Videogame Review: ‘Fretless: The Wrath of Riffson’

Fretless – The Wrath of Riffson is a game that has caught my eye at the last couple of PAX East conferences and I was excited to take the final release for a spin. Everything I liked from the demos is better and bigger. But while the music, combat, and exploration were great, I found the thin story held back the full potential for this game to shine, err, shred.

Fretless: The Wrath of Riffson is a pixel-art adventure set in the rock-inspired musical universe of Rob Scallon and his friends. This music-infused game has the hero, Rob, just aching to join the Battle of the Bands, while the corrupt runners from SMR Records try to get him out of the way so they can fix the competition in their favor.

This simple setup leads to a short but satisfying journey as Rob explores the land where the plants, trees, animals, and enemies all take part in the musical journey. The game is focused on making your way to the Battle of the Bands, finding new instruments, Riffs, and Mods, and staying alive as evil SMR VPs, mutated creatures, and dangerous monsters block the way.

Visually the game is a vibrant and lovingly crafted pixel experience that really shows the world in an interesting and charming way. The various instruments you find look and feel great in gameplay and every location looks unique and is enjoyable to explore.

The key mechanics in Fretless revolve around the combat using the various instruments: the humble but powerful Acoustic Guitar, loud and potent Bass Guitar, psychedelic Synthesizer and arcanely devious Six-String Metal Guitar.

Each Instrument performs in a different way, with its own catalogue of Riffs (attacks) and Mods that can be installed. This was one of my gripes. Because each instrument handles differently, I was often confused when I got a new one. While I typically hate tutorials, short ones explaining the different modifiers and powerups would have been appreciated.

I would have also loved to be able to swap instruments mid-battle, like in other games you change from, say, a bow to a sword. This would have added some fun mix-and-match techniques. Instead, each time I found a new instrument I just used that until the next one was discovered. I ended up sticking with the six-string till the end as it was very cool and I saw no need to swap out to another option.

The game is very linear and as mentioned above pretty static once you find an instrument you really like. Aside from adding and changing Riffs and swapping Mods and discoverable pedals, I went into combat with whatever instrument was newest.

Combat is turn-based. Once enemies are engaged it is actually pretty fun. A selection of your Riffs are available and three can be strung together into an attack. Some damage, while others add shields or effects. Once my attacks complete, the enemies get their turn and hit with one of their abilities.

Developer Ritual Studios added a nice feature: If a simple QTE is triggered during each attack or defense then damage is increased or decreased. Successful QTEs also fuel the crescendo meter and once that is full a special free attack can get triggered.

This massive attack is customized to each instrument and always revolves around a simple rhythm game. The more successful inputs, the more devastating the attack. Once combat is done some simple loot is acquired and we move on to next encounter.

And that is pretty much all there is to the game. Explore a region, fight some enemies and then a sub boss, move to the next region and rinse/repeat. Finding new Instruments, Riffs, Mods and pedals helps to customize the experience, but the story is fairly thin and the overall journey fairly simplistic.

Having said that I did really enjoy my time with Fretless: The Wrath of Riffson. The presentation is terrific, with each instrument showcasing different music and FX, and the world is very charming and fun to explore. More depth in the story and strategy with Instruments would have made this that much better, but overall it was a fun game to experience.

We were given a Steam code for Review Purposes. Fretless: The Wrath of Riffson is available right now for PC via Steam.