When you think of music games, what do you think of? Over the last twenty years, the phrase music game has become synonymous with Rhythm games such as Rock Band, Guitar Hero, DJ Hero, and even Fortnite Music Festival.
Over the last decade, Indie game companies have looked to reinvigorate the franchise and evolve it into something new. During that time, games like Metal Hellsinger, Beat Sayber, Fuser, and DJ Hero changed the industry.
Now a new game called Fretless: The Wrath of Riffson by Ritual Studios looks to bring music to RPGs. Using a pixel art style, the developers want to create fun visuals and blend them with Music-based combat.
Fretless Demo Impressions
When you are playing through any demo there is always a limit as to how much you can take in before it becomes too much. Ritual Studios took this into account with their Fretless: The Wrath of Riffson demo; the demo was not to long and showed off the core mechanics of the game.
The game is an action-adventure RPG that has deck-builder elements. Combat within the game felt fairly simple with us overpowering the enemies with ease. Even the final boss of the demo felt fairly simple to overcome as long as you played your cards right.
Despite the ease of combat, that did not detract from the overall experience. The demo seemed to primarily focus on teaching the player the core gameplay mechanics but also showing off the 2D-pixel world.
As we explored the world, we could tell how much effort the developers had put into creating a vibrant world. Exploring the area didn’t feel like a chore where you could easily get a headache, but instead felt like reconnecting with an old friend we hadn’t seen in a while.
It warped us back to a time when we didn’t care about the graphics of the game but rather how it played and felt. The feeling of playing through Golden Sun, Dragon Quest, and Chrono Trigger came rushing to mind while playing Fretless.
They say music can heal the soul or bring back memories from our past; Fretless: The Wrath of Riffson was able to do just that, connect to our soul through the power of music.
Yes, the beginning combat was overly simplified but that’s what made it fun. We could mix our attacks up and come up with fun and creative ways to take down monsters and enemies
Honestly, we look forward to when Fretless: The Wrath of Riffson releases sometime in 2024 for Windows PC (via Steam).
