The Jamirus Conclusion: Theatrythm Final Fantasy

Hello, and welcome! 

Theatryhthm Final Fantasy. 

I can sum up my feelings for this game in a single word. WHOAMGAWESOME. *Pronounced in a high pitch squeal, but was translated for your reading pleasure!*

 Welcome to the Jamirus Conclusion. Today I would like to give my thoughts and feelings on the last 3DS game that I purchased. It's got music, Final Fantasy, Rhythm based game play, and a cute art style. I welcome you all, to my first review (Well, second if you count the Crusader of Centy one I did back in 2004...)

The Game play!

This game has a very simple concept, which has been done before. Tap, slide and hold notes to the rhythm of the music. This game features three different styles of gameplay, with three different difficlties for each song, Beginner, Expert and Ultimate. There is the Battle songs, the Field music, and the Event songs. All of which I will get into later. This game offers three different gameplay modes, as well. Series mode, in which you play through each Final Fantasy game. Each game offers a total of 5 songs, 2 of which are skippable, and only there to provide more Rhythmia, which is points you get after completing each song that unlocks new features. Challenge mode, which you unlock after you have beaten at least 1 Final Fantasy game in the Series mode, allows you to, obviously, challenge yourself with the 3 main songs from each Final Fantasy game, the Battle, Field and Event songs. Finally, there is the Dark Shrine. This area is designed to give ruin you, and will be discussed in it's own section.

There is a lot of customization available in this game, as it does contain some RPG elements. You can create a party of four beloved Final Fantasy characters, which range from FFI - FFXIII. There are a total of 13 party members to choose from at the beginning of the game, and through the Chaos Shrine and Rhythmia, you can unlock another 16, totaling 29 characters to choose from! It'll take some time to get them all the 99. The characters all level up, and every 5 levels gain a new skill. Skills can help in the different gameplay styles, for example, a Vivi can have on Double Cast (which doubles the magic damage he does), Thunder, Blizzard and Fire. During battle stages, Vivi will use his magic abilities and help kill the enemies faster, which increases the item drops and exp your party recieves. It's a really cool concept, and makes the game better, in my opinion.
    One top of the character customization, you can customize your street pass card to say something cool, the color, picture (selected from the available Final Fantasy characters), and a random saying. As an example, my current random saying is "Discretely multi-talented dancer". Gotta let them little kiddies that pass me by on the street know that I sell my body.


Battle Stage!

**Please ignore my glorious face**

As you can see, the battle stage pits your four party members against classic Final Fantasy baddies. You must tap your way to victory! This is one of the better modes of the game. It is simple, and you know what you're getting yourself into, plus it's a lot of fun with the RPG elements. You can create a team to destroy the enemies, or perhaps a team of white mages and defenders, so you know you have a better shot at completing the song! Another strategy is to unequip all of your characters to obtain the Stoic Bonus. This bonus increases your points by a hefty 2,000,000 points, and is the only way to get an SS or SSS ranking for any song.

Field Stage!

Ah, the Field Stages. These stages offer some unique game play, in that you have to hold the green notes, and move your stylus up and down on the screen. I really enjoy these stages. Grab a character that has high agility, put em' as the leader, and watch your cute Chibi run around the themed backround of your favorite Final Fantasy! These songs are very relaxing, and offer an easier style than the Battle style. Plus, there's some really great songs here, which I will talk about a little later.

Event Stage!

The Event stage. I have mixed feelings about this style of game play. On one hand, it's really cool to see the video of classic Final Fantasy. SE did a really nice job of creating movies specifically for the Event stages. The songs are great, the backround distraction is great... the gameplay... not that great. It gets a bit better on Ultimate difficulty, but for Beginner and Expert, these stages are hard. The circle that moves changes speed, and it can be very hard to keep up with it, when it goes from ultra slow to super fast in a blink of an eye. The only real way to pass a song with a good grade is to seriously know the rythm of the song already.

Chaos Shrine!

The Chaos Shrine is a pretty big chunk of the game. You play through one field song, and one battle song. The bosses in the battle song drop items and shards. Shards are used to unlock the extra character. There are 16 extra characters, and you need to collect 6 shards of each character's color to unlock them. Needless to say, it takes a while to unlock all the characters. Step one of brain aneurysm has commenced. The Chaos Shrine seems pretty awesome at the start. It has some of it's unique songs, and you get new characters. The problem is... There's only a total of 20 songs to play in this mode, and it is random. You may get "Blue Fields" for the next 30 songs. Which, after 2 is super annoying. The brain aneurysm is growing. Finally, the difficulty of this mode gets crazy. At a level 99 note, it goes super fast, arrows start spinning, and your brain aneurysm errupts.

Song Selection! 

This game really has some of the greatest songs in the series! Classic songs that really define the series. There are a total of 43 playable songs, plus another 8 Chaos Shrine songs, plus up to 52 DLC songs, each (aside from the chaos shrine songs) have 3 different difficulty levels. You'll be playing this one for a very long time!

Extra Goodies!

This game contains a lot collectables, including trophies! There are 64 trophies to collect, up to 99,999 Rhythmia (You get about 100-200 per song.), CollectaCards, which are cards with descriptions on them, there's a cool theatre mode where you can watch all of the event stages, and finally you can play all the music in the theatre mode. This mode is awesome, as you can hook up some headphones, set the songs to shuffle, close your 3DS and enjoy the music, stress free!

Overall!

Overall, this is a fantastic game that I can't recommend enough. The main game has hours of entertainment, and with DLC being released every week, for the low price of $1 per song, this game will last a very long time. If you have a 3DS and love Final Fantasy, you should already own it. If you have a 3DS at all... you should own this!

TL;DR!

The Good.
-Overall great music selection with three different degrees of difficulty.
-Awesome art style.
-DLC!
-Leveling up and collecting items makes for a great time.
-Often times the characters say interesting a funny things

The Bad.
-Chaos Shrine can be very annoying with the constant same songs.
-Grinding shards for your favorite characters can be very tedious.
-Some songs have slight sound issues due to the 3DS. This can be remedied with headphones!
-Mi'ihen Highroad. That is all.


If you need a number score, I would give this game a solid 9/10, and I look forward to future Theatrythm games. Theatrhythm: Kingdom Hearts, anyone?

Thank you for joining me on my first true review! This has been Jamirus, stay tuned for more goodies!