The Shrine

The game is a huge amount of fun. In short, the best way to describe it is Elite Beat Agents with Final Fantasy songs from each of the series. There's 85 songs selected from all 13 games, that come with the game - and plans for at least 50 more on DLC (including at least one from a Spinoff game, FF 13 Versus, which is already out in Japan).

There are some loose RPG elements involved, you have skills and items, gain experience and levels. The more HP you have, the better chance you have at getting through the levels of the game. So given certain circumstances or depending on how you play, characters will cast various spells - i.e. if the character hits a certain number of notes at a certain quality, then a Fire or Firaga spell can be cast (depending on what is equipped).

You can also select a party of 4 with characters from each of the FF games. You can switch up your party at any time (to help other characters gain XP and skills), it is much like FF6 (the character selection screen, is the FF6 airship music).

There's a theater and a music box where you can unlock videos and songs to play later; the videos are cutscenes and FMVs from the FF games with 3D effects added (these play in the backgrounds during the songs as well); all of the songs are perfect representations of how they appeared in the original releases of the game - no remix/remake bullshit as has been done in some of the remade FF games.

the only complaint I have is the available songs for some of the games are not the ones I would have chosen; I.E. in FF8, there are two variants of Eyes on Me used (the one during the dance, and the main version), and neither variant of Liberi Fatali; there is also no Fisherman's Horizon, no Balamb Garden, none of the final boss themes like The Extreme, etc... It seems there were a lot of preferable selections; although these will probably all be released as DLC.

Overall, I am really enjoying the game, I played through all 13 of the basic runs of each of the games (there are higher difficulties and different game modes; it is a much bigger game than EBA was on DS). I still have yet to explore other modes of the game (ie. Chaos Shrine, Multiplayer, etc...). The "Basic Run" took me at least a couple of hours, it is easy enough that you can just cruise through and enjoy the music with a fairly casual rhythm game. If you liked Elite Beat Agents, and like Final Fantasy music, this game is an absolute must have.

Here's some examples of the gameplay, note that Battle Mode, Field/town themes, and Event themes all have different types of gameplay:



Some of the other battle songs:

I have logged almost 35 hours into the game already and am greatly enjoying it. The Chaos Shrine stages include note patterns that you can't play in any other mode, and is the key to unlocking other characters. The ultimate difficulty is extremely challenging, espically when it comes to the battle songs. I failed The Man With The Machine Gun 15 times on Ultimate before I gave up. So it defidently gets really hard. Defidently been a great time sink for me!

I'm about 12 hours in - cleared all Basic and Expert Challenges - and cleared one Ultimate Challenge (Blue Skies - FF8). I still have most of the Expert Runs to complete.

I unlocked Lightning's theme from FF13, and Dancing Mad from FF6, and purchased the Ragnarok theme, Zeromus final battle, and Cosmo Canyon. Hopefully they come out with some of my more favourite songs from the series like Liberi Fatali, Aria di Mezzo Caraterre, Fisherman's Horizon, FF6 World Map theme 3, the Oath, the Extreme, Balamb Garden, and the Landing.

I was REALLY disappointed that this song didn't actually make it as the End theme for FF8 (it's my favourite credits song along with FF4's), instead they put Eyes on Me, which really should have been an event song:

September is proving a good month so far with DLC; the songs were mostly from 11, 5, 12, and 13 last month. This month has had classic FF8, FF4, and FF1 songs including The Extreme.

Two more that I just had to get that came out today: Matoya's Cave from Final Fantasy 1, and Force Your Way Through from Final Fantasy 8. I pretty much got all the FF1, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8 DLC; and ignored everything else.