Fretless - The Wrath of Riffson is the kind of genre-blending mismatch that’s just crazy enough to work. A turn-based deck-building rhythm game clearly made by musicians with a care for the craft scratches an itch for me that a lot of more straightforward rhythm games don’t. Like Hi-Fi Rush before it, Fretless’ marriage of mechanics and musicality is intuitive enough for the rhythmically challenged, but clever in ways that make it especially rewarding for those of us with a musical background. Its love of the genre that’s given us everything from Slay the Spire to Balatrod is obvious, but it’s the care it demonstrates for the music out of which every mechanic is built that helps it rise above its contemporaries in the ever-growing field of deck builders.
Music is everything in Fretless. Melodies and percussion are found in every pixel of its retro-style world. Passing through a small garden of flowers will release a series of calming notes into the air like you’re running your hands through a series of hanging handbells or wind chimes. The monsters that Rob, the silent but always expressive musician, faces on his way to a literal Battle of the Bands competition are all based on instruments, with each one weaponizing the game’s eclectic soundscape to stop him from reaching his destination. The only way to fight music is with a setlist of your own, and that’s the entire deck-building premise: making music with your own instruments.
Rob can wield one of four instruments: an acoustic guitar, a bass, a synthesizer, and an eight-string electric. Each axe has a different set of “riffs” that make up a deck, and while you can customize your loadout, each has a bespoke, core mechanic that makes every instrument demonstrably different. The bass has a “slap” meter that, if strategically raised, will power up certain attacks to devastating effect. The synthesizer, which quickly became my favorite of the bunch, utilizes “status FX” and exploits them to multiply damage to such a high output that if I placed the right cards down in the right order, I could wipe out powerful bosses in a turn or two. The eight-string is perhaps the most challenging but rewarding instrument to wield, with its push-and-pull playstyle sapping your own health in exchange for destructive attacks, eventually culminating in summoning a powerful ally who can turn the tide of battle.
Each instrument requires a different strategy, and an intimate knowledge of the way different cards interact with each other to use them effectively. There’s a surprising amount of minutiae to each deck, and every attack you use, spell you cast, and status FX you inflict has a timed rhythm element that, if you manage to land it, will increase their effectiveness. After playing games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which also had timing woven into its turn-based battles but whose dodge and parry windows were often poorly communicated, it was refreshing to have something like Fretless, which ties its blocking and power-boosting mechanics to the actual rhythm of the music being composed in each battle. After I’d spent hours fighting with the synthesizer, its riffs were baked into my muscle memory, allowing me to compose a symphony of whoop-ass with my eyes closed.
The rhythm elements are only part of optimizing a deck. Each turn, you use up to three cards with different (or repeating) effects, and each funnels into an instrument’s playstyle. The synthesizer has cards that inflict status FX, then damaging cards that increase their output if an enemy is afflicted by specific ailments. Choosing what order to use the cards in so you can chain their effects together is the core of its deck-building. Each turn, you draw new cards and have to work with the ones you’ve got on hand, and figuring out how to min-max whatever you’re stuck with can be the difference between a wasted turn and a strategic sweep. You start Fretless with the acoustic guitar and its damage-dealing and shield-building cards lull you into a false sense of simplicity, only for every subsequent instrument to experiment with the game’s deep mechanics in ways that I was constantly surprised by.
All of this would be nothing without Fretless’ excellent, eclectic soundtrack. Rob’s arsenal determines the battle music for most of its fights, but bosses bring their own sound into the ring. Fretless’ music spans so many genres, from the electric beats of the synthesizer to the distorted heavy metal of the eight-string. But when people aren’t slinging music notes at one another, it dips into chill, nostalgic ambiance evocative of the retro RPGs that clearly inspired its aesthetic. Fretless could have fallen back on crowd-pleasing licensed music, but instead it carves out multiple aural identities, each of which is etched into the world and the battles waged within it. I don’t want to downplay the depth of its card-battling systems, but as a retired musician, I find Fretless to be at its best when it’s leaning into a clear love of music and building its world around a shared understanding of the language of composition.
Fretless is full of what are essentially worldbuilding puns based on its musical theme. It plays with old RPG tropes by giving them a musical twist. The inns at which you heal yourself are adorned with a big sign showing a quarter rest…because you rest there, you know? Its equipment loadouts are mods to your instruments like pedals, pickups, and strings. It’s like everyone and everything in its world lives and breathes musicality, and it’s such a consistent, cute throughline that it stirred a love of musical creation in me that I sometimes feel like I’ve lost. I always have music playing in my ears. I work with a 200+ person musical group in New York City every week. However, after I moved away from being a professional musician to write about video games for a living a decade ago, the compositions I once spun in my head like breathing became background noise in my everyday life. I’ll find a new song or artist I resonate with, one of my faves will put out a new album, or I’ll go to a live show and remember all my musical inclinations like I’m putting on an old glove. Fretless gave me that same feeling, all to the tune of a well-crafted deck builder.