Infinity Nikki Makes Me Appreciate Its Gacha Approach

Infinity Nikki is the most recent game in the Nikki series, but it's also the latest gacha game to take the gaming community by storm. With adorable outfits, a deceptively dark story, and plenty of content to explore, it's easy to get sucked into this adventure set in the fictional world of Miraland. It turns out that being a stylist and collecting various fashions is a super fun game mechanic, and beating other stylists in Stylist Challenges is rather satisfying.

As a game that's free and looked cute, I became one of the millions of players who downloaded Infinity Nikki. I'm generally wary of gacha games, and I tend to hear mixed opinions about them, especially since it can be far too easy for some players to sink money into these games, then end up regretting it later. While I still don't prefer gacha as a genre overall, I found myself appreciating the way that the gacha system is implemented compared to other games I've tried, like Honkai: Star Rail and Wuthering Waves.

Infinity Nikki Has You Pull For Fashion Instead Of Friends

You Won't Miss Out On Storylines

Usually, gacha games have you pull for party members, who fight beside you with their various strengths. It can be fun to have a variety of characters to bring on your journeys, and then those characters tend to have their own stories and quests that continue to build the in-game world. Unfortunately, there are a few downsides to this approach that Infinity Nikki manages to avoid. The way that Infinity Nikki does this is simple. Instead of pulling for characters to fight with you, you pull for clothing pieces that can form full outfits.

The way that banners in Infinity Nikki work is similar to other gacha games, where you're guaranteed a specific level of item if you don't get one after a certain number of pulls, which is usually referred to as the pity system, since the game is taking pity on your bad luck. Of course, you can't get only part of a character in other gachas, unless you're getting fragments that can be used to unlock the character at a certain amount, but you can get parts of outfits that are useful by themselves in Infinity Nikki.

As you might expect, individual outfits and clothing pieces that you can pull from banners in Infinity Nikki don't have their own storyline. Instead, the only outfits that you can say have a story would be the Miracle Outfits, which are your ultimate goal to craft while you're in Miraland, as you've been entrusted with the Heart of Infinity. This setup results in less of the fear that you might miss out on great characters, since there are always some who are overpowered, or that you won't be able to see content because you were unable to pull a character.

Pieces Are As Useful As Full Outfits

Less Temptation To Spend Money

Close

This might be my favorite part of the banner system in Infinity Nikki. While pulling all the pieces needed to put together a full banner outfit is ideal, you don't need the whole outfit to receive benefits from the pieces you collect before the banners are switched – at least when it comes to the limited banners. The pieces themselves also have stats that can help you in stylist challenges, and pieces from the outfits in banners tend to have fairly decent stats, which you need as you progress through challenges, and they become more difficult.

Related I Was Shocked Infinity Nikki's Story Has Me This Hooked Infinity Nikki is a game filled with beautiful outfits, hairstyles, & accessories. However, the story behind the clothes is much deeper than expected.

The exception to this would be ability outfits, some of which you can get through banners, such as Crystal Poems from the permanent banner being a purifying outfit. If you want to use banner outfits to replace the default ability outfits that you earn through the game's main story quests, then you need the full outfit. This is a bit of a downside, but you technically don't miss out on abilities from this, since you get an outfit for each ability just by going through the story quests.

Aside from ability outfits, however, you can mix and match pieces of other outfits – or those that don't belong to outfits – together to win Stylist Challenges, or to simply make a pretty outfit to wear as you quest and explore the expansive, cozy world of Miraland. Plus, clothing isn't the only reward you can get from banners, as you can also earn makeup pieces through the Deep Echoes feature that gives you an item once you pull a certain number of times from the same banner. This is also one of the few ways that you can get new cloaks for Momo.

The Focus Stays On Nikki And Select Allies

You Aren't Overwhelmed By Characters

When you have a game that uses a gacha system to give you new characters that you can use as party members, it's easy to become overwhelmed by the number of characters available in the game, as the cast grows rather quickly. This is especially the case if you pick up a gacha game a few months or years after it was initially released, because the number of characters and areas grew during that time, and you end up feeling like you're playing catch-up to get to the same point as other players.

Related Infinity Nikki Players "Unreasonably Devastated" At Max-Level Eureka Mechanic Infinity Nikki players are disappointed at upgrading their Eurekas to max level, because of one big change that happens when they're fully upgraded.

Instead, Nikki has a set number of allies, but they don't join her in combat due to the way that combat is designed, so you're able to face enemies alone. That means that each character has a role to play in the story, and that lets you form emotional connections with them. As a result, I felt sad for the characters as I went through the main quests, and I was happy to see them grow and overcome the hardships they face. It was unexpected, since the game first appeared like a cute fashion adventure, but I was pleasantly surprised.

I hope that more gacha games take this style into consideration, and that we see more of them on the market that have you pull for rewards that aren't characters. Not only does it add variety, but you don't need to get as frustrated about banners, especially since it seems like there are always a handful of characters that you use for the best team, which leaves the rest of the characters you pull sitting around. Until then, I can't wait to see what comes next in Infinity Nikki.