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fuck it, drop 100 megabytes into the repo. Also new post

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Lethe Beltane 2024-01-30 07:55:30 -06:00
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blog/2023/march/theatrhythm.html
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</ol>
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<source src="../../../img/theatrhythm/repetitive.webm" type="video/webm" codecs="vp9.0, opus" />
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<li>"Field", which features overworld themes and music on the calmer end of the spectrum. In both versions, there is a single line that triggers travel on. In <em>CURTAIN CALL</em>, the first member of your party walks along a road, and the better you do on the stage, the faster they run. If you lose enough HP from missing triggers, that party member will stumble and fall and be replaced with the next character in your party. In <em>FINAL BAR LINE</em>, all four members of your party walk at once, and they often stop and fight a monster or two before continuing their journey. Airship themes no longer have you travel on an airship; they're just the same as every other Field-type stage now. <em>FINAL BAR LINE</em> also introduces double tap triggers where you have to hit both L and R (or ZL and ZR) at the same time; if one of these appear, the line that triggers travel on will temporarily split into two, and both taps will be judged individually. The up-and-down motion for hold triggers can be difficult for some controllers to follow, as my brother had issues with keeping his cursor on the track when we played in co-op mode.</li>
<li>"Event", which can have songs from either of the previous two categories. Event-type stages are similar to Battle-type stages, but instead of your party fighting a monster, a (muted) cutscene from the song's original game plays in the background. For the retro titles (<em>FINAL FANTASY I-VI</em> and <em>Tactics</em>) gameplay footage is used because of a lack of cutscenes, but strangely it's of the Japanese versions of those games, even though I made sure to specifically buy a USA-region cartridge. (Songs with lyrics are in English, though... And <em>CURTAIN CALL</em> had actual cutscenes for <em>Tactics</em>' Event-type stage. Why did they replace it with gameplay?) <strong>If you're photosensitive, do <em>not</em> play on Event-type stages: strobe effects, such as when characters cast spells or teleport on the overworld map, were <em>not</em> edited out and occur frequently.</strong> There are still four lines that triggers travel on, but they're rotated ninety degrees; the triggers start on the top and come down towards you, similar to <em>Guitar Hero</em>. This is much improved from <em>CURTAIN CALL</em>, where triggers just... appeared in a swirl? I could never get the timing right, but now I can.</li>
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<p><img class="big" src="../../../img/theatrhythm_event.jpg" alt="Zack dying during the Event stage for FINAL FANTASY VII"></p>
<p><img class="big" src="../../../img/theatrhythm/event.jpg" alt="Zack dying during the Event stage for FINAL FANTASY VII"></p>
<p>Speaking of timing, <em>FINAL BAR LINE</em> adds a number of quality-of-life features:</p>
<ol>
<li>Game sequels with only a few songs are now grouped together so you don't have to scroll as much: for example, <em>Advent Children</em>, <em>Crisis Core</em>, and <em>Final Order</em> are now grouped together under "FINAL FANTASY VII Series" instead of getting their own game (<a href="http://ld.vernccvbvyi5qhfzyqengccj7lkove6bjot2xhh5kajhwvidqafczrad.onion/title/tt0385700">movie?</a>) entries.</li>
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</ol>
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<source src="https://cdn.letsdecentralize.org/theatrhythm/slow.webm" type="video/webm" codecs="vp9.0, opus" />
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<source src="../../../img/theatrhythm/slow.mp4" type="video/mp4" codecs="avc1.4d002a, aac" />
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</ol>
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</li>
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<p><strong>Playing online can unlock songs quicker than playing through the singleplayer mode.</strong> In <em>CURTAIN CALL</em>, if you weren't the type of person to play online, there wasn't much to do: after the tutorial, the game dumps you at the main menu, where most of the songs are already unlocked and free for you to play at your whim. There is a quest menu, but the main purpose of that is to earn "shards" that you can use to unlock characters. <em>FINAL BAR LINE</em> reverses this: you have no songs unlocked to start, and one key with which you can choose <em>one</em> of the original titles to unlock. You then have to play through one song at a time in that title's quest until you come across another treasure chest with a key in it a few songs in, at which point you can unlock another title. </p>
<p><img class="big" src="../../../img/theatrhythm_unlocks_title.jpg" alt="I hadn't unlocked FINAL FANTASY VIII at the time of taking this screenshot"></p>
<p><img class="big" src="../../../img/theatrhythm/unlocks_title.jpg" alt="I hadn't unlocked FINAL FANTASY VIII at the time of taking this screenshot"></p>
<p>But <strong>if you play in online mode, and you beat a song you haven't already unlocked, you will unlock that song even if you haven't used a key to unlock that song's original title yet.</strong> After you unlock a song, you can replay it at any time at any difficulty by going to the main menu and selecting "Music Stages". Speaking of difficulty, in addition to the existing "Basic", "Expert", and "Ultimate" levels, you can now also play select songs in "Supreme".</p>
<p>When you unlock a title, you get a few characters from that title to start, unless the title explicitly says there are no characters to unlock. Clearing a title's quest will (probably) unlock one or two additional characters, usually final bosses. As such, there are no shards to collect. Which is good, because <em>FINAL BAR LINE</em> adds a lot of new characters. Hell, you don't even need to grind ten gazillion hours to get eight black shards to unlock Sephiroth anymore: you just need to beat all fourteen of the <em>FINAL FANTASY VII</em> songs.</p>
<p>Speaking of Sephiroth... if you're like my youngest brother and your only attachment to this game is because Cloud is a playable character, then you may want to stick with <em>CURTAIN CALL</em> because <strong><em>FINAL BAR LINE</em>'s version of "One-Winged Angel" omits the whole first half of the song.</strong> Truncating songs isn't new for the THEATRHYTHM series: to give two examples, "We Have Come" is also cut in half in <em>CURTAIN CALL</em>, although the new beginning is during a quiet part of the song, and "The Extreme" skips the long piano intro. There is no reason for "One-Winged Angel" to be cut in half, and so poorly at that: it drops you directly into a dramatic part of the song. The <em>Advent Children</em> version of the song remains intact and whole, which makes the original version's truncation even more bizarre.</p>
<p>Speaking of taking creative liberties with the soundtrack, the names of a number of songs were changed as well, mostly to undo weird localizations from <em>CURTAIN CALL</em>. So don't feel bad if you have a hard time finding your favorite song before the timer runs out in online mode. Hey, at least people <em>use</em> online mode in <em>FINAL BAR LINE</em>. <em>Nobody</em> was online in <em>CURTAIN CALL</em>. My only point of reference for what the previous game's online mode would have looked like was a mockup mode, which pits you against computer players pretending to be other people online. <em>FINAL BAR LINE</em> doesn't have a mockup mode. It also doesn't have a cooldown for sending taunt messages in online lobbies, so you can just jam the arrow buttons on your controller to spam taunts and annoy the other players in your room. Or maybe they'll give up and join in. You never know!</p>
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<p>If you're sensitive to repetitive noises, be careful when switching between online and singleplayer mode: when online, in order to keep the flow of play moving, the game will not give out unlocked rewards for reaching certain levels of earned Rhythmia points. If you go a long period only playing online, next time you play singleplayer you'll get spammed with all the rewards you missed.</p>
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