I’ll admit, I’ve been looking forward to this game… and I’m not exactly disappointed with it, but to be honest, I’m nowhere near as impressed as I thought I’d be, especially with it being a game coming from Square-Enix (though to be fair, they only published the game… it was actually developed by TriAce).
First the good points.
The story is engaging. The characters are likable. The environments are pretty, colorful, and varied enough that it’s not one of those annoying games where every dungeon looks the same. The gameplay, too, is mostly solid, if a bit hack-and-slash (not that there’s anything wrong with that… I actually enjoy it). It does have it’s issues, but more on that in a minute.
Infinite Undiscovery is the story of a boy named Cappel, who right off the bat is tossed into the local prison because he happens to bear a striking resemblance to a rebel leader by the name of Sigmund. Sigmund and his allies have been traveling the world, battling the Order of Chains, and dangerous group who seeks to enchain the moon for their own devious motives. Cappel is rescued by Aya, thinking that he actually is Sigmund, and even after realizing her mistake, she still drags him along with her to meet us with the rest of the Liberation Force.
I won’t spoil the plot for you, because it really is a decent story that’s entirely worth playing through… if you can tolerate the less likeable parts of the game.
The first of these is the voice acting. I’m not even going to beat around the bush here… it’s awful. Really awful. Not all of it. There are a few well-done voice-overs, but they’re few and far between.
The other thing that bugs me… even more than than bad acting sometimes, is that lip syncing is almost non-existent throughout the game. The dialog isn’t exactly great in a few place, either, but that at least is tolerable. But with the lip sync (or rather, lack thereof), after awhile you get the impression that they didn’t even make the attempt.
But realistically, bad voice acting isn’t exactly uncommon in games, and poor lip syncing can be ignored if you put in a little effort (especially if you mute the voices). Some things that are a little harder to tolerate are the sometimes bizarre motivations of the characters. Every once in awhile there’s a situation where it feels like they decided to skip a few key events in character development altogether and beat you over the head with one character’s feelings towards another with no explanation as to how we arrived at that point. Unfortunately, this occasionally carries over into the plot as a whole, as well.
As for the gameplay itself…
My first qualm is that it’s not always clear what your next goal is supposed to be. For example, you’ll finish a mission, and then wind up in whatever town or locale you’re supposed to be in, with only a very vague idea of where to head next. There are hints… but they’re easy to miss, because they’re often spoken aloud by one of your party members as you’re heading out into the world map. Sucks for you if a random monster jumps you right out of the gate, because you’ll never hear the hint, and as far as I’ve been able to find, there’s nothing in the menus that states your current goal (which is a real pain in the ass if you stop around 2 am to sleep, then attempt to pick it up two days later and have no memory of what the hell you were doing the last time you saved).
The second thing that annoyed me was the multiple party system. Or rather the way it’s managed. See, you don’t always have multiple parties… which is fine because sometimes it’s not a good thing to have twelve people running around doing their own thing. You really don’t have much control over the secondary parties when you do get to use them. There are also a number of characters that are only allowed in secondary parties… which really sucks, because a couple of them seem to be pretty damn effective mages, and it’d be nice to have that in the main party once in awhile. The choice of ranged fighters is kind of limited.
And finally, two comments on the menu…
1) It’s nested like crazy, so it’s hard to find anything quickly.
2) God help you if you need to use a recovery item during battle.
All in all, it’s not a bad game, but it’s by no means a great game. It’s also a little on the short side for an RPG (I made it through the first of two discs in under 9 hours, taking my sweet time, and the second disc, at the beginning anyway, seems very cutscene heavy, limiting actual play time). The story is a good one, though, and there are some genuinely funny and emotional moments along the way.
My ratings on this game:
Story: 8/10 - Good plot, engaging events, but occasionally predictable.
Characters: 5/10 - There are a few memorable ones, and even some great ones. The villains, unfortunately, are rather weak, though, and there isn’t a whole lot of development of the main protagonists… even the ones closely tied to Cappel. I think this largely stems from the fact that there are just so many (18 playable characters can only get so much screen time for backstory).
Gameplay: 6/10 - In general, it plays very similar to Kingdom Hearts. Run up to an enemy, and button mash. But some of the things are extremely awkward. “Connecting” with other party members to control their special ability and give them a target, for example, is almost ineffective during battle because it’s such a pain to activate. The menu, too, as I mentioned is a challenge to work with.
Overall: 6.5/10 - It’s decent… worth at least one playthrough… but forgettable, which is a pity, because it had so much potential.
