Infinity Nikki is beautiful, captivating, and enormously complicated

Written by Eric Hauter on 12/2/2024 for PC  

Infinity Nikki arrives on December 5, after spending the last six months sending shiver after delicious shiver down the spine of the gaming community during it's prerelease period. From the moment of the game's initial reveal, gamers of all stripes have been captivated by the gorgeous graphics on display, the charming character work, and the call of the stunning open world. Hardened RPG and shooter fans have been forced to look inward with self-examination, startled by the fact that they are seriously considering playing a game centered unabashedly on the concept of "dress up". 

I'm among those gamers. I took one look at Infinity Nikki's fabulously detailed worlds and said "Yup. I want to go there." The excitement of exploring the world of Infinity Nikki immediately trumped any doubts in my mind, negating the need for inward reflection. I'll play dress up, no problem. There is no shame in my game.

The visuals in Infinity Nikki have to be seen to be believed; this game is absolutely gorgeous, to the point where the fact that Nikki is launching as free-to-play feels like some sort of prank. The closest visual analogue I can think of are AAA Square-Enix games; the latest Final Fantasy games have similarly beautiful imagery. In fact, the entire tone of Infinity Nikki feels Square-adjacent. Your little (not as irritating as you might think) buddy Momo is definitely a Moogle-like. And everything else, from the architecture to the color palate, just screams "top-of-the-line Square-Enix". I mean this as a high compliment. Visually, this game is an absolute banger.

I've had a prerelease build of Infinity Nikki in hand for a couple of days, and while I don't feel right offering an actual review until the game's monetization is in play, I have played enough to offer some thoughts. My build had the in-game store locked down, so I still don't know how all that works, though some pre-release documentation states that monetization will be strictly cosmetic in nature. I still dutifully dug in and played about ten hours of Nikki while awaiting the final build. Frankly, after that brief period of time, I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. To call Infinity Nikki deep would be an understatement. I think "complex as hell" is a bit more apt.

The build I've played seems to be missing an introductory sequence, so I joined Nikki upon her awakening in a beautiful but strange world, where she is quickly taught the bare basics of the game's traversal and combat. She quickly loses these abilities (which are tied to specific outfits), but not to worry, because she just as quickly gets them back. The core gameplay in Infinity Nikki involves the collection of outfits, which are insanely intricate designs, consisting of many pieces. The player gathers a resource called "Whim" to construct outfits, and at the game's outset you will be able to craft full sets, but before long you'll be questing for materials to make individual pieces.

Some outfits are gained just for the fun of changing up how Nikki looks in-game (which is surprisingly entertaining), but some of them offer new abilities. Nikki wanders the countryside, solving quests and minor platforming puzzles, exploring, and gathering materials that can be fashioned into new stuff. It's a great loop that keeps the player constantly on the lookout while exploring. The gamer-ass-gamer side of me could not help but notice the parallels between Nikki and games like Monster Hunter and Diablo, which also have the player creating new outfits that give abilities. Just sayin'.

The story in Infinity Nikki takes her to the nearby settlement of Florawish, where Nikki joins a local guild of designers. It is here where Infinity Nikki reveals it's true nature as a UI monster. This is a game that hides menus in menus in menus. As Nikki joins the guild and starts to work through her first few quests, the player is absolutely clobbered with new features and the menus needed to access them. Hold down the LB button to reveal one set of menus, the Start button to reveal a second. Don't forget the D-pad, which has more. Infinity Nikki frequently plays like this: you are asked to access a series of menus, then press a face button to enter the second series of pop-ups. Choose the one on the right and tip the right stick in the direction of the correct icon. Let go to access the menu to see the passive quests that you can cash in for the crystals that will give you the diamonds that will allow the outfits to...sparkle? I don't know. I totally lost the thread. It is a bewildering maze that might be manageable if it were delivered over maybe 15 hours, but Infinity Nikki drops it on your head like an anvil. 

It is at this point in the game where players can either jump off the cliff and declare that they are in, or they can back slowly away from the labyrinth of gacha nightmares that Infinity Nikki unleashes. All of the UI is cute, laden with little animal faces and glowing sparkles, but there is just so much, and it comes all at once. In order to keep myself grounded, I chose to stop exploring the UI unless absolutely necessary, and instead focused on trying to finish quests in the game's world. Still, when Infinity Nikki told me to go to the "Heart of Infinity", I thought that was a physical place, and wandered around for a good thirty minutes looking for it before discovering that it was the name of a menu. I felt like I needed a spread sheet, a notebook, and a murder board just to keep track of where all the menus were.

I had fully planned on engaging my kids with Infinity Nikki, as the game is super charming. But after spending some time with it, I'm not sure they can handle the menu system. Maybe the 11-year-old can do it with some guidance, but the eight-year-old will bounce off for sure. Which is a shame, because the moment to moment gameplay in Infinity Nikki is actually very fun.

There are a ton of platforming puzzles scattered about the landscape, just waiting to be discovered and solved for some sparkling reward. Jumping is super floaty, clearly on purpose, allowing Nikki to tap once to jump, tap twice to gently float forward toward a platform. Don't worry too much about missing jumps; come anywhere close to a platform and Nikki dutifully mounts it. Similarly, Nikki is rocking some major aim assist for the game's light combat sequences. If you just kinda face towards an enemy and tap the button, the game takes care of the rest. 

That isn't to say that the moment to moment gameplay is no fun because it is too easy. Infinity Nikki makes up for difficulty with sheer volume. The world is dense with discoveries and is very, very fun to explore, and as Nikki gains more abilities, you realize just how many activities are layered into the experience. For example, Nikki quickly gains the ability to groom animals. And suddenly, you notice all the animals and birds that have been flitting around the game. I had thought they were pretty graphical embellishments; turns out that they are gameplay mechanics. And suddenly, there's a new layer of stuff to do in the game, along with new materials to collect. Then Nikki gains the ability to catch bugs, and you think "Oooooh...that's what all these buzzy round bees and pretty butterflies are about." And so on, and so on. All of these mechanics are carefully tuned to deliver on the maximum amount of cuteness and delight straight to your brain's pleasure centers.

There is no question that Infinity Nikki is not my sort of game. I'm not sure who the audience is for this sort of experience, but "52-year-old dad with not a lot of time" is surely not the key demographic Nikki's developers were shooting for. It's not the age or the dad-hood that is issue here, it's the "not a lot of time" part. Infinity Nikki feels like an enormous game, and it is so laden with collectables and mechanics that it will take at least twice the time I've spent with the game to even start come to terms with everything. And yet...I could see myself going full Diablo on this thing, still dutifully pressing buttons after I have literally seen and done everything, in a dopamine-fueled pursuit of the next vital pair of shoes.

I don't foresee an end for Infinity Nikki; I suspect that once the player has worked through the story, the game will continue spooling out new goals and prizes to keep them returning. And of course, constant updates will keep the game's world expanding. Which might be just what the doctor ordered. I can foresee a large swath of gamers happily freefalling into Infinite Nikki and never looking back. Really, are the gameplay mechanics all that different from the usual battle pass we all adore in other games? Even from the outside looking in, I can identify a quality product when I see one. And though I've so far found Infinity Nikki to be a little impenetrable, there is no question that it had been lovingly crafted to set records in the "addictive" and "adorable" categories. If that sounds like your jam, then you might as well take the leap.