Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line coming February 2023, featuring TWEWY songs

[Oracle Spockanort]

A new installment in Square Enix's Theatrhythm series was announced in today's Nintendo Direct! Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line will be releasing on Nintendo Switch and Playstation 4 on February 16, 2023.

The base game will feature a whopping 385 songs from across the Final Fantasy series, with 167 of them being new in comparison to 2014's Theatrhythm FF: Curtain Call. 27 additional tracks are available for those who purchase the Digital Deluxe Editions, including “Eyes On Me”, “Melodies Of Life”, “To Zanarkand”, “A Long Fall (Scions and Sinners: Band)" and more.

There will also be three Season Passes, each consisting of 30 tracks from various titles in Square Enix's catalog:

• Season Pass 1: 
• SaGa Pack (7 tracks, releasing February 16th)
• LIVE A LIVE Pack (4 tracks, releasing March 1st)
• The World Ends with You Pack (6 tracks, releasing March 15th)
• NieR Pack (5 tracks, releasing March 29th)
• SaGa Pack Vol. 2 (8 tracks, releasing April 12th)
• Season Pass 2: 
• NieR Pack Vol. 2 (6 tracks, releasing April 26th)
• CHRONO Pack (6 tracks, releasing May 17th)
• CHRONO Pack Vol. 2 (6 tracks, releasing June 7th)
• Mana Pack (7 tracks, releasing June 28th)
• OCTOPATH TRAVELER Pack (5 tracks, releasing July 19th)
• Season Pass 3: 
• SaGa Pack Vol. 3 (7 tracks, releasing August 9th)
• Mana Pack Vol. 2 (6 tracks, releasing August 30th)
• Xenogears Pack (3 tracks, releasing September 20th)
• ??? Pack (6 tracks, releasing October 11th)
• ??? Pack (8 tracks, releasing November 1st)

That makes for a grand total of 502 songs!

Currently-announced songs, characters, and a further breakdown of the titles featured in each pack can be found on the official Japanese website.

Three editions of the game will be available for purchase:

• Standard Edition: Available physically and digitally, this contains 385 sounds from across the FINAL FANTASY series
• Digital Deluxe Edition: Contains all songs from the standard edition, plus 27 additional tracks, and Season Pass 1.
• Premium Digital Deluxe Edition: Contains all songs from the standard edition, plus 27 additional tracks, and Season Passes 1-3.

 

[Sign]

The TWEWY pack is gonna have 3 songs from the original and 3 from NEO. Twister, Calling, and Someday were in previous games and will no doubt be returning to rep OG TWEWY.

NEO has so many bangers though. I'm guessing they'll go with New Game, Your Ocean, and Breaking Free, since that's what they used as BGM on the NTWEWY site. Would prefer Shibuya Survivor or Unpainted though.

 

[The_Echo]

I'm so excited for this

I wanted a console port of All-Star Carnival since it got announced, and it looks like this is it.
And finally having Theatrhythm on a proper controller, what a time to be alive

It also looks like this is "the last Theatrhythm FF" so hopefully they keep supporting it for a while. DLC is only non-FF titles but we've got VII Rebirth and XVI coming in the not-so-distant future.
Feel bad for the Chrono Cross fans, two whole DLC packs for Chrono and only two songs for Cross. Right after that big remaster, too.

And, ain't no way those mystery DLCs don't include Kingdom Hearts and Dragon Quest... right?

 

[MATGSY]

It also looks like this is "the last Theatrhythm FF" so hopefully they keep supporting it for a while.

So was Curtain Call. This series is rivalling Friday the 13th for most "final" entries.

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

I'm so excited for this

I wanted a console port of All-Star Carnival since it got announced, and it looks like this is it.
And finally having Theatrhythm on a proper controller, what a time to be alive

It also looks like this is "the last Theatrhythm FF" so hopefully they keep supporting it for a while. DLC is only non-FF titles but we've got VII Rebirth and XVI coming in the not-so-distant future.
Feel bad for the Chrono Cross fans, two whole DLC packs for Chrono and only two songs for Cross. Right after that big remaster, too.

And, ain't no way those mystery DLCs don't include Kingdom Hearts and Dragon Quest... right?

See I want to believe it is KH and DQ given TDQ is stuck on 3DS now and KH was always the original source of this franchise so…

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

Tracklist revealed thanks to ResetERA user Lumination:

SaGa Pack (7 tracks): $5 Release: At launch
Enraged Battle
Struggle to the Death
The Conflict
Horrible Shadow
Beat Them Up!
Coup de Grace
Passionate Rhythm

SaGa Pack 2 (8 tracks): $6 Release: 4/12/23
The Celestial Protectors
Battle #4
Alone
Battle #5
Last Battle -T260G-
Feldschlacht III
Missgestalt
Battle Theme I

SaGa Pack 3 (7 tracks): $5 Release: 8/9/23
Ever Higher
Title Screen
Encounter with the Seven Heroes
The Ultimate Confrontation
Four Sinistrals Battle I
Four Sinistrals Battle II
The Ultimate Confrontation (yes this is here twice, idk why, no other qualifier)

DLC Pack 15: Release: 11/1/23

Mana Pack 1 (7 tracks): $5 Release: 6/8/23
Nuclear Fusion
Battle 2
In Search of the Sword of Mana
Swivel
Powell
Meridian Child
Sacrifice Part Three

Mana Pack 2 (6 tracks): $4.50 Release: 8/30/23
Darkness Nova
Into the Thick of It
Danger
Meridian Dance
Hometown of Domina
Bejeweled City in Ruins

Chrono Pack (6 tracks)1: $4.50 Release: 5/17/23
Wings That Cross Time
Radical Dreamers - Le Tresor Interdit-
Chrono Trigger
Boss Battle 2
Battle with Magus
Corridors of Time

Chrono Pack 2 (6 tracks): $4.50 Release: 6/7/23
Robo's Theme
Chrono Cross -Scars of Time-
Wind Scene
Frog's Theme
World Revolution
To Far Away Times

TWEWY Pack (6 tracks): $4.50 Release: 3/15/23
World Is Yours
Your Ocean
Breaking Free
Twister
Calling
Someday

Pack 14 Release: 10/11/23

Nier Pack (5 tracks): $??? (Likely $4 like the Octopath Pack) Release 3/29/23
Dependent Weakling
Weight of the World Kowaretasekainouta - Marina Kawano
Amusement Park
A Beautiful Song
Emil's Shop

Nier Pack 2 (6 tracks): $4.50 Release 4/26/23
Fleeting Words / Outsider
Song of the Ancients / Devola
Hills of Radiant Winds
Kaine / Salvation
Song of the Ancients / Fate
Shadowlord

Octopath Pack (5 tracks): $4 Release 7/19/23
Battle at Journey's End
Primrose, the Dancer
Daughter of the Dark God
Octopath Traveler -Main Theme-
Decisive Battle II

LIVE A LIVE Pack (4 tracks): $3 Release 3/1/23
Go! Go! Steel Titan!
LIVE A LIVE
Birds Fly, Fish Swim
Megalomania

Xenogears Pack (3 tracks): $2.50 9/20/23
Awakening
Blazing Knights
Soaring

This does not include the two mystery DLC packs.

 

[MATGSY]

And, ain't no way those mystery DLCs don't include Kingdom Hearts and Dragon Quest... right?

Switch exclusive SMRPG pack.

 

[Zackarix]

I am absolutely ecstatic that this isn't a Switch exclusive! After how Melody of Memory taught me that I actually do like rhythm games this is an auto-buy!

But oof, those DLC practices. Praise Nomura for shutting that down in MoM.

 

[The_Echo]

But oof, those DLC practices. Praise Nomura for shutting that down in MoM.

Actually, for rhythm games, post-launch support is usually desirable...
I'd love some DLC song packs for MoM, especially since they couldn't get many KHIII tracks into the game, and no UXDR representation at all

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

I am absolutely ecstatic that this isn't a Switch exclusive! After how Melody of Memory taught me that I actually do like rhythm games this is an auto-buy!

But oof, those DLC practices. Praise Nomura for shutting that down in MoM.

On one hand yes I appreciate that the game did not have DLC, but it is the one game that I really wish had DLC because it needed way more tracks.

For this, my gripe isn’t DLC but the fact that some of it is actually already in All Stars but is being piecemeal’d as DLC. Some of those DLC songs should have already been in the base game.

 

[Zackarix]

But realistically would the hypothetical Melody of Memory DLC have been stuff that filled out the gaps of the track list, or would the result have been a game with a similar selection but with stuff that's currently in the base game instead being locked behind a paywall? For example, I'm pretty sure that the Disney songs were going to be DLC before Nomura said no.

Doesn't MoM have 150 tracks in it. Both the original Theatrhythm Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest had less than 100 songs in their base games. It seems likely to me that one of the reasons base MoM is so fleshed out is because they didn't decide to cut out content to sell it separately.

 

[The_Echo]

But realistically would the hypothetical Melody of Memory DLC have been stuff that filled out the gaps of the track list, or would the result have been a game with a similar selection but with stuff that's currently in the base game instead being locked behind a paywall? For example, I'm pretty sure that the Disney songs were going to be DLC before Nomura said no.

Doesn't MoM have 150 tracks in it. Both the original Theatrhythm Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest had less than 100 songs in their base games. It seems likely to me that one of the reasons base MoM is so fleshed out is because they didn't decide to cut out content to sell it separately.

Curtain Call's base game had 221 songs, boosted by 100 DLC tracks

There is no "full game" number of songs for a rhythm game, only what is able to be done in the dev cycle per time and budget.
Amplitude (2015) released with 30 songs.
DJMAX Respect launched 146 songs.
Project Diva Future Tone launched with 224 songs, but Project Diva X was only 30.
The newest Taiko game launched with 75 songs.

Rhythm games are a niche genre so I think the typical distrust around DLC fostered by predatory AAA practices is misplaced here. They have to stop the tracklist somewhere, and there's always going to be more music that could be put in.
The prime example is Rock Band, with only 58 songs in the base game. But it was supported for years and ultimately wound up with... well... a lot (support for RB1/2 stopped on October 26 2010 in this list). It's easy to see that they simply couldn't have put all of that in the initial release.

Spockanort is right though that a lot of the planned DLC for Final Bar Line were already done for All-Star Carnival. Which isn't great. And as a physical-first sort of guy I'm not happy that Digital Deluxe gets exclusive songs.

 

[2 quid is good]

Well said, I will probably get the digital deluxe edition bc i don't see myself paying for dlc and I only really want the TWEWY dlc as of right now, it's still a little annoying that physical pre orders don't have the same benefit

 

[Zackarix]

Curtain Call's base game had 221 songs, boosted by 100 DLC tracks

There is no "full game" number of songs for a rhythm game, only what is able to be done in the dev cycle per time and budget.
Amplitude (2015) released with 30 songs.
DJMAX Respect launched 146 songs.
Project Diva Future Tone launched with 224 songs, but Project Diva X was only 30.
The newest Taiko game launched with 75 songs.

The only game here that isn't a sequel is Amplitude.

And yes, they have to stop the tracklist somewhere, but comparing MoM to the original Theatrhythm Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest (which are MoM's closest analogues, being the first rhythm games Indieszero made for for those respective franchises) MoM has the largest tracklist by a decent margin even after adding in DLC. That's why I can't imagine an alternate MoM where it was developed with a long DLC campaign in mind to have that much more extensive of a tracklist.

If DLC!MoM was the game we got plus more content I'd love it. But if it was just a few more tracks from KH3 and KHUX with stuff that's currently in the base game being held back to be sold as DLC it would not have been worth it. And as has been mentioned in this thread before, the newest Theatrhythm game has tracks that were in the base game in previous games being made into exclusives for the Digital Deluxe Editions. So clearly SE and Indieszero aren't above those sorts of practices.

 

[The_Echo]

The only game here that isn't a sequel is Amplitude.

And yes, they have to stop the tracklist somewhere, but comparing MoM to the original Theatrhythm Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest (which are MoM's closest analogues, being the first rhythm games Indieszero made for for those respective franchises) MoM has the largest tracklist by a decent margin even after adding in DLC. That's why I can't imagine an alternate MoM where it was developed with a long DLC campaign in mind to have that much more extensive of a tracklist.

If DLC!MoM was the game we got plus more content I'd love it. But if it was just a few more tracks from KH3 and KHUX with stuff that's currently in the base game being held back to be sold as DLC it would not have been worth it. And as has been mentioned in this thread before, the newest Theatrhythm game has tracks that were in the base game in previous games being made into exclusives for the Digital Deluxe Editions. So clearly SE and Indieszero aren't above those sorts of practices.

Eh, the idea of "sequels" in rhythm games is a bit different...
These 100+ tracklist, compilation of entire series, arcade cabinet port titles are very much a recent thing. Typically a new entry is a mostly- or entirely-new tracklist separate from previous entries (for example, some people didn't like that half of Project Diva F2nd's 42 tracks were returning from previous games).
But for some non-sequel examples, Muse Dash launched with 53 tracks, AVICII Invector launched with 22 tracks, Persona 3 and 5 Dancing launched with 25 each, Senran Kagura: Bon Appétit! has 22, Superbeat XONiC launched with 58.

Point is, Indieszero releases uncommonly large tracklists for their base games as it is (and also a lot more DLC than you typically get, too). 100+ tracks ain't normal. I'd imagine this has something to do with Square Enix footing dev costs.

And the nature of the content makes it difficult, if not impossible, to look at DLC and think "this was originally part of the base game" without a situation like Theatrhythm, where Curtain Call and All-Star Carnival set a precedent of launching with the previous game's full tracklist and then adding on top of it.
DLC-era rhythm games essentially eschew the need to release a new game with the ability to simply add a new game's worth of content to the original. Cuts down on dev cost and increases convenience for fans.

 

[Zackarix]

If we're going to say that the Indeieszero/SE rhythm games are unusual for the genre doesn't that just emphasize that they should mainly be compared to each other?

Assuming that the translation is accurate this is what Nomura had to say about DLC in MoM:

――There are over 140 playable tracks. Did you give any opinions on the track list?

Nomura: Not really. I didn't want to go with a format where we release additional songs as DLC post-release, so I asked them to make sure to add as many songs as possible for maximum satisfaction in this one title. That's about it.

I suppose there might be another way to interpret it, but to me this sure suggests that there was a link between base MoM having over 140 tracks and the decision to not have DLC, even if the specifics can only be theorized about.

---

I've just realized that this game has dropped the "Final Fantasy" subtitle. It's just Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line. Which kind of makes sense because the DLC is mostly focused on SE's other properties. But it also doesn't because they're still taking the big brand out of the title.

It makes the lack of Dragon Quest tracks even more apparent. It was the first big attempt to expand Theatrhythm to other franchises and it hasn't been followed up on? You could probably make two or three season passes worth of DLC just by using TRDQ as a basis. Did it bomb? Or is there some sort of rights issue?

 

[rokudamia2]

The lack of dragon quest might be Sugiyama's estate being stingy(like he was)

 

[Zackarix]

I wonder what the character roster will look like for for this game. I've seen some websites claim 108 characters will be available, but it's not in any of the announcements themselves. Were they just counting the characters that appeared in the trailer?

Probably not going to happen, but it would be cool if bonus characters came bundled with the already announced DLC. Like if you bought the TWEWY pack it came with a playable Neku.

 

[The_Echo]

I wonder what the character roster will look like for for this game. I've seen some websites claim 108 characters will be available, but it's not in any of the announcements themselves. Were they just counting the characters that appeared in the trailer?

Probably not going to happen, but it would be cool if bonus characters came bundled with the already announced DLC. Like if you bought the TWEWY pack it came with a playable Neku.

Square Enix officially lists "over 100 characters" on their store page

The 108 specificity seems to stem from All-Star Carnival's roster, though I can only find 101 on the fan wiki page

 

[Chaser]

From Square Enix's asset guide:
・104 characters appear from throughout the FF series!