Infinite Undiscovery Review

After playing through Infinite Undiscovery I still haven't the faintest clue as to what the title is supposed to mean. It sounds meaningful, but the game is neither infinite nor does it challenge the player to "undiscover" anything.

Clocking in at around 20 hours, this game is hardly representative of its impressive pedigree. I can't recall a Star Ocean or a proper Final Fantasy game with so little substance. This is nearly unheard of for a game spanning two DVDs. But what is there is done well.

Extremely heavy on story, the narrative and characters are developed well. I happen to be one of those individuals who doesn't cry foul at plentiful cut scenes, but I must admit that this one started pushing the limits of what I thought was acceptable.

Perhaps my imagination is running away with me, but I couldn't help but notice some visual similarities with one of my favorite series: Ys. When he's in full armor Capell closely resembles Adol Christin, and Balbagon - an auxiliary character - appears similar to Adol's best friend Dogi. I have to wonder if this was intentional.

The music is ambient and fitting, but largely unremarkable, much like Final Fantasy XII.

Visually the architecture and cut scenes are a microcosm of Final Fantasy XII, with large sweeping camera pans across tall ornate buildings.

Gameplay wise, this game was very obviously using the same engine as Final Fantasy XII. It's as if someone took Final Fantasy XII, stripped out 75% of the depth and made it into an Action RPG. The character development and AI control of the other party members seems to follow a similar progression but the player is given very little visibility into or control over them.

The item creation system is almost as cryptic as it is frustrating. The items you can craft are dependent upon who you "connect" with. To connect with another character that character either has to be in your current party, or you have to locate him/her in a town or village. Trying to locate a party member in a town or village can be a lengthy and frustrating process. There is no way to tell which items a character can craft without actually connecting with him/her to view the list. The quickest option is usually to change out party members while in town and then exit town to get them to "connect". The problem with this is that, frequently, the story will not allow you to leave town. It also forces you to decide between who can craft the best items and who is the best in battle when choosing team members. Fortunately (or unfortunately if you look at it that way) the items available for crafting are rarely ever better than what you can buy in shops. Supposedly frequent crafting will cause your crafting ability to increase and make new items available, but I was never able to see any progress from this.

Changing party members can only occur while you are in a town, or at certain points in the game you are given a one-time option to change out party members. This can happen before a boss fight, for example. I would have expected the developers to at least give the player access to this feature at save crystals, but evidently that would be asking too much.

In a badly failed attempt to reinvent the oft mimicked Active Time Battle (ATB) system made famous by Final Fantasy IV, Infinite Undiscovery will not pause the action while you browse through a menu. Instead of adding another layer of strategy to the fighting, the game simply severely penalizes you for wanting to access your menu during a battle. For example, I purchased and equipped a sword with a water element. I had been using it for over an hour when I suddenly encountered a group of water based enemies that I was accidentally healing every time I attacked. They weren't particularly strong enemies, but in the time it took me to open my menu and equip another sword, my party was wiped out and I lost an hour of gameplay. The fatal flaw of this system is that when the menu is open your character is paralyzed. I can understand not allowing the player to attack while using the menu, but to not be able to move? What piece of reality is that trying to simulate? Also of annoyance is that there isn't a way to quickly exit the menu once you've done your business and want to get back to the battle. Instead, it is necessary to cancel out of every menu in the same order they were opened. If the developers had allowed the character to move around, and provided some sort of quick menu exit, this feature would have added the desired challenge without being a complete kick in the face.

Healing during battles can be painful to the ears. Left to their own devices the other characters will simply attack constantly. If you want them to heal each other or themselves it is necessary to hit the Y button. This doesn't put them in a first-aid mode where they keep healing until everyone is topped off or near it, no, it's only good for one heal, then it's back to attack attack attack. When dealing with boss fights where area effect spells hit everyone at once, it becomes necessary to repeatedly mash the Y button. This wouldn't be such a problem, except that it elicits a voice clip of Capell either imploring someone to do some healing, or asking if they have. This gets old very quick and was the single most annoying aspect of the game for me.

With so many negatives, it might be easy to get the impression that I didn't like the game, but that's really not the case. It was a decent game and enjoyable, but I see all of the ways it could have been done better and I can't help but point them out. It's definitely worth a play through, but not at $60. This game was obviously produced in a very short amount of time, and should have been priced accordingly at around $40.