Preview conditions: We played the PC version of the game for about 6 hours, using a machine with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600 processor, 16 GB of RAM and an AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card.
Princess Nikki
To put aside the contemporary aspect to which the series is usually attached, Infinity Nikki starts almost like The world of Narnia. It's about a magic wardrobe in an old attic that gives access to another world much more fantasy-like, with a story of a magic dress and darkness to purify. We'll quickly move on from this story already seen a thousand times to focus on the particularity of our heroine.
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Nikki is just a young woman without powers accompanied by her little pet creature that we will call a cat (the cute Momo), except that in this world she has the faculty to be able to change outfits on the fly. Very practical to save time in the morning, but the interest of this capacity lies in the fact that Some outfits have a special power.
We quickly acquire a look dressed all in blue that allows us to glide to make longer jumps, a green dress to throw balls of light, overalls to play surface technicians … These outfits are roles that we will be able to switch at will to solve the different puzzles that present themselves to us. Not all of them, since the game does not forget its roots and nevertheless leaves some room for customization by letting you configure your initial look with dozens, or rather hundreds of options.
From one person to another, Nikki will not necessarily have the same appearance as the choices are numerous and varied, with truly successful outfits that draw on diverse and varied influences. All this goes through a craft part which requires exploring the game's large open world, with lots of materials to collect. At first, it might seem like it has little impact except for fashionistas, but the game also sets up challenges in which you have to put together an outfit that is attractive enough to earn the most points and get more rewards.
“Fashion hell is really cool”
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This is where we find the “dress-up game” part of the other games in the license, which remains the heart of the experience. Its skeleton, however, changes radically. If we wanted to flatter Google with crude shortcuts as titles, one could almost say thatInfinity Nikki is more of a mix between Genshin ImpactMario and Princess Peach than just an adventure game. And the comparison would not be so hackneyed after all. We see Genshin-likes everywhere and we sometimes tend to use this term wrongly or indiscriminately. However, it is difficult to deny the influence that HoYoverse's game has had on the structure of free-to-play open-world games.
It's not so much in its gameplay asInfinity Nikki recalls this genre, but in its coating. We find all the codes of classic free-to-play with menus that all look the same, several currencies, daily tasks, an overall adventurer level, energy to spend each day, challenges in the open world or chests to go and find… Which helps you easily get your bearings if you are used to games of this type.
It is once we are interested in the activities that are offered to us that we better understand the other comparisons with Nintendo games. For Princess Peachno need to explain it to you again, the principle of the different outfits has been discussed. As for Mario, it's simply because The title is both an exploration game and a platform game.. Nikki is not a warrior, and other than being able to throw glowing balls that will one-shot her opponents, she will remain defenseless.
This is why the emphasis is rather placed on platform challenges, with dungeons that require a bit of skill to see the end. There are even bosses that would have been perfectly at home in a Mario game, and that require either getting through their attacks or knowing their repetitive patterns in order to “attack” them. If we think of Mario first before other games of the genre, it is also because one of the major objectives of your quest will be to go in search of giant stars. These are obtained by succeeding in various challenges within the open world, which again take the form of platform phases in most cases.
These stars are then used to advance Nikki in a skill tree that will unlock new outfits and therefore new roles, and here you have the cycle of the game repeating itself. The purpose ofInfinity Nikki rremains to be seen since beyond its qualities, Its unengaging dialogues and its classic open world quickly install a feeling of repetitiveness.especially if you are already used to this kind of level design, which is nothing crazy. It still has the charm of its settings, helped by the Unreal Engine 5. which works wonders on lighting. At least, when optimization is there, since this beta version still suffers from major problems on this side with a few crashes on the counter and a framerate that yo-yos, even on a machine that is nevertheless sufficient to run the game correctly.
Clear, Infinity Nikki builds on the strengths of the license while making a fairly significant shift that looks at aspects found in dozens of free-to-play games today. Many things still need to be verified over time (like its economic model, which is necessarily absent in the beta) to see if this marriage is a happy one or not. As it stands, Infinity Nikki has at least the merit of pushing the series towards new horizons to conquer an audience that was probably unaware of its existence until now.