For those of you keeping track, it’s been nearly 3 months since I reviewed Final Fantasy VII. I promise, I started Final Fantasy VIII immediately after, but I’ll be really honest. I found it to be so unfun that I struggle to play it. Every time I turn the game on to keep progressing, I get into a single battle, roll my eyes and shut it down again. So instead of progressing on the main story, today’s post is another adventure into one of the spin-off games, Theatrhythm Final Fantasy. Specifically Final Bar Line, the most entry in the series.

Theatrhythm is a rhythm game set to the music of the Final Fantasy universe. When you first launch the game, you’re given a key, and a carousel of the main line titles, along with a choice selection of some of the more popular spin-off games. Your key will unlock one game, along with a few chibi representations of party members from that specific title.

You’re tasked with building a party to take into each one of these rhythm game missions, and the characters are largely separated into different types. Attack type, defense type, support, summoner, and so on. As they go on missions, they level up and unlock new skills.

But wait, you might be asking. Why are you getting levels and skills in a rhythm game? That’s a great question, and one that is never really answered. Each game presents you with a linier path of songs, starting from the beginning of the game, and progressing through the major plot beats. Each level has various dots scrolling from left to right, and all you need to do when the dot hits the right side of the screen is press a button. Literally, any button will suffice. You can choose to use the shoulder buttons, the face buttons, d-pad, anything. If two buttons hit the right side bar at one time, you’ll need to hit two buttons. There’s also green lines, when make you hold a button for a while, and if that green line slants up or down, you’ll need to hold the joystick in that direction to satisfy the note. There’s also arrows mixed in with the buttons, asking you to press one of the joysticks in that direction.

And that’s the entirety of the gameplay. But literally behind the rhythm game aspect, your party of characters is walking in the background from right to left, letting the scenery scroll by, and occasionally encountering monsters. Your party will automatically battle the baddies they encounter, and should they defeat them, they’ll just keep on walking to the left until the song ends. After a couple songs, you’re rewarded with another key, so you can unlock another game’s music, and if you manage to complete all the songs for a game, you’ll be able to add that games antagonist to your party, just for kicks.

To encourage you to build your party out a little bit, each song has a mission for you to accomplish, and most of them have to do with the party defeating a certain number of baddies, or using certain types of skills. It can be quite difficult to nearly impossible to defeat enough enemies when you first start the game, meaning you’ll likely need to return once your party has levelled up enough to lay the smack down on the enemies. That said, some characters synergize with each other incredibly well to really ratchet up the damage they’re able to output, making previously impossible challenges an utter breeze.

I find the RPG elements of Theatrhythm to be banal and superfluous. It literally does not matter how you build out your party, or if they fail to accomplish whatever the goal of the song is. The only thing that matters is that you hit enough notes to complete the song. I will concede that some of the characters trade defense for attack, and if you stack too many of those characters together, then missing just a handful of notes is enough to make you fail the song.

The rhythm game itself is simple and generally relaxing. The music of the Final Fantasy franchise is beautiful, and it’s actually been really lovely to revisit the past 7 games I’ve played in this way. The musical themes stirring up the memories of my adventures was more nostalgic that I originally expected. Some of the songs really ratchet up the difficulty, putting this game into the “easy to play, difficult to master” territory. Thankfully, each song has several difficulty levels, letting you push yourself on the easier songs, and pull back on the more devilish ones.

I use the term ‘master’, loosely. Theatrhythm is very forgiving, with generally wide range for accepting a button input, to the directional arrows just needing to be within the correct 90 degree arc. Add this to the dual stick and any button approach, and sometimes just spamming things at the right general direction is enough to get you through a difficult spot.

I was surprised at just how many songs were packed into this game. Every main title has at least 10 songs to deliver, and Final Fantasy XI shows up with a whopping 44 songs. With the DLC added, there’s over 400 songs to play through, although some of the most popular songs end up repeated and remixed several times (looking at you, Battle on the Big Bridge).

Theatrhythm ends up being a wonderful and charming celebration of Final Fantasy music, and one that I thoroughly enjoyed. Although the RPG elements are pointless, they do provide a fun little background for my daughter to watch while I focus on the dots flying across the screen.

If you’re being picky, you’ll start to notice that not all note tracks are particularly well-matched to each song. Some dots will fly by and ask for button presses off-beat, but it’s hard to really complain too much when all of the music is just so good. As a celebration of Final Fantasy’s 35th anniversary, Theatrhythm absolutely succeeds in being a big package of fan service to long-time fans. I don’t think the gameplay is engaging enough to make you want to sink hundreds of hours into it, nor will you be organizing multiplayer Theatrhythm parties any time soon, like you used to do with your favourite rhythm games. But if you’re a Final Fantasy fan, I think you’ll find yourself surprisingly touched when the themes of your favourite games come on, and the caricatures of the heroes you’ve spent dozens of hours with bob across the screen. Just don’t show up expecting deep, satisfying RPG gameplay, you won’t find it here.