Level up, and you get more abilities, higher HP and stats. Perform well during the Feature Section and you’ll get to play an entire extra section of the video.īut what about the RPG part? After every song, your party gets experience points and items depending on how many monsters they beat up or how far they traveled, and the experience curve is set up so that no matter how you play, there’s a good chance you’re going to level up after every song. In these, the background is replaced with some kind of full-motion video sequence, like the intro to Final Fantasy Tactics, and instead of the notes flying in from the left side of the screen towards a marker on the right, it’s just the opposite: the notes are fixed in place, and the marker is the thing moving around the screen, following a trail of light in swooping circles and hard angles. Instead of determining how many monsters you defeat, your performance during these songs decides how fast you run, the quality of the chocobo you find, and whether you run into any gift-bearing moogles on your journey.įinally, there are a handful of event songs, which break the mold a little bit. Perform well here, and your lead party member’s summon monster will show up to do some serious damage blow it, and a chocobo will show up instead.įield music works much the same way, but with only one trigger on the right side of the screen instead of 4, and only one party member onscreen. Towards the middle is a “Feature Section” with slightly bolder, brassier looking notes. Like in DDR and other music games, every note you hit is ranked from “Critical!” (you nailed it) to “Bad” and “Miss,” and there are special notes that require you to flick a direction or hold the stylus down, too. Circular note triggers come flying in from the left side of the screen towards your party, and it’s your job to tap the touch screen with the stylus in time to the music when they reach one of 4 circular trigger points situated next to your party members. For battle themes, the screen is laid out like a random encounter from the earlier FF games, with your party in a row on the right side and the monster they’re battling on the left.

It nails the music game part, it nails the RPG part, and somehow the two don’t jar up against each other and explode, but just the opposite - they make each other stronger.įirst, let’s talk about the music game part, which comes in 3 slightly different forms depending on the kind of song you’re playing. I haven’t really played a Final Fantasy game since VII, but Curtain Call still managed to dig its fangs deep into the squishy parts of my brain and has yet to let go (spoilers: I might actually be dead right now).

What’s so impressive to me about the whole thing is just how well it manages to court both audiences. That said, while Theatrhythmborrows a few design elements from games like Dance Dance Revolution and Taiko Drum Master, it is very much designed primarily for people who have never played music games before, never had any interest in them, and never would have given this game a second thought if it didn’t have Final Fantasy attached to the title. It’s really, really good.Ī disclaimer: I like music games a lot. The results were successful enough to green-light a sequel - Theatrhythm Curtain Call - which dropped just a few weeks ago in Japan (a US release is confirmed with a pending release date), and… guys, it’s good. Back in 2012, Square Enix released Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, a 3DS game that attempted the bold jujitsu of merging Final Fantasy with a music game.

Curtain call song list ff