Rhythm Thief demo

Firstly, I should preface this by saying I've never really been one for rhythm games. If it counts, I've played Guitar Hero, but that's about it.

So, I recently played the Rhythm Thief & The Emperor's Treasure demo for the 3DS. I'd heard about this game in a magazine, and it was described as a bit of a Professor Layton but with more rhythm games than puzzles, although puzzles do feature. As a fan of Professor Layton, I was intrigued. Previewers all talked about how amazing it was. So when a demo for the game was released on the 3DS eShop a few days ago, I immediately downloaded it to give it a go. I wanted to give it a go before deciding if I wanted to purchase the game when it's released later this year.



In Rhythm Thief, you play as Raphael, who by night stalks Paris as a heroic and infamous thief called R, who steals paintings and then returns them days later. You join him as he tries to steal the Wristlet of Tiamat, hoping it will help him uncover the truth behind his father's disappearance. Raphael is joined in his adventure by a British, violin-playing girl called Marie, who it seems you will play in some rhythm games as seen in a trailer for the game linked below (it's in Japanese but you can get a feel for the tone and style of the game, as well as see glimpses of some of the games).



I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised. In the demo you get 3 rhythm games to play. The first is a fairly typical style rhythm game, where you follow the moves of your 2 backing dancers, and slide the stylus across the touch screen to match their moves in time. The second sees you trying the sneak into the Louvre, and having to touch 1 of 4 colours as appropriate to hide behind a statue and avoid the guards. The third, which is labelled R04 so seems to be the 4th game in the... game, sees you pressing either the A button or the d-pad to fight off enemies to the left or right.



The first 2 games were easy to get the hang off, especially for a rhythm game novice such as myself, but the third was pleasantly challenging enough. They gave me a good idea of what to expect from the game itself, a good taster of what's to come. The graphics are colourful and simple enough, but beautiful anyway, and charming. You don't see any of the actual story in the demo, but from what I've heard it definately sounds interesting. Rhythm Thief is deifinately a game I'll be keeping an eye on and one I'm sure I'll be picking up when it's released later this year.