People of Note Review

It’s no secret that I love role-playing games, especially turn-based ones. People of Note falls into this category, but it is melded together with a music-rhythm game, so we essentially have an RPG musical. Developed by Iridium Studios and published by Annapurna Interactive, you play as Cadence, a singer who dreams of stardom and believes that winning the Noteworthy Song Contest will get her the recognition she needs to make it big.

The first thing you do when you start playing is set the combat difficulty. There are three different options, starting with Garage Band, Rising Talent, or Superstar, and a fourth labelled “Off” that lets you skip combat at any point in time so you can just enjoy the story. You also get to select the difficulty of the puzzles you encounter, basically turning them on or off. If you hate puzzles, you will love having the choice to get rid of them.

The first thing that I noticed about People of Note was the vibrant visuals and high-energy music. All the characters that you play as and interact with have a great hand-drawn look to them. The loose, sketchy pen lines on top of a colour base that looks like it was done with markers give an edgy look that fits the personality of the game.

People of Note feels like you are in a musical, where the big story events are portrayed through song. The singing in this game is really good! We start on the morning of the auditions for the Noteworthy Song Contest. Cadence has one last practice session with her best friend, Cerrin, who helps her out in his recording studio. Apparently, a boy band called Smolder has been the winner of this contest for the last six years, and she thinks that she has what it takes to dethrone them and take away their title.

For the audition, Cadence performs her song called “Under the Lights”, which sounds great, by the way. The judge appointed to you from the Council of Fifths, named Sharp, says it is mediocre and an imitation of greatness, and tells her to leave. You learn that this judge is Smolder’s manager, so it makes sense that he won’t let Cadence proceed because it could be competition for his band. This seems like a huge conflict of interest to me!

Cadence realises that she might not be successful as a solo act, so she travels across Note (the in-game country) to the EDM-filled city of Lumina, Durandis the Rock City, and other locales to recruit powerful and eccentric musicians to join her band. As time passes, however, winning the contest isn’t the only concern for our heroine. A group called the Harmonic Convergence is messing around with the natural musical harmonies, so it is up to Cadence and her bandmates to stop these dark forces before they destroy music.

Battling against foes is very different from other RPGs I have played in the past. Fights in People of Note are an interactive musical performance where you try to keep rhythm with the battle music, which makes sense because everything in this game is music-related — even the train station is called the bassline. A turn is called a stanza, and you need to stay on beat with the music playing, lining up the circles to inflict the most damage possible on the enemy. Between attacks, your character and the opponent are busy dancing to the music; everyone seems like they are having a great time! The awesome thing is that your team’s health is automatically restored after battle, so you don’t have to waste items or turns trying to heal everyone before focusing on fighting.

Once you defeat the enemy, you are shown a Performance Complete screen displaying how many experience points you earned and how many Groove Points you got; these are the in-game currency, as well as the Vinyls that you picked up, which can be traded for special items. Each city that you visit has its own style of battle music, so you will hear the same song multiple times over, but it was always super catchy and high-energy, so I didn’t mind that at all.

People of Note is such a fun and unique turn-based RPG. The one thing that I have an issue with is that there is no map or indicator to show you how close you are to the next location you need to go to. In the pause menu, it is easy to see what your next quest is, but not how to get there. So I found that I was doing a lot of wandering around until I figured out the location of the next quest.

If you are looking for a unique RPG and love music, People of Note is a game you will want to check out. The soundtrack is incredibly good; I loved all the different musical genres you get to hear. Accessibility-wise, there are a lot of options that you can select from to make the difficulty the way that you want. I just wish there was a map or something to point you in the right direction for the next quest you need to complete.