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When visiting PAX East this year, one of the biggest priorities on my schedule was demoing various RPGs that would be at the event, as that is my area of expertise when it comes to gaming. While there weren’t many at the expo, one that I absolutely knew I needed to try out was Fretless – The Wrath of Riffson by Ritual Studios.
This traditional turn-based RPG has the player fight against enemies using a musical instrument, allowing you to both strengthen your own attacks and block the actions of enemies with the power of rhythm.
When being given the tutorial for combat in this game, I had initially expected a system of simple QTEs like in Nintendo’s Mario & Luigi RPG franchise. Instead I was greeted with a very different but satisfying mechanic where each action the player takes in combat has a rhythm to it, with you needing to press the attack button in tune to the music in a way that is very quick and easy to learn yet is still satisfying each time you are successful at it.
With each attack having its own musical riff it plays during combat, you may expect the music during battle to constantly be very jarring or cut off at random points. I am very glad to say that it is quite the opposite; no matter what move I made during combat, the music transitioned to the attack chords seamlessly and was always a bop to listen to.
Another interesting aspect of the game’s combat system is how the player is able to select their actions each turn. Every turn, the player must choose and execute three options out of a possible six. The options that you do not pick will remain for the next turn. This leads to some interesting opportunities, such as the player waiting until they have several options with add shields before using their skill that does extra damage based on how many shields you currently have.
While all of this may sound incredibly simple when written out like this, when experienced, it leads to an incredibly addictive battle system which has me engaged to the point of me not noticing my time limit at the demo booth had run out, the one time this had happened to me at the convention.
The one aspect of the game that I wasn’t quite able to get my head around during the demo was the equipment system, both for your guitar and for your abilities during battle.
The guitar’s equipment system seemed simple enough, as you could equip perks to it at specific stations during the demo. As I only found a single one during my time with the game, I cannot comment on how much they change the flow of battle, but it’s safe to imagine it will be like equipment in any typical RPG.
What was really interesting, though, was the system for equipping the commands you could use in battle. I mentioned before how, during each turn in battle, you could select your actions from six choices. Those choices are determined by your ‘deck’, so to speak, where you can load up sixteen different commands to use in battle.
As someone who has played a fair amount of games with a deck-building system, I was very intrigued by this instantly, as instead of each command having a ‘cost’ so to speak, it allowed you to add any sixteen to your deck (including repeats of the same one, of course).
While the demo itself didn’t include many commands to put into my deck and experiment with, what was there already intimidated me as I had to think about how much I wanted to shield myself vs how much of the deck I wanted to just be raw attacks. I was able to make a decision fast (having only a limited amount of time to play in the demo booth was certainly a motivator there),
Obviously, I cannot comment on how this will play out in the later parts of the game, but the potential for decision paralysis amongst gamers who aren’t used to this type of system is possible. While I personally can see myself enjoying this aspect of the game, you should keep it in mind if you plan to buy it yourself.
Aside from the gameplay itself, Riffson is also visually impressive, with the spritework during battle showing off cool animations whenever the player or enemies attack during their turns.
Another aspect of Fretless’s visual design that truly stood out was the art and world design of the area I played through. The team went a mile beyond just making today an RPG with a music focus and instead made every aspect of the world be related to music.
From treasure chests that are made of stereos to flowers which are bells (and even make a small sound as you walk by them), it would have been understandable if the team just had a few musical items here and there, but to see the whole world be built like this is awe-inspiring and it might be worth checking out this title just to see what other aspects of the world are made of music.
Speaking of music, aside from the battle theme where I had to pay close attention with the provided headphones, I sadly wasn’t able to immerse myself to much into the soundtrack I heard due to the convention atmosphere, but considering how much of a bop the battle theme I heard was and how much the development team clearly cares about music, the game is likely in good hands there.
Overall, the team at Ritual Studios put together what could easily be one of the best small-scale RPGs of the year, and I would recommend trying out the demo, which is currently available on Steam.
Fretless – The Wrath of Riffson’s full release is right around the corner on May 22. After the enjoyable experience with the title I had at PAX, I can easily see myself playing through the full title when it releases.
