As an ex-Love Nikki player, and still a Shining Nikki player, you can say I'm quite invested in this series at this point. I saw it myself when Infinity Nikki was first announced, to the surprise and delight of everyone. I've been looking forward to it so much, and finally, it has arrived!! This is actually my first time playing an open world game (yes, I never even touched Genshin Impact), so I was keen to find out how it goes. Here's my impressions after a day of playing.

(I thought this is well-written enough, so I opted for posting it here instead of in my microblog. Plus, might as well use this blog again. I may write my impressions for Girls' Frontline 2 later. It came out first by 2 days since I'm in Darkwinter server, but it doesn't have as many problems as Infinity Nikki, so I didn't have much to say. Plus, I was busy speedrunning the game on the first day lol.)

Beginning with Troubles

To be honest, I've been worried about the game's optimization ever since I heard it's using Unreal Engine 5. UE is infamous to be not very well-optimized, especially for phones, so I braced myself for the worst. Also, I was a bit surprised when the game's release date was announced so close to the end of CBT. I didn't get into CBT, but I heard plenty of problems to be fixed. I suspect it might be rushed, especially to make it in time for Nikki's birthday in December 6. If it is rushed, then I can't hope for the game to be optimized well.

On the day of its release, I've been looking forward to the game so much that I wanted to get into the game as soon as possible, but turns out there's yet another in-game update so I had to wait ~40 minutes. On laptop, it got stuck at 3% before crashing and giving a weird error which some people also encountered on Discord server and Reddit. This will be addressed again later.

(Screenshot by u/imright77. Sorry for linking a picture that isn't mine, I couldn't take a screenshot so I took a photo with my phone instead and it was bad.)

Thank god I downloaded it on my phone (potato phone barely meeting the requirement) too! So I played it on phone instead. The graphics are set to the lowest so it doesn't look too great, but at least it doesn't lag.

I spent an embarrassing amount of time in the tutorial trying to jump/float across a cliff to another cliff, failing many times lol. The double jump and float SUCK. Many people also had difficulties. But to be fair, I am kinda bad at platforming.

So far so good despite some hiccups. My elder sister also said it runs better on her phone than PC, so surprisingly, beyond our expectations, it may do a bit better on phone. At least from our experience, which may not be shared by others. Not to mention a myriad of other problems people encountered on PC and PS5, seeing the Discord server.

And then I got into town and see...this. Some buildings and stuff don't render properly, they're invisible but still exist so I hit them. I'm heartbroken. 😭💔 They weren't lying when they said, "Your device may not run the game smoothly. We recommend switching to a different device for the best experience.". Checking the Discord server, I wasn't the only one.

Finally Into the Game

However, miracle happened. I eventually managed to play it! On laptop!! Thanks to this Reddit post (to be more precise, in the comments). I just went straight to install/update AMD drivers and it worked!! I forgot about the mantra of "check the drivers if something went wrong" lol. Even then, it wasn't painless - I kept getting weird errors, perhaps partly due to bad internet. Just my luck. But thankfully, my persistence paid off.

Before we get into the game though, the start-up time of the game sucks due to compiling shader every time you open it - I heard it's an Unreal Engine 5 thing. Even worse if you have a bad internet connection (like me) so you might be forced to restart the game, doing it all over again. Insanity. This also includes when you're already playing the game but got kicked out. Nikki games and telling me off for having a bad internet as usual (Shining Nikki does this too, to a lesser extent).

Being a somewhat potato laptop, however, the graphics are low and look so pixelated. Even with the lowest of the lowest of settings, it still lags sometimes. Though I noticed it likes to happen when the ping goes down - in which case, well, I suppose there's nothing I can do about that. I experimented with the graphics settings and found that using tier 2 (whatever it is called) anti-aliasing at least made it look so much better and less pixelated even with everything else set to low, though it mostly looks good when there isn't too much motion. It sucks to be forced on low graphics to play the game smoothly (and again, even then, it still lags) when the point of the game is to admire the world's and fashion's beauty. That's what I get for having potato devices. 😩 This is even more of a pain, but, I change the graphics settings depending on what I want to do - for example, I set to higher if I want to take a photo, and set it to the lowest if I'm platforming.

(I really love this photo, especially the lighting and vivid colors.)

Other than graphics problems and lags, the audio sometimes stutters or outright cuts off, which are not pleasant to listen to - but I think I got used to it at some point. I also encountered a few bugs, like getting stuck in shop, unable to get out.

Also, platforming? More like parkour sometimes! In the middle of the town, jumping through roofs! Fun!!

Conclusion

"The coziest open world game," you say? I'm having so much stress here! Not to mention the platforming and gacha! 😂 Still, despite all of the struggles, frustration, and compromises I had to make, I'm glad I didn't give up. I'm glad I persisted. Because ultimately, I enjoyed the game to play it for so many hours. It's fun to explore an unknown area full of wonders, discovering secrets behind its nooks and crannies. In the end, I'm happy and grateful I can play it at all. After playing for so many hours, I think I'm starting to get used to it - with all the lags and changing graphics settings. It always sucks when it suddenly lags when you're jumping or something and it literally kills you, though lol.

It's clear that Papergames/Infold put a lot of effort and attention into the game. The UI is clean and uniform - it's in the same style as Shining Nikki's new UI. The music is nice, perfect for the game. The graphics are beautiful and detailed, for better or worse (better because it's beautiful, worse because it made the game's minimum specs requirement pretty high). The world is vivid and with a lot of places, nooks, and cranies to be explored; things to be discovered. The characters' faces, gestures, and voice acting are full of emotions (many bonus points for Momo for being so expressive and funny). The gameplay basically consists of collecting items to craft clothes, do quests, do puzzles, and do platforming. That might seem boring, but even now, I think there's plenty of things to do that one may feel overwhelmed. I'd argue these gameplay ements fit the game as it aspires to be cozy. Even then, the platforming can be pretty challenging. As a whole, the game truly feels whimsical and magical, with so much joy to be felt. And of course, there's no question that the fashion/clothing designs are great. I love the idea of stylists collecting materials for their clothes themselves (it's fitting) and I really love how there are "ability outfits" that enable Nikki to do things, it's such a novel idea. I just wish the game is optimized more. Fingers crossed for that! Shining Nikki wasn't very optimized, but it got an overhaul that made it run so much smoother. Perhaps it may also happen here. Or so I hope.

Since I haven't progressed that far yet into the story, I can't say anything much about it. So far, it's been pretty standard and introductory, while also having some stakes.

I only mentioned the gacha once in passing because at this point, I don't know for sure how it would be yet. 20 pulls for guaranteed one 5* piece/item, thus making it 180 pulls in total to complete a set if you hit pity (that 20 pulls) every time is a lot for sure, but it's the same system as Shining Nikki's UR. Then, there's recolored version of a set, which I heard require dupes of pieces/items - not a very enticing offer. And here I thought Shining Nikki's recolored is bad already, turns out there's something even worse. There's also the question of how generous the game is in terms of giving diamonds/pulls, which we have yet to see. Only time will tell. But to be honest, I expect it to be not very F2P-friendly, as Papergames has such a history, even with the series' previous games.

I still don't know whether this game will stick with me in the long run or not, especially with the gameplay elements and open world nature eating a lot of my time. But for now, I'll keep playing and see where the whims of the stars will take Nikki (and me) along.

P.S. Shout out to my elder sister who took a leave from work to play this game, I'd have gone insane if she weren't there to hear me going insane in real time. Also shout out to my friend who did the same for Girls' Frontline 2 (Haoplay server) releasing today. Truly gacha game Barbenheimer!

P.P.S. One funny anecdote: My sister surpassed me in levels (she was level 10, I was level 7), but one way or another, she was behind in main quest than me. The wonders of an open world game.

(Edited 2024-12-08: Added audio stuttering problem, which I forgot to mention.)