Infinity Nikki review: Fashion is everything. Even the fish!

Infinity Nikki is one of those things that, in “normal” gaming circles, seems to have come out of nowhere but in actual reality has had millions of fans ready to explore the world of Miraland from the jump. The “Nikki” series has previously been exclusive to mobile platforms, and more akin to a dress up sim with visual novel elements than anything else. Over the years this audience has been building in the millions, and with Infinity Nikki breaking into consoles and genre-vaulting into a AAA, open-world adventure with absurd production value, that audience seems likely to explode. With joy I mean, thanks to thousands of fancy clothing items to collect, dozens of weird and adorable animals to meet, and several kinds of collectible, magical currencies to stockpile.

This is a heck of a game in scope and scale, and while there are pieces of it that look familiar, there’s really nothing else like it on the market. Games that step away from the “core” gaming audience are often relegated to mobile and not seen as “real” games, despite their massive audiences and influence on the rest of the industry. Infinity Nikki not only boldly jumps into the console space, it does so in a way that takes lots of cues from modern console games while assimilating them into its identity rather than the other way around. It’s like if the Borg from Star Trek was more interested in collecting Sanrio merchandise than dominating outer space.

Magical clothes-making, and crafting, and stuff. The usual.

I covered the basics in my preview earlier this year, and in accessing Infinity Nikki for review I retread the game’s opening hours. Just, with a little more purpose this time and with a much more stable build, relatively speaking. Nikki is a Stylist, someone who can use the clothing-oriented surroundings of her world’s natural ecosystems to do bonafide magic. Thanks to a strange encounter with a troubled goddess, Nikki’s Stylist abilities go even further, granting her abilities like floating through the air and purifying creatures corrupted by a dark essence as long as she’s wearing the right outfit. Which she can change into instantly without so much as an anime-style transformation sequence, because she’s that powerful. She also has a little talking cat buddy who really likes BBQ, and may or may not be hiding a more unethical belief system than he lets on. It’s hard to figure that Momo guy out, let’s just say.

Anyway, if this sounds goofy that’s because it is, and Infinity Nikki is not embarrassed to be goofy in the slightest. You’ll find yourself sneaking up on fuzzy dogs with braids naturally woven into their fur to steal some “floof,” netting worms that are also socks, and hooking fish in a nearby river that are literally shaped like designer handbags. This is all in service to crafting clothing after uncovering recipes, which either grant you new abilities with which to navigate the fantastical world around you, or simply pad your ballin’ out of control wardrobe. Every part of this game is about having a good time with fashion, and not doing much fighting, grinding, or surviving. But it doesn’t quite do the things the average “cozy” game does either. Instead, it’s as if something like Fashion Dreamer was put in a blender with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Sonic Frontiers. With a little Super Mario Odyssey sprinkled on top.

More than the sum of its parts

The main devices fueling your adventure are called Whimstars, which are a form of cosmic Stylist power that allows Nikki to tap into the abilities granted to her by the goddess at the start. You can use them to unlock story-relevant clothing recipes, stat bonuses, and more across a large skill tree-like structure. You find them scattered all throughout creation, much like the Moons in Mario Odyssey. They’ll be perched atop tall buildings, hidden in chests, protected by enemies, or locked behind various challenges. Some of those are clearly inspired by the Shrines in Breath of the Wild, but others are as silly as grooming a magical ferret or finding a star-themed object within a given area. No matter where you are, there’s probably a Whimstar hiding just out of view.

Platforming is another huge part of Infinity Nikki, and the controls, physics, and puzzle design all work together to form big chunks of pure, video gamey joy. You’ll find on-brand nonsense floating in the air (like I said, Sonic Frontiers!), such as birds gleefully holding up bouncy nets like background characters in a Disney song being forced to perform eternal labor. But they’re so happy to do it! I said “nonsense,” but there’s an absurd depth to Infinity Nikki’s lore, and you’ll find prose putting tons of effort into providing narrative context for every strange thing you come across. It’s those moments, when you spend time going through a finely-tuned platforming sequence punctuated by detailed, surprisingly dark lore, when you realize how truly futile trying to discern this game’s target audience is. The answer is probably “screw demographics, we’re just here to have a great time.” I’d believe it.

Full of surprises

While much of the moment to moment adventuring takes place in fairly mundane outdoor environments, Infinity Nikki is never afraid to flip the script out of nowhere to remind you it has a budget to spend and imagination to spare. A stroll behind a waterfall leads to a whimsical power plant run by talking frogs, where Nikki hops across massive lily pads to use her comically chic electrician fit for major repairs. Exploring an old tower used to store peoples’ wishes reveals an otherworldly void full of floating ruins; Nikki glides through on a giant paper crane, watching hundreds of wishes coast along air currents while an inspiring vocal song punctuates how impossible and wonderful it all is. Setpieces and “dungeons” are real treats, especially since in this world you never know what to expect. You know, besides apparel-themed flora and fauna.

The obligatory paragraph about ethically dubious money stuff

If you haven’t grown up with this stuff, it’s hard to believe a game like Infinity Nikki is free. Of course, that’s because it’s only technically free. All the family-friendly glee and wholesome energy is held up, like anything else that doesn’t charge up front, by gacha pull systems and microtransactions. And those are fueled by multiple layers of progression systems that are designed to suck up just as much time as money, or more so if you aren’t a spender. While there are many, many clothing items that you get just from playing, and nothing required for the story is paywalled, all the coolest and strongest items are gacha prizes. The good news is that multiplayer competition isn’t a factor, unlike previous Nikki titles. There are Stylist duels you can pursue for various rewards, and high value wardrobes make those easier, but that part is simply one of many side quests, and there are means to upgrade the stats for the free stuff. It’s a complicated matter for sure, but it’s at least nice that Infinity Nikki doesn’t aggressively hound you for money.

I didn’t come to Infinity Nikki with a lot of background knowledge, nor are fashion games a genre I’ve ever spent time with. Nikki caught my attention with its strong sense of identity, immediately standing out as something different than anything else it overlaps with on paper. Sure, you can easily connect some dots back to Genshin Impact or Zelda to name a few, but those elements are used to build a journey that has markedly different interests and goals. Infinity Nikki doesn’t reinvent any wheels, push boundaries, or offer a revelatory or novel gameplay experience. But it does offer a fresh perspective, a strange and captivating world to explore, bucketloads of silliness, and hours of breezy fun. If you can put up with the free-to-play trappings and some hopefully temporary technical instability at launch time, and if you can have a good time without needing to kill stuff, you can have a blast without needing to know a single thing about fashion. I still don’t trust the cat, though.

Infinity Nikki is available now for the PC, PlayStation 5, and mobile platforms. Early access to the PC version was provided by the publisher for this review.

Lucas White

Contributing Editor

Lucas plays a lot of videogames. Sometimes he enjoys one. His favorites include Dragon Quest, SaGa, and Mystery Dungeon. He's far too rattled with ADHD to care about world-building lore but will get lost for days in essays about themes and characters. Holds a journalism degree, which makes conversations about Oxford Commas awkward to say the least. Not a trophy hunter but platinumed Sifu out of sheer spite and got 100 percent in Rondo of Blood because it rules. You can find him on Twitter @HokutoNoLucas being curmudgeonly about Square Enix discourse and occasionally saying positive things about Konami.