People of Note Gameplay Preview: Not quite my tempo

When music and games go together perfectly, I feel like Remy's brother in Ratatouille trying strawberry and cheese for the first time. A magnificent combo, and whether it's the orchestra swelling as you step into a boss arena about to get clapped by a dragon in Elden Ring, or the simple ambience as you're going through the latest restyling of your Animal Crossing island, games aren't half as great without good music. So bound are the two, that in recent years we've seen games solely dedicated to music pop up. Ones that aren't just rhythm or dancing titles, too.

Stray Gods, No Straight Roads, and now People of Note. Iridium Studios and Annapurna Interactive's rhythmic RPG seeks to be a video game musical, with much more of a Final Fantasy style approach to its gameplay than the interactive storytelling Stray Gods has. We take on the role of Cadence (the first of many musically named people, items, places, and more), a young pop star with big dreams of winning a music competition back in her home city. After being told she doesn't have the chops, Cadence seeks to form a group to give her more musical range. In the demo we played, we were on the hunt for our first bandmate, who turned out to be a legendary rock star named Fret.

Our happening upon Fret came by chance, as he joined up with Cadence to fight some Wild West-inspired faction called the Homestead. After walking through the split, desert city of Durandis and exploring a little bit, we got our first taste of People of Note's combat. Much like its turn-based RPG inspirations, People of Note's battles revolve around a turn order known as a stanza, allowing you to attack, use abilities, and rest in a given turn, as well as use mash-ups alongside your fellow band mates when you take damage. When attacking or using an ability on your turn, you'll get a couple of quick-time events to deal extra damage or heal a partymate by an additional amount. Similar to Clair Obscur, in a way but admittedly much less dynamic. There's no defensive actions, so you'll just have to grit your teeth and hope for the best as an enemy chooses to whack you over the head with their guitar.

The run of the mill fights against regular opponents feel rather formulaic, and a bit slow at times. Quite obvious padding, rather than a chance to try out your latest skills and see how strong you can get. In other turn-based RPGs, these encounters shouldn't take long at all, and yet People of Note at times has extra health added to enemies, barriers in place, and other ways to drag out these jobber fights. It doesn't help that we only have two bandmates, meaning that even if you're playing perfectly, you're not getting the full extent of how exciting this combat could be, as shown in the trailers.

Where it did shine, though, was in the boss fights. We played two in the demo, with the latter offering interesting mechanical changes to the usual formula, and giving us a chance for a proper nail-biter where we had to use healing, defensive buffs, and perfectly timed attacks to win the day. There's a lot going on, at least at first in People of Note's battles, but peel back the surface and you'll find them to be very simple. Make the most of when your bandmate's style is in action, and otherwise just do what you can to stay alive and end the enemy. That changes slightly in the boss fights. Bosses also get stronger as the fight goes on, meaning you're incentivised not to see them at their strongest form. It's a little weird in a way, as it's like you're robbing yourself of the most epic battle, but probably for the sake of a win.

Combat aside, I felt a little thrown at times by People of Note. It's a world-spanning adventure, with an alternate reality quite literally shaped by music. It's a bit tonally diluted at times, never quite sticking to a tongue-in-cheek musical or a more serious tale about standing up against power to ... well, I don't know ... play music better, I guess? I feel like something like No Straight Roads does this better, where it's immediately clear on who our protagonists are and what they want to do. The demo of People of Note exists in a period where it seems Cadence is starting to learn the world isn't just about music competitions, but because we don't have the full picture, it's impossible to tell where this story is going to go. It's a bit like listening to the bit of Hamilton right before the war kicks off and then leaving. You can guess where it's all going, but in People of Note I'm not quite sure it's hooked me enough to make me plough on.

Exploration and traversal is minimal, and while the puzzles were decent, they're clearly not a priority as you can literally turn them off in the game's menu. Iridium has a strong story and strategic combat focus here, but as the demo ended and we got a trailer featuring the game's release date (the 7th of April), it seemed to do a better job of hyping me up than what I'd just played. Perhaps it's just an awkward part of the game to showcase, but if People of Note is going to stand up as a great example of a gaming musical, I hope the rest of the game rushes a little more than it can drag.