[13/07] Theatrhythm Final Fantasy's Rhythm Gameplay Detailed

[Gingerbread Lesbian]

For our first solid details on Theatrhythm Final Fantasy's rhythm gameplay, we turn to Dengeki PlayStation. Yes, it's a PlayStation magazine, but they'll occasionally cover high profile games on non-Sony platforms. This week's issue has one page devoted to the 3DS title.

According to the magazine (via Sokuho), Theatrhythm has three modes of play: Music Game, SpotPass and Museum. Of these, only Music Game is introduced.

Select Music Game, and you'll be presented with three submodes: Series, Challenge and one unidentified mode. These options are shown alongside your current party, listed with HP and level. It also looks like you can swap out characters from your party here.

Now for the gameplay details. As you might have guessed from the screenshots that were released yesterday (see below), the basic gameplay involves icons moving across the screen. There are three types of icons:

Red: Touch the screen briefly
Yellow: Slide in the direction of the arrow or line of movement of the icon
Green: Touch and hold down on the screen.

It was previously revealed that the game will have "field," "battle" and "event" stages for each of the numbered Final Fantasy titles. Of these, field and battle are introduced in the magazine.

Field
Play to field, town and dungeon music. There's just one rhythm line here. The difficulty is lower, and there are some more relaxed songs that require you to slide the touch pen up and down.

Battle
There are four rhythm lines here. The music is higher tempo and the difficulty higher. It appears that you'll be able to get critical attacks by timing your inputs perfectly. Yesterday's screenshots confirmed the presence of chains.

Source: Andriasang

 

[Martel]

Jesus, months of silence and now we've got this sudden outbreak of bad news. Is the world going to end a year ahead of schedule or something?

For our first solid details on Theatrhythm Final Fantasy's rhythm gameplay, we turn to Dengeki PlayStation. Yes, it's a PlayStation magazine, but they'll occasionally cover high profile games on non-Sony platforms. This week's issue has one page devoted to the 3DS title.

High profile? Theatrythm? What planet are they on?

According to the magazine (via Sokuho), Theatrhythm has three modes of play: Music Game, SpotPass and Museum. Of these, only Music Game is introduced.

If I had to guess, I'd say SpotPass is an out-and-about thing where you either work co-operatively with up to four players to kill stronger monsters/bosses and/or fight against one another, and Museum is where you can replay particular songs, events or boss battles. I've never actually used the SpotPass feature on my 3DS, but I'd imagine it'd be bigger in Japan, where every single person has three Nintendo products on their person at any one time.

Select Music Game, and you'll be presented with three submodes: Series, Challenge and one unidentified mode. These options are shown alongside your current party, listed with HP and level. It also looks like you can swap out characters from your party here.

Free Mode, perhaps? I doubt it'll be anything exciting if they're not highlighting it. Or it could be more exciting because they're not...but since when have Square Enix surprises been exciting, or even remotely surprising?

Now for the gameplay details. As you might have guessed from the screenshots that were released yesterday (see below), the basic gameplay involves icons moving across the screen. There are three types of icons:

Red: Touch the screen briefly
Yellow: Slide in the direction of the arrow or line of movement of the icon
Green: Touch and hold down on the screen.
Blue: Panic

It was previously revealed that the game will have "field," "battle" and "event" stages for each of the numbered Final Fantasy titles. Of these, field and battle are introduced in the magazine.

That sounds...horrendously awkward. Although I suppose anything more complex would just be frustrating, but I can see yellow movements being a bloody nuisance, especially in battle.

Field
Play to field, town and dungeon music. There's just one rhythm line here. The difficulty is lower, and there are some more relaxed songs that require you to slide the touch pen up and down.

Battle
There are four rhythm lines here. The music is higher tempo and the difficulty higher. It appears that you'll be able to get critical attacks by timing your inputs perfectly. Yesterday's screenshots confirmed the presence of chains.

Sounds rather basic and unimaginitive, to be honest. I suppose you'll have to go through Field to get anywhere, and then occasionally get interrupted by Battle or something. If that is the case, I can see this game being extremely frustrating and unbalanced, with some wild difficulty spikes even with the option of difficulty modes.

So...what about Event, then? Will those be like boss fights, where you have so many rhythm lines the screen looks like someone went insane with Pictochat, or will you be idly tapping the screen in boredom in time to words such as "conflict" and "turtle"? Intriguing...