I’m not a very involved music guy. Whatever gets regurgitated on the radio ad nauseam consists of most of my musical palette. So most of the time I am drawn to the music of the media I consume on a far greater rate, namely video game and film music. There is something soothing about the reserved, atmospheric quality of many video game scores and something exhilarating about the more uptempo that serves as the background for intense, action-heavy scenes. Video game music rides a fine line of having to be instantly recognizable and infinitely repeatable, all while mixing into an interactive setting where the amount of time music is heard is ultimately up to the player. Whereas a musician or film director controls how much of a song is heard, the longer a player stays in a town, the longer they hear that town’s theme.
And few other series have as proud of a tradition as Final Fantasy. The long-running, quality-oscillating series has no doubt been at the center of video game music even through it’s worst of times. Even during the series’ worst games (II, VIII, XIII), Final Fantasy needs is omnipresent score to keep the feeling of the series alive. Square Enix knows this and felt the need to celebrate it by making Final Fantasy Theatrhythm, a game with a title on par with the nonsense usually attached to SE releases. Theatrhythm was a fine attempt a rhythm-based game using FF music, though it lacked any sort of interesting structure outside of the songs and the number of songs felt limited, especially given some of the omissions.
Curtain Call, last year’s sequel, is more or less the same game but with a hell of a lot more, a general improvement overall. Many of the glaring issues are still there, but there is now more of the good stuff to counter it.
For the uninitiated, Theatrhythm‘s gameplay is divided into three different types: Field Stages, Battle Stages, and Event Stages. Gameplay occurs entirely on the bottom screen while the top screen is dedicated to the note track. Notes will come sliding in from the left side of the screen and as they reach the right side an appropriate tap of the stylus will hit the note. Every successful note will score points, more less depending upon the accuracy, and hitting consecutive is essential to hitting high scores. In Field Stages, a single note track appears as the character walks forward. Characters walk further the longer you keep a streak going and landing critical hits will speed them up. Battle Stages resemble the battle screen of the older titles, where your four party members line up against a monster. Each party member has a track of its own and successful hits on the music track make them attack the enemy. Finally, Event Music has a track of music playing over an FMV of the relevant game from which the music came from.
The party you pick does matter in the slightest. Playable characters range from at least one choice per game to 3 or more for the more popular ones. Each of them have different stats and learn different abilities. Strength and Magic stats are relevant to Battle Stages while Agility and Endurance affect Field Stages. Abilities tend to be passive benefits, like slowly healing HP for every successful hit or triggering damage after a certain number of critical hits. Items can be used for a one time benefit during a fight, such as temporarily increasing a stat or adding other modifiers in different ways.
The main form of the game is the Quest Medley mode, where players travel across an overworld playing songs to progress, fighting bosses, and collecting items. This mode helps give an overarching structure when compared to the first game, which offered very little beyond just playing the songs from a list. Each map has different paths to success and provides a variety of songs to play, which helps the people like me who would prefer to play a random song over and over again rather than get bored of the ones I like. For all this though, the mode still tends to get repetitive, if more slowly.
The repetitive nature of the game is the least of its worries. Rhythm games aren’t exactly known for their variety outside of the songs available and this game was only ever going to appeal to Final Fantasy fans anyways. This is why strong base mechanics are important to rhythm games. What does harm the game to an extent are these very same mechanics and how limited they are by the 3DS.
I don’t think its unreasonable to say that many of the best rhythm games have a unique input method for the games themselves: Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Dance Dance Revolution, DJ Hero, etc. Now I don’t feel its necessary to have this, I’ve gotten my mileage out of Audiosurf and am looking forward to this summer’s Amplitude. But video game controllers do not often work the best for these types of games when compared to something designed with it specifically in mind. Here is where Curtain Call runs into problems. With one note track, the variety in the note charts is wholly underwhelming after a while. Even in Battle Stages, where there are 4 tracks, there is no method to switching between them, they are functionally one single track and the game even tells you to treat them as such. Imagine a Guitar Hero game with only one button and a strum bar and you will have a better idea of how the game feels. There is some variation by requiring different directional sweeps of the stylus to land notes, but the is the only thing done to change up the difference between tap notes and hold notes.
It mostly comes down to how willing you are to put up with mediocre mechanics to listen to compressed versions of Final Fantasy music you love. Don’t get me wrong, I have fun rocking it “Clash at the Big Bridge” and “One-Winged Angel” as much as the next fanboy and the inclusion of more spinoff titles and even further reaching DLC tracks is a plus. But even though the game does ramp up its difficulty on the highest level, anyone looking for an in-depth or captivating experience would best be served elsewhere. It’s fans of the music only for this one.
The art style is also terrible, but mostly ignorable.
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