Preview: Infinity Nikki is a Grand Fashion Adventure

Infinity Nikki is, in only the most positive sense, a dream for every teenage girl. It’s a fashion-oriented open world RPG with plenty of exploration and a rich story set in a breathtaking world. While there are some rough edges to its current build, it’s hard to say how much of it lies in its demanding graphics.

The story of Infinity Nikki follows a girl named Nikki, who is pulled through a wardrobe into alternate world by a mysterious red dress. She meets a goddess wearing a fashionable eyepatch, who grants Nikki the Heart of Infinity. This gives Nikki the power of a Stylist, but before the goddess can explain anything, enemies attack them. The goddess saves Nikki and transports her to Miraland, which is a fantasy world of fashion and wishes.

Nikki and Momo (a bizarre cat pet thing) adjust very quickly to life in Miraland. However, while Miraland looks like a fantasy utopia at first glance, they soon learn about a mysterious coma-inducing illness plaguing the nation. Thanks to her Heart of Infinity, she’s able to establish herself in Miraland and figure out what’s putting everyone into comas. It’s a lot to take in at once, to be honest, especially since it doesn’t take long for Nikki to start acting like she’s always been a part of Miraland. I wonder if you’re supposed to be familiar with the overall lore beforehand from Shining Nikki and Love Nikki.

Let me get this out of the way: any time I mention the visuals or performance, I have to add in the caveat that my gaming laptop is give or take five years old. It also has a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card inside of it. Infinity Nikki runs on Unreal Engine 5 and its default setting when it comes to FPS is “limitless,” which baffles me a little because that seems kind of insane. My computer cannot handle this game. It’s constantly stuttering and I doubt I’m seeing how beautiful the models and backgrounds really are.

Normally, I’d leave it at that. But this game feels like its target audience is around thirteen or fourteen years old. This isn’t a bad thing, but its rather demanding specs make me a little confused. Growing up, my father could be stingy when it came to entertainment. The laptop I used all throughout my childhood and teenage years literally had less storage space on it than my friend’s iPod and could barely handle The Sims 2.

If I was a kid today, playing this on a computer my dad got me, I’m pretty sure my device would just blow up. I was terrified to play Infinity Nikki during the daytime. My apartment heats up like crazy during the day and I legitimately worried that my laptop would combust. But the game seems to want a legitimate gaming PC to run properly, and I’m not sure if that makes it friendly for a general audience or not.

There’s a lot to do in Infinity Nikki. Aside from playing through the story, you can fight against enemies, dress Nikki up, and explore all the nooks and crannies of Miraland. You can also collect various currencies like Whimstars and Blings. Whimstars in particular usually make you complete a miniature challenge before you can get them. Examples of challenges include looking for a star in a given area or parkouring across platforms to get to the Whimstar. You can use Whimstars to unlock nodes in your Heart of Infinity, which can improve Nikki’s stats and unlock special outfits after completing a requisite quest. These special outfits are ones that grant Nikki access to certain actions on the overworld. For example, one outfit lets her shoot out her purification orb and another lets her catch insects (which are necessary to craft certain clothing items).

The game becomes infinitely more fun once you unlock the ability to fulfill NPC requests and challenges to dress Nikki up based on a set of given criteria. Most of the time, you just need to dress Nikki up in clothes that are a certain style. But there’s still a level of freedom that you have when it comes to expressing your own personal taste. Outside of these guidelines, you can always alter how Nikki looks in the overworld. Since you unlock the items via gacha, using in-game currency that you can collect, you can rack up a large amount of clothes and accessories in no time.

However, this is still a beta build, and it’s easy to see. There are some technical difficulties, such as the audio desyncing during a cutscene. Nikki herself can be clunky to control, especially when it comes to combat. The encounters in this game tend to feature multiple enemies who surround Nikki, but she can only really attack in a single direction. She also needs to be manually directed to face that direction first, and that additional input can start to grate at times. There aren’t that many enemies that you have to deal with in Infinity Nikki, thankfully, but when you have to face them, the battles are easily some of the worst parts of the game.

Infinity Nikki is a promising RPG full of fashion and fun, though it can be very demanding on your system. The voiced tutorials and menu make it seem like it’s for children, but there’s a lot of general appeal in it through its open world exploration and character creation. Hopefully by the time the game comes out, I’ll have a much better computer so as to fully appreciate the beauty of this game.

Infinity Nikki is in development for the PS5, Windows PC, and mobile devices. Windows PC version previewed.