For our first solid details on Theatrhythm Final Fantasy's rhythm gameplay, we turn to Dengeki PlayStation. Yes, it's a PlayStation magazine, but they'll occasionally cover high profile games on non-Sony platforms. This week's issue has one page devoted to the 3DS title.
According to the magazine (via Sokuho), Theatrhythm has three modes of play: Music Game, SpotPass and Museum. Of these, only Music Game is introduced.
Select Music Game, and you'll be presented with three submodes: Series, Challenge and one unidentified mode. These options are shown alongside your current party, listed with HP and level. It also looks like you can swap out characters from your party here.
Now for the gameplay details. As you might have guessed from the screenshots that were released yesterday (see below), the basic gameplay involves icons moving across the screen. There are three types of icons:
Red: Touch the screen briefly
Yellow: Slide in the direction of the arrow or line of movement of the icon
Green: Touch and hold down on the screen.
It was previously revealed that the game will have "field," "battle" and "event" stages for each of the numbered Final Fantasy titles. Of these, field and battle are introduced in the magazine.
Field
Play to field, town and dungeon music. There's just one rhythm line here. The difficulty is lower, and there are some more relaxed songs that require you to slide the touch pen up and down.
Battle
There are four rhythm lines here. The music is higher tempo and the difficulty higher. It appears that you'll be able to get critical attacks by timing your inputs perfectly. Yesterday's screenshots confirmed the presence of chains.
