➤ Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line, the review of a great comeback 🕹

Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line is a triumph of music, colors and fun for fans of Square Enix role-playing games. But for everyone else?

It's difficult to explain the charm of a rhythm game because, after all, it's just a matter of pressing the keys in time with the music: it's not complicated, and you don't even need a good ear, just a little concentration and speed. . reflexes. Naturally, it's the soundtrack that does most of the work, and it turns out that Square Enix's Theatrhythm can count on songs and musicians that have made video game history throughout. Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line comes to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 - and therefore to PlayStation 5 - almost ten years after the previous title, Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call, which had already enchanted us on Nintendo 2014DS in 3. Meanwhile, the small promoter indiezero He did not sit idly by and worked on Theatrhythm: Dragon Quest and the arcade Theatrhythm: All-Star Carnival, which however never reached the West.

In short, the last time we had to deal with a similar Theatrhythm was at the end of 2020, when we played the disappointing Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory. We feared that indieszero had lost its magic touch, but ours Theatrerhythm review: Final Bar Line is here below to assure you that it could hardly have been better than this.

Final Fantasy not solo

Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line, the review of a great comeback — Theater: Final Bar Line, the party faces Gilgamesh to the tune of Battle at the Big Bridge

The name Final Fantasy has disappeared from the title for a simple reason: Final Bar Line encompasses an even larger library, which includes music from titles such as NieR, The World Ends with You or Octopath Traveler, and from true historical icons such as Xenogears, Chrono Trigger and SaGa. In total, Final Bar Line includes well Clues 502, of which 27 are only available with the purchase of the Digital Deluxe version - or the corresponding update, if the plain version was purchased first - and another 90 that will be published in the coming months in three different season passes . It is an impressive collection of music, also because the free game includes 385 of its own songs: in this sense, the fifteen Final Fantasy games reign supreme, but there is also room for spin-offs, sequels and the Final Fantasy VII Remake. .

As you can imagine, for a fan of the Square Enix series this compilation is pure gold, also because each song can be heard simply on the Music player, as if the software were some kind of jukebox. Obviously not all the songs from all the games are there, but there is a good selection that includes between ten and twenty, except Final Fantasy XIV which has around thirty songs. Think of a particularly memorable song and it's almost guaranteed to be there.

However, you must first unlock them and start by choosing one of the games in the mode Serial missions. It is the starting point, the "campaign" of Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line which, however, to avoid misunderstandings, does not have a story to follow: through the selected songs we go through the most notable moments of the chosen game, represented by scenarios iconic ones in which Our group, made up of up to four characters, fights against equally recognizable enemies. By passing a certain number of stages, you get a key that allows you to unlock a new game in the series, with its characters to join the party and its music to play. This way alone, it takes several hours to complete the Standard Missions mode, especially if you're looking for the real challenge in the difficulty levels. Extreme and Supreme, which are the last two of the four available. The indieszero game, however, is suitable for all audiences and easily configurable thanks to the different selectable play styles and a screen full of options.

Compared to the previous Theatrhythms, which were also played mainly with the touch screen of the Nintendo 3DS, this Final Bar Line is based solely on pressing the keys: initially it may seem unusual, especially if you are used to the previous episodes, but In a few minutes you also get used to and appreciate the fact that the game recognizes any button press as input. It is a particularly important solution because the final stages, especially the high levels of difficulty, require intricate and different combinations than usual.

All stages of the Standard Missions can be repeated at will in the mode musical stages, but in reality Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line continually rewards the player. It's like a matryoshka: by completing stages, you earn experience points for the party and also Rhytmia, a currency that unlocks collectibles with each new threshold reached. And each stage of the campaign offers a mission, that is, a challenge to overcome to get another reward that can be a consumable, a CollectaCard that represents the characters and monsters, a new InvocaGemma for combat, a new visual element for the ProfiCard that represents us online.

Final Bar Line is also multiplayer: not only can you play each stage cooperatively (just split the inputs) but you can also challenge players online in Multi-battle: This last one is a lot of fun, because you can "annoy" your opponents with a large number of tricks, and in the end everyone gets a small reward.

The GDR component

We talk about battles, experience points and summons... but how does it work? Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line includes a nice one RPG component More casual players can easily ignore it and still enjoy every song in the game; However, those who want to unlock every collectible, character or record will have to rack their brains a bit. The unlocked characters are divided into several types (magical, physical, defense, etc.) and as they level up, with the experience points obtained, they also learn various skills that can be set to a maximum of four for each character. There strategic combination The choice of types and abilities is very important: on the stage selection screen we can find several suggestions about the type of enemies we will have to face, so it might be more appropriate to choose characters that cast magic of a certain element , which can cure or remove anomalous conditions such as Petra and Poison.

In "combat" our characters are completely automated and attack or cast spells based on a series of conditions, for example when we hit a certain number of triggers of a specific type or when we receive positive or negative ratings, even simply reaching a certain amount of game. song time. The same happens with theSummon Gemma, which deals elemental damage and grants a buff that can make a difference.

In reality, it is only lost if the trigger is pulled incorrectly: the sum of life points of the group members constitutes an indicator that is discharged every time we make a mistake, and obviously with zero Life Points we enter Game Over. This is why higher difficulty levels are even more challenging: if you get too many triggers wrong, you won't even make it to the end of the song because the group will be "defeated" first. However, if you set it up correctly, you will be able to make more mistakes and deal more damage, and in doing so you will be able to challenge the real bosses, completing the missions that offer the best rewards.

But to this dynamic of the GDR is added the component of collecting, which not only refers to songs, letters and everything else, but also to playable characters, which are more than a hundred and include protagonists and antagonists in chibi form, that is, very cute. They're adorable, detailed, and beautifully animated, and they add a quirky but hilarious tone to the whole experience: collecting them and then raising them, unlocking their abilities, is practically a game within a game.

Ultimately, Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line is pure fun and good music. It is not a title that can be dissected from a technical point of view; Graphically it is essential but very colorful and fun, and it doesn't even make sense to express itself in the soundtrack, in this sense the elaborate way in which indieszero managed to match the progress of the songs with the rhythm and movements of the triggers. deserves all our attention screen. Only one observation can be made about computer graphics movies that play in the background. Stage of musical events, which are in low resolution like the original, but it's a precise nostalgic choice that we don't feel like criticizing.

In fact, it's hard to find anything to criticize about Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line because it does what it's supposed to do very well and even more, but if we really have to be picky, then on Nintendo Switch i Climbs feel a little more than on PlayStation 5 - although the game is absolutely perfect and perhaps more suitable for portability, but also very playable on a TV - and some screens tend to be poorly organized, causing the player to go through too many menus.

Conclusions

Tested version Nintendo Switch digital delivery Nintendo eShop Price 59,99 € Holygamerz.com 9.0 Readers (14) 7.9 your vote

Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line is a compilation full of the best music we've heard playing Square Enix titles, which is based on immediate and fun mechanics, with an equally intuitive and fun RPG component. It's a repetitive video game by nature, let's be clear, and it won't change the minds of those who love music but can't stand this type of gameplay, but the amount of rewards, collectibles and content to unlock is really impressive and will keep all players who love stuck to the genre, and to Final Fantasy, for an embarrassing total of hours.