Friday, July 22, 2011

Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy - Nightmare Chibis and Rhythm-Based Battling


 Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy is hardly new, but as we know, my reactions to Squeenix things are generally delayed if simply because I choose to ignore most Squeenix news like the plague for a while.  Of course, we all know this can horribly backfire if Squeenix puts out something genuinely neat like Type-0, but, hey, that's like a once in a blue moon thing, honestly.  The horrible backfiring thing...it ain't happening here with Theatrhythm.

It's hard to decide where to start here, in all honesty.  Of course, I'm lying, I know exactly where to start.



The character design is atrocious.  Now, I know Chibi style things have a place somewhere (my personal preference places it in the trash can, but 'opinions') but when you do Chibi, you have to do it right.  Those things up above?  They are not right.  They are soulless beings of pure nightmares.  Mostly because they're the exact same body dressed up in different outfits to denote the different characters.  The outfits are, admittedly, kind of cool, and there is something about it that works....it's just not the characters themselves, which is kind of an important distinction.

It should be noted, if it's not immediately apparent, that Theathrythm takes place in the Dissidia universe.  Which is just.....yeah.  I guess they just didn't want to make another universe wherein a bunch of Final Fantasy characters got mish-mashed together for....some reason.  Why they're fighting monsters instead of Manikins or, you know, each other is quite beyond me, and I'm sure there's a perfectly logical story behind this ga-hahahahahahahahahahahaha, yeah, alright.  Clearly, this has to take place in the 12th or earlier cycle of Dissidia, as we can clearly see Lightning above who was only in Duodecim because prequels get more characters for some reason.  (I know the reason, but, y'know, spoilers.)


The above pictured Battle Mode features putting four character in a party (dunno if you get to choose or what) and using a Rhythm game to.....fight monsters?  I guess.  It honestly seems like a handheld (Instrument) Hero/Rock Band game, skinned with nonsensical things for some reason.  The premise honestly escapes me completely and I just don't....know where they're going with this at all.  I can imagine it being addictive, of course, but I'm not about to expect anything approaching genuine fun unless something different comes about in the coming months.

As far as we know, there's only going to be three songs per game from Final Fantasy 1 to 13, one for each of the Field, Battle and Event stages featured in the game.  Rough math indicates that is only 39 songs, which, last I checked, was smaller than 50.  Definitely smaller than more than 50 in such a case.  Yet, all reports indicate that the game will contain over 50 songs, so I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that they're just kinda...holding back for now.  Which, hey, whatever works for them.  Just.....just saying.  I'm sure there's a lot more depth to the game than these early reports point to.

That's about all I cans ay on the game currently, as this heat is destroying me.  Stay frosty, folks.

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