Fortnite Festival is one of 3 big new game modes, which are supposed to help Fortnite branch out with more gameplay options. Many people are speculating that it might be Fortnites wish to become the next Roblox, the big game for everything. To be honest, I guess we will have to see, but I am not really convinced. Anyhow Chapter 5 introduced the Lego Mode, Rocket Racing and Fortnite Festival to the game. Lego Fortnite is an Open World Survival mode with Lego units. Rocket Racing is the new Racing mode and Fortnite Festival is supposed to be Fortnite's new Music mode.
Festival actually consists of two seperate game modes. One is called Main Stage and is, in my opinion, the only real Festival mode and the other one is called Jam Stage, but we are going to talk about that later on.
Main Stage is a rhythm based game, in which you have to press the right buttons at the right time to hit the music notes. Hitting multiple notes correct in order will increase your score multiplier. If you mess up however your multiplier will reset. You often have to press more than one button at the same time and you can even increase the difficulty of the song, which will make it much harder not to mess up, but which will also give you many more points. Since I haven't played many of these games, I found myself satisfying challenged on the easy difficulty. I would also strongly recommend to change the default control scheme, since I personally found it to be pretty convuluted. Switching to the shoulder buttons made it much more manageble.
In any case, if you ever played one of the popular 'Guitar Hero' or Rockband' videogames, than you will fell right at home. The special Fortnite twist is, than you can also emote during short music breaks of your instrument of choice. It is certainly some fun for a while, but I am not sure how often I will come back to this game mode in the future.
Jam Stage on the other hand is much more relaxed and less competitive. You are in a park area with multiple music stages and you can play your instruments by emoting. Other players can join you and listen to your music. There is nothing else to do or achieve here. I am personally a bit confused, why Fortnite added a seperate Jam Stage mode instead of adding it to the already existing 'Party Royale' mode. Having both of them in the game seems pretty redundant, since they are both just focused on relaxing and playing music.
So let's talk a bit about Cosmetics and Monetization. The game mode is obviously free, like all game modes in Fortnite. Fortnite Festival however is the only gamemode aside from Battle Royale that offers it's own Battle Pass. This Battle Pass costs 1800 Vbucks, which is nearly twice as much as the 'real' Battle Pass. It only has 11 Levels and doesn't give any Vbucks back. On the free track you get 5 songs, a couple of emoticons, a loading screen and a guitar skin. On the paid track you get a couple more songs and instruments skins, as well as a single character skin.
I think it is fair to say, that this Festival Pass is pretty controversial. If you just compare the price to value ratio with a regular Battle Pass, than the Festival Pass is obviously abysmal, with far less content and a far higher price. Some people however seem to be happy with pricing, since it is only a bit higher than a regular Skin in the shop. Fortnite is already planning for a second Festival Pass Season in February featuring a new musican. I am personally not really convinced, that many people will purchase this. You also have to consider that nearly all challenges in the Festival mode give XP exclusively to the Festival Pass, which is very different than for example Rocket Racing, which helps you level the regular Battle Pass. Except for a small niche I don't see many more players playing this mode regularly, since it involves a second grind for a Battle Pass.
Apart from the Festival Pass you can also purchase Music instrument skins in the shop, as well as new songs. The pricing of these songs is however also a bit controversial. Every song in the shop costs 500 Vbucks, which is the equivalent of 5 Euro. Guitar Hero and Rockband players however pointed out, that new songs in these games often only cost around half of that. You also have to consider, that every day there are a couple of different songs in a free rotation and you can experience some of the paid songs, if your teammates add one of them to the song selection of your Main Stage match.
Result:
Fortnite Festival is a nice side attraction to Fortnite and I do agree it that extends the gameplay variety of Fortnite. That being said, I see two main problems concerning the longevity of this mode. The biggest fans of this mode are probably going to be Rockband and Guitar Hero players, but why wouldn't they just keep playing the arguably more polished versions of Fortnite Festival. It does have the free Price Tag, but challenges exclusively contributing to the Festival Pass and the monetization currently being very high, are probably going to scare a lot of casual players away. Fortnite Festival is a somewhat fun gamemode and probably worth trying out, but I am not sure it's still going to be played in weeks or even months from now.
6.5/10
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