I have been looking forward to Rhythm Thief and the Emperor’s Treasure since it was announced in Japan in 2011. I made a point to preorder it as soon as possible and to have a grand ol’ time with it when it was released, even if it was going to be overshadowed by Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy. It is a game which focuses on musical minigames used to propel a narrative forward, so it being story-based is a bit of a draw. SEGA is no stranger to the rhythm genre, with games such as Space Channel 5 and Samba de Amigo being part of their repertoire. So how did SEGA’s latest performance go?
Give the Orchestra an Encore
This is and was the biggest draw to the game for me. With a soundtrack that gives special thanks to Jun Senoue, you know it’s gotta be good, right?
Well, it actually is, imo. I liked the album a lot. The main Rhythm Thief motif is nicely composed and a wonderful way to greet the player when selecting the cart on the 3DS menu or opening up the title screen. It being consistently there in fanfares and the ending was nice.
Some of the minigame themes like "Intruding the Louvre" and "Moon Princess" provide a lovely backdrop to the main minigame sound effects and cues. Intruding the Louvre, for example has a ridiculously nice bassline which complements the secretive nature of Phantom R's entire operation. Moon Princess is covered in the majesty Hijiri Kuwano, whom some people may recognize from such soundtracks as Final Fantasy XIII and Sigma Harmonics. As usual, Kuwano dazzles us with some good violin playing. The game's opening minigame theme "Showtime" is loaded with some disco and catchy vocals, which reminds me a little bit of Sonic Adventure's soundtrack. This is a good thing.
Town themes such as Day in Paris and Night in Paris sort of remind me a lot of Sonic Unleashed's soundtrack, and this is purely because the portion of Unleashed's soundtrack dedicated to Europe employed such things as piano and accordions. Here, catchy percussion and lovely piano hooks create a celebratory atmosphere in Day in Paris that you can't help but to dance to if listening to on its own. You sort of hear some of an Unleashed night theme in Night in Paris in addition of the Rhythm Thief main theme to distinguish it from the day theme. Overall, the town bits are very fun to listen to.
You've also got some remixes from Space Channel 5 and Samba de Amigo in here, so it's a bit of a nostalgia trip. The ending theme in the western version (Je te dis au revoir by Karie Kahimi) is a different song from the Japanese version (Story by Ai), but that’s alright.
Overall, I have to say that I'm very pleased with the soundtrack. Giving Paris a jazzy atmosphere was a nice decision on Ohtani and Hataya's parts. Also, the fact that all of this was performed with live instruments tickles my fancy.
Colours, Voice, and Art
I also loved how the 2D art for the backgrounds and characters looked. The artstyle employed for the characters was great. The art for the younger main characters like Charlie, Raphael, and Marie makes them pop out and stand out, particularly during cutscenes. The older folks’ artwork is very nice and rather detailed in its own way.
The backgrounds are lovely. The art for many of the world’s famous structures from Notre Dame to the Eiffel Tower, and the art for many of Paris’s streets is superb and very colourful. It was a joy to walk through Paris’s streets poking around for various objects (more on that in a minute) and chatting it up with various NPCs. It was even moreso of a pleasure at night, where I felt the art was a little better. The backgrounds aren’t really static because you could see clouds in the sky moving, fountains moving, or a plane moving in the background, so at least they have some sort of detail.
I cannot speak much for the 3D in the backgrounds or scenes because I cannot see 3D very well in general.
The voice acting… well, everyone who is not Vergier, Raphael, or Napoleon should probably take a back seat. Raphael’s English voice actor feels much better than the Japanese seiyuu by virtue of sounding a little bit like Michael Jackson, which someone pointed out to me. The character moves like MJ, so why not have him sound like him. It was good casting there. Vergier and Napoleon sounded rather authentic at times, so I have little problems with them. However, I can’t help but to feel a little disappointed that the localization crew didn’t inject more francophone into the game. Instead, they opted to have more British accents in the game, which… uh, makes it sound European, I guess. If they had used French accents for everyone, then we wouldn’t have gotten Raphael’s voice actor, so I guess it’s a decent tradeoff. But the British voice acting still sounds rather jarring when you’d expect some characters to be overtly Francophone.
On that note, Marie’s voice actress needed better direction or something because there were times when her line reading sounded absolutely lifeless. Sometimes it’s difficult to feel that the character is interested in what’s going on due to the voice actress’s performance. Disappointing.
Dancing Through the Streets with Technique
Rhythm Thief has an exploration aspect to its gameplay other than the obvious incorporation of rhythm games. In fact, sometimes it feels like the larger course of the game, particularly because you spend a lot of time picking apart the scenery in a Professor Layton-esque tapping-the-screen-to-find-stuff sort of way. Each portion of the map you come across will have hidden medals, hidden music discs, and hidden sheet music pieces.
Medals are the game’s version of currency, where you can go to a shop to purchase things like marathon levels, minigames you’ve missed during your adventure, or buffs for when you’re playing rhythm minigames. So they aren’t necessarily like hint coins that you’re going to hoard for the entire game.
Hidden sheet music pieces are found when putting together five music notes scattered throughout one of the game’s backgrounds. They’ll construct a picture, and you’ll be able to unlock a Bonus Chapter by putting them together.
Additionally, towards the beginning of the game, Raphael obtains a Sound Recorder. Click around on stuff like animals, boats, talk to NPCs, etc. and some sound effects will be recorded. You will sometimes need to do this in order to advance the story (ex: move a person out of the way by scaring them), but you can also record different sounds for an optional sidequest to construct an instrument, thereby leaving you to a Bonus Chapter.
Essentially, to find and unlock everything, you’ll have to waltz through SEGA’s colourful construction of Paris. Poking around can, yes, become rather tiresome, but if you’re in this thing as a completionist, it’s essential. I do have an issue with the world map, though, and that’s that advancing through can sometimes be overly linear. If you have an objective sometimes, some parts of the map are blocked off from you, or if you have an objective, the solution is highlighted on the map, leaving the player not having to put some thinking into the solution.
Dancing with Two Left Feet Through Minigames
And this is what most of us bought Rhythm Thief for—the rhythm gameplay. Throughout Rhythm Thief, the player will have to go through an assortment of rhythm minigames. Some will involve button presses, others will involve tapping the screen, others will involve using the gyro controls in the 3DS, and others will have a combination of two or three of these. This sort of makes gameplay flow rather oddly, and leaves the player wishing that the developers had merely stuck to one form of control here. It’s inconsistent for the most part.
There are some minigames such as Raphael having to hide behind statues to avoid sight from the guards, the ones involving shooting down enemies, the ones involving biting officers in the rear, where Raphael has to fence with an enemy, etc. are completely fine because the player has to adhere to some sort of rhythm. If you button-mash or something, you won’t always be successful in these cases. The minigames which involve stylus input are okay and not bothersome. They’re very fun when they work.
In order to pass through minigames you must achieve at least an E rank on the Groove Meter. The Groove Meter takes note of your steps and missteps and grades you accordingly during and after the round. Some bits of the ranking system may be considered rather difficult because sometimes one slip-up will mean disaster and possibly losing the round and having to do the entire thing over. Sometimes you’ll have a good score in the minigame, and slip up just once or twice, and you’ll end up having a really bad rank or having to do the sequence all over again.
The minigames which involve button input with the A/B/L/R buttons and D-pad work 50% of the time for me. I have to hammer very hard on the buttons in order for an input to be registered. I’ll have to note that I haven’t had to do this before with other games like Sonic Generations, Ocarina of Time 3D, Mighty Switch Force, etc, so I’m not sure what exactly is at fault here.
The biggest issue here is the gyro controls. They are horrible. They should never ever be in a rhythm game. They should never be anywhere near a rhythm game. If there is a Rhythm Thief sequel, the gyro controls should be nixed forever in favour of touch/stylus controls. The minigames which involve gyro controls are generally hit-and-miss, and you really need to thrust your system hard to get an input in. This doesn’t necessarily work in a rhythm game because when you’re recovering and noting the next action after you’ve tilted to the side, and the next action is another tilt you may not get there in time for a good tilt to register. This ends up making some boss fights and some optional games irritating to play. Never again.
The presentation of the minigames are generally very good and are basically eye candy for the player at times, especially because of the abundance and explosion of colour. When you aren’t concentrating on an indicator and watching some of the cutscenes between phases, it looks very nice.
There are some minigames which involve listening to notes and constructing something based on those notes, or listening to notes and pressing on the touch screen at an appropriate time or at points of the touch screen. These aren't very difficult, and they serve as minipuzzles. I suppose they were included to enhance the 'musicality' of the game.
If you’re having issues, you may purchase buffs from the shop prior to entering the rhythm sequence. The buffs include a Phoenix Down-like buff which will boost you back to a C rank if you’ve lost all of your groove, a buff that will make your Groove fill up faster, a buff that will decrease the speed and amount at which your Groove is lost, and finally, a buff which acts as a “one hit and you lose” sort of item.
As a note, if you get all A ranks with the minigames, you will unlock an extra chapter.
A Intriguing Narrative Which Loses Balance Towards the End of its Routine
Rhythm Thief tells the story of a young man named Tintin Raphael and his dog Milou Fondue. He’s a student by day and the smooth rhythmic criminal known as “Phantom R” by night, stealing pieces of art from the Louvre while throwing off guards’ scents by dancing up a storm. His main intention by doing this is to find a way to meet his father again. On his way back from his latest heist, he encounters the violinist Marie, striking a partnership with her on a quest to unlock the secret of a mysterious symbol while throwing off the scent of a revived Napoleon Bonaparte.
The narrative starts off on an intriguing foot at the beginning, and then halfway through, it begins taking the wrong twists and turns to make the game’s narrative become more and more dramatic and throwing in trope after trope after trope, culminating in a climax that I hadn’t anticipated and was unsure as to why it happened. Because of this, I feel like the game’s potential had been soured somewhat in an effort to pen a more fantasy-esque narrative. Other people have described exactly what I felt had been off at the end, and I am in full agreement. The buildup to the climax wasn’t orchestrated very well, and it felt as though many plot elements and characterization weren’t developed adequately at all. Raphael himself ends up feeling rather 1.5-dimensional because of the lack of character development on his part. Everyone else are generally actors who get to say their share of lines and call it a day.
The reason why the narrative and plot are getting criticized and focused upon here is because while it’s a rhythm game, the game’s design devotes quite a significant amount of itself to pulling a story along. While you can explore a map of a section of Paris, there generally is one endpoint or objective in each section of a chapter, and it is generally based on a part of the story which you must see and fulfill until you move on. It’s much like Layton in that regard. However, the craftsmanship and development behind the narrative isn’t as in-depth or specific as it should have been in order to evoke emotions or thought on the player’s behalf. Towards the end, it sort of felt like a Return of the King affair in that it didn’t know when to end as well.
It is clear that due to the cinematography and narrative-focused nature of the game that the player should be drawn into the narrative, but it doesn’t do its job in terms of character development or moving the plot along in a timely manner. Much of the mythos and affairs surrounding certain characters and objects are not cohesively explored and tied together, which hurts the narrative in general. It’s quite unfortunate and serves as a bit of a black mark on the entire affair.
So Do You Think the Rhythm Thief Can Dance?
This entire thing probably sounded a little negative, but the game isn’t really a bad game. It’s pretty solid and it can hold up on its own with some practice. It sort feels like a your-mileage-may-vary sort of affair sometimes. It looks good and it sounds great, but sometimes the minigames aren’t very fun, or they can sometimes be a little irritating to get through. The stylus-based minigames are absolutely excellent, and I enjoyed the callbacks to Space Channel 5 and Samba de Amigo in some of the minigames. Raphael has the capacity to be a good character, but needs better development, and maybe a better-constructed story, to highlight his good side. The bonus chapters are a nice addition to extend the narrative a bit with some minigames. Overall, the game is pretty decent, but it certainly isn't perfect.
On a personal front, though, I can’t help but to feel a little disappointed by the end of it. Sometimes it made me suspect that my launch 3DS might have some faults or may not have been broken in adequately, but I can’t help but to think this is not the case when I’ve played other 3DS games with little trouble. However, with everything said and done, I’m still happy to have bought and played the game because I’d been looking forward to it for months.
There is potential for a sequel, and I certainly hope there is one because SEGA at least has a step forward here. If they can make improvements upon the original formula, I’d certainly take a Rhythm Thief sequel.
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