Threatless
HIGH The animation is way better than it has a right to be.
LOW The story barely evolves and remains one-note from start to finish.
WTF Some of the fauna encountered expire horrifically during battle.
Fretless: The Wrath of Riffson is a 2D JRPG deckbuilder with rhythm action elements. Players take control of Rob, a talented but unknown musician from a remote area who harbors big dreams of trekking across the world and smashing his way to victory at the upcoming Battle of the Bands hosted by musical megacorp SMR.
However, whispers abound regarding this tournament. Could it be that SMR are instead up to nefarious schemes, rigging these battles so that only the most malleable and easily-bought contestants make it through to the end, winning a tournament that’s little more than a hollow scam to exploit musicians for corporate greed?
Well, yes. It pretty much says as much right from the start. Anyone expecting wild plot twists is going to leave disappointed, so expect musical assassins and goons to be deployed en masse to prevent Rob from winning the competition fairly.
See, music isn’t just a pleasant or occasionally irritating distraction in this world — it’s how people survive. Out in the forests and grasslands, acoustically empowered foes lie in wait to annihilate Rob via the medium of turn-based battles, and it’s here that the rhythm-based battle system comes into play.
Starting out with his trusty six string guitar, Rob can assemble a deck of commands that are randomly drawn from a pool. Three in a row can be set in motion to attack and debuff opponents, or heal and strengthen Rob’s defenses, with timing based QTE’s assigned to each action. Hitting these QTEs accurately can influence battle by enhancing damage dealt, or mitigating damage taken.
Rob will find three additional instruments to unleash havoc with, each of which has its own battle theme when in use. The Bass Guitar is a heavy hitter, the Synthesizer features a warlock style approach of slamming out buffs and debuffs, and the Eight String causes damage to Rob in order to power up its attacks. Each instrument also has passive qualities, with the Synthesizer triggering equipped mods if enough frequency is gained during the turn, for example.
Sound complicated? It can be if desired, though the extremely mild difficulty means that learning the nuances of the battle system isn’t necessary. QTE checks can also be disabled, which I did as I found they weren’t adding anything to the experience — with the Guitar Hero-style “Crescendo” super attacks being the one exception. After building enough meter and initiating the Crescendo (or having a boss encounter do the same to Rob) a musical highway of notes appears alongside a cool animation. It’s a neat touch.
The graphics are… interesting. I don’t think the style is anything to write home about, but the animation is almost unnecessarily lavish. Every attack has a different animation associated, including found or purchasable ones that can be cut into the deck. Cutscenes and Crescendo sequences have clearly had a lot of effort put into them, and it’s downright weird to see a fairly generic graphic style have an almost overwhelming amount of care put into the animation. It might even be a negative in some ways — with no way to skip many of these animations, they slow battles down more than necessary.
Exploration is pretty typical stuff. Each town has a few shops and NPCs, and Rob will occasionally encounter simple puzzles such as shoving boxes, copying environmental patterns or ensuring switches are hit in sequence. There’s a decent diversity of environments, but it’s notable that none of the characters Rob meets along the way are even remotely interesting or fleshed out. It harms the sense of discovery when all that’s waiting in the next outpost are more inconsequential background faces chucking out the odd music pun.
Fretless is remarkably frictionless, but not necessarily in a good way. Standard enemies pose little threat, but still take a while to whittle down with no way to skip attack animations or immediately stomp underpowered adversaries. I killed most bosses on my first attempt, with one of only two deaths in the entire game occurring because I killed myself attempting to learn the Eight String Guitar — which, as mentioned earlier, sacrifices Rob’s health to strengthen its attacks and can kill players who aren’t being judicious with its use.
Bizarrely, the final stretch of the adventure devolves into a monumentally non-thrilling stealth sequence where being spotted by roaming guards results in being evicted from the premises and starting over. On the one hand it’s simple to stay hidden, as their field of vision is projected around them in plain sight. On the other, it’s an absolutely terrible sequence that took far too long to get through, not helped by the fact that I spent ages looking for an exit, only to find that the camera perspective made said exit look like a solid wall.
It’s unfortunate that I find myself having to put the boot in this hard to what’s obviously a passion project from an indie developer, but my emotional state playing Fretless oscillated between boredom, irritation and occasionally finding it all mildly pleasant. Perhaps it will hit differently for someone who’s into the music scene or deckbuilders, but as a JRPG fan who’s partial to a good rhythm action game, it hit a bit of a bum note for me.
Rating: 4 out of 10
Disclosures: This game is developed by Ritual Studios and published by Playdigious Originals. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher. Approximately 8 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.
Parents: This game has not been rated by the ESRB. It’s fine for kids, I’d think, with its upbeat approach to nearly everything that’s going on and cartoonish villainy from the bad guys. However, watching the skin melt clean off (potentially artificial) wildlife to reveal a skeleton as they die seems massively at odds with its usual vibe, even if there’s no blood involved.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game’s story is told entirely in text, so subtitles aren’t needed. While music is a big part of the game, I don’t recall anything from the rhythm based gameplay that didn’t also have a visual cue that would suffice.
Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.
The chance discovery of a muddy, burnt out copy of '50 Shades of Grey' in a hunting pit gave him an appreciation for complex plots, characters and overarching narrative, and the unexpected gift of a Spectrum 48k allowed him to indulge in these newfound sensibilities with intelligent, highbrow games such as 'flee from the badly animated spinning turquoise dolphins' or 'avoid the deadly glowing bricks of doom'.
The fusion of both these interests finally culminated with Darren teaching himself how to write by basically guessing at what words might look like when jotted down on paper as opposed to being howled inarticulately at the skies.
Now others occasionally get to read his scribblings. Lucky them.
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