Some thoughts about... Theatrhythm Final Bar Line... The Demo (Patreon)

I'm not bothering to spell-check "Theatrhythm". Any time I put the title down on paper and all associated typos are in the gods' hands.

Theatrhythm is one of the top 3 rhythm games and one of the best games on the 3DS, so I was very excited to hear about a new one. It just had one of the best progressions and meta gameplay systems in a game that totally changes how you play without ever changing the rules or core gameplay. 

The new one... is pretty much this series again. And that's good! It adds a kind of "story mode" with the Series Quests. You go through a mostly linear progression of songs from a particular title and each song has a goal associated with it. The boss may also change stats or add special conditions to the fight. It's pretty basic stuff and doesn't drastically change how you play since most of the goals are just a variation on "play well", but they can force you to change up your team if the enemies inside have a resistance to the elements or attack types of your favored characters. There is also an "Auto optimize" button that purports to just pick the best team from what you have available, but it seems to only change your Summon and what skills the already equipped team uses. I thought it would match up a magic user with a magic stage and all that, so the current implementation leaves much to be desired.

Man though, there is a ton of content in the demo. It has multiple titles with multiple songs in each, you can get about a third of the way through the quests in the title, and there are at least 4, and usually more, characters unlocked for each title. Characters have a pretty generous level cap so it mainly just caps your "money" gained and prevents one type of item from dropping (the profile cards). It took me two days to get through the demo (and even then there are a few quests I couldn't complete with the current level caps) and the counter said I'd be at 4% quest completion if I transfer everything over to the full game.

The bad stuff. I'm totally not sold on the new multi-note system where you have to hit multiple lanes at the same time, even having to do multiple flicks at the same time. Thankfully, you can turn it off, but the UI in-stage doesn't change, so it can look a bit confusing. However, turning off the multi-notes also gets rid of all the flick triggers. I don't want to overly simplify it, I just want to get rid of the one bad thing. So easy is too easy and normal has the bad stuff. Ugh. 

Also, the game really feels different without a stylus/touch screen. The physical movement of tapping, holding, tracing, and flicking was a part of the experience and just tapping a button on a controller is a poor substitute. Without the stylus, I really thought this franchise would be dead with the passing of the 3DS. And you're losing out on Street Passes. I was lucky enough to live in a populated area when the first game came out, so it was so fun getting those on the subway to/from work. Having it on a portable system was also nice because you could just flip it open, play a few songs, and then close it and get back to work, versus having to load up the console version. And no, I don't consider the Switch "portable" thanks to its size, battery life, lousy controllers, and cost compared to the DS.

There's a lot of content here, but also a crazy price point for the game. $50 for the basic game and $100 for the complete game with a nonsense system of DLC packs and exclusive songs. And of course, no one DLC pack is filled with great songs. Each one has a couple of good ones and then the rest are cruft. Just use the original's DLC implementation where you bought each song separately. I paid $10-20 for Theaterhythm, bought some DLC, AND bought Theatrhythm Curtain Call all for cheaper than just the basic version of this game.

I'm still looking forward to getting the full game and the demo did a fantastic job of assuaging fears about the new systems, but between the new systems and having to play it on a controller, the game feels noticeably worse to play and experience. There's nothing that can really be done about that given the original system the franchise was made for is dead now and the team did a fine job porting it to a controller, but it's just not the same. It takes Theatrhythm from a must buy to a wait for a sale, especially for all the DLC nonsense to get worked out.