Awesome amount of content that tackles plenty of different eras of FF and related series. There were some tracks I was sad not to see - particularly from the DLC packs and from the miscellaneous games section - but overall the picks seem good, at least for the games I'm familiar with.
While the RPG elements are generally pretty unnecessary and superficial, I believe they're at least quite helpful in retaining the player's interest as a small meta-goal alongside the usual rhythm game goals of high ranks and full combos (not to mention the Rhythmia unlock goals, of course). The visuals are alright with the various enemies and summons tending to look better than the playables (save for some standouts like Chocobo and Garland) in my opinion, as well as somewhat meh backgrounds that do occasionally pop. I'm not a huge fan of the color options for the various beats but they could be worse.
For some reason it seems like there's a really awful issue with the offset in the game to the point where I had to push it back to -15 in docked and -12 in handheld mode and it still wasn't quite perfect in the former. From what research I've done it's an inconsistent problem that seemingly just happens on random copies of the game, so hopefully it becomes more and more uncommon as the game is printed further over time. Even with that issue, though, I find the control scheme is quite comfortable; I do miss the touch screen options I had in the 3DS games, but it was a loss I don't mourn too deeply as the way the game plays here is still plenty good enough.
I'm not deep enough into rhythm games to be able to rate the super high level content of the game, so I'll mostly just describe the first three difficulty levels. I found the quality of the maps to be somewhat inconsistent, with some feeling a bit too braindead while others were generally engaging. This was true of the maps for all three of the difficulty levels I tried, and while the third one was probably the most consistently interesting it still felt like the difficulty values were pretty arbitrary. From the few times I tried the fourth difficulty level it seemed like everything was absolutely brutal, so I would hope they were designed more thoroughly than the others. I wouldn't know, though.
I haven't 100%ed this game and I do think I'll come back to it and do so, especially if I find myself on an FF kick again. There's lots of music I'm less familiar with from eras of the series I'm more spotty on, so I'd not mind getting to know them better before hopping back to this game to retread them with more context. It's certainly a fun enough game to come back to as rhythm games tend to be, but the extra attachment provided via the series represented helps a lot for its staying power. I think that attachment also has the potential to blind a player from the game's weak spots, but overall the package does plenty with its source material and remains fun for its entire runtime to an almost addictive degree.
While the RPG elements are generally pretty unnecessary and superficial, I believe they're at least quite helpful in retaining the player's interest as a small meta-goal alongside the usual rhythm game goals of high ranks and full combos (not to mention the Rhythmia unlock goals, of course). The visuals are alright with the various enemies and summons tending to look better than the playables (save for some standouts like Chocobo and Garland) in my opinion, as well as somewhat meh backgrounds that do occasionally pop. I'm not a huge fan of the color options for the various beats but they could be worse.
For some reason it seems like there's a really awful issue with the offset in the game to the point where I had to push it back to -15 in docked and -12 in handheld mode and it still wasn't quite perfect in the former. From what research I've done it's an inconsistent problem that seemingly just happens on random copies of the game, so hopefully it becomes more and more uncommon as the game is printed further over time. Even with that issue, though, I find the control scheme is quite comfortable; I do miss the touch screen options I had in the 3DS games, but it was a loss I don't mourn too deeply as the way the game plays here is still plenty good enough.
I'm not deep enough into rhythm games to be able to rate the super high level content of the game, so I'll mostly just describe the first three difficulty levels. I found the quality of the maps to be somewhat inconsistent, with some feeling a bit too braindead while others were generally engaging. This was true of the maps for all three of the difficulty levels I tried, and while the third one was probably the most consistently interesting it still felt like the difficulty values were pretty arbitrary. From the few times I tried the fourth difficulty level it seemed like everything was absolutely brutal, so I would hope they were designed more thoroughly than the others. I wouldn't know, though.
I haven't 100%ed this game and I do think I'll come back to it and do so, especially if I find myself on an FF kick again. There's lots of music I'm less familiar with from eras of the series I'm more spotty on, so I'd not mind getting to know them better before hopping back to this game to retread them with more context. It's certainly a fun enough game to come back to as rhythm games tend to be, but the extra attachment provided via the series represented helps a lot for its staying power. I think that attachment also has the potential to blind a player from the game's weak spots, but overall the package does plenty with its source material and remains fun for its entire runtime to an almost addictive degree.