reviews

Name: Infinite Undiscovery
Genre: RPG
Platform: Xbox 360

tri-Ace, creator of such popular RPG series as Valkyrie Profile and Star Ocean, has said that Infinite Undiscovery is a realization of ten-years worth of ideas, resulting in an experience that could only be achieved on current-day consoles. It is also one of the first Xbox 360 games to cause sales to rise in Japan, and the game was popular enough to cause nationwide shortages of a console that usually sells less than a thousand units a week. With Eternal Sonata, Blue Dragon, and Lost Odyssey failing to be any more than average, gamers were ready for the first stand-out RPG experience of this generation, and with the amount of money Square-Enix put into advertisements many thought that Infinite Undiscovery would be the game that fans wanted it to be.

The plot kicks off with the Order of Chains, who found it wise to bind the moon to the world with large, magical chains. Wherever one of these shackles is placed, death and destruction soon follows in the form of monsters and natural disasters. Traveling from chain to chain is Sigmund the liberator, leader of The Force, and savior of the land. He is known throughout the world as the only man who can sever the chains, and is ambitiously and heroically attempting to free the lunar body from its manacles. Enter: Capell, a flute playing coward who happens to look so similar to the Liberator that even Aya, one of The Force’s members, can’t tell them apart when she breaks into an Order of Chains prison to rescue Capell, who is being held for that very reason.

The huge cast of playable characters are mostly cliché RPG archetypes, and many of the party members you gain while working through the game’s story are unlikable, with others left underdeveloped. Infinite Undiscovery’s cast of characters grows unnecessarily large by the end of the game, and it seems like every NPC you stop and ask for directions decided to pick up a sword and join your band of warriors. Their characterization isn’t helped at all by lazy script writing and horrendous voice action, likely caused by an insufficient amount of time spent on localization. Just like many of the other aspects of Infinite Undiscovery, it falls victim to issues that RPGs have suffered from for twenty years without attempting in any way to solve them in any way.

Cut scenes are plagued by the abovementioned issues as well as technical problems, ranging from poor lip-synching to an absolute lack of lip-synching, turning even the most dramatic and emotional moments into a poorly dubbed Kung-Fu movie. With a few extra months spent finding better voice actors and allowing anyone with a basic understanding of the English language and scriptwriting to look over the game’s dialogue, the story of Infinite Undiscovery, which is actually fairly interesting, could have carried the game past mediocrity and set it as one of the best RPGs of the generation.

Portions of the game are visually breathtaking, and if the high-resolution graphics and detailed character models don’t impress you then you might be expecting too much of this generation’s RPGs. One section of the game in particular, set in a jungle while light rains from the sky, is about as beautiful of a scene as you could possibly want from the game. Sadly, the game’s framerate is prone to occasionally dropping during large-scale combat, and other sections of Infinite Undiscovery are incredibly bland. Whether it the beautiful sections or the dull, the game’s level design is consistently disappointing, and the dungeons and open-world areas both feel right out of the SNES generation – which isn’t a good thing in this context.

Generally, combat is real time (as opposed to turn based) to create a more robust experience, but limiting the amount of attacks the main character has seems to negate this point entirely. Fighting is mapped to the A and B buttons for “quick” and “power” attacks, with several combos that can be achieved by combining them. Actually, to be specific, there are three combos. Exactly three. It seems like if the developer wanted to add real-time combat to their title they would do more than have two-button combat. Capell can also link up with his allies and issue commands or take control of them for a limited time, but this happens in real time and is used more for in-between combat puzzle solving than it is for fighting. At several occasions throughout the game you’re able to assign your party members to three groups, who will tackle different objectives in certain quests. This serves as the only innovation in the title, as it isn’t a normal RPG experience to fight alongside nearly a dozen allies, especially ones with fairly capable A.I. Accessing the inventory is done in real-time as well, which adds a little complexity to the otherwise stale combat.

However, there is still something entirely charming about Infinite Undiscovery that is hard to place your finger on. Maybe it’s the bumbling leader, Capell, who manages to be entertaining despite the atrocious voice acting. Maybe it’s the story, which is actually fairly interesting, even if it’s complete nonsense. Maybe it’s the dated gameplay reviving nostalgic thoughts of older generations. Whatever it is, the game is fun to play despite the many failures on the part of Square-Enix. Infinite Undiscovery is, first and foremost, made for Japanese gamers, and fans of JRPGs will likely find plenty to love. There’s a fairly involved crafting system, several difficulty levels (which unlock more of the story), and about 30 hours of gameplay for anyone willing to explore for far corners of the world. It might be a little on the short end when compared to Square’s other JRPGs, but there is more than enough content to extend the game significantly. That said, anyone who isn’t already a fan of the genre will likely grow tired of the cliché locales and repetitive gameplay, as well as not being as forgiving of the game’s many other missteps either.

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