Wildly Imaginative Music-RPG That Hits Most of the Right Notes
Whenever I describe People of Note, it feels like it’s heading in an interesting direction before taking a wrong turn. It’s a music-based RPG…but the music doesn’t factor into the gameplay. It’s the story of one girl’s determination to be a pop starlet…but gets distracted with side quests throughout. The world reminds me, oddly, of the film Trolls World Tour, which I’m not sure is a recommendation.
If I was a video game executive, I’m not sure that I would have plopped down any cash for People of Note. It’s just too creatively askew, making odd decisions that don’t seem to make much sense on the surface, certainly not for a mainstream audience. For all the reasons I’ve mentioned, it sounds perilously close to a disaster to me.
Video Games Killed the Radio Star
I am happy to say that I’m not a video game executive, because People of Note is not a disaster. It is a wonderfully sincere love letter to music, a surprisingly deep RPG, and a great way to spend fifteen hours or so. If it were an album, there would be some duff filler tracks and some partially successful genre-crossovers, but I’m happy to have experienced it.
The story of People of Note centres on Cadence, a pop debutant who is aiming to win a kind of X-Factor competition that has been won seven times in a row by the band Smolder (a fantastic name for a smug boy band). Getting accepted into the competition is just the first step: she’s painfully aware that she needs a sound that no-one has heard before. So she heads out of Chordia, the pop city where she’s spent her entire life, and travels to realms of rock, country, rap and other genres to find new sounds and band members.
There’s a lot to unpack with the world and story of People of Note. In general, the moment-to-moment writing is top-notch. Conversations are presented in a 2D visual novel format, and the quality is higher than most VNs. It’s capable of bad music puns (the weapons, armour and items in particular are brilliant/terrible – Vanilla Ice Tea anyone?), throwaway quips with randoms, and some emotional, lived-in characterisation with the main cast.
Everybody Wants to Rule the World
I’m a bit bemused with the world, though. Don’t get me wrong: I love how the genres push against the stereotypes, with rap in particular being a gleaming citadel rather than a too-easy ‘hood and streets. But the world doesn’t really work for me. The different realms alternate between being segregated and open-border, depending on what the plot needs. People seem both aware and unaware of each other’s genres. I got a sense of how each realm worked in isolation, but not together.
And I get what the plot was doing, but that doesn’t mean it was ultimately successful. The rags-to-riches story of Cadence gets parked in favour of something far more world-ending, and I thought it lost something by making the transition. RPGs are overflowing with big stakes: I was more interested in helping a wannabe pop star to her dreams.
Still, there was never a point where I was bored with the world of People of Note. Iridium Studios clearly have some talented concept artists and imagineers on their team, because the different areas – and the intermediary spaces – are inspired. I love the creatures in particular, all of which have been smudged into musical spaces. The Accorgion (a corgi crossed with an accordion) is the clear winner, but there are monsters that have been spliced with xylophones and harps to great effect.
If I Could Turn Back Time, if I Could Find a Way
Hitching a wagon to the turn-based RPG makes a lot of sense, especially after Baldur’s Gate 3 and Clair Obscur. But People of Note doesn’t just tick all of the cursory boxes. There’s a surprising amount of depth and playtime here. You can gain Songstones from exploration and combat, which are socketed on your choice of character. Think Final Fantasy Materia and you’re mostly there. But there’s a neat Amplify system which allows you to hook up modifying effects to one or more Songstone. Min-maxers will love the final moments of the game, as some game-breaking effects can be achieved.
Combat is a little more perfunctory, but still not bad. Actions take place in ‘stanzas’: blocks on a timeline that governs who attacks and when. You can manipulate these stanzas, applying buffs and debuffs to them, and there is freedom of who performs their action in which stanza. Those actions are reasonably generic attacks, specials and rests (recuperating the BP that is spent on specials), while repeated hits means your character can perform a Mashup: a combo ability with one of your bandmates.
I was most surprised that rhythm played no part in combat. All of the attacks and specials have musical names and associated signature themes, but there’s no need to follow a beat or react to an enemy’s attack at all. It meant that I switched off on occasion, particularly during the enemy stanzas, and it just felt like a glaring hole in the concept and combat. Something felt missing.
Like the story, then, combat and the RPG stuff is very good but with omissions that raise the odd eyebrow. I wondered whether something was laying on the cutting room floor: something that didn’t work, or was too costly.
You Will Walk 500 Miles, and Then 500 More
But People of Note is absolutely capable of going above and beyond expectations. Exploring the world, you can come across a wealth of environmental puzzles. These range from the familiar – light and mirror puzzles – to the unexpected, as you balance water pressure and slide giant pipes like a bizarre sokoban. Other games would have reused mechanics from zone to zone. People of Note tries something new in every region.
And it’s surprisingly long – a musical epic. It doesn’t challenge Baldur’s Gate 3 in this sense, but it reaches twenty-odd hours in length, which was more than we expected coming into People of Note. This isn’t a well known studio with piles of cash to burn, yet Iridium Studios have produced a world that feels large-scale. Somehow, they have managed to make it dense through shops, weird-owl collectibles, puzzle challenges and scattered dialogue. The scenes aren’t re-used assets: every new area has something dazzling in its centre.
As the old adage goes, I’d much rather play something that takes big swings and fails, than something that plays it safe. People of Note is the emblem of that. It feels slightly unfair to call its failures failures, but the wayward plot and lack of any musical gameplay dragged the experience down for me. People of Note is very capable of making you wonder what someone in the writing room was smoking.
But for every swing-and-miss, there’s a home run. The songs, the kaleidoscopic world, the Materia-like songstones: they all want to make me pump the air. Sure, there’s the occasional duff note, but People of Note is a crowd-pleaser that should pique the interest of music and RPG lovers alike.
Important Links
People of Note – A Musical Spin On RPG Combat – https://www.thexboxhub.com/people-of-note-a-musical-spin-on-rpg-combat/
Best New Xbox And Game Pass Games For April 2026 – https://www.thexboxhub.com/best-new-xbox-and-game-pass-games-for-april-2026/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/people-of-note/9NB2TF2P011B/0010
