You know that kind of conversation on the Internet where one familiar item is identified as another completely different item in a way that shouldn't make sense but strangely does? like like a hot dog could be classified as a sandwichor because it has a filling enclosed by dough, a Pop-Tart is ravioli. Although Infinity NikkiIt looks like a high quality dress up gacha game, it's actually Breath of the wild reborn with elegant clothes.
In the game, you play as Nikki, an ordinary girl who is whisked away to the fantasy world of Miraland along with her pantsless, bipedal, talking cat, Momo. In Miraland, fashion is magical and a guild of stylists uses it to combat the evils of the world and each other.
I had issues with its clunky, unintuitive, and sometimes unresponsive control scheme.
Infinity Nikki having so much in common with Breath of the wild It wasn't immediately obvious. At first I didn't really like the game. I had issues with its clunky, unintuitive, and at times unresponsive control scheme. The menu icon is in the top right corner of the screen, but is opened by holding down the key left shoulder button. But when you open the radial menu, you can only highlight icons with the right stick. The direction pad doesn't work and while you use the x button to confirm selections, the circle is used to click in the dialog. It's a disaster and the platform change between mobile and PS5 didn't solve this problem at all.
Control issues aside, Niki Then I ran into my dislike for gacha games. I don't outright hate them despite their reputation for having the same kind of predatory design elements that led to the crackdown on loot boxes. Rather, I've found them to be either completely impenetrable with their billions of progression systems and currencies layered on top of a completely banal game, or so naked in their primary purpose of extracting my time and money that they put me off. Prima facie, Infinity Nikki I felt like that.
In addition to the exploration and fashionable battles, Infinity Nikki is filled with all kinds of mini-games that provide an entertaining break from a game like this. Flappy bird.
But as I ran through a pastoral field, with soft piano music playing at a predetermined volume a few levels below a whisper, I saw a golden glow in the distance. I found a plant that I was able to collect. Then another. Then Momo, which is basically the mobile game version of Persona 5Morgana, told me that something called a “whimstar” was nearby. I found it at the top of a rocky cliff and it required some light platforming to get to. From the elevation, I saw a treasure chest, so I used my bubble suit to gently glide towards it before changing into my purification suit to dispatch the monsters guarding it. Once they were gone, I saw a bug that I could collect with the new bug catcher suit I had just made. So I…
It's easy to read this and think that everything Infinity Nikki what he has done is take OTW and fill it with microtransactions (which I'll get to later). But when I had my, “Oh, shit. This is zelda”, revelation, it didn't look like a cheap clone. I felt the same pleasant jolt I felt when solving a Korok puzzle when obtaining a whimsical star. And the dress-up mechanic added a layer of novelty that further enhanced the game and my enjoyment.
all in Niki It is driven by fashion. There are special outfits, like my Monster Purification Dress or my Bug Hunter Uniform, that impart abilities that allow you to roam the map, collect materials, and fight monsters. You then use the materials you've gathered from those activities to upgrade your skill sets or obtain the clothing you want to customize your avatar. There are so many clothes and accessories, each with intricately beautiful details, that you can wear to radiate your own style and win fashion battles against other stylists.
After exploring, I had a lot of fun creating outfits in fashion duels against NPC stylists. Each garment is assigned points in five categories: sweet, fresh, elegant, sexy or cool. Whoever has the highest score in the designated categories wins. Since these battles are score-based, you can easily win wearing an ugly hodgepodge of high-value clothing, kind of like when I won my first battle. The experience was so rewarding that it made me want to try to win future battles with looks that are both high-scoring and high-fashion.
Borrowing a phrase from Final Fantasy XIV, “Glamour is the end game.” It means you're not playing to become powerful or win the game, you're playing solely to fund your fashion habit. And surprisingly it's not expensive.
Although Niki As a gacha game that is essentially designed to make you spend money, its monetization systems seem more vestigial than critical. Most gacha games never require players to spend money, but they are usually designed in such a way that you can't avoid it. The main activities of the game are arbitrarily limited and if you want to continue playing, you must pay. From what I've seen after 15 hours, Niki It doesn't have that.
Dressing up is the main feature and there is a cash shop where you can spend money on consumables that give you the chance (known as a “pull” in the gacha community) to win temptingly pretty, high-value clothing. But there are plenty of other cashless ways to get clothes that are as attractive as anything on sale.
You can try to mix and match pieces of your skill sets, earn clothing or blueprints to make from quest rewards, or simply buy things from in-game vendors with in-game cash. I wasn't a fan of all the lace, sparkles and pastels I did for my first outfit and considered throwing a few dollars into the fashion slot machine. But as I continued my magpie adventures, I made a punk rock look that I would actually wear in real life without spending a dime. It seemed like the store was only there for people who simply needed the exclusives it offered.
I enjoyed how Infinity Nikki It subverted my expectations. A gacha game managed to recreate Breath of the wild in function and spirit, while the depth and detail of the fashions spoke directly to my love of individual expression in games. It wasn't simply an Unreal Engine 5 version of the dress-up games of the early Internet, but a spiritual and sartorial successor to one of the best games of the last decade.
Infinity Nikki It is now available on Android, iOS, PlayStation and PC.
