Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Review

Unlockables
Besides a vast selection of songs, there is a plethora of things to unlock. The first thing you can unlock are cards, which are 81 different images that show you all the character designs. The back of each card gives you a small idea of who they’re or what they did, so it’s a great refresher for fans. If that’s not enough, you can further collect holofoil and platinum variants that have slightly different images.

If you’re not a fan of cards you can also unlock a number of new characters. Similar to songs every game is given at least 1 support character, with the exception of Cosmos from Dissidia. To unlock a new character you need to collect 8 fragments, which can only be obtained from Rhythmia score or defeating a boss in the Chaos Shrine. It could easily take you hours to unlock a single character, but it is certainly worth it to add Sephiroth to your party.

NOT

Chaos Shrine
Chaos Shrine is easily one of the best ideas in Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, but it is implemented very poorly. See every Chaos Shrine stage starts with a FMS song. As mentioned earlier agility is important in these songs, so depending on how far you travel the boss will change. After this stage is completed, you will start a BMS song with enemies based off your performance. Provided you didn’t screw up the FMS song, your boss will be based off your performance. A good performance will earn you the 3^rdboss, who will give you a fragment to unlock a character, where as a bad performance drastically lowers your chance. As you complete more of these songs you will unlock harder versions, which is where the problem comes into play.

Every Chaos Shrine stage is based off random or seemingly random creation, but it pulls from a pool of 20 songs. This means there is only 10 different songs per type and you can expect some overlap. Of the 21 notes I earned, I got the same FMS 3 times in a row. When you consider you need finish at least 128 stages, the limited selection can get quite annoying.

VERDICT

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy is easily the best game I’ve played for the 3DS. The art style is quite cute and unique, plus the music is just simply fantastic. The RPG elements make it quite unique, so fans of either genre should find it interesting. While it would have been nice to see more diversity in the Chaos Shrine, unlocking characters like Sephiroth more than makes up for it. Long story short, if you’re a Final Fantasy fan, then you should pick up this game.

[Editor’s Note: Theatrhythm Final Fantasy was reviewed on the 3DS platform. The game was provided to us by the publisher for review purposes.]