Last year in December I reviewed the recently released mode Fortnite Festival. I recommend the article (https://gamereviewnation.blogspot.com/2023/12/fortnite-festival-ps5-review.html), if you want to know what Fortnite Festival is and how i rated it. Now nearly a year has passed and I would like to do a short update.
5 seasons featuring musicians have been released during this time. It started in December 2023 with the first season called 'Opening Night', which featured a Festival Pass (the Fortnite Festival version of a Battle Pass) about the artist 'The Weekend'. The season lasted till February 2024 and was followed up by a season about Lady Gaga called 'Unlock your Talent'. That season lasted till April and was followed up by Season 3, which featured Billie Eilish. Festival also dropped the subtitles for their seasons from Season 3 onwards. June 2024 brought Season 4, the Metallica season. Fortnite also added a third festival game mode during this season with 'Battle Stage'. In August 2024 the fifth season released, which features Karol G and will last till November 2024.
As I just mentioned, Festival now has 3 different game modes. Last year Festival released with its main game mode 'Main Stage', in which you play a rhythm based minigame, where you have to hit the right buttons in time to perform the music notes. You can play with up to 3 other players.
'Jam Stage' on the other hand is more of a relaxing game mode, where you can freely walk around in a big concert area and play your instruments by emoting.
Battle Stage released during the Metallica season and is a Battle Royale version of the Main stage mode. The maximum amount of players has been increased from 4 to 16 and each player competes only for himself. There is no Duo or Squad option in Battle Stage mode. After every song a couple of players drop out until the Festival champion is being crowned after the final song. In contrast to Main Stage, where songs are being selected by the players before the match, all songs are random in Battle stage. Otherwise the pure gameplay in Main Stage and Battle Stage is identical.
Let's now take a quick look at the player numbers for the different Festival modes. Main Stage has been averaging in the last months a daily player peak between 10.000-20.000, which is of course much lower than at release, when the mode had nearly a million players. Obviously the mode was going to drop off from the peak, but the numbers still look rather respectable and have been quite stable in the last 4-5 months. Like many people I believe that the Metaverse idea was a big mistake by Epic Games, but there definitely still seems to be a playerbase for Festival. Lego Fortnite for example still has a daily peak of 30.000-50.000 players, which is a lot more, but Main Stage still looks better in comparison to the 5.000-8.000 of Rocket Racing.
The same however can not be said about Battle Stage and Jam Stage. Battle Stage has been averaging around 1.000-2.000 players per day. Jam Stage has been stagnating around 1.000 players and in the last 2 months even often below that. So far both modes seem to continue dropping players. If we compare this with the around 2.000-3.000 average Party Royale players, than I can just repeat myself from my review last year. I don't see the point of having both Jam Stage and Party Royale in the game, which are very similar, while a game mode like Fortnite Imposters has been removed from the game. In my opinion they should just merge both modes, or port the musical emotes to Party Royale and remove Jam Stage. Battle Stages at least differentiates itself a little bit, but Festival doesn't seem to need 3 different game modes.
Of course, if we compare the player numbers to the Battle Royale game modes, Zero BR or even Fortnite Reload, than all the creative maps and the metaverse gamemodes look really insignificant. In my opinion it is pretty obvious that Epic has been taking away resources from Battle Royale since Chapter 4 and it doesn't seem to really pay off.
Result:
The addition of Battle Stage mode brought a bit more variety to Festival, but my initial view of the game from last year hasn't really changed.
Festival is still the only game mode, which practically never gives any XP for the main Battle Pass and only for its own Festival Pass, which for most players doesn't really make it worth spending time on. Additionally the prices are still way too high in Festival. The Festival Pass costs nearly double the price of the regular Battle Pass, which is just obscene and the individual songs for Festival also seem to be more expensive than in comparable game modes, like Rockband or Guitar Hero.
Fortnite Festival in 2024 is still a nice side attraction in Fortnite, but in my opinion the game mode hasn't really improved much, which is why I won't raise my score of 6.5/10 from last year. If you however never played Guitar Hero, Rockband and the like, this might be a decent alternative, considering it's a free game mode.
6.5/10
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