Consider Theatrhythm: Closing Bar Line, a love letter to the music of the Closing Fantasy collection, because the Tremendous Smash Bros. of rhythm video games. By progressing by the principle Sequence Quest mode, gamers can unlock over 100 widespread heroes (and villains), from Mystic Quest’s Benjamin and Crystal Chronicles’s Ciaran all the best way as much as Closing Fantasy XV’s 4 Warriors of Mild. These characters can then be leveled up and brought into battles the place their harm dealt (and obtained) is essentially decided by how properly gamers match the beats of almost 400 songs, tapping or holding buttons or swiping the analog sticks in particular instructions.
The sport’s controls are easy as a whistle, which makes the expertise persistently gratifying, however Closing Bar Line accommodates virtually twice the quantity of musical content material as its 2014 3DS predecessor, Curtain Name, and it considerably staggers beneath the burden of how that content material is organized. You’ll be able to argue that that is apt, provided that Chaos has been the massive dangerous of each Theatrhythm recreation to this point, although you wouldn’t know that from enjoying Closing Bar Line.
All of your favourite characters are simply right here combating for Rhythmia factors, which makes the abrupt look of a closing boss and finish credit greater than just a little stunning. Closing Bar Line is a musical museum, but it surely’s a self-guided one that might, particularly for many who aren’t connoisseurs of Closing Fantasy soundtracks, profit from a little bit of curation.
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Take, as an illustration, the presentation of the Sequence Quest mode, which simply drops roughly 30 titles on the display so that you can scroll between. However their ordering is actually arbitrary, and it’s onerous to have a good time the collection’s three-decade historical past when a non-canon title just like the 25-minute anime Final Order will get recognition right here however full-length spin-offs like Dirge of Cerberus are ignored. Your favourite songs are in all probability a part of this assortment, however except they’re from a mainline numbered entry, you might have to do some digging by ambiguously titled catch-all buckets like “Closing Fantasy Sequence” to seek out the correct needle-drops within the haystack.
That mentioned, even when Intergrade’s “The Runaround” is lacking, just about each tune on this recreation’s large jukebox is stellar. That’s by and enormous why Closing Bar Line’s finest (and most sincere) mode is its unlockable Countless World, which accurately has no finish aim, and the place the songs are randomly chosen. This enables the main target to stay solely on the music fairly than any of the sunshine RPG prospers, and leaves it to gamers to encounter and make their very own connections between, say, the choral association of FF-Sort 0’s “Tempus Finis” to the balladic chorus of FFIX’s “Melodies of Life” all the best way to the bouncy jaunt of FFVIII’s “Shuffle or Boogie.” (The sport’s maximalist strategy additionally means that you would be able to play by interpretive deep cuts just like the Siena Wind Orchestra’s brassy efficiency of FFV’s “Mambo de Chocobo” proper alongside widespread classics like FFVII’s “One Winged Angel.”)
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At worst, Closing Bar Line is a missed alternative to raise the Theatrhythm collection. Persona 4: Dancing All Night time used its music to current one other compelling case for its Investigation Group. Beatles: Rock Band used its stage design to showcase how the Beatles’s musical sensibilities advanced. Closing Bar Line simply throws the whole lot on the wall, placing the music and characters from mobile-only titles like Document Keeper and Mobius on equal footing with mainline entries.
With out an overarching narrative to anchor the person quests, the RPG-lite performance comes throughout as a pointless grind. Sure, you’ll last more on a tough observe in case your characters are at the next stage or have therapeutic spells, and, sure, you’ll be able to collect CollectaCard art work for fulfilling goals like killing a foe with Ice magic or shortly dispatching a boss with bodily harm, however this does nothing to have a good time Closing Fantasy’s music.
Fortunately, these programs can largely be ignored at your discretion. There’s even a Music Participant (and an Auto mode) for many who simply wish to hearken to the songs as a substitute of tapping alongside to them. The sport doesn’t do something to reveal a way of historical past or development between its 385 songs, but it surely doesn’t must. Regardless of how a lot Closing Bar Line might flatten its inspirations all the way down to a single two-dimensional chibi artwork fashion, the music sings for itself.
This recreation was reviewed with code supplied by fortyseven communications.