With a title like Infinite Undiscovery, you’re not given much of a clue of what the game is about. Believe it or not, the game is a typically anime-inspired Japanese RPG. You play as a youngster named Capel, who stumbles upon a resistance group looking to break the ‘chains’ that are connecting the earth and the moon. The problem with this, apparently, is that the magical energies from the moon are causing environmental havoc and monster appearances on earth. Furthermore, Capel seems to be a strange physical resemblance to the leader of the resistance, Sigmund.
In the world of Infinite Undiscovery, most people are assisted by magical abilities given from ‘lunar glyphs’. As the name suggests, these magical abilities come from the moon. One distinguishing factor for the main character is that he is one of the unlucky maligned few that don’t have any magical abilities. Apart from a few minor twists and some inter-character relationships, the story is fairly standard fair for experienced players. However, you can wipe through the game without really getting to know or see anything, but the jury is out on whether or not this is a good thing. here is not a lot to the story and it never develops into anything as compelling as the previous efforts from Tri-Ace.
Buxom support characters? Check.
Infinite Undiscovery also has a fairly standard action RPG set up. You have two attack buttons, one for a weak attack and one for a strong attack. You then chain together combos with weak attacks that are finished off by a strong one. You earn super moves but can only have one equipped at a time. To add to the combat system and try and emphasise the character relationships, you can ‘link’ to one of you squad members. When linked together, you can perform joint attacks or use one of their attacks to help your progress. The latter is not implemented a lot and some are interesting implementations, though a few are cumbersome to use at times.
Overall, the combat system is serviceable, though somewhat shallow for just about anyone. Furthermore, there are a few odd decisions that hamper the gameplay more than what they should. One aspect of the combat that simply doesn’t work is blocking and countering. If you can concede this early on, you’ll get through the game fine. An ability that the game offers is the use of Capel’s flute. When he’s first introduced, he’s no resistance fighter but a flute player. As you play, you’ll unlock numerous flute tunes that what will help by boosting abilities in battle while helping you find secret treasures outside of battle.
You can have a party of up to four players, but there are 18 characters that you can pick and swap for the parties. There are different situations where you will play as one party while another will be fighting in real time elsewhere in the dungeon. This doesn’t really add to the depth of the game, as familiar combinations level up faster, and party members tend to leave and come back a little too frequently. Furthermore, the game doesn’t allow you to manage your party in towns as they all just seem to go their own way.
Now where did my party run off to...
Within the game, you have the ability to create weapons, items and other things such as food. Unfortunately, the process is somewhat cumbersome, as the requirements for creation can be rather stringent and actually accessing these options are something of a pain. It was almost a relief that the game doesn’t require you to actually utilise these features. What really hampers the game is the number of stupid design decisions. The worst of these is the inability to pause the game during battles. The reason for this can be understood, such as keeping the player in the game, but they have been very poorly implemented.
The problem with this decision is that you’re heavily exposed whenever you try to use a healing potion, for either health or magic. It doesn’t help that you need to use the useless Xbox 360 d-pad. While it is a decent idea to have a healing button in real time, you AI partners will often use items that you would otherwise save or simply forget sometimes. Furthermore, they will not use magic recovering items. When you add this in with very widely dispersed save points and an erratic difficulty curve, particularly late in the game, and your experience is left a little for the worse.
Despite coming on two DVDs, the game can be finished in around 20 hours, though the clock lies as it does not count some downtimes and restarts. However, getting a more complete experience will take longer. By taking part in the side quests and some of the game’s features such as the item creation, you will learn more about the character relationships and the world of Infinite Undiscovery. Doing so will increase your play time, but not all of these activities are always enjoyable.
Just try and figure what's going on here.
In terms of the visuals, it’s among the more solid JRPGs to be released on the Xbox 360 in recent times, as it has not plagued by issues like previous ones. Still, apart from the nice battle effects, the overall visual presentation is unlikely to drop any jaws nor will there be any appreciable flair found. Sound is decent, with some good themes, though the voicing typically ranges from passable to laughable. Just like the story, the audio and visual presentations are just by the numbers.
If you are big on you JRPGs, there is a chance that you won’t be able to shake the feeling that Infinite Undiscovery is merely an experiment that is an attempt from the developers to get a feel for the system. It is also surprising and disappointing to find the number of stupid decisions, particularly from developers of this calibre. The Xbox 360 is no longer starved of RPGs, and Infinite Undiscovery comes at a time where there are superior turn-based options and not long before seemingly superior turn-based and action alternatives arrive. So while Infinite Undiscovery is a decent if flawed romp, it’s not one that you’d make your first priority.
thats a good thing though for me
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