Infinite Guitars Review: Fails To Shred

On paper, Infinite Guitars screamed out as something tailor-made to appeal to me. An isometric turn-based RPG with an emphasis on rhythm-based gameplay and exploration, I was feeling hugely optimistic. But, unfortunately, my optimism was misplaced. Infinite Guitars, in practice, is a game that feels like it tries to do too much at once without ever truly nailing any of its core components, despite having a soundtrack that does a lot of heavy lifting.

Nonsensical Narrative

I’ll try my best to give a snippet of what’s going on in Infinite Guitars. I say try, as the narrative is a bit of an incoherent mess.

Our main protagonist JJ is adrift in a world that has long since been destroyed during a war between a mechanoid army and humans. Traveling with her Grandfather, JJ has just one love in life: her love of shredding on the strings of her trusty guitar. Following a visit to a floating island in their planet’s orbit, we discover that all humans are powered by cores that enable them to use guitars as weapons. This revelation is followed shortly by an appearance from someone from Grandad’s past, who swiftly abducts him for reasons which aren’t immediately clear. I say immediately clear, but the truth is, even after a significant number of hours, I still wasn’t clear on everyone’s motivations or the history behind this world. It’s not that there isn’t any narrative there; it’s more a result of how poorly it’s told. Conversations flash by with a heap of jargon and minimal context, and the writing, unfortunately suffers from what feels like poor localization. The end result is a world that’s difficult to care about, with additional party members that get added feeling like an afterthought. Nevertheless, the skeleton of something interesting is there, which makes it all the more frustrating when the writing can’t elevate some of the interesting concepts, such as the morality of war, which Infinite Guitars touches upon.

In Need Of Tuning

The way the narrative is fumbled would be forgivable if Infinite Guitars had enough going for it in terms of gameplay, but sadly, despite some interesting mechanics, repetition and a general lack of polish, drag the experience down further.

Infinite Guitar’s moment-to-moment gameplay can broadly be broken down into two components; exploration and combat. The former sees JJ exploring a number of admittedly beautifully drawn environments, hoovering up scrap that converts into experience needed for leveling, and navigating dangerous environmental hazards. Much like Tango Gameworks’ excellent Hi-Fi rush, much of the environment moves in time to a rhythm, meaning hazards will follow the same beat, making navigation a matter of timing your movement in an effort to avoid taking damage. At least, that’s how it plays out some of the time, as the dedicated dodge that enables you to roll through hazards rarely seemed to prevent me from taking damage. I’m not sure if maybe the hitboxes are off, or the dodge perhaps doesn’t contain the invincibility frames that the visuals would suggest, but it became much more efficient for me to forget about dodging entirely, with simply timing my runs through the dangerous wasteland proving to be the way forward.

Combat suffers from a similar lack of precision, though it is somewhat more enjoyable than the explorative sections of Infinite Guitars. As you venture about the various biomes, you’ll periodically encounter enemies roaming the wild. Engaging with them brings about turn-based combat, which itself is broken down into a few key elements.

Assuming the enemy attacks first, you’ll begin by dodging enemy attacks, which see an enemy attack either JJ or one of her party, with the player assuming direct control of the selected party member and subsequently having to dodge attacks in real-time on the screen. These dodges suffer from the same lack of precision as those you’re required to pull off when exploring, which often leads to you entering the attack phase with an HP deficit that feels more like it results from poorly designed mechanics than it does from player ineptitude. Once the enemy attack phase ends, you can then move on to your own action phase, where you select from any of JJ’s party members, each offering different options such as conjuring up debuffs, party-wide buffs, and just general damage-dealing attacks. It’s in these phases that Infinite Guitars shows what could have been with a little more refinement, as each attack typically involves the game transforming into a Guitar Hero-lite type affair. Played on a controller, notes will start flying across the screen horizontally, corresponding to the A, X, and Y buttons, with the requirement being to nail each button press as it glides over the sweet spot at the edge of the screen in time with the soundtrack in the background.

When the system works, it’s a true joy. Infinite Guitars has a killer soundtrack which initially makes these sections a highlight. They can be a real challenge, so playing along well to an awesome tune and then having your damage calculated based on your accuracy is massively satisfying. For a while, at least, until you realize that the same input issues that plague playing defense also crop up again when on the offensive. You’ll find yourself whiffing notes through no fault of your own, and the periodic sections that require you to hold down the input, or mash the button like a madman, will randomly stop recognizing your actions. It’s an incredibly glitchy affair, which completely undermines just how fun it is to engage with the rhythm gameplay when the game decides it wants to work as intended for any prolonged period of time. Then there’s also the issue of repetition; between the amount of combat you engage in, and the level of backtracking required across Infinite Guitars runtime, the tracks that initially seemed so delightful soon lose their appeal. That song that initially brought a huge grin to your face? Prepare to wince as it assaults your eardrums for the fiftieth time.

Visuals A High Point

While there are a lot of criticisms that can be thrown at Infinite Guitars, being difficult to look at certainly isn’t one of them. Adopting a striking anime art style, it frequently looks stunning. Enemy and character designs are also great, with enemies, in particular, being a treat to look at during the battle sequences, where you get a more detailed interpretation of their appearance than you do in the overworlds. The various environments that JJ will traverse are also decently varied, despite relying on pretty standard tropes and themes that won’t offer any surprise to anyone who has played an RPG before. It isn’t enough to save Infinite Guitars from being a slog to playthrough, but the passionate art direction is always appreciated, even where the overall package is lackluster.

Conclusion

Given how ambitious and unique the premise of Inifite Guitars is, it pains me to say that what should be a refreshing marriage of RPG and rhythm-based gameplay has turned out to be a bit of an exercise in tedium that is held back massively by issues with input recognition and repetition. It looks beautiful, and, with a few patches aimed at tightening up the gameplay, this may turn into something that is worth experiencing for that fantastic soundtrack alone, but, as it stands today, Infinite Guitars doesn’t feel like it was quite ready to take to the stage.

Final Verdict: 2/5

Available On: PC (reviewed), Switch, Xbox One; Publisher: Humble Games; Developer: Nikko Nikko; Released: 30 March, 2023; Players: 1; MSRP: $19.99