It's a Final Fantasy rhythm game! It's real hard to screw that one up. I just wish the selection of songs were more robust, by which I mean I would've enjoyed if it had a few obscure songs for me PERSONALLY.
This will be no surprise to anyone who knows me, but these past several months have been immensely stressful for me. Stressful for the planet, no doubt, but also stressful for me. And I think that being able to pull out this game from my pocket, boot it up, and play some of my favorite, most relaxing, exciting, and lovely tracks from my favorite game series of all time... it helps more than anyone can really know.

Speaking as a rhythm game fan (and someone who has never really played, but plans to play FF games in the future), this game fucking rules. A series such as this, with a long and varied lineup of games, deserves to have a game that effectively celebrates all the music that comes with such a prestige. It's all wrapped up here with an adorable art style.

This game has a stupidly huge amount of songs to choose from, with a selection that spans every mainline title, as well as a handful of spinoff titles. If you nab the DLC, you also get music from other Square Enix RPGs (including Nier, TWEWY, Bravely Default, Secret of Mana, and more!).

The game's "story" is the most barebones setup possible, but you're not here for the story. As you beat stages, you earn "rhythmia", and you earn rewards for reaching certain milestones, most notably more characters to choose from. The game has light RPG elements underneath the rhythm game aspect, Your team of four interchangeable FF characters has stats, gains EXP, can set abilities, and more. All it really boils down to is being able to defeat more enemies in a single song (thus having more chances to earn items) and having more HP to survive easier on higher difficulties. It's more useful in the "Quest Medleys" mode, where you effectively play through a playlist of songs under the guise of a "quest", with a health bar that doesn't automatically refill between songs. The mode's mostly useful for gaining more shards (for unlocking characters) and rare items, the kind that can help you through a tough song, or guarantee certain enemies/items to appear.

There's so much more to this game, but I don't wanna be here effectively describing the game to you all day. there's an online/AI battle versus mode with a tournament hierarchy. There's an entire set of trading cards with three tiers of rarity, and it doubles as a model viewer with a blurb of text about the character on each one. The one complaint I have is that sometimes the swipes I made on the touch screen just didn't register, and it made me miffed, but it happened infrequently and I was enjoying myself too much to care. Based rhythm game, sasuga Squeenix, etc etc. This game rules.

Exactly what it says on the tin, which comes with its fair share of missed opportunities. Particularly in the lack of impact for actually doing well on tracks and its underutilized puppet show style, which my ideal version of this game would combine. Picture it: getting satisfactory grades on "Bombing Mission" through "The Chase" unlocks a Rhythm Heaven-style medley of those tracks, fully rearranged and accompanied by a puppet reenactment of Avalanche's misadventures through Midgar. Maybe doing poorly on certain sections of one of these medleys would also humorously alter the events of its respective game, but then again it's not fair to expect any old rhythm game to match Elite Beat Agent's genius.
On the other hand, it's hard to be disappointed that we "only" get the original tracks, considering their sheer volume and the amount of care put into both mapping the beats and constructing unique backgrounds for every single one. Not even I can be cynical about the bigger-is-better mentality present here, or even the DLC, not as long as I get to tap along to "Wind Scene." I think the day Nintendo makes their own version of this with all of their IPs is the day my manchild heart finally gives out.

At the time of playing this game I wasn't even that well acquainted with the Final Fantasy games having only played some of the mainline games casually and beaten some spin-off games. Despite that, I had a great time with this game which I guess attests at how good the soundtrack has been for the series all along.

The presentation is also fantastic, making sure to hit all the right notes for fans in the series allowing you to use different characters from each game and having backgrounds that reminisce their corresponding games.

I was there in the Final Fantasy heyday (IV through X, minus V, plus Tactics), but I lapsed soon after. As a fair-weather fan, though, I half-enjoyed this.

Surprisingly, it’s not “Terra’s Theme” or “J-E-N-O-V-A” that swells my heart, but the songs I never knew. I tap along to almost-familiar melodies from the first three games, and it’s like some parallel dimension of my videogame history opens up, imagined afternoons with games I never actually played.

Then another dead-eyed poppet shambles across the screen and I win more useless RPG junk and I remember why I stopped playing Final Fantasy.

Final Fantasy has had some strange offshoots like Chocobo Racing, Kingdom Hearts, and the TBS Tactics. A rhythm game is probably the only genre Final Fantasy hasn’t touched and it’s one that the game belongs in. Final Fantasy is full of some of the best video game music ever created. While later titles aren’t exactly up to par, there are plenty of songs here that fans will love across all 13 core titles.

The basic gameplay is broken up into 3 stages that are randomized. BMS is Battle Music Stage. Usually, one song from each game is picked that was used in a battle, usually a major boss fight. Your four characters stand in front of bars similar to a horizontal Guitar Hero. The entire game consists of only 3 tap types. Hold, tap, and slides. The speed and combination of these 3 can make things really difficult on the Ultra mode but the standard mode is just way too easy even for beginners. EMS or Event Music Stage is a song picked during some sort of popular or well-known cutscene and the said scene plays in the background to the music. It’s great seeing Rinoa and Squall waltz in Final Fantasy VIII or watching Aerith’s death scene in Final Fantasy VII. The game is mixed up a bit where the ring you tap flies around the screen as you follow it to complete the required taps. The final stage, FMS or Field Music Stage, has your leader character walking down a re-rendered field from each game collecting chests and the field music from each game accompanies it. This stage consists of one bar that you can move up and down to follow waves. There’s a third boring stage where you tap a crystal in the center of the screen as bubbles fly into it, these are for the opening and ending themes in the main mode which are as boring as ever.

This may sound simple, but the other half is leveling up your cute chibi FF characters and equipping items and weapons to last through the harder difficulties. Characters with higher HP won’t die as easy (meaning you can mess up more) and this includes their armor (they won’t take as much damage when you do mess up). Characters with higher luck infield stages will find more items. This is a unique twist on the rhythm genre and helps push it forward in a way that’s never really been done. Thanks to the many extras such as fully rendered trading cards and DLC there’s a lot to be had in this package. If you like the lesser known songs in these games the Dark Notes mode will help you here. You can acquire new songs vita StreetPass or battling friends in multiplayer for the highest score. These are all set to the hardest difficulty so practice is needed.

With such a content heavy rhythm game is begs the question as to who this title is for. Rhythm game fans will appreciate the mechanics and use of the touchscreen, but may not care for the orchestra and chiptune heavy music. Final Fantasy nuts may love this game but not really like the fast-paced rhythm action. It’s something that can appeal to anyone who even hates RPGs, but the Final Fantasy only music may turn Rock Band and Guitar Hero fans away. Despite who this game is made for, whoever picks it up will enjoy a simple yet rich game full of detail, content, and attention to detail that hasn’t been seen since the earlier days of Final Fantasy.

Simplemente estaba jugando y de la nada me salieron los creditos.

Es muy divertido la verdad y me ayudo a tener una razón para desempolvar mi 3ds, eso si tiene los típicos pecados de los spin offs y derivados de la franquicia, ósea puro ff7, pero de los demás esta bueno el fanservice de hacer tu party a tu gana con una variedad interesantes de personajes, los modos de juegos son entretenidos gracias a lo simple pero adictivo del gameplay solo tengo problemas gordos por tres cosas, el gameplay con video o los movie no se que, son realmente aburridos de jugar y me debía obligar a jugarlos, el modo vs es bueno pero la jodida voz del mogu es molesta PERO se puede desactivar a si que no esta taaan mal, el modo quest si es un poco aburrido casi ni lo toque simplemente no me daba mucha gracia, la variedad de música esta bien 200 y casi siempre son las mejorcitas o las mas memorables de sus títulos, no se me hizo falta ninguna además son re jugables por el tema de mejor clasificación y las dificultades, que a veces si se pone un poco cerdo pero nada mortal para alguien que no es muy fan de los juegos de ritmo este me gusto mucho ya que bueno es uno de ff la música esta buena de forma garantizada.

Always dreamed of playing a rhythm game with video game music, since it has been always a sort of obsession of my whole life.

The biggest surprise is that i've never ever played and beaten a single Final Fantasy title in my life, yet despite however i was a big fan of Nobuo Uematsu's music. I used to hear of this game many years ago back when i had my own old teal Nintendo 3DS, i played the song demos over and over like no tomorrow and used to ask my dad to get me the original Theatrhythm FInal Fantasy, but it never happened until when i was able of modding my New 3DS.

By the time i wrote this review i was giving my focus on Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX, which is good enough but a little inferior on content. This game has hundreds of songs from the many existing Final Fantasy titles from the first in existence to the multiplayer-rich Final Fantasy XIV. A giant bag of oldie tunes right on your pocket.

You will never get tired of completing the collection.

One of my favorite musical games. the music of the FF series is so iconic and varied, and the personality of this one isn't too overbearing. I still come back to this one every time I beat a new FF game. In LOVE with the inclusion of TWEWY music, good touch.
Feb 2023 update:
Finally putting this one to rest after getting more mileage out of it than any other game on the 3DS, bar none. VERY fun gameplay and a robust library. I'm only shelving this because Final Bar Line comes out this month. rest in peace warrior, your battle is finished.

Fun rhythm game using one a franchise with a wide range of excellent music.

The game implements some light RPG mechanics, such as stats and abilities that can either trigger after hitting X amount of notes, when you reach a certain point in the song etc, or passive effects that tend to boost your stats. But stats only really apply fully to one song type. The song types being:

Battle – This is where all your stats will matter. As you get the various levels of hitting the note you’ll deal damage to enemies based on your attacking stats, and if you miss notes you’ll take damage depending on your defences. Luck will help determine if you get an item after beating an enemy etc. Very simple stuff, but a nice addition to what could otherwise be a very basic “hit the notes” rhythm game. These are probably the hardest stages since you have to focus on 4 different lines of notes coming in at once.

Field – Focusing on the exploration portions of games, your character moves from the right side of the screen to the left. Very simple. It only makes use of very specific stats, specifically the agility stat to determine how far you go, the physical defense stat which is used to determine the damage when you miss a note, and of course the luck stat for items. But items work much differently in these, since in battle stages it’s obviously as you defeat an enemy you may or may not get an item, but for these stages they just kind of pop up randomly. I’m not sure if it’s checked for every 1000m you travel or so, but I tend to always end up with way less items in these stages than battle ones.

Event – By far the least populated stage type, with only about a dozen of them in the game, and they can’t be played anywhere other than in free play. In these stages you don’t use your characters, instead the background just shows cutscene clips of the game the song comes from. It’s pretty dull, and not only does it make by far the least use of the games other mechanics, but the background is just distracting, instead of using cartoony versions of game locations like other song types.

As the game focuses primarily on the first 2 types, the issues I have with the event stages don’t matter much. But even field stages can feel somewhat lame compared to battle ones. Field stages do get a pretty neat thing where if it’s an airship song the character is replaced by the airship, and notes come in at a 2.5D angle instead.

I had a ton of fun with this game. The massive amount of characters to unlock always gives you something to work towards, the various milestones in songs (getting an all-critical bar over time, getting a perfect chain, getting SSS rank) gives you an incentive to want to replay songs, and the style is just very cute.

There is an online mode, but with the age of the game I wasn’t really able to use it. You can do the online-style versus battles against an AI in a simple league system. In these versus battles after filling a bar you send a random effect to your opponent, something like making their notes go faster, or making them blank until just before they hit the end so the opponent doesn’t know what’s coming. These are interesting ideas, but I felt like they activated way too many times. Also against the AI they probably seem pretty useless since you just know the game just has set scores for them, so regardless of if you hit them with the best or worst effect, they will be “affected” by it the same way.

There’s certain QoL features I feel are missing. Most noticeably is how you can’t assign 2 different ability sets for battle and field stages. While you could have separate characters set up for tackling field and battle stages, you tend to want to use as many characters from the game of the song as possible as you get extra points for it, so if you want to fully optimize your team for the stage, chances are you’ll be swapping your abilities a lot.

Anyway if you wanna tackle some of these songs on the hardest difficulty you’re gonna need straight up Ultra instinct.