Infinite Undiscovery

"More of a good, broken game."

I rarely write reviews, and I usually dislike the ones I DO write not long after their completion, but I feel that the reviews for this game either forgive or overlook it's main issue; that it's essentially a half-broken game. Many of the ideas incorporated into this game are not, inherently, poor. In fact, many of them are very interesting, and explains why Tri-Ace, along with Namco, tend to be the leaders in RPG's with real-time combat systems. The problem, as I feel has become typical of Tri-Ace as well, is that the game is rendered unplayable to most simply due to a mountain of issues that are not, individually, very large or signifigant. Instead of standard review format, I simply wish to explain some of these frustrating aspects, as other reviews adequately cover the basics of the game itself.

It is true that this game is almost entirely in real time. It can be paused, but only by bringing up a pause menu, which has nothing on it but a brief reminder of what your current goal is. Truly, incorporating this into an RPG, traditionally known for favoring menu-heavy gameplay, is a difficult task, and one that Tri-Ace fails at accomplishing. It's not merely that it becomes risky to try and use a potion in battle, because you are being hit repeatedly while you do; Final Fantasy players overcame the same difficulty with Squaresoft's Active Time Battle system. It's that the menu is designed in a way as to make access to virtually anything slow and painful. It opens slow, it moves slow, the controls are not very intuitive and little is easily accessed. One must go through multiple screens to get to their desired page, and even the map, which IS on the first screen, is buried in the bottom third of the list. This makes doing virtually anything in the menu impossible during combat. The only time it's suggested to do so is if you NEED to use an item to resurrect a dead party member to survive, and even then, you better retreat and hope your party can hold back your enemy. This same real-time fixation presents itself in the ability to control your party members. Tri-Ace apparantly desired to never, ever allow you to control someone besides your main character, but DID want to use their special abilities for puzzle solving and the like. The result is a clunky, multi-step process to have Capell control a party member, making both of them basically defenseless for the time being, made all the worse by the constant discipline of real time. Apparantly, controlling other members was acceptable in it's flagship Star Ocean series, but not here.

There are other problems. Item Creation is relatively benign; the game shows you 100% of what your character can make at their level, what the items do, and what you need to make them. Little fun is had, but it is easily utilized. The frustration comes, first, from attempting to FIND your party member in order to make something; you must track them down in whatever corner of the city they are hanging out and connect with them. Then, another frustration is being forced to make each item individually. Since using IC is the only effective money maker, really, have fun hitting A every 8 seconds to make whatever potion or trinket you are selling in large enough quantities to matter (read, probably hundreds of times).

In battle, I quickly encountered a massive issue that seems to have been ignored elsewhere. Besides the fact that the game is relatively unforgiving in terms of initiative or reach (making it more difficult than similar games to ensure your combos land or to hit multiple enemies), a major issue is that you have to actually lock on to an enemy. This, itself, is automatic, but it doesn't UNlock right when the enemy dies. No, you must wait until the enemy is dead, all attacks that were launched against the enemy before his death finish, and then through a slight delay as your reticle selects the next victim. Even worse, you are capable of continuing to attack the corpse (and increase the time you are waiting to attack the next opponent), and in fact, even if you STOP attacking, your button presses are "logged" as soon as you hit them, so if you hit AAAB, and the opponent dies on the first A and you stop doing anything, you will still continue the combo (any combo that ends with B, or B alone, is quite long as well). This can even punish you financially, as items that are dropped from the dead only appear after the body has actually faded, and only for a brief time. You literally have seconds to run and pick them up, but no, you are stuck finishing your Killer Instinct-ish combo while that prized IC material vanishes. And, obviously, you are vulnerable during your attacks, so expect to get interrupted frequently in your efforts to kill the already dead snake. This entire critique here is topped off by the fact that your enemy's health is in the bottom corner of the screen, where it's not exactly difficult to see, but it IS hard to focus on when you are trying to play a real-time combat game way over towards the screen center, so you might not even realize your opponent is already dead for some time after he perishes (yes, dead enemies can be knocked around, knocked into the air, etc, so only the tiny, blinking overkill that's flying around over his head tips you off).

Some simple commands are simply poor. There is no "run" button; you always run. This doesn't seem bad until I edit it to say you always jog slowly. And, as other reviews have stated, there is a "battle" stance and a "relaxed" stance, so if you run with your sword drawn, so you can react to enemies faster, you run even slower. This is in addition to having to sheathe your sword ever single time you want to interact with the world in any way not sword related. Meanwhile, your parry button is virtually useless. Instead of a block that is simply held until you release, you have to stop doing anything for a second, tap parry, wait and hope you don't get attacked in this brief blank space, parry any attacks in one sweeping motion lasting about one second, and then return to battle ready stance. Only if your parry is timed perfectly is it effective, and considering battles usually consist of you being out-numbered and thus likely being struck from multiple foes, even a successful parry against one guy will result in you getting hit multiple times from the OTHER guys.

Even interaction is a headache. All doors close behind you and are slow to move, as well as react to your input; you often have to speak to NPCs with a specific character connected to get what you want (remember, that's 17 other guys!); and even talking can be annoying, as sidequests or pertinent information is often times only stated by a character AFTER you have talked to him one or several times and gone through the "generic" dialogue, whereas almost every other game reverses this trend. Strangely, as well, you can't access your magic screen in town, even just to check something. Some of what you might consider "character status" isn't with the OTHER "character status" info, even. Oh, and using Capell's "magic", so to speak, requires you to actually HOLD the Square button for a second or two, not simply tap it, which can be frustrating in many situations. Leveling up your skills is also odd; there are only three levels, and you are only likely to reach the second one in normal play. That's right; unless you spend hours abusing each individual skill to increase it, you will get exactly one power-up on it. Exciting. Especially when the bonus to it could be useful when you are not getting healed due to the very random chances of healing (better than Last Remnant, but not by much).

The story and characters for this game are in fact interesting. The battle system itself is not a bad idea. But it is simply poor executed, to the extent that you wonder if beta testers were told only to report major bugs and not the legion of simply frustrating and inexplicable issues with the game. Right from the get-go, you will likely be cursing this game for one problem after another. The intro is actually difficult, and you will likely die your first attempt as you try to not overkill your opponents and thus waste your time, switch back and forth between your stances so you can run faster/interact with the world, try to deal with the infuriating system for using your party member's abilities, realize that all your potions are only good BETWEEN battles, attempt to actually block your enemy's attacks, and just a whole host of other issues. This is all made worse simply by the fact that the game is unforgiving. Many games that are harder to play tend to fudge a little for you; they make it so that if you and your enemy attack at the same time, your attack is always the one to hit, or they make it so that as long as enemy was very CLOSE to an attack, they are affected. This game is brutally strict, meaning that the only time the game makers chose to actually be persnickity was when they were ensuring that the game's edges were NOT softened, which was the last hope for the rest of us that the game would be FUN.

I hope my rants weren't too terrible disjointed, but regardless, you should get the gist of it; Infinite Undiscovery is the type of game that would normally have gotten a good review for the gameplay and story as is, if it had simply been fun to play. It is the spiritual opposite to games like Halo that were known for having done very little unique or new, but still being among the most playable games of that generation simply for smooth and intuitive controls and the like. Nearly everything in THIS game is clunky, slow, and difficult to execute, making all the excellent parts of this game really about as fascinating as a classic film watched through muddy glasses; you know there's awesome stuff there, but it's a strain to even get a glimpse of it, and you will likely get sick of trying. The only good aspect here is that you should get a feel for the game quickly. Renting it (or buying it used from Gamestop, since that's basically renting), is unusually effective for an RPG, for you should know in just 2-3 hours if you are having fun or kicking yourself for wasting your money.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 08/12/09

Game Release: Infinite Undiscovery (US, 09/02/08)