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Genre: RPG Publisher: Square Enix Developer: tri-Ace Players: 1

By Keith B (24th Sep 2008)

I’ve never enjoyed the Final Fantasy games, probably because I didn’t play the earlier instalments and it’s hard to pick up a series half way through, especially when it was already up to III ir IV. Having played Infinite Undiscovery for a few days I’m now pretty certain I’ll check out the FF series in the future a little more closely.

It’s also been a reasonable time of late for me with these RPG-types, having enjoyed Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon quite a bit and even drawing some sort of enjoyment from Too Human’s inventory for about 10 minutes, so while standing in a retail outlet one morning at 9am and vaguely noticing the guy sticking prices on new stock, I grabbed a copy and headed back to the dungeon for a test.

What we have is a modern take on a crowded genre, where most of the elements of a solid RPG are present but so too are sprinklings of other things, like decent combat, complex item creation and a large pool of NPCs and other characters, the latter meaning you have upwards of 20 people to populate your party with at any given time.

The story begins with a very punchable main character called Capelle that we’re now going to control for the rest of the game, but it took me two reloads to get any of it because the speech wasn’t working on the first two tries. Not the best of introductions between us but there you go. Once it decided to work I found out that a girl called Aya has broken into the dungeon I’m in to free a hero called Sigmund but as Capelle is apparently the spitting image of this hero, and Sigmund isn’t there, she decides to help him escape.

Having been given simple instruction on combat and movement, it’s time to break out, and so the feel of the game changes from the typically feature-sterile environments of RPGs (where an interactable item flashes to make sure you can’t miss it) so something that really reminded me of Fable more than anything else. Complex dungeons and open world environments blended seamlessly, with a minimum of load times, and I started really enjoying exploring the world, and meeting the plethora of characters.

The basic premise is that there are a series of chains that bind the moon to the earth, thus preventing it moving and also causing strange occurrences at the bases of these massive, interplanetary chains. Sigmund, Capelle’s doppelganger, is on a mission to breaks said chains. The moon plays a larger part too, because it determines how powerful a person’s special skills are. These skills are enabled by Lunarglyphs, like magical tattoos on a person.



What works best with Infinite Undiscovery is the depth to which the various elements are taken to. The combat isn’t just in real time, but features a full combo system with aerial, standing and prone damage; a stealth and detection system; an item creation feature, not limited to one type of item but everything from cooking to metalwork, enchanting to repairing can be done and improved upon with practice; a very large party to pick your team from; impressive indoor and outdoor environments. There is just so much stuff here it really makes an impression when you play. And the thing is, is it’s all good.

The combat is annoying right from the start because the selected character shrieks out the name of the move he’s doing, so while it may help to make you realise that you are that person who plays Soul Calibur with only one character and one move, it’s awful having to listen to him scream stuff like “Oniyaku Dive!” or other such babble every three seconds. But in the end the combat is satisfying, controllable and with seamless connections to both the game world and the magic element of the party, it’s easy to get hooked. Similarly, sitting on a plain somewhere and sticking various elements together making food was fun, as was getting someone else to some tinwork while I cooked. It was, rewarding.

Aside from the impressive underlying structure that holds the game together, there is a glossy coat of paint over everything, and I mean, glossy as hell. In terms of graphical polish I, seriously, can’t think of many that do as well as this does. Not only in terms of effects, but the amount of work that has gone into both designing and creating this world and its inhabitants is incredible. The clothing is all very well thought out, and created with such vibrant colours it reminds you of what life was like before Gears of War and Halo became household names. It’s such a pretty game it has to be said.



When the audio decided to work it too received gentle nods of approval. While Capelle appears to have lost his spine somewhere on his flute-playing travels (don’t... -Ed) the rest of the group are voiced to a high standard. Add in the wonderful orchestral score which reminded me of Star Wars more than once and there really is little more we can ask for in such a dialogue rich release.

Right from this beginning there was a pretty serious adult undercurrent in Infinite Undiscovery, from Aya ruthlessly slitting the throat of a guard to help you escape to Capelle promising to return to a village to take advantage of an “I’ll do anything to pay you back” promise from a girl, in no uncertain terms. Just so you know, most of the party are 16 or so, two are 12, and there’s one old man in the middle. It’s a strange blend.

The biggest criticism with it all though is a lack of logic. When in a city you can select one other person to run around with you, and depending on who that is, you can do certain things, like speaking to rats when paired with the little boy, Rico. Speaking to the rats in the first place wasn’t high on my list of things to do and hence once I discovered it, I suddenly began thinking that there must have been things I’d missed because I hadn’t been paired with someone else, because maybe the old man can talk to the pigeons or Sigmund can talk to lamp posts. Then there’s the lack of a proper journal, which records what you’re doing, because more than once it was difficult to work out what was happening and where I was supposed to go next. But these slights were more than balanced by the sheen on your retinas from the colours and content. Not bad for a game I hadn’t been watching the calendar for.

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