A lovely RPG that is under 10 hours long and has no missable achievements. The music in this game is fantastic, and it has some very nice accessibility settings to make the game less challenging.
Approximate time to 100%: Under 10 hours
Estimated achievement difficulty: 2/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: I wrote this guide:
https://www.missitheachievementhuntress.com/fretless-the-wra...Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No
Gamepad or mouse and keyboard: I played it with a gamepad, which felt right for the "Guitar Hero" kinda mini game
In Fretless - The Wrath of Riffson, you play as Rob, a musician who isn't well known, and you get the chance to enter the Battle of the Bands tournament to get a contract. But on your way there, you learn more about the company behind the tournament, and it turns out they are pretty evil.
This RPG completely implements music as a theme. Your starting weapon is an acoustic guitar, but later on you'll unlock other instruments and you'll unlock them quite early into the game. They all play a little differently, but with all of them, it is possible to finish the game. I mostly kept playing with the acoustic guitar as it was my favorite. The battle system is a turn-based one where you also build up an energy level by attacking, which you can trigger when full to do an extra and potent attack in the form of a "guitar hero" style mini-game. The regular attacks are done with riffs, shown in the form of cards. You have six cards each round and can choose up to 3 to play. The cards you don't select stay in your hand, and you get new ones till you have six cards in your hand again. The effects of the cards do damage, but also play around with the different status effects and funny combos. And if that wasn't enough, each weapon also has a special passive power. For example, the acoustic guitar does double damage every 6th attack, so you want to prep a riff that is powerful in that slot. There are also passive effects from pedals, which you can have three active at the same time. This all sounds very complicated in text form, but it isn't that complicated, and the game does a good job explaining everything. All this to say that you have a lot of freedom to choose your playstyle between the different weapons, different card combos, and passive effects. There is also a timing thing going on during attacks and defenses; however, if you suck at timing or want a more relaxed experience, you can turn on some settings in the game menu to make this easier, or have the game automatically give those bonuses.
Fretless - The Wrath of Riffson is very straightforward as an RPG. There are many signs to show you the way. There is a button to show you your current objective. I never felt lost, but it was rewarding to explore around, as in many nooks and crannies, you can find items. Most of the time, the game will show you there is something there, but you have to find the way to get there.
One of the things, next to the story, that I loved is how you don't have to grind battles for experience. You level up with items and money, and you receive those from battles as a reward, but also in other ways. And sometimes you need to do a few more battles to have enough money, but that is easily done with a group of enemies close to a loading screen to another area, as loading back into the previous area respawns the enemies. They didn't add endless grinding to make the game time longer, which I appreciate. Fretless - The Wrath of Riffson reminded me that I miss the RPG genre, as I don't play many RPGs nowadays, but most of them are too long.
Fretless - The Wrath of Riffson has no missable achievements. After finishing the game, you get back to just before the ending and can get the other ending, as well as teleport to previous areas to mop up different things. The teleport option is available from very early on in the game. I would highly recommend exploring the maps to find the chests and statues, as those can be the most challenging to find; all the other stuff can be achieved very easily later on. You need all the riffs for an achievement, but not all the accessories, so keep that in mind before you mindlessly buy all the accessories in the game, as there are a lot.
I give Fretless - The Wrath of Riffson 4 out of 5 stars.
4.0