Overly Positive

Recently in my Gamefly queue I managed to drop in a whole crapton of Xbox 360 RPGs. Seeing as I have a couple years of RPGs to catch up on as a recent 360 purchaser, I thought I needed to see what I’ve been missing. This inevitably means that an RPG fanatic like me tends to go a little overboard and lose track of what’s in the ol’ Gamefly hopper.

So it was when Infinite Undiscovery arrived in my mailbox that my first reaction was “Huh?”. But heck – no need to look a rental horse in the mouth, right?

Infinite Undiscovery is an RPG from Square Enix that actually doesn’t have Final Fantasy in the title. Now, I’ve posted about developer equity before, and Squeenix has much of my love and lost hours playing their products. It wasn’t surprising, therefore, for me to feel pretty good about popping this disc into the system and giving it a go.

The game follows the adventures of a notorious coward, Capell, a simple flute musician who ends up getting swept up in world-changing and epic events as its central character. That one sentence pretty much typifies what’s great about the game from a story perspective. Remember how I said this was an RPG that wasn’t Final Fantasy? If you’re missing out on Final Fantasy goodness, it has all the familiar elements that you know, love, and love to hate from those games. You’ve got the ill-fated mentor figure (FFIV and VI), guy with huge sword who also happens to be jealous of you (FFIV and VII), two kids who just happen to be good at magic (FFIV), ninjas (every FF out there), and emo whining and carrying on (FFVII, VIII, X…errr..you get the idea). I could go on\.

Another good thing I had to like was the Options screen. Ok, sure, I could have picked a ton of things to pick out to sell you loyal readers on the game, but I had to pick this one. This is because the Options screen has the ability to turn on Voice and Subtitles or just Subtitles for cutscenes. Best option ever, Square Enix! If, like me, you found the voices of the characters to be so talented so as to shift your mood from Happy To Be Playing to I Want To Strangle My Characters, you’ll love this option. Sure, I could be in awe of one particular character’s screaming attacks wanting to make me slit my own wrists, but trust me, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Turning of the voices is a plus.

Speaking of the voices, I do have to say that even though I turned them off plenty of times, I have to hand it to them for creating screwed up appeal for them. It’s like when you see a major car wreck on the highway. Sure, it’s real bad, and you might feel a little sympathy for people involved, but you can’t help but slow down and look. Every so often, I’d wonder how much more interesting the voiceover would be for a particular scene and I would turn it on in the options. My ears would burn, but I’m sure that it was because the quality was so high my brain couldn’t catch up to comprehending how great it was, making it turn out like some bad overdub of some foreign film.

But enough about the atmosphere – what about the gameplay? The game operates in a third person behind-you view with enemies on screen, in a sort of Zelda Twilight Princess overworld fashion. Of course, if you’ve played Secret of Mana or Final Fantasy XII, the strategy is simple – find the one attack that you can use over and over again, and run around in circles while doing it. Whether it’s a knockdown attack or a jumping dive or a massive sword swing, rest assured there will be no moments of frustration throwing your controller through the screen, because repeated spamming is the key to ultimate victory! There are times when you’ll have to employ the multitude of other characters you recruit into a 4-person party, and ask for the occasional heal but most of the time, it’s all you, baby.

Extras include, among other things, the Crafting System to end all Crafting Systems. Not content with just one way to craft or get items, Square Enix puts in all of them, just to make sure you’re satisfied with one of them. You can craft everything from potions, weapons, armor, enchants, food, and drink, and if the system would allow it, you could probably make a paper clip, a bazooka, and the meaning of life, too. Sure, to create some of these things you actually have to have A)the right character and B)be in the overworld where you might be eaten by monsters to do it, but why not – it’s realism, right?

Let’s not forget that subset of RPG fans who have to go everywhere and do everything in a video game version of OCD. Infinite Undiscovery caters to this in spades with a totally not boring, not unnecessary Connect system, which allows you to grab other characters and talk to townspeople for different responses. Sure, you have to actually physically walk up to your buddy and take him or her with you even if you have to go up 5 flights of stairs and 3 hallways to get to them, but heck, it’s realism, like I said. Some of the people you talk to will give you sidequests if you’re Connected with the right person, meaning “get that cup of tea for me from the counter next to me” fans will love being the world’s errand boy.

I gotta say, with all these winning things about it, Infinite Undiscovery’s got more going for it than an interesting sounding title which ends up having to do absolutely nothing with the story.  You should definitely check it out.