People of Note by developer
Iridium Studios and publisher
Annapurna Interactive—
Sony PlayStation 5 review written by
Jim with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes.
Not many people know that I love musicals from movies like The Greatest Showman and Repo! The Genetic Opera. I love musical plays like The Phantom of the Opera and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. I loved games like Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, and of course, I love music in general. After playing the People of Note demo, I knew I had to play the full game.
You play as a pop singer named Cadence who wants to become the next big pop star in Chordia, the City of Pop. The boy band Smolder has won it for the last few years and is all everyone in Chordia can talk about. To become the next big singer, Cadence enters Noteworthy, a type of competition, but when she is told by commissioner Sharp she isn't good enough, Cadence goes on a quest to make her music better by forming a band. The story evolves from this challenge into a dramatic quest to save the world, keeping me engaged and eager to see how it unfolds.
I fell in love with all four of the main characters. There is, of course, Cadence, who represents pop; Fret, the old-school rocker; Synthia, an EDM DJ; and Vox, a rapper. The cast is really good. Heather Gonzalez plays Cadence perfectly, and even though the singing is by LEXXE, they sound so much alike that I didn't even realize they weren't the same. Erika Ishii voices Synthia, and Amanda Angeles does the singing for Synthia. It was easy to tell that the singer's voice didn't match Erika Ishii's, but I still enjoyed it. Fret is voiced and sung by Jason Charles Miller, who some may know from his singing in the Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance song Rules of Nature among other things. And lastly, Vox is voiced and sung by Mansa Wakili, who, honestly, I have never heard of, but he plays Vox like a pro with good rapping. That is just the four main characters of the game; The other minor characters are just as amazing voice actors and singers!
People of Note is a turn-based RPG with some music thrown into the battles. The battles play a little differently from a traditional RPG, where a turn is called a "stanza". During a stanza, you can act with any of your characters first and then all of your enemies. There is a bar at the bottom of the screen that shows how many actions you have, and each character can act once and has to wait. You can sometimes act more times than you have active characters in a stanza. Once you use each character once, you will be able to use any character again. Using an attack or skill will bring up a rhythm mini game where you hit X when two circles meet, like in lots of other rhythm games. If this isn't to your liking, you can turn it off in the options menu. The better you do, the more damage the attack will do. Using Skills uses up BP. Each stanza, you get one BP, but you can rest instead of attacking or using a skill that will give two BP and acts like a defense in other games, as it raises a character's defense. A neat feature of battles in People of Note is that each stanza will have a music style or sometimes none at all. Using a skill or attack with the character who matches the style of music will increase the power of that attack or skill.
You get to see what is coming for the next few turns so that you can plan ahead. Once Cadence becomes closer to her bandmates, they will unlock Mash-ups. Every time one of the bandmates takes damage, their mash-up bar will go up, and once both bandmates' bars are full, they can use a special skill that will deplete their mash-up bar, but is a useful skill that can be very powerful or do things like heal everyone. Mash-ups will then change the music's style for the rest of that stanza to match the bandmates who used the mash-up. One thing I didn't like was that every boss battle starts with them using a skill called mash-down, which takes the bars down to nothing. If you were saving it for a boss, it won't let you use it. I have used this tactic in other RPGs with skills like this, and it's a bummer that they make you raise the bar again, and most of the time, the battle didn't last long enough to get a mash-up. The party is healed after every battle, so there are no battle items like potions. Boss fights also have a timer; the longer you take, the higher the "crescendo" bar rises, and the stronger their attacks become, adding a new challenge to bosses.
People of Note handles random battles a little differently than other games. Instead of walking around and a random battle starting, you have to press Triangle, and it will ask if you want to start a battle. Winning battles awards you with experience, groove (money), and AP. It's a good way to farm for levels or AP. There are still some battles that are not random that start by running into the enemy on the map. They stand there and don't move, but you have to defeat them before you can move on. Another thing you get from battles is vinyls. Each area that has battles, let's call them dungeons, has its own vinyl that you can trade to an NPC in each area for items like new equipment or songstones. It gives a reason to use that random battle feature if you want decent equipment you can't get anywhere else.
Characters gain skills by equipping songstones to their weapons, which are also their instruments. Each instrument has its own songstone graph. Stronger instruments allow more songstones to be equipped. This part was a pain. Every time you equip a new instrument, check the graph, as it changes what's equipped and the order in which they appear in the battle menu. Don't let muscle memory get to you during battles, as it did me a few times. At least you can change skills anytime you want outside of battles. You will also get remix stones you can attach to the graph to add things to the skills, for example, making attack skills stronger or healing anytime you use the skill the remix stone is attached to. The AP you gain from battles can be used to strengthen songstones that you have equipped. Each character gets their own AP. You are free to experiment with it, as there is no penalty for taking from and adding to the songstones you want; you even get all AP back if you unequip a songstone! You can buy new songstones and remixstones at shops and find them in chests.
As you explore, you will find NPCs who will give you puzzle battles. Each puzzle battle gives you predetermined equipment, songstones, and tasks you with doing things like winning a battle in so many stanzas. You're keeping everyone alive for so many stanzas, or doing so much damage. Some of them were difficult towards the end, but I managed to get them with time. Luckily, these are all optional, but they do give you experience and groove. Other things you can find that are optional are hidden owls you find by a shining spot on the ground. These owls are called "Weird Owl"; they look a lot like Weird Al and even play polka music when you encounter them. They give you trivia about the game, and if you get it right, you will get a feather that you can trade later on in the game. Again, these are optional, but they are fun to try to find and get all of them. I do love the nod to Weird Al, though! These are not the only nods to singers or bands. I saw a shop called 3 Stores Down. These little nods are all over the place in this game, and I love it. Also, there is a dog breed in the game called an Accorgion! Half accordian, half Corgi, that you can pet!
There are puzzles in the dungeons that, for the most part, I was able to figure out, but some of them were frustrating. Luckily, there is an option to turn off puzzles. This option helps if you've already beaten the puzzles but want to go back to look for anything you might have missed, or if you don't like puzzles. I'm not a huge fan of puzzles, but with trial and error, I was able to do them. You can also play the game with skippable battles, but I kept this option off; it's there for anyone who wants to hear the story or listen to the music.
For a game about music, and the devs went out and made fully animated music videos, having no option to rewatch them was a huge bummer. There are jukeboxes where you can listen to any song you have listened to, including battle music and world music, not just the musical songs. It's nice to listen to them, but I would have loved to rewatch the videos, and I have to wonder why they didn't think of this? Why spend all that time animating a song when you will only allow it to be viewed once?
Now, I did run into a few issues with the game that I hope are just early build bugs. I got stuck on scenery a few times and had to return to the menu and reload a save. There are a few times when, like above, I got stuck by falling off areas I wasn't even supposed to be able to fall off of. This glitch also happened about two times. Later in the game, I ran into an issue where the screen wouldn't transition views or would show a white screen. This happened a few times, maybe 2 or 3. Then, in one mini game, if you fail to win it, you cannot start it again unless you reload your save. I am hopeful these will be patched in a day-one patch.
Graphically, the game is pleasing. It looks hand-drawn with bright colors. Each City is based on a genre of music, and the colors and style match it so perfectly. Another nice touch is that each instrument (weapon) that you can equip to characters all look different. It's really noticeable with Frets guitar.
A game about music should have a good soundtrack. I'm happy to report that the music in People of Note is really good. From the score to the musical songs, they are all so good! There are a good number of musical songs, and I'm hoping they release the soundtrack at some point. I do wish the musical songs were a little longer; most seem to be under 3 minutes.
It took me about 30 hours to beat the game, which is a decent length for an indie RPG, but it wasn't long enough to fully tell the story of some of the characters, like Vox, who you get just before the halfway point. I would like to know more about the boy band Smolder or one of the main enemies, with whom I was expecting a big reveal, but nothing really happened with them. I hope the game does well enough that we get a sequel, because I fell in love with the game's characters.
Overall, People of Note made me smile from start to finish. I absolutely love the game's music, and I am so glad I got to play it. The story is decent, but not the best, but the musical songs more than make up for it. It's extremely rare to find games like this, with only two others coming to mind off the top of my head. They added too many puzzles toward the end. To me, it was to make the game seem longer, and I wasn't a fan of that, but other than that, I really enjoyed the game! So far, it might be my game of the year! The game's engaging soundtrack and musical themes really resonated with me, making it a must-try for music lovers.
Score: 8.75 / 10
