Final Fantasy Theatrhythm: Curtain Call is Great Music, Good Gameplay, and a Poor Mix

Final Fantasy Theatrhythm is proof that great music doesn't necessarily make great rhythm gaming.

It's an unfortunate realization I came to recently, while playing the second Theatrhythm game, Curtain Call. I got the game around it's release, way back in 2014, and haven't played it in about 2 years. But while playing Final Fantasy XIV, I was reminded that the music in Final Fantasy games is always so dang good, and decided to dust off the cartridge. And you know what? I was correct. The music in Final Fantasy is, indeed, so dang good. Sweeping orchestral scores, or as close as 8- and 16-bit hardware could manage way back when, serve as a fantastic backdrop to grandiose stories of capital-h Heroes saving the capital-w World. All of the songs are fantastic in their own right, and a few still give me chills to think about.

And Theatrhythm is a very good rhythm game. Hundreds of songs from the series history are represented, from the very first game for the NES all the way to Final Fantasy XIV, the most recent in the series at the time. Even spinoffs like Crystal Chronicles and the obscure Mystic Quest have a couple songs and characters in the game. Beyond the variety of music, the scoring and progression is unique and interesting as well: you create a party of 4 characters chosen from a wide roster, again culled from across the series' history, which all have their own stats. These stats determine how good they are at what kinds of songs: Some characters will make Battle songs easier, while others make Field songs easier, and more still are suited to cutscene or Event songs. These characters will gain experience as you use them in your party, gaining abilities and stats to further help you pass through difficult songs.

Did I mention all of the different kinds of songs have differing mechanics, as well? Battle Music Stages force you to keep tabs on 4 different tracks for notes, while Field Stages have only one that you'll need to manipulate to keep centered on the upcoming notes. Event Stages will actually move the cursors onto notes rather than the opposite. You also have a variety of ways of hitting notes, so whether you're most comfortable using buttons and the circle pad, your stylus, or a mixture of the two, the game allows it and even keeps track. It can occasionally be a little fiddly when the game asks you to flick the stylus or circle pad in a particular direction, but for the most part it's a fun system. And the incredibly slow progression system, of slowly unlocking art and new characters (earned via crystals) as you gather 'Rhythmia' from finishing songs, ensures dedicated players have a reason to play for months. It's great fun.
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Which all goes to show that sometimes, great tastes do not taste great together.

Rhythm games work best with songs that are more designed to be...well, rhythmic, I suppose. Catchy, recognizable beats that are easy to hum along to. I love Final Fantasy and its music with all my heart, but "hummable" describes very few songs in the series. Some songs certainly work better than others: Battle songs tend to work anywhere from decently enough to pretty well. But once the game wants you to play DDR in time to a slow town theme, the whole things feels off.

Not to mention, the note maps are occasionally...silly. There are a lot of ways high-level rhythm game maps mix up the difficulty: They require more buttons, they force you to more closely follow the notes in the song instead of simplifying, things like that. But there's always a sense that goes into those increases in difficulties. Take, for example, this video from Hatsune Miku Project Diva: Future Tone. It's of the song Sadistic Music Factory, on the hardest difficulty level:

Pretty difficult, right? But there's a flow to how the notes are arranged in the song. There are moments with rapid alternation between two notes, which may shift to hitting the notes simultaneously, or holding one note while hitting out a rhythm of other notes. Ultimately, the speed makes it difficult, but any individual section can be looked at on it's own and have a sense to it that congeals well in the end.

For comparisons sake, let's look at the Final Fantasy XIV Titan Theme at the highest difficulty in Theatrhythm:

The notes are much more all over the place in this one. In the same section of the song, the notes you're expected to play shift rapidly without reason, almost like the game is trying to trick you. Note maps can be difficult, but there's usually a sense to them. Some of the maps in Theatrhythm look like those joke note maps for free computer DDR or Elite Beat Agents games. In a song you'd typically hear in a rhythm game, this kind of stuff isn't necessary because following the song itself can lead to enough challenge on its own. But when the music doesn't get as crazy, you have to resort to stuff like this, even when it feels cheap.

I cannot stress enough that I really enjoy Final Fantasy Theatrhythm. I'm at over 40,000 Rhythmia, a metric which has no meaning even to me but basically means I've played this game a bunch. The music is great, and the gameplay is pretty good. It's just a crying shame that they mix like oil and water.

The Familiar Feeling of Thumper

Before finally getting a chance to play it this week, I'd been hearing things about Thumper for a good long while. It's freaky, it's fast, it's "Rhythm Violence". It's barely even a rhythm game, it's all about getting into the flow of things. It'll stress you out. It'll make you sweat. It's not like other rhythm games.

Having played it, I'm inclined to disagree. Not to say the game isn't an odd duck, it definitely has its own idiosyncrasies. For instance, in a genre which typically maintains a shorter playtime on songs, around 2-4 minutes, to avoid overwhelming the player, Thumper gleefully has levels which reach over 30 minutes in length. In relation, the game doesn't really seem to expect you to memorize the levels the way you would memorize note charts in other rhythm games, given how it'll give additional sound cues ahead of time for the notes and also how 30 minutes is a ludicrous amount of time to memorize. Most importantly, in my opinion, the game’s soundtrack isn't catchy, or listenable, or even rhythmic: I often found myself completely incapable of finding a beat, only hitting notes by listening for the sound cues or looking carefully ahead. The soundtrack is more like a horror movie soundtrack, like John Carpenter's The Thing: The point isn't to be melodic or catchy, it's to set an unnerving and eerie mood.

But, ultimately, it's still a rhythm game. Let's compare it to a more recent release: Hatsune Miku Project Diva: Future Tone! There are the obvious similarities: You're still hitting buttons and directions in time with a rhythm. The music is a focus, though for different reasons. And, interestingly, there's a lot of visual noise behind the important, gameplay-focused notes and paths: Thumper has writhing limbs and flashing backgrounds, while Hatsune Miku has its music videos, which vary from unassuming fake concert footage to 3D animated music videos.

For me personally, the biggest similarity is what many people seem to think separates Thumper from the rest of the genre: stress.

Thumper revels in the stress it causes players: The long levels mean you can't feel "finished" with a song in the same short period of time as a typical rhythm game, and of course the Lovecraftian look of the game is incredibly unsettling. But the sweaty palms, the tense shoulders, the cursing at mistakes...that's not a new feeling for me when I play rhythm games. When I play, I want to get a perfect score. Any difficult part of a song, any tricky pathing...my shoulders tense up. My toes involuntarily flex. Every part of my body acts as if a moment of great exertion is happening.

That's what rhythm games are to me: stressful. A fun stress, not unlike what horror fans get out of their chosen genre. I don't dislike the Hatsune Miku games for that reason: Project Diva f 2nd is still a mainstay in my Vita, which I come back to periodically to try and do a bit better on songs that are always frustrating me. Ultimately the thing I'm there to do is overcome that tension and do my best. Thumper revels in it like few others do, sure, but it's not particularly novel in that respect. Thumper extends that stress out over 30 minutes, but the spikes I've felt playing through, say, Close and Open Demons and the Dead on Extreme difficulty easily match that stress, if not exceed it (though to be fair, I'm only about halfway through Thumper.)

My palms may be sweaty, my shoulders may be tense, my tongue may be sticking out to focus, I may be cussing a lot. But that's rhythm games for me. Thumper isn't an outlier; it fits comfortably, if oddly, among the rest.