsHell rather brutal invasion of Rubrum]] and [[spoiler:Class Zero's death]]. However this is fixed in the English versions where ''Final Fantasy Type-0 HD'' has yet to be released; the ending scene is replaced by Alexander's Light of Judgment attack. The ending scene did return in ''Final Bar Line'' but the game was already released in the west 8 years ago so people who played it are already aware of how it ends.
36* PortingDisaster: In addition to being laggy on anything older than an [=iPad4=] or [=iPhone5S=], the nominally "free" iOS version only includes 2 songs and 13 characters, and purchasing everything costs '''''more than three times''''' as much as the 3DS version -- which already includes all of this premium content, except for some songs which are either still DLC or just not available as well as some characters that don't have any unique skills available to them. And oh, no ''Event Music Stages'', one of the biggest draws of the game. On the other hand, some players consider the higher resolution graphics and higher quality music an acceptable tradeoff, especially since [=DLCs=] for the 3DS version of the game are NoExportForYou to those living in areas without the 3DS eShop (when comparatively, the iOS version and all its [=DLCs=] are available worldwide), and rationalizes by buying only the songs and/or song packs they like. Additionally, all [=iOS=] devices have a capacitive touch screen compared to the 3DS' resistive touch screen, and the screen itself is bigger to boot (especially on an [=iPad=]), making it a little easier to play. And then Square announced that the [=iOS=] port has essentially been abandoned due to poor song and character sales and '''won’t''' be updated to 64-bit to be made compatible with [=iOS 11=] and beyond...In any case, both ''Curtain Call'' and ''Final Bar Line'' have all content the [=iOS=] port of the first had, effectively making it little more than a curiosity.
37* ScrappyMechanic:
38** ''No one'' likes spinning yellow arrow notes because nailing them is almost always the result of dumb luck instead of skill.
39** In the first game, the Stoic Bonus is a bit of an odd mechanic. Putting on equipment makes songs a little easier to survive andor lets you earn more items (depending on what you equip), without affecting your score. Removing all equipment results in a huge score bonus (about 2 letter grade's worth). So the game creates a choice between playing with equipment so you can [[CircularReasoning get more items]], or playing without equipment so you can get a better high score. Playing stoic also removes the special features from the songs. Thankfully, it's been removed in the sequel and you can now get a maximum score on any song right off the bat regardless of equipment if you do well enough.
40** In the first game, getting a Critical on a note once was enough to count it towards completion of the Total Critical chart (and the Practice mode of the song showed which notes hadn't been hit yet). The second game changed it to needing to get nothing but Critical notes for an entire 1/20 of the song that the bars in the chart represent. For bars late in long songs like Dancing Mad and One-Winged Angel, having to play through the whole song to make a single attempt on that one segment gets very tedious if they're especially tricky. The last 15% of Dancing Mad alone is harder than the rest of the song combined.
41** Button Mode in FMS stages that have a lot of Holds that end with Arrow nodes as holding the circle pad up/down to follow the Hold trail tends to also trigger the arrow at the end prematurely.
42** Out of all the Ex Bursts in the second game, Judgment seems to be the most hated one. It makes every non-Critical note count as a Bad, it makes the timing for a Critical even stricter than normal and every Bad scored while it's active also causes you to lose points, while none of the other Ex Bursts directly affect the score for the notes you screw up. It's basically the musical equivalent of a [[VideoGame/SuperMarioKart Blue Shell.]]
43** EX Bursts as a whole can feel like this, as they are randomly selected. A match can be decided simply because the RandomNumberGod decides to curse one player with Judgment several times in a row while the other player gets comparatively tame Bursts like Super Speed and Wave Speed. They ''can'' be turned off, but in turn both players must play on Ultimate difficulty and the game simply becomes a glorified score attack competition since neither player can affect the other. Perhaps become of this, ''All-star Carnival'' employs {{Drop In Drop Out|Multiplayer}} CoOpMultiplayer instead of VS matches instead. ''Final Bar Line'' allows multiplayer lobby hosts to determine whether to enable Bursts on or off.
44** Although relatively accepted in the first ''Theatrhythm'' game, the EMS levels in ''Curtain Call'' feel MUCH more difficult to Perfect Chain and All Critical than those in the first game. It doesn't help that, even on Ultimate, most of the EMS levels don't have that many notes, making it very hard to get higher than an S rank on them unless your timing is flawless.
45** In the first two console games, there are no difficulty ratings, meaning that you'll just have to play the chart for yourself to see how difficult it is. Ratings are available in ''All-star Carnival'', which is an arcade game that mostly suffers from NoExportForYou. ''Final Bar Line'' would introduce them to consoles and worldwide.
46** Players going for OneHundredPercentCompletion dislike the heavy FakeLongevity the games have thanks to their reliance in repeatedly play songs to collect Rhythmia and making you play the same song several times in different modes (with what was done in one mode not counting in the other) to collect Trophies.
47** Despite the three types of charts available (BMS, FMS, and EMS), each demanding different types of party composition for optimal play, you are expected to change your party members one at a time when switching between chart type. It gets worse if you want to use the same character for more than one chart type, because you also have to change their ability loadouts, also one at a time. In ''All-star Carnival'' and ''Final Bar Line'' you can finally have party presets.
48** Only 62.5% of your score comes from hitting notes accurately; the rest is chain bonuses. This means that a few mistakes in the middle is enough to warrant a restart if you're trying to go for a high score.
49* SelfImposedChallenge:
50** While Pair Mode in ''All-star Carnival'' and ''Final Bar Line'' allows you to play with a friend (The four lanes are split to two each), there's no stopping you from playing the mode by yourself for an added layer of challenge. The game even suggests this in the loading screens.
51** Many rythmia bonuses are rewarded for doing certain challenges, such as having no abilities equipped or using only one character.
52* SequelDifficultySpike: ''All-star Carnival'' and ''Final Bar Line'' add a new rainbow-colored Critical judge rank, making it harder to get a perfect score, although the grading system has been tweaked to compensate[[note]]For example, getting an SSS in the consumer versions requires 9,750,000 points, but ''All-star Carnival'' and ''Final Bar Line'' only requires 9,000,000.[[/note]]. Both games also add the [[HarderThanHard Transcendence/Supreme]] difficulty, which makes Ultimate charts look like tutorial levels, having far more strenuous strings of notes as well as triple and quadruple notes. Hope your fingers are warmed up for those challenges.
53* SpiritualSuccessor: Gameplay-wise, the game feels a lot like ''VideoGame/GrooveCoaster'' if one uses the touchscreen, due to both games being rhythm games with "it doesn't matter where on the touchscreen you hit as long as you do what's required to hit the note" gameplay. ''All-star Carnival'' doubly so, as much like the arcade version of ''Groove Coaster'', the cabinet has two buttons and two joysticks and uses [=NESiCA=] cards for logging in.
54* SurpriseDifficulty: The game is full of sparkles, cute cartoon characters, brightly colored and rounded icons, and aside from ''maybe'' [[{{Stripperiffic}} Barbariccia]] and some of the more frightening enemies like the Ahriman and Anima, there's nothing a MoralGuardian would object to. The higher difficulty songs will crush your spirit, trample the shards laughing, and invite you back to more. You will ''wish'' for the comparatively simple task of just fighting Omega and Shinryu like normal, rather than getting a perfect 200-Critical chain on Ultimate Difficulty with no abilities and starting over any time your timing is off just enough to miss that one Critical.
55* ThatOneAttack: Most of the status ailments in ''Final Bar Line'' are nothing more than a nuisance, but Poison is the only one that depletes the party's HP. When fighting multiple Poison-using enemies in a long song, it's not unusual for a strong party to still lose most of its HP to Poison ''despite'' having means of curing it and healing the damage it causes simply due to getting hit with it over and over again.
56* ThatOneLevel:
57** If playing the songs in game order on Ultimate, "Battle With The Four Fiends" will make you cry; and that's not even nearly as hard as "Battle at the Big Bridge". And those are just among the songs that are part of the main game. Some of the DLC songs on Ultimate are meant to be far more challenging than anything the base game has to offer.
58** In ''Curtain Call'', "Dancing Mad" is changed up from its arrangement in the first game, with the final 15% of the song being much harder to Perfectly Chain and Total Critical than the rest of the song combined on Ultimate. The fact that it's one of the longest songs in the game doesn't help either.
59** Several of the vehicle levels in ''Curtain Call'' are also nightmarish on Ultimate (particularly FFXII's "Heart of a Child") as well since the often-fast paced "travel" music allows for very little time to rest between one section of notes and the next.
60** In a few forums, the hardest levels have been noted to be "Force Your Way" ([=FFVIII=]) and "Crazy Chocobo" ([=FFXIII-2=]).
61** Similarly known and feared for their difficulty on Ultimate are "Battle 2" ([=FFIX=]) and "Heart of Chaos" ([=FFXIII-2=]). And the DLC provides plenty of challenge as well (such as the aforementioned "Crazy Chocobo"), with "Assault" ([=FFX=]) and "He of the Name" ([=Bravely Default=]) being examples of songs with extremely difficult second halves.
62** ''Final Bar Line'' has some of the most ''brutal'' charts conceived with the Supreme difficulty, with five charts rated at 16, the highest rating in the game. Among those, "Advent: One-Winged Angel" is a MarathonLevel that tests your endurance, and "Battle at the Big Bridge - TFFAC Arrangement" is blisteringly fast and dense. Good luck.
63* ThatOneSidequest:
64** In the first game, the trophy for defeating Chaos in a Dark Note. First, he only appears in Dark Notes that are at least level 90 (out of 99). Second, he's always Boss No. 3. Third, he doesn't always appear in a Dark Note of that level, so a player may have to clear through dozens of level 90+ Dark Notes to find him. Fourth, presuming you do find him, he has a ton of hit points, which means you need a lot of power and abilities to clear through him. Fifth, the spinning arrows mentioned under ScrappyMechanic are guaranteed to appear during the fight. And, finally, he does a ton of damage, so a couple of missed notes can mean having to start over. It's like combining a MetalSlime with a FinalBoss, and mixing in a Scrappy Mechanic for a garnish. Good luck.
65** The second game has the trophy for defeating every enemy at least once. The problem is that several are only [[MetalSlime rare bosses]] on Chaos Notes that are at least level 90 - see above about the problems about getting them to randomly drop. Plus, they have a chance to invoke the dreaded [[ScrappyMechanic spinning slide triggers]] in the fight. Of course, the rarest ones not only have tons of hit points, but they have a habit of appearing on really short BMS songs. The only saving grace is that there's an item (the Gambler's Soul) that will randomly change a song to a different song of the same type. Sure, it's not necessarily ''easy'' to suddenly change to "Dancing Mad" or "One-Winged Angel," but both are long enough, and have enough triggers, to greatly improve your odds of being able to do enough damage.
66* UnexpectedCharacter:
67** [[Videogame/FinalFantasyMysticQuest Benjamin]] in ''Curtain Call'' is an interesting addition, to say the least, given that he and his home game hadn't been mentioned in a Square-Enix product in nearly ''two decades''.
68** While ''All Star Carnival'' added quite a few new characters, [[VideoGame/MobiusFinalFantasy Wol]] and [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyRecordKeeper Tyro]] weren't characters people were expecting, mainly since they're main characters for mobile games.
69* UnderusedGameMechanic: [=EMSes=]. While it's understandable that they're few in number compared to other types of stages due to video files generally taking up a lot of space, they're notably the only type of stage not used in Dark Notes or Quest Medleys, and the iOS game and ''All-star Carnival'' remove [=EMSes=] outright.

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