Infinite Undiscovery

THE GOOD:

Decent musical score.

A lot of characters.

A lot of details.

THE BAD:

A lot of characters.

A lot of details.

Short game.

Lack of directions.

Cheesy voice acting and corny plot during certain times.

Characters don't move their mouths properly during voice acting sequences.

Repetitive combat.

SUMMARY:
I've never actually played any of the Star Ocean games, but I'd heard quite a bit about them. So when I first saw that tri-Ace was developing Infinite Undiscovery, along with SquareEnix as the publisher, I figured the game couldn't possibly be half-bad. I had just bought a 360 recently back then, and being a die-hard RPG fan, I was looking for something interesting. When I went to buy Infinite Undiscovery, I found Tales of Vesperia on the shelves along with it, but I said "Ehh what the hell? How bad could it possibly be?" and chose to give Infinite Undiscovery a chance. An hour into the game and I was already regretting my decision. I normally write reviews about games which I feel should be recommended; however, in Infinite Undiscovery's case, I'm writing this to advise people to stay the hell away from it.

I had originally planned to write this review earlier since I've had the game for months now, but it was only recently that I finished playing it. However, most of my initial impressions haven't changed. I'm going to slip through the plot details and focus primarily on the reason why I gave it such a horrible score.

So many characters, so little time: As you might have noticed, I put "a lot of characters" under both, the good and the bad. It's a good thing if you like having a ton of characters in an RPG. However, my main gripe is the fact that you can only play as Capell (the protagonist). So when you have about 20 people you can choose from in your party, what good is it really if you're stuck using the same one for the duration of the game?

One-two Punch: Which brings me to the combat aspect of the game. Since you're stuck with one character, your moveset is extremely limited. You basically have three types of attacks; regular attacks which can be strung as three-hit combos, special attacks which can be done by pressing B after a regular attack, and special techniques, which consume MP and are learnt as Capell levels up. So the deal with special attacks is that it depends on when you press B during the combo. Pressing A->B will result in a different special attack than pressing A->A->B or A->A->A->B. The only thing is that you'll almost automatically 99.9% of the time press B after the three-hit combo because the attack that you perform (Dancing Rhapsody) is much stronger than the other specials since it adds another 3-4 hits, making the other special attacks pretty much useless. As for the techniques, only two can be assigned at a time and can be performed by holding down either the A or the B button. So as you can see, the combat system has its set of flaws.

God is in the Details...But Do You Really Have Time to Look For Him?: Once again, I put "a lot of details" under both categories. If you're into details then, like before, it's a good thing for you. However, my concern is that there are way too many details thrown into the game. And you don't really have time to appreciate them. For a game that spans two discs, the playtime is only about 20 hours, which is quite literally nothing. I got more than that out of Chrono Trigger DS, a game which I had already played thrice on the SNES. So in this short period of time, you don't really get the chance to enjoy all these subtle details. For example, I didn't even know what the AP gauge was for until towards the end of the game. Another problem with the details is that there are a lot of things that you will rarely use. There's a lot of things like item creation, cooking, surprising enemies, and so forth. But at the end of the day, the game is so frustrating that you won't even care about these little nuances.

Real Men Don't Ask For Directions: And this game won't give them to you. I literally spent an hour in the beginning just roaming around the map trying to figure out where to go next. The map has no marker or any indication whatsoever of where you have to go. To add to your misery, there is no fast travel feature in this game, which is a shame because the areas humongous and going from one place to another can be an aggravating task. At one point in the game you will come across one of those magical forests with warps and you have to navigate yourself to your destination. All I can say is that that was THE MOST POORLY DESIGNED LOCATION I have ever seen in my experience of playing video games. You don't really have much of an indication of where to go. I tried to do this part myself, but after spending nearly three hours of walking around without having a clue of what I was doing or where I was supposed to be headed, I resigned myself to a walkthrough. I think it's nearly impossible to get through that part without a walkthrough. And I owe (a few hours of) my life to the guy who wrote it.

The Art of Voice Acting: This game has quite a bit of voice acting in it and some of it isn't that bad. However, the bad parts are enough to make you cringe. Couple that with the corny plot, such as nearly every female character falling for Capell, and you've got a reason to skip the cutscenes. In fact, when I played this game in my dorms, I used to have it on mute just to make sure nobody heard it. However, one of the aspects that really pisses me off about the cutscenes is that the characters don't move their mouths in time with the voice. It's one of the reasons I hate watching dubbed animes (that and the god-awful english voice actors). So if this irritates you as much as it does to me, I'd stay away from this game because of this sole reason.

So that's the end of my rant about the game. I suppose the only good thing is the game's decent music, but there isn't much to write about. Anyhow, it's been about 3 months since I bought the game and I've finally managed to finish it. I had considered selling it to Gamestop for the measly 5 bucks or whatever it's worth. But hey, I could buy a pack of cigarettes with that money to help ease my mind every time I think of the $60 I wasted. Do yourself a favor and stay away from this game. If you're really intrigued by how bad it is, you could try renting it...only if you have around 20 hours to kill.