Around 11 months ago, I went on a buying spree to collect various seventh generation console-exclusive RPGs (with an emphasis on the Xbox 360 platform). Some, like Eternal Sonata, got covered immediately because of my prior experience with them, while other titles were left on the back burner because of the possibility they’d someday be playable on the Xbox One—a significantly easier platform to create screenshots and video on because neither require external hardware—as part of its backwards compatibility program. That program recently ended with a slew of new releases, including several of the RPGs I had been waiting for, and right as a confluence of events too bizarre and unbelievable to detail made it difficult to cover anything not on the Xbox One platform for a week or so. Among these releases was a game developed by tri-Ace and published by Square Enix, Infinite Undiscovery, which I was the most interested in; since I had bought the games used, I made sure to spend a few minutes with each to ensure that they work properly, and Infinite Undiscovery had the most promise of all the various games I had tried out. This isn’t a quality game, however, embracing the unfortunate trends of its time (awkward MMO mechanics, unclear quest design, unpleasant levels of bloom that ensure that everything either looks flat or incandescent) so wholeheartedly that it yo-yos between professional and shockingly amateurish.

I’ve played Infinite Undiscovery for something like 13 hours now, and the story is interesting despite the best efforts of its dialogue. You play as Capell, a seemingly random flute player who’s imprisoned and then rescued due to his resemblance to a respected freedom fighter who seeks to destroy the chains that anchor the moon to the planet. These chains are put up by the creatively-named “Order of Chains,” whose motivations thus far seem pretty simplistic, but the writing has hinted nicely at future developments without outright spoiling them. The writing itself is surprisingly poor, however, with conversations frequently playing out as a bunch of characters shouting non sequiturs at each other and pretending that the resulting back and forth suffices as a functional conversation. The voice acting doesn’t help any, as it’s clear that the voice actors weren’t provided adequate context for the scenes they’re voicing, resulting in unclear, scattershot emotions.

The worst thing of all, however, is the gameplay. While the basics of Infinite Undiscovery‘s real-time combat system function well enough, feeling like an incredibly loose take on the combat in Tales games, the “advantage” system that provides bonuses to your party or the enemy whenever either gets an attack off on an unsuspecting opponent is frighteningly random, sometimes triggering at the end of combat as the final enemy dies for reasons I can’t even begin to guess at. The rules behind Infinite Undiscovery‘s systems are left in the air, and this extends to the quest design in the worst of ways. At numerous points, you’re tasked with finding something, only to waste an hour of searching before discovering that you have to check back with a character before the thing you’re looking for actually spawns in the world. It’s never clear when obstacles blocking the way to the next town have randomly been cleared, and it’s not uncommon for the things you need to proceed to be hidden away from you.

This is a game that fights you at every turn, sabotaging a potentially enjoyable experience in favor of artificially lengthening itself with unclear objectives and miscellaneous busywork, and nothing highlights this quite like the Cobasna Timberlands. At one point you’re tasked with finding someone hidden in this forest, only there are teleports positioned all throughout that might (and might not) be required to reach your goal. The only way of making it to your objective is to recognize that the white shimmer that’s barely perceptible amid the golden rain surrounding you is guiding you along the right path. No one ever tells you this, nor do they hint at it, and I’m not the first person to spend an inordinate amount of time wandering around randomly in the hopes of chancing upon the correct sequence of teleports because of how poorly the gimmick here is communicated. Teleport mazes are effectively the game equivalent of admitting that you have no idea what you’re doing and phoning it in.

It’s not like tri-Ace can’t make enjoyable games. They just didn’t appear to bother trying with Infinite Undiscovery. For awhile, I was convinced that this game would end up remastered and released on multiple systems like what happened with Resonance of Fate, but after playing 13 hours of this mess, I could see them being too embarrassed to remind people that Infinite Undiscovery exists. This game is a monumental “meh, pass.”

The post Infinite Undiscovery is a stupid name for a janky game appeared first on Killa Penguin.