History YMMV / TheatrhythmFinalFantasy

* 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 ourselves and can't really do anything higher than that]].

* 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 or even Ultimate 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.

** In the sequel, 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.

* 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...

** ''All-star Carnival'' is 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'' you just need 9 million.

** In the consumer 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 only available in ''All-star Carnival'', which is an arcade game that mostly suffers from NoExportForYou.

** 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. Only in ''All-star Carnival'' can you finally have party presets.

* HilariousInHindsight: When it was first released on the UsefulNotes/Nintendo3DS, there were many jokes to be had about how many of the games featured (Specifically, ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' onwards) originated as exclusives for the [[UsefulNotes/PlayStation PS1]], [[UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 PS2]], and [[UsefulNotes/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 UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch years later, but Cloud, whose game in particular marked the separation of ''Final Fantasy'' and Nintendo, ended up in two ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'' titles.

** While ''All Star Carnival'' added quite a few new characters, [[VideoGame/MoebiusFinalFantasy Wol]] and [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyRecordKeeper Tyro]] weren't characters people were expecting, mainly since they're main characters for mobile games.

%%** The remixes of the Kingdom of Baron, Hunter's Chance and Loss of Me/Something to Protect.
** In the first game, Squeenix saved some of the best tracks as DLC, such as Dark Messenger and many of the final battles except II, VI and VII.

* ItsTheSameNowItSucks: 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.
** In a more unusual version of this trope, with the console release of the game, ''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.

* ThatOneSidequest: 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.

* UnexpectedCharacter: [[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''.

* SelfImposedChallenge: 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.

* SpiritualLicensee: 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.

** 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.

* AuthorsSavingThrow: The Stoic Bonus in the first game isn't well-liked by rhythm game enthusiasts due to effectively forcing the player to either play for the RPGElements or to play the game strictly as a rhythm game, but not both at the same time. Subsequent games do away with this, with the only score-affecting ability being the completely optional Spare Change ability (which deducts points to damage enemies); beyond that, players can optimize their teams for damage and still be able to get good scores.

* ThatOneAttack: Most of the status ailments in ''Final Bar Line'' are nothing more than a nuisance, but Poison is the only one that deletes 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.

* 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.

*** 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.