I picked this up while waiting for the next Layton game as I love both puzzle and rhythm games.
So let me start off with the good points:
The art really is wonderful, it's lovely with the 3D effect but it's just as stunning with it off. It is very cartoony though, so if you prefer more realism, this might not be for you!
The songs are really great – all earworms, but that doesn't matter because they are really fun to listen to and keep your toes tapping the whole time you play.
The story is wonderful, and quite evenly spaced around the action sequences. I haven't finished it yet (for reasons which I will discuss later) but I am dying to know what is going to happen in the end.
But what Rhythm Thief does wrong though is a hard obstacle to get over, even with wonderful art, storyline and music.
It has a very unfair scoring system.
I'm not saying it's impossible, and games should definitely be a challenge, but it goes from some wonderfully fun games to some devillishly hard ones that have left both my husband and I getting frustrated for days. And as they are part of the storyline, that can be a game breaker as there is no way to get past a particular challenge.
This brings me to the scoring bar, which ranks you from A through to E. If you drop below E, you fail and must restart the entire rhythm challenge. Some vicious challenges can cut your scoring bar in half if you miss one step, and an unforgiving grading curve can make even the most hardened gamer throw down their console.
It's very unfortunate, because otherwise this is the kind of game that my little sisters love, but if most of my gaming friends my own age have given up in disgust, I don't think it'd be suitable for kids.
So in summary, it's a wonderful game, which does everything right except how hard it can get – it'd be nice if they had added in an option to skip after trying one challenge few times or an option to make it easier – and this has made it a mis-buy for me, at least. I recommend it to anyone who really loves a challenge, but not to someone who prefers storyline and some more restful gaming.
I still give it four stars for everything it did right, and I hope anyone who makes a purchase has more luck than me – and could maybe give me some hints!