When your favorite band’s fourth album comes out, you probably know what to expect from them – they’ve got all the experimental stuff out of their system, they know what their strengths are, they know how Write songs that please the masses and still have enough creative fuel in the tank to blow your mind.
But maybe, just maybe, your favorite pop rock has exhausted all their gimmicks at this point, and what’s left is a distro that sounds good and works perfectly: safe, predictable and risk-free.That’s pretty much what Square Enix did Final Fantasy Theatrhythm Final Bar Line.
Of course, this is not a bad thing. To avoid scrolling down to the bottom to check, this game got a 4/5 at iGamesNews – which is better than average, good, and my recommendation. It’s a great package that includes some incredible songs, love for the core series, and some really good-looking presentations. The rhythm-action RPG somehow crams over 385 playable songs and 104 playable characters into your Switch cart or PS4 hard drive, and gives you multiple ways to play through its symphonic catalog.
Whether you want to take part in “events” (FMV sequences you play together), “battles” (RPG-style battles where your team of heroes and villains deal damage to various series of enemies), or “fields” (travel songs where Your mission is to travel as far as possible in a limited time), Theatrhythm Final Bar Line has a lot to offer you. “Fields” and “battles” now incorporate gameplay features from the previous games, and if you’ve played them, “events” have been simplified so you can see that movie behind the notes map – that’s the point, after all . Function-driven mechanics in 3DS games have been removed, as have all swipes and tactile inputs. More on that later.
Say Final Fantasy 9 is your favorite – good taste, by the way. You’ll start the game with a key that unlocks the collection and its 18 or so songs. You’ll also unlock its characters, some of the game’s most popular characters (in this case Zidane, Vivi, Garnet, Eiko, and Kujo). Then you’ll need to play the songs in order to unlock them when they’re free to play. Along the way, you’ll level up your heroes and need to solve some light RPG-style puzzles to complete your quest.
A boss, say a silver dragon, may require you to have garnets on your party when you defeat it. Easy fix; swap out Squall from FF8, and, boom, Cid is your uncle. complete. Others are trickier–for example, needing to leave a boss after defeating nine enemies is difficult. You’ll need to beat more games and more stories to unlock more mages who understand ice magic and upgrade them to a level high enough that they can take down tons of enemies before the battle music ends. It’s good brain food, and low-key enough that the grinding doesn’t get too serious.
It’s just that the input and note mapping aren’t good enough to keep your attention on all 400+ tracks. That’s fair enough, really: making One-Winged Angel as good as the track that used to happen by chance in Final Fantasy X-2 was always going to be a tough ask. But there’s a big difference between tracks that feel playful and those that feel like filler. Going back to the analogy above, it’s like sitting through your favorite band’s latest album for entry singles. It’s worth it as a package, but you know you’ll be skipping tracks four through seven on a few listens.
Then there’s the input itself; it plays fine on both Switch and PS4, but I find myself missing the stylus a lot. Swiping notes away, or swiping up from holding them, feels good—it’s like you’re a mini-conductor, commanding troops while calling out the ebb and flow in the music. Relegating it to a little push of the thumb is less satisfying, more finicky, and less grandiose.
Still, it feels really nice to hold two notes and quickly swap between them when the melody is arpeggiated. Like nudging twice with your fingertips for a big final note to really get things done. So while you’ll find yourself wanting some phantom stylus while playing Man With A Machine Gun, it’s nice to play Dancing Mad with the new input. But maybe that’s just me, being cool before doing my theater-rhythm version of “I Like It.”
This is a top-notch rhythm action game positioned as a love letter to the Final Fantasy series, rich in content, full of love and care. But – like some of the more ambitious double albums out there – it sometimes feels like quantity outweighs quality, as you struggle to sift through some not-so-well-thought-out note-maps in order to find the ones you know will inspire you. Some people will be more patient with this than others. Given that I’ve played Blue Fields about 20 times, I’ll let you figure out where I land.
Final Fantasy Theatrhythm Final Bar Line Releases February 16, 2023 for Nintendo Switch and PS4. This review is for the Switch version of the game, code provided by the publisher.
