Review: People of Note

I don’t normally write reviews as such. Especially of games I’ve recently finished. As the name of my Substack suggests, I’m more about looking back retrospectively and digging deep into my memories, finding games I thought I’d forgotten. But I figure yesterday also counts as “the past” so here I am talking about “People of Note”. No one else seems to be giving this musical turn-based RPG a go. Here, let me see if I can convince you. Beware though, mild spoilers ahead.

Developed by Iridium Studios and published by Annapurna, People of Note is a musical turn-based RPG set in the fictional world of Note. Here, music is everything, and each country has its own entrenched style, from the hard rockers of Durandis to the bleary-eyed party goers of Lumina. In the pop-city of Chordia, we meet Cadence, a wannabe superstar trying to climb the ranks and win the citywide talent competition: Noteworthy. Bland boyband “Smoulder” have won several years in a row, and Cadence is determined to get into the finals to beat them. Sadly, she’s pushed back and told she’s boring and doesn’t have what it takes to be a star. So Cadence sets out to explore the wider world of Note and expand her musical horizons to win Noteworthy once and for all. Along the way she meets Fret, the ageing rocker, Synthia, the superstar DJ, and Vox, the rap prince. Together, they form a band the likes of which have never been seen and uncover a much larger and more sinister power threatening to remake the world. Will they be able to save Note and make it home in time to make those smug Smoulder boys cry?

First and foremost, this is a musical game and I personally think the music in this game is fantastic. Everything is almost a satirical send up that somehow manages to be so on the nose in its delivery. The folks in the pop world Chordia are obsessed with their fave boy band, no matter what they do. The rockers all think Cadence is heavily uncool for being into pop music. Yes you could say it’s relying on a lot of boring stereotypes, but for me that’s part of the fun. It’s not afraid to go heavy either. As a metal fan, I always get annoyed at media that portrays a “metalhead” and the only band they can come up with is Metallica. The rock world Durandis houses a metal, punk and grunge area, and there’s some fun meaty shredding guitar parts throughout the game. Colour me impressed!

The songs are ridiculously catchy too. There’s a part where the boy band Smoulder apologises to you for being dicks; their song “Sorry Girl” had me cackling with laughter and singing along. The battle theme switches genre each turn, providing a boost to the character the genre represents. Vox will be piling on the damage while you’re bopping to some trap beats, and I was having a mini house rave when Synthia was throwing out some status effects during the EDM round. I found myself humming the battle theme around the house, including the genre changes. That’s a deep ear worm.

The characters can also come together the blend their musical styles through moves called “mash-ups”. These are limit break / overdrive style power moves that have various effects, from healing the whole party to causing major damage. The story of the game leans into these mash-ups too; every musical country is very segregated and set in its genre, so for 4 people from different places to come together and make sweet music is unheard of and frowned upon. But somehow, the band make it work and the end result is a beautiful blend of sound and style.

The next thing I loved was the attention to musical detail woven into the game. Firstly, the game is extremely clever at seamlessly weaving musical theory into game mechanics. I achieved a B in a music GCSE many moons ago, and this game scratched some long forgotten knowledge itches in my brain. Cue me explaining to my husband why it’s so clever that the turn count is displayed at the start of the line like a time signature in sheet music, and that a whole turn is called a “stanza” and how clever the whole thing is.

Secondly, there are so many Easter egg like puns and plays-on-words littered throughout the game. My husband and I started trying to guess who or what would be in each world. The gear you find for your characters has names such as the “Linkin’ Parka” or the “Philip Glasses” making reference to famous musicians. Characters have abilities such as “One Hit Wonder”, “Hammer On”, “The Drop” and “Acid Jazz” and they all do what you probably think they’ll do. It’s a music nerd’s paradise. I bloody love a pun too, so I was in heaven, just chuckling away to myself as I made my way through the game.

Finally, the gameplay is pretty good. Regular saves, puzzles that are challenging but not impossible, no healing necessary between fights, shows you how much damage a move will do before you select it so you can strategise around status effects. Having just come from a few JRPGs where I’ve had to grind or run through mindless random encounters, this was really refreshing. Enemies seem to level up with you, so there’s not really much point in over levelling, it’s more about the strategy you employ during a battle and outsmarting your enemy. That said, I did turn the battle difficulty down a notch when I got a little stuck halfway through. But the fights have still been a thinking challenge, I’ve not breezed through. That might say more about me than the game though!

As someone who’s used to overpowering myself in usual RPGs so that most bosses can be defeated by the flick of a finger, People of Note presented me with some minor difficulties. I really struggled with one fight about halfway through, but I will take some responsibility for that. I had not really explored or understood the Songstone junction system enough to get my characters to a place where they were fully effective.

Songstones act very much like materia from Final Fantasy 7; weapons have different slot arrangements and you can equip active and passive abilities into them. As usual, I had poured all of my ability points into attacking, leaving my defences and strategy lacking. Luckily, the game allows you to easily reset and reappoint your Songstones and ability points. However, it can royally fuck around with a great build when you equip a new weapon and you forget to ensure your abilities all line up. I got screwed over on a few battles because of this 🫠 but once I spent time messing around with different builds and better understanding each character’s abilities, the battles got easier and more fun. Maybe turning down the difficulty also had something to do with that…

The battles are pretty fun, requiring you to strategise and correctly time your hits to do optimum damage. They’re not random encounters so they don’t feel overdone, but they can sometimes feel long and arduous. Especially if, like me, you don’t always have long to play games and you’re trying to plough through as much as you can in the short time you have. You can’t necessarily just mash X or A and win. Whilst this could be seen as a good thing, it’s making sure you’re involved and invested in the game you’re playing, I personally see it as a slight annoyance 😅 I definitely praise the interesting way to play, but it did grind me down on a few sessions where I just wanted to progress!

A larger frustration came from the huge crashes the game went through. I was playing on the Switch 2, so didn’t expect huge failures but twice after big boss fights the game decided to die on me, obliterating 30-40 mins of progress. Which, when you only have 2 hours or less to play, pretty much reduces that whole session to null and void. 😮‍💨 deep breaths Amy, deeeeeep breaths.

I’ve seen some reviews that neg on the storyline, but I didn’t find it that bad. There’s a couple of bits at the end that I felt could have been better, but it was a largely satisfying end. And I can make peace with that, especially as I didn’t spend over 100 hours on it like SOME RPGs!

The character designs are gorgeous. It’s clear a lot of time and thought went into them and I fully appreciate it. Just like with Date Everything, I’m really looking forward to seeing some cosplays of these characters in the near future 🤞each of the main characters really embody their musical genre, and their voice & singing actors really got into their characters.

There’s a country music dude and the amount of hilarious American stereotypes that were in his solo tune were fantastic. The eagle is just the cherry on the cake. There’s a line from Vox in the pre-fight banter: “Man, what in the world are you talkin’ about? What proof? You out there startin’ wars over conspiracy theory garbage. You the problem man, you the villain!” And well that’s very on the nose. 🫢

Yes you can pet the dog. Yes it’s called an “Acorgion” (it’s a play on words for “accordion” and “corgi”) and yes it does make an accordion sound when you give it belly rubs. There’s one in every world and best believe I petted them all!

I’m not going to explain this but I loved it and it was worth completing the game to see it. Thanks Iridium.

And finally, this was my favourite song from the whole game. Talking about on the nose satirical fun, this hits the target, AND it’s catchy as hell. Sorry not sorry if this is stuck in your head for the rest of the day, or week.

I really enjoyed People of Note. It was a funny and punny jaunt through a vibrant and varied musical world. It took me about 24 hours to fully complete, yes of course I did all the side quests and found all the Weird Owl feathers for Normal Al (does anyone else get this play on words?!)

I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys a turn-based RPG but is maybe tired of mashing the same button and wants a bit of thinking in their battles. If you’re a music nerd and a pun fan, you’ll love the detail that’s been lovingly poured in. This game is fun and silly and it knows it. You’ll have fun playing it. And maybe you’ll learn a new musical term, who knows?!

Anyway, this is my GOTY so far, loved it. It’s great to see a fun and exciting take on the turn-based RPG genre. There’s plenty of callbacks to Final Fantasy and other RPGs, as well as the musical references I’ve mentioned, so RPG fans will also eat well from this game. It did actually remind me a bit of FFX-2 in its jovial musical nature.

Has anyone else even heard of this game or tried it? Would you consider it after my glowing review?