Review: Infinity Nikki (Sony PlayStation 5)

I hate that I love so much about Infinity Nikki. There’s such a warming wholesomeness in abundance that the experience feels almost transformative and subversive. It’s like the developers saw all the combat loops that dominate all the other big-budget open world games and were determined to show that there were other ways to do things. Infinity Nikki is in so many ways unparalleled, taking what Genshin Impact started and refining it to an utterly gorgeous standard. If only the microtransactions weren’t so offensive.

Infinity Nikki is particularly offensive in this regard, unfortunately. It’s not just that the game is constantly trying to incentivise a LOT of money out of you (it is), but it’s because that monetisation is so at odds with the experience that the game purports to offer. Infinity Nikki is meant to be wholesome, good-natured and sweet. It’s a game of dress-ups and dress collection rather than slaughter and fan service. It’s a game where you’ll pay more attention to riding a bike through the air or playing hopscotch on a special board that magically transforms your clothes with each skip than some epic save-the-world plot (which is there to an extent as a way of introducing the game, but almost immediately forgotten once you land in Miraland, where all the fantasy happens). It’s a game that is meant to be simple, humble, and welcoming, in other words.

Meanwhile, the main “treasure” you’re searching out is stars called “whims,” and the villains are cut more from the ilk of Sailor Moon than genocidal maniacs, and that is Infinity Nikki’s core message: you’re playing something whimsical in a world of delights and wonder.

The world of Infinity Nikki is a delight to wander and participate in, too. It offers players a big open world, but also one filled with little activities and a simplified, yet engaging, approach to exploration. It’s also totally gorgeous and worth exploring just to discover the ideal places to indulge in some virtual photography. Unusually for these free-to-play open world things the game doesn’t feel designed to make progress crawl along just to keep you playing for as long as possible. It’s obviously too early for me to fully appreciate whether the content is sustainable long-term, but the good-natured relaxed pace and sense that you can just hang out and chill if that’s all you’re in the mood for does match with what I look for in this kind of game.

Finally, I truly love Nikki. In many ways she’s a mannequin of a character – in addition to her clothing, you can mess with her hair colour so she doesn’t need to look like the Nikki on the “box” if you don’t want her to. Much of the game’s storytelling comes from its lore rather than what Nikki herself does. This does mean that she lacks the definition of an authored character, but then again this makes her perfect for authoring your own character and personality into her. It’s a very Hatsune Miku approach and we all know how I feel about Miku. There is just enough of a personality conveyed through her voice, movement, and responses in cut scenes to have her come across as a wonderfully adventurous yet sweet girl, and of course,e she’s just so damn pretty you can’t help but love her.

In fact there are already Infinity Nikki figures available on the market, and given the point of the game is to play dress-ups, there’s no reason to think we won’t end up with dozens of Nikki figures filling up the anime fan’s cabinets in the coming years, just as Hatsune Miku and the Fate series have done in years past.

But the fact that all of this is so wholesome, pleasant and happy is also why it is so infuriating that the game also then prices itself at the point where you’ll be looking at about $500 to get the costume that you really want from any limited campaign (i.e. the “seasons” that one presumes will regularly roll over going forward). There is nothing wholesome, pleasant or happy about the way gacha developers aim to exploit their biggest fans and those with addictive personalities to hand over that kind of money, on an ongoing basis and into perpetuity. In fact, it’s downright scum behaviour, and it doesn’t suddenly become acceptable just because the underlying game is actually enjoyable. That actually makes it worse.

Because the basic game is so good, the excuses for the predatory microtransactions have, unfortunately, been rolling in like clockwork. I’ve seen plenty of comments to the effect of “you don’t have to buy the costumes, so the pricing is acceptable this time around,” and I’m sorry but what the hell are those people on? The entire game is about playing dress-ups, and sure, you do get a lot of costumes for free just by playing, but if the costume you want to see Nikki wandering around in happens to be one of those rare ones (and – surprise! – the rare ones do have an obvious additional level of effort from an art direction perspective), then you’re s*** out of luck and better break out the wallet, because owning that costume IS as essential to the fundamental experience of Nikki as a punch button is in a fighting game.

I don’t have an inherent issue with DLC. When it is genuinely optional and unrelated to the core mechanics, I enjoy buying costumes and other superficial elements. But clothing and fashion is core to the Infinity Nikki experience, and in monetising that specific element of the game the developers have gone to all lengths to turn this into an incredibly expensive hobby.

Again, that’s to its detriment, because it totally undermines the wholesomeness of the rest of the game. After playing a while I stopped seeing really pretty dresses on Nikki. All I saw was the monetisation behind this system, and then the pretty clothes on the pretty girl weren’t quite so joyful.

I suspect that because I refuse to pay $500 for a digital dress, my interest in Infinity Nikki will disappear the moment I miss out on getting a particularly attractive costume from one of the limited events. But then I’d be better off just waiting for a Nikki figure to come out with my favourite dress on it instead anyway. I can see myself becoming a big-time collector of Nikki figures, and I love the character and what Nikki represents outside of the monetisation. However, the monetisation is inexcusable, even by the standard of exploitative gatcha games. No video game about collecting dresses is worth more than it would cost to buy the actual dresses in the real world. What’s more, when you let the monetisation undermine everything that the creative side of the game is aiming to achieve and suck the joy out of the fundamental mechanics, you’ve just broken your project.