Don't sleep on Infinity Nikki's stylist battles like I did—they're secretly one of the coolest parts of the game

Okay, listen, in my Infinity Nikki review I said that styling battles—where you take the clothes you've accumulated and use their attached scores and tags to duke it out with an NPC—sort of took a backseat in this game, especially compared to previous non-adventure entries in the series.

That's still mostly true, until I realised that I wanted to craft the Wishful Aurosa outfit. Turns out, I gotta do a lot of stylist battles across various in-game factions in order to obtain every piece. After initially brushing them off as a tedious grind, I've come to absolutely adore them. They're campy, creative, and secretly one of the coolest parts of the entire game.

The reason I'd largely slept on the styling battles was because the handful I had played started off very samey. I approach an NPC, throw on my highest-scoring clothes according to whatever tags are part of the theme and then sit through a lengthy cutscene as the camera pans around my hideous creation, crossing my fingers that I score high enough so that I don't have to do the whole thing all over again.

The skirt is mightier than the sword

They're sort of the trash mobs of styling battles though, the boring bits I have to slice 'n' dice—or I guess, dress 'n' impress—my way through to get to the far more exciting part. As I inched closer to the Sovereign of Cool, the first fashionista Big Bad you encounter in Infinity Nikki, I became privy to tons of interesting lore around not only her, but the factions that operate under her.

You've got the Golden Daisies, for example, a flora-loving guild who also happen to be beefing with the Ebony Scissors. I also got glimpses of dissent among the ranks—members of Beyond the Basics seem to actively disagree with how the Sovereign of Cool is running things, likening her to a tyrant. Do I feel like a kid crossing paths with Pokémon trainers sometimes as I flitted around each stylist? Sure, but it's also some real neat lore in a world that's supposed to be all about fashion.

Things open up even more as I reach the finish line, being given a quest where I have to venture into a basement bar in the middle of the night and pry the Sovereign of Cool's whereabouts out of three brothers, who act as her lackeys. They're big, burly blokes, but this isn't a game where punch-ups solve problems. As Nikki put it: "They'll try to stop us? With styling, I suppose."

Again, very cartoon bad-guy, but I can't help but be ridiculously invested at this point. I defeat all three brothers, and they point me in the direction of how I can challenge Aderinna, the coveted Sovereign of Cool.

I was expecting the final battle to be the same animation as the previous 15 battles, which had admittedly started wearing on me a touch at this point. What I wasn't expecting was an all-out phantom thieves performance across rooftops and balconies, giant spotlights and dramatic angles that wouldn't go amiss in a theatre performance.

That's exactly what I got, though, and I couldn't help but watch, mouth agape, as my Nikki—dressed downright daft in fishing gear and whatever else I could get my hands on, her glittery green waistcoat clipping like nobody's business while she very seriously strikes poses and stares down Aderinna. Like I said, the whole thing is supremely campy, perhaps unintentionally so, but that's what made the whole thing so downright charming.

It was worth slogging through the initial battles to get there, so much so that I ended up diving straight into the next group of factions to eventually take on the Sovereign of Elegant. That one's led me down a road of rumours and myths relating to banshees, ominous songs, and people being controlled like puppets. This sort of thing is definitely not what I expected in my ultra-cosy game where I prance around fields brushing sheep and picking flowers, but I'm loving every second of it. Let me get flung around in whatever abomination of an outfit I end up throwing together next, please.