It's been a good while since I've last finished a game. This is somewhat to do with abandoning a string of games on the trot, but mostly because FF7: Rebirth has been inhaling all of my time. To give me something to play when I haven't had access to the TV, however, I exhumed my 3DS last week and went to the trouble of jailbreaking it (which was surprisingly easy to do). And then, because I evidently needed some more FF in my life, I decided to install this (which I do have the cart for somewhere - honest promise, guv - but couldn't find).

Anyway, Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Colon Curtain Call is a great bit of rhythm action Final Fantasy fan service with a terrible name and a rubbish art style. You choose from one of over 200 songs from across the Final Fantasy series (plus other Square games) and then use the stylus to tap or swipe on the bottom screen in time with symbols that appear across the top, matching the melody of the song. It's pretty simple, but it works, and the pleasure you derive from doing this will unsurprisingly correlate exactly with how much you enjoy the music in the Final Fantasy games. Thankfully, I think the music is the best thing about FF, especially the older ones I played as a lad, so I had a jolly old time bopping along to all of my favourites.

Unfortunately, however, there's not a great amount to keep you playing once you've ticked off all the hits, beyond improving your scores or playing on the 'Ultimate' difficulty level, which was too frantic for me. The devs try to keep you interested by bolting on a sort of mini-JRPG gameplay mode, where you essentially have to clear random playlists of tracks in order to succeed. There are items, abilities, levels and stats, à la regular FF, but it all feels a bit clumsy and repetitive, with very little to differentiate one Quest Medley (as they're called) from another. Moreover, the difficulty of each quest isn't fixed, so it's entirely possible to be 17 tracks into a 20 track playlist, only to be completely roadblocked by an Ultimate track that brings your run to a swift, frustrating end. Or that was the case with me, anyway.

Still, when you're hitting perfect criticals all the way through Cosmo Canyon, or tapping away merrily to Man With the Machine Gun, or sweeping majestically through Streets of Rabanastre without skipping a beat, most of these quibbles melt away, and you're left with a generous and addictive love letter to some of gaming's most iconic music. If you have any affection for the soundtracks in Final Fantasy games then I'd definitely recommend giving it a go, although there's been a more recent iteration on Switch (Final Bar Line) which I've been meaning to check out, and which includes tracks from games which aren't now at least ten years old, so that could well be the one to go for.