"I played Theatrhythm Final Fantasy for the first time today. Not too shabby! As I remembered various things from the past 20 years, I was reduced to tears. FF music fans should definitely play it. Won't you cry with me?"
Nobuo Uematsu
An... out-of-nowhere entry in the running-gag-reflex-inducingly popularFinal Fantasy series, this game's premise is relatively simple: bringing the "conflict of the gods" plot of Dissidia: Final Fantasy to the Nintendo 3DS and later a port to iOS, but in the form of a Rhythm Game. In other words, it's Elite Beat AgentsmeetsFinal Fantasy.note (This moniker is surprisingly accurate; gameplay footage has revealed that the basic mechanics are lifted straight from Elite Beat Agents with a few new types of button to worry about.)Okay, time for a brief lesson in recent-gaming history for everyone: Dissidia: Final Fantasy, when first released, caused many fans to wet their pants in excitement just for the fact that a fighting game featuring representative heroes and villains from the Final Fantasy seriesnote (from the first installment right up until the latest released at the time) could only be justified with the words, Rule Of Cool, on which the concept was basically built.Then, the sequel (Dissidia 012 [duodecim] - Final Fantasy) was released, but this time around, sadly, the rejoicing (with Lightning joining the fight, among others) was foiled by the rather disappointing announcement that the game in question would be the last in the series, or at least, the last appearing in Fighting Game form.Turns out, the next game in the Dissidia series is a Spin-Off for the Nintendo 3DS, a Rhythm Game featuring (as the logo above - a throwback to that of Dissidia itself - shows) the characters' avatar versions first seen in Kingdom Hearts Coded.The game follows the events of the gods Chaos and Cosmos, a similar plot to Dissidia Final Fantasy. The space between the two is called Rhythm, which gives birth to a crystal that controls music. Chaos causes the crystal to become disrupted, and the only way to return it to normal is to increase a music wave known as Rhythmia.The playable characters appearing in the game are the following:
The game also features enemies and bosses from the games ranging from the main villains like Chaos and Sephiroth, mid-bosses like Xande, Black Waltz #3, Gilgamesh, Ultros and the Elemental Archfiends, mainstay monsters like tonberry, bombs and behemoths and even common enemies unique to each game like PSICOM enforcers and bangaa thieves all redesigned to fit the game's unique art style.The game operates in three different styles of stages. Battle Music Stages have the players chosen party members occupying the right side of the screen like a classic Final Fantasy game. You score hits on the enemy by successfully hitting notes, and by getting higher combos you can unleash stronger attacks like Summon Magic. Event Music Stages feature video montages from Final Fantasy games, and the player has to tap the notes in rhythm while the cursor moves around the screen in various patterns. Field Music Stages are represented by a chosen playable character strolling though the scenery from different Final Fantasy Games. By scoring higher combos you can run faster, encounter Moogles, and even call a Chocobo to give you a ride.
This game contains examples of:
Adaptation Dye Job: For the original 3DS release, Faris had brown eyes and blond hair, being based on her Yoshitaka Amano art. In the iOS version, she has the green eyes and purple hair used for her sprites and other artwork pieces.
Allegedly Free Game: The iOS version is "free"... but if you want any of the content, you'll have to pay up. It only comes with two songs.
There is no escaping this evil eye. Once you have met its fearsome gaze, you will never be alone again. Even now I feel the loathsome eye on me. Always it is on me. Where is it? Where is it!? Oh, sweet gods...!
Ascended Meme: A possible case. Before the iOS port introduced Ramza with the same ability, Aerith was the only character with the ability "Thoroughbred", which resulted in better chocobos during FMS sequences. A famous VG Cats comic◊ depicts Aerith attempting to breed a gold chocobo and explaining the breeding mechanics to do it to Cloud.
Badass Adorable: They may be chibi-fied, but that doesn't change the fact they're still Kain, Gilgamesh, Sephiroth, etc.
Black Mage: Shantotto, Rydia and Vivi who focus the most on casting spells like Fire and Thundara. Useful in that spells are activated automatically, so mage characters can attack normally and have the spell kick in for extra damage.
Boss In Mooks Clothing: Some monsters that qualify as bosses in easier dark notes are just normal monsters in harder dark notes.
Cap: The interface-induced cap is invoked if you manage to get all critical hits in a song, without equipping items or abilities, resulting in a score of 9999999.
Chibi: the game's use of avatars is bound to induce many fans to squee.
Clip Show: The videos in the backgrounds of the event stages are these for the games the song comes from.
Combat Medic: Minwu is this compared to the other White Mage characters: his HP caps at greater than 9K while the next best character's caps at around 6 thousand. Along with all the best healing spells, this makes him great for higher difficulty songs.
Continuity Porn: This game is full of references to the main games, ranging from obvious shout outs to subtle nods.
Difficulty Spike: 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.
Do Well, But Not Perfect: If you're trying to farm items from Boss 1 or Boss 2 of any given Dark Note (but especially a low-level one) this is in effect. Do too well in the Field sequence, and Boss 1 will not appear in the Battle sequence, and getting Boss 2 to appear requires doing well in the Field sequence, but poorly in the Battle sequence.
(And that's about as close to a Title Drop as we might possibly get.)
The "theater" part relates to the action happening in the background as the player performs along the the "rhythm" (ie. Battle games have a standard FF ATB battle going on, Field games have your character running across scenery, and Movie games have sequences from the title in question).
Excuse Plot: Perhaps notably, this game may have the least plot of any title in the Final Fantasy series. Asides from a "boss fight" against Chaos triggered once you accumulate a certain amount of Rhythmia, the only bits of plot come in two scrolling blurbs in a text box. This is not necessarily a bad thing, given the contortions gone through to make a plot for the original Dissidia spinoff, it's sort of hard to imagine any kind of sensible plot arising from the "... and then they became super-cute and used music to solve their problems" premise inherent to the rhythm game.
Fake Difficulty: On the highest level Dark Notes, some (but not all) yellow slash arrows will rotate as they cross the screen, completely ruining you on faster songs if you don't notice it in time.
Fire, Ice, Lightning: The standard spells return as abilities that activate when you combo certain kinds of notes. Also, the summons Ifrit, Shiva, and Ramuh.
Fragile Speedster: Faster characters are great for Field Stages, but tend to have lower strength and HP.
Genius Programming: If you close the 3DS during the sound-test, the game will normally suspend as usual. However, if you close the 3DS during the sound-test while headphones or speakers are connected, it will not.
Glass Cannon: The "Sacrifice" tree of abilities work like this, providing boosts to strength while reducing HP. Although many characters can learn them, the most notable example is Kain: When you first unlock him, he starts at level one with Sacrifice equipped... however, since the HP Sacrifice takes away is greater than Kain's maximum HP at level one, he becomes a literal One Hit Point Wonder. Thank goodness Sacrifice can be taken off.
Harder Than Hard: The difficulties in Challenge and Series mode are Basic, Expert, and Ultimate. Ultimate fits this trope like a glove. Go forth, beloved gamer, to the Battle with the Four Fiends, and may God have mercy on you.
However, getting all the cards is ridiculously easy when you have all the Passwords...
Interface Spoiler: Many potential ones are averted; the % completion counts are based on how many songs you have unlocked, not the total number. The game will even give the player a crown for completing 100% of charts on a difficulty, only to take it away after a new song is unlocked. It seems to be played straight on the music player for total number of songs.
Killer Rabbit: Staple monsters like the Behemoth and Ahriman appear. They've never looked cuter, but considering they're among the series's famous Demonic Spiders...
Jack of All Stats: Lightning, at max level and with the right ability set up, can have star-ranked Strength, Agility, AND Magic, plus an impressive 8632 HP.
Late Arrival Spoiler: Several of the major plot points of every single Final Fantasy game represented flash in the background of the Event Stages and the Ending Tracks, including summaries of the endings.
Lightning Bruiser: Of the thirteen characters you start the game with, at max level the only character with a natural star-rank in both Strength and Agility is Firion—plus he has the highest natural strength of said original lineup, outstripping even Cloud.
Marathon Level: The Advent Children version of One-Winged Angel(iOS only). The number of notes nearly hits 475, and that's only on easy.
Magikarp Power: Onion Knight; starting with some of the lowest stats, but some of the highest near the end. Also levels up faster in the early levels than pretty much everyone.
Minimalist Run: If you want a high score, the game rewards you for making it through a song with no abilities or items equipped with a Stoic bonus of 2,000,000 points.
Min-Maxing: Depending on how hard a chart is for you, HP is either the Dump Stat or vitally important, along with cure and protect spells.
Mood Whiplash: Trying to target the Stoic Bonuses on EM Ss deprive you from getting the extended versions of the cinemas that usually lead to the best moments of the game. Want to see how Aerith's Holy vaporizes Meteor? Too bad! You get her sinking in the water.
Other egregious examples include "Waltz for the Moon" ending with Rinoa sobbing over Squall's "dead" body and FFIX's "Beyond the Door" fading out just short of its triumphant final chords.
Nintendo Hard: While it is rather easy on the Basic difficulty, it can get surprisingly hard on the later difficulty settings.
No Export for You: Highly feared at first, given the game's nature as one hell of a Widget Title. But then it was announced for the other regions. Averting such a trope is already a great feat for Square Enix, let alone the aforementioned nature of the game.
Nostalgia Level: The Event Music Stages are this if you're staring at the event more than you're paying attention to the notes. Warning: Repetitive tries on one of the thirteen events will eventually make you play the main games again for good measure.
Pinball Scoring: As is common in the genre, this game as 7-digit scores, and trophies are awarded for reaching milestones of billions of points.
Powers of Two Minus One: Stats max at 255, and characters need 65535 EXP to max their level.
Power-Up Letdown: Some of the abilities earned are useless by the time they're earned. For example, by the time Cecil learns the HP Plus level 3 ability, HP Plus level 2 will already put him at max hit points.
Rainbow Motif: Present. Instead of out-and-out rainbows, though, the game favors color-changes that follow the rainbow 'cycle'.
Rank Inflation: From F, up to SSS, with the stoic bonus.
The Red Mage: Cecil, Terra, and Ashe vary in stats, but all can learn both attack and defensive/healing skills. Between the three, Terra leans more to attack magic with the "aga" Fire, Ice, Lightning spells, Cecil to defensive and healing magic with Curaga and Protect Lv 3, and Ashe fills in the middle with Cura, Protect Lv 3, Fira, Blizzara and Thundara.
Characters have levels and stats, and gain exp after songs.
Enemies drop items, which you can use to help you clear stages.
Characters also have equipable abilities in two forms, auto-abilities (such as Strength Up and HP Up, which are Exactly What It Says on the Tin) and activated abilities (Such as Focus and Fire, which will deal extra physical or magical damage to opponents if you do well enough with the notes).
Shout Out: On the selection screen for choosing which mode to play, a character will walk onto the top screen and say something related to their own game. Zidane will say that you don't need a reason to help people, Bartz will mention Boko, Terra will muse about humans and espers being incompatible, and of course Squall will tell you not to get your hopes up, as you won't be disappointed, and to talk to a wall.
The passwords that you can use to unlock some Collecta Cards (Or level up the ones you already have) are also taken from their respective games, or something related to them : For example, one of the passwords that unlocks Tidus's cards is Zanarkand Abes, the blitzball team he was the star player of, and one of Shantotto's passwords is her trademark Noblewoman's Laugh.
Spoiler: The movies from the event stages contain major spoilers from their games (especially if you can read Japanese, since the scenes in the movies are from the games' Japanese versions).
Late Arrival Spoiler: Then again, most of the games represented in this one have been released a while ago.
Stone Wall: Cecil and Snow while their other stats may lag compared to other characters, he has some of the best hit points in the game and naturally gets curative and damage-reducing reaction abilities
The Tetris Effect: You will start seeing colored dots and lines in your dreams, or hearing the chimes of correct notes whenever you hear the music outside of the game.
Timed Mission: In a way, the Chaos Shrine songs are essentially this—your goal in the Shrine is to get good items that randomly drop from bosses in the notes. All notes are made of two parts: A Field song, and a Battle song. The objective of the Field song is to get your character to reach a certain point in the field, designated by a sign, that will make the higher-tier boss spawn in the following Battle song—and of course, in the Battle song, you have to kill the boss (and, naturally, the preceding enemies) in order to get the drop. This turns into a timed mission because the songs are always the same length—the field sequence or battle will always end at the same time, meaning you need characters that are fast for the Field mission and offensively capable for the Battle part in order to actually get the rewards, since not even Perfect-Chaining the notes means you can get far enough or dish out hurt quickly enough.
White Magic: White Mage type characters have abilities like Cure and Protect which heal you and reduce the damage you take from missed notes.
Wraparound Background: In the backgrounds of the field stages. It's easier to see in the ones for Final Fantasy VI (one greener one based on the World of Balance and a very similar but less green World of Ruin one), in which it is to be expected to pass Figaro Castle multiple times.
Producer Ichiro Hazama has entertained the thought of making Theatrhythm its own series by making installments based on other Square Enix-owned franchises, such as Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, and even Tomb Raider.
Zero-Effort Boss: Gather 10000 Rhythmia and you're facing Chaos, to the epicness that isthe only original remix in the game: Chaos Shrine. Try as you might, armed with a level 99 Cloud, Terra, Onion Knight, and Lightning, equipped with Bahamut's Magictite, and you will not defeat him until the stage ends. On the other hand, you can give yourself four level one characters, play the shortest song in the game, and drop the 3DS. You will constantly be revived before your HP can even hit zero, and when the song ends, Chaos will simply be engulfed in a massive fireball of spontaneous combustion and perish. Either way, you may not pause the game; the only way out is to turn off the system (or head to the home menu and close suspended software) and reboot, in which case he will simply ambush you after the next fight.
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