Off the jump, Ritual Studios’ Fretless had my attention the moment my eyeballs landed on it. Gorgeously animated pixel art? Check. Turn-based RPG combat? Check again. Rhythm mechanics but also music playing an integral role in the world, characters, and story? Okay, fine take my money I want to play this whole thing now. It’s true that Fretless might be all-in on the music conceit which can sometimes be detrimental when a game pushes all of its chips into the center on a hand, but in the brief slice that was playable at PAX East, seems like they are pouring attention to detail and copious amounts of love into these aspects of the game. Wandering around the world and running into a patch of flowers that ignited into a small melody, collecting guitar parts to modify your weapon, and building combat systems around cleverly crafted musical terms never felt like it was too much and I only wanted more.
The combat revolves around a deck of attacks that get dealt out each turn that come with plenty of ways to strategize the path forward in a fight by adding buffs/de-buffs, augmenting health, or capitalizing with powerful crescendo attacks. The layers shuffled into the combat could lead to surprising depth later into Fretless if this same level of care and balance is applied throughout the journey to foil Rick Riffson and his Super Metal Records’ scheme. Each attack from both the main protagonist Rob, or one of the many enemies on display in this slice of Fretless was accompanied with not only it’s own visual display but a string of music that fit what was happening on screen. A little mushroom looking enemy would stomp around with musical accoutrements that fit the animation which only just dialed me further into the action and world around me. In what seems like an effortless attempt at capturing a magical land of music with how wonderfully whipped together everything is, it was most definitely and arduous task that I can’t wait to see play out in its entirety.
Combat can seem daunting at first with the addition of a deck-like system attached to your weapon for attacking as opposed to menus and mana, but once you learn the rules and how different status fx (yes, status fx) function stacking up combos to build up shield or bolster attacks was incredibly satisfying and a joy to setup and execute. I cannot wait to noodle around in this melodic playground and discover everything of note.
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