infinite guitars hurts because there's a ton of potential throughout it. the character designs rule, the music is nice, the world is open for an interesting story (instead of the really vague and confusing one they went with), and the concept of a rhythm rpg is really fucking cool. however everything after chapter 1 in this game was spent with me going "i mean i guess i'll keep going just to judge it fairly" and then regretting that decision every time i played. i then dropped it after chapter 9 (of 11?) after i lost a hour of progress thanks to autosave automatically kicking in when i accidentally selected an old save file. this was because I talked to a NPC in an area, their chatbox glitched out, and the game left me stuck in place unable to do anything but force quit.
anyways here's just a bullet list of everything I personally disliked or encountered within Infinite Guitars from what I played . [also all these bullet points are copy/pasted from discord. the ones in the second half are also kinda spoilery but not really because there's barely any plot to spoil in this game! there's still a warning when it starts getting spoilery though incase you care. very scattered and rambly though sorry]
- there’s either translation problems (no clue where the devs or from or what their first language is) or the writing is just Bad. grammatical errors and incredibly unclear plot points (one character’s motivation is “I would like to go find my sister or girlfriend it is genuinely unclear which one it’s supposed to be”. the fact they leave is literally not mentioned in the last conversation you have with them and yet every character suddenly knows it’s happened)
-lots of getting stuck on overworld objects that look like you should be able to walk through them or that are way too small and scattered around an area. fun when half of the gameplay is semi-bullet hell overworld dodging stuff!
-one thing is “running makes your screen smaller”. this would be fine and a suitable trade off for better projectile dodging and stuff if the base walking speed wasn’t slow, meaning you’ll probably be running all the time and struggle seeing stuff
-there was a bug where an enemy kept infinitely respawning so I had to fight it like six or seven times before I could escape. this is because there’s no escape battle mechanic so you’re stuck in every fight you get into
-equipment system is annoying. you can’t just swap items onto characters, you have to manually deequip any item a character has equipped and then equip a new item. why!
-there’s a weapon upgrade system at blacksmiths in each town that costs limited currency. you can’t actually check what upgrades a weapon has at any time without making the trek back to each individual blacksmith since they all have separate weapon upgrade tracking for some reason
-there’s a decent amount of songs but the game loves making you play the same few patterns to the same few songs. one area has you do the same exact rhythm game of one song excerpt four times to get through doors
-I’m on hard for overworld combat, turn based combat, and rhythm game stuff. none of the three is remotely hard. rhythm game I can understand because I am actually good at rhythm games so for all I know it’s hard to a non-experienced player, but there’s no battle strategy since every enemy dies in 2-3 hits regardless, and overworld attacks do like 1% of your health
-one mechanic is “depending on dialogue choices being aggressive or not your attack or defense will increase”. except maybe not because there’s been times where I choose the barely aggressive option and gain defense or vice versa?
-enemies respawn every screen change. more minor but also this is just annoying because enemy ai in the overworld ranges from “you are right next to me but I can’t see you” to “you’re barely on the same Y layer as me I’m gonna run and get you in a turn based fight now” [update from when i wrote backloggd review - turns out what i mistook as enemy ai was actually pathfinding that leads to the enemy walking to a place that you walk towards and then start walking in place and continually switching from looking left and right. why]
-there’s a whole system based around scrapping items you find for exp with a whole tutorial on misc. junk items. I’ve found a total of 3 junk items I could scrap so far and according to my time I should be over halfway through the game [update from when i wrote backloggd review - yeah i didn't find anything else since then]
-additionally you can scrap the Limited Upgrade Resource even though it’s Limited and also doesn’t even give exp. there’s been times where I’m scared that I accidentally hit the confirm key in the menu while scrolling past it
-there’s a few islands you move between using an airship as the hub thing. theres no actual map to check so you have to hope you remember where everything is (granted it's a small map but still annoying when you go to the wrong side and have to trek back)
-one area has you trek through like 10 rooms to make it to the boss. there’s then a dialogue exchange and you go back to the town 10 rooms back to save a character. you then have to go back to where the boss was there was no reason to kick us out. the game also then goes “oh yeah I’m a blacksmith and can do blacksmithing” but that was already unlocked when you first enter the town so ???
-in one island there's a bunch of chests that are already opened. i can't tell if it's intended or a bug. leaning towards bug because there's at least two paths where there should be some sort of reward but there's just an empty chest
- weird moving chest bug that happened twice - it just kept hovering up and down on the screen
PART WHERE RANTING STARTS GETTING MORE SPOILERY
- map is inaccurate (shows exit on the bottom right, but screen transition is all the way on the left side)
- sectors where map is just wrong (shows that there's 3 exits from a room - exit 1 connects to a room to the top left, exit 2 to a room right above it, and exit 3 to a room on the top right. however, the only two exits I could find was an exit that led to the top left and the exit to the right of it that led to the room on the top right. no sign of any exit that went to the room above.)
- "here, take our charge" dialogue but you get NOTHING {maybe gave something but not until the next screen}
- there's a room with two autosave guitars literally 5 seconds apart from each other. why.
- boss rush like 6 hours in with quick dialogue wrapping up character development ig??? (also kaylee's avatar doesn't even appear here i love bugs)
- fourth island focuses more on dialogue with a side character who does nothing than actually developing the character who joins you (who you talk to like twice total and who completely speedruns her character development within the span of a minute, going from "wow i gotta fight all these Centipedes by Myself because Power" to "yeah i'll join you guys it's what she'd want after all")
- THE BOSS RUSH INCLUDES THE BOSS YOU LITERALLY BEAT TEN MINUTES AGO
- they all just die and nobody mentions anything until you reaach The Final Boss Rush Boss Lady [update they still live why did she say that they died???]
- final boss rush boss lady attack plays the same unskippable intro animatio nevery time they attack
- every boss has the same exact "clash riff" thing happen with the same exact song. why?
- there's like nothing to buy in any of the shops. i hope you enjoy defense boost accessories even though defense is almost useless! (in hindsight i guess spending all your scrap on exp items is a good use of it??)
- same ru isa dialogue in both centipede mech fights
- sidegoals of stone cores remain even after collection
- character textboxes before ru island second boss allow you to open them, but they immediately close (and you're stuck in place unable to do anything)
- holy shit the second temple is "go in a square loop 3 times with barely altered rooms"
- overworld enemy icons don't correlate to the enemy type at all (as seen in temple 1 where there's several enemy sprites but they're all the same mech)
- can't place the orb in the thing (update: you have to run down the hall, place orb in statue, go through door, grab orb, run back up)
- lava on the island 2 revisit just isn't fun to try and roll over + the sun damage is actually annoying unlike visit 1 and there's way more forced damage/"no shade to run under" segments
- game froze after beating centipede mech fight 2, forced to quit the game and use autosave to fight it again
- several pieces of dialogue near the end of the game have the right half of the screen pure white instead of the character art that's supposed to be there
- objective tracker doesn't get rid of side goals after you achieve them in rizal visit 2
- rizal core mission is marked as "RIZAL_CORE1" in map. no way that's how it's supposed to be
- another textbox that freezes your game in rizal visit 2 town
- there's a key area in the inventory. i didn't get a single key once in my gameplay
- first third of the game has you unlock a whole two bonus attacks for characters with sidequests/npc dialogue. the only other unlocks i could find were the end of game mandatory super attack ones.
is Infinite Guitars the worst game out there? probably not. however, you'd have to kill me before I recommended this game to a single soul unless it goes through a ton of patches and changes.
anyways here's just a bullet list of everything I personally disliked or encountered within Infinite Guitars from what I played . [also all these bullet points are copy/pasted from discord. the ones in the second half are also kinda spoilery but not really because there's barely any plot to spoil in this game! there's still a warning when it starts getting spoilery though incase you care. very scattered and rambly though sorry]
- there’s either translation problems (no clue where the devs or from or what their first language is) or the writing is just Bad. grammatical errors and incredibly unclear plot points (one character’s motivation is “I would like to go find my sister or girlfriend it is genuinely unclear which one it’s supposed to be”. the fact they leave is literally not mentioned in the last conversation you have with them and yet every character suddenly knows it’s happened)
-lots of getting stuck on overworld objects that look like you should be able to walk through them or that are way too small and scattered around an area. fun when half of the gameplay is semi-bullet hell overworld dodging stuff!
-one thing is “running makes your screen smaller”. this would be fine and a suitable trade off for better projectile dodging and stuff if the base walking speed wasn’t slow, meaning you’ll probably be running all the time and struggle seeing stuff
-there was a bug where an enemy kept infinitely respawning so I had to fight it like six or seven times before I could escape. this is because there’s no escape battle mechanic so you’re stuck in every fight you get into
-equipment system is annoying. you can’t just swap items onto characters, you have to manually deequip any item a character has equipped and then equip a new item. why!
-there’s a weapon upgrade system at blacksmiths in each town that costs limited currency. you can’t actually check what upgrades a weapon has at any time without making the trek back to each individual blacksmith since they all have separate weapon upgrade tracking for some reason
-there’s a decent amount of songs but the game loves making you play the same few patterns to the same few songs. one area has you do the same exact rhythm game of one song excerpt four times to get through doors
-I’m on hard for overworld combat, turn based combat, and rhythm game stuff. none of the three is remotely hard. rhythm game I can understand because I am actually good at rhythm games so for all I know it’s hard to a non-experienced player, but there’s no battle strategy since every enemy dies in 2-3 hits regardless, and overworld attacks do like 1% of your health
-one mechanic is “depending on dialogue choices being aggressive or not your attack or defense will increase”. except maybe not because there’s been times where I choose the barely aggressive option and gain defense or vice versa?
-enemies respawn every screen change. more minor but also this is just annoying because enemy ai in the overworld ranges from “you are right next to me but I can’t see you” to “you’re barely on the same Y layer as me I’m gonna run and get you in a turn based fight now” [update from when i wrote backloggd review - turns out what i mistook as enemy ai was actually pathfinding that leads to the enemy walking to a place that you walk towards and then start walking in place and continually switching from looking left and right. why]
-there’s a whole system based around scrapping items you find for exp with a whole tutorial on misc. junk items. I’ve found a total of 3 junk items I could scrap so far and according to my time I should be over halfway through the game [update from when i wrote backloggd review - yeah i didn't find anything else since then]
-additionally you can scrap the Limited Upgrade Resource even though it’s Limited and also doesn’t even give exp. there’s been times where I’m scared that I accidentally hit the confirm key in the menu while scrolling past it
-there’s a few islands you move between using an airship as the hub thing. theres no actual map to check so you have to hope you remember where everything is (granted it's a small map but still annoying when you go to the wrong side and have to trek back)
-one area has you trek through like 10 rooms to make it to the boss. there’s then a dialogue exchange and you go back to the town 10 rooms back to save a character. you then have to go back to where the boss was there was no reason to kick us out. the game also then goes “oh yeah I’m a blacksmith and can do blacksmithing” but that was already unlocked when you first enter the town so ???
-in one island there's a bunch of chests that are already opened. i can't tell if it's intended or a bug. leaning towards bug because there's at least two paths where there should be some sort of reward but there's just an empty chest
- weird moving chest bug that happened twice - it just kept hovering up and down on the screen
PART WHERE RANTING STARTS GETTING MORE SPOILERY
- map is inaccurate (shows exit on the bottom right, but screen transition is all the way on the left side)
- sectors where map is just wrong (shows that there's 3 exits from a room - exit 1 connects to a room to the top left, exit 2 to a room right above it, and exit 3 to a room on the top right. however, the only two exits I could find was an exit that led to the top left and the exit to the right of it that led to the room on the top right. no sign of any exit that went to the room above.)
- "here, take our charge" dialogue but you get NOTHING {maybe gave something but not until the next screen}
- there's a room with two autosave guitars literally 5 seconds apart from each other. why.
- boss rush like 6 hours in with quick dialogue wrapping up character development ig??? (also kaylee's avatar doesn't even appear here i love bugs)
- fourth island focuses more on dialogue with a side character who does nothing than actually developing the character who joins you (who you talk to like twice total and who completely speedruns her character development within the span of a minute, going from "wow i gotta fight all these Centipedes by Myself because Power" to "yeah i'll join you guys it's what she'd want after all")
- THE BOSS RUSH INCLUDES THE BOSS YOU LITERALLY BEAT TEN MINUTES AGO
- they all just die and nobody mentions anything until you reaach The Final Boss Rush Boss Lady [update they still live why did she say that they died???]
- final boss rush boss lady attack plays the same unskippable intro animatio nevery time they attack
- every boss has the same exact "clash riff" thing happen with the same exact song. why?
- there's like nothing to buy in any of the shops. i hope you enjoy defense boost accessories even though defense is almost useless! (in hindsight i guess spending all your scrap on exp items is a good use of it??)
- same ru isa dialogue in both centipede mech fights
- sidegoals of stone cores remain even after collection
- character textboxes before ru island second boss allow you to open them, but they immediately close (and you're stuck in place unable to do anything)
- holy shit the second temple is "go in a square loop 3 times with barely altered rooms"
- overworld enemy icons don't correlate to the enemy type at all (as seen in temple 1 where there's several enemy sprites but they're all the same mech)
- can't place the orb in the thing (update: you have to run down the hall, place orb in statue, go through door, grab orb, run back up)
- lava on the island 2 revisit just isn't fun to try and roll over + the sun damage is actually annoying unlike visit 1 and there's way more forced damage/"no shade to run under" segments
- game froze after beating centipede mech fight 2, forced to quit the game and use autosave to fight it again
- several pieces of dialogue near the end of the game have the right half of the screen pure white instead of the character art that's supposed to be there
- objective tracker doesn't get rid of side goals after you achieve them in rizal visit 2
- rizal core mission is marked as "RIZAL_CORE1" in map. no way that's how it's supposed to be
- another textbox that freezes your game in rizal visit 2 town
- there's a key area in the inventory. i didn't get a single key once in my gameplay
- first third of the game has you unlock a whole two bonus attacks for characters with sidequests/npc dialogue. the only other unlocks i could find were the end of game mandatory super attack ones.
is Infinite Guitars the worst game out there? probably not. however, you'd have to kill me before I recommended this game to a single soul unless it goes through a ton of patches and changes.