Welcome to my review of Infinite Undiscovery for the Xbox360!, Infinite Undiscovery, is one of Square/Enix's first ventures with a large scale RPG onto the microsoft platform! Created by the colaberation of Tri-ace and Square-enix, IU (as I will refer to it throughout this review) makes use of an intresting system known as the connecting system...But is the first venture of Square-enix onto the Xbox360 a successful one? That we will find out over the course of this review!
Storyline-
Infinite Undiscovery has a pretty much similar to most modern RPG storylines, but with a twist! You take on the roll of the reluctant hero Cappell, who is mistaken for one of the games main protaganists Sigmund and Imprisoned by the gastly Knights of the Order of Chains, an evil order led by the Dread Knight and main antagonist of the game Leonid. After a short introduction Cappell is rescued by a young female hunter named Aya, whom has also mistaken you for Sigmund the Liberator (as he is known) after which you both work together to escape the prison and make your way through the forest, all while being treated to a quick tutorial of the games basic commands, via an information pop-up screen.
During your escape you encounter a very bad tempered Ogre that chases you up a flight of stairs, which can be a slightly frustrating experience as he often rushes at you knocking you down and taking quite a bit of health...luckly the AI is pretty intelligent and will heal your character when your health falls into critical zones, leaving you to keep a close eye on your own character...
After the escape you meet a large group of the main protagonists of the game, most importantly Sigmund The Liberator! Sharing an uncanny resemblance with Cappell, things definatley become more interesting and you embark on a journey with the group meeting others that become enlisted along the way as you work on smashing the chains and liberating the moon in some pretty stunning set piece fights and nicely worked cutscenes..
The storyline advancement however is problematic, some parts are slow and dont advance the story very much, and others advance it all in one chunk, letting out several key factors out in one scene.
Another problem is direction, there isnt very little sense of it, and if you dont listen intently you can often miss directions and end up getting quite lost or heading around for hours looking for the next part you should be heading to.
Voice acting is also somewhat choppy, In some places of the game its exceptional, and helps the story vastly, in others the voice acting is terrible, badly thought and often regret listening to the particular cutscene, luckly there is a subtitle option so if the voice acting is being pretty bad, you can knock the sound down and read what there saying instead. Luckly the voice acting only suffers in a few sections and isnt an overly common experience...
The storyline gets an 8.4/10.
Characters-
You take the control of the games main Protaganist and reluctant hero Cappell, there are plenty of other characters that will join you upon your journey but they are usually controlled by the A.I, however you are granted some degree of control over them, by being able to pre-set certain commands, and use the connect system to manually control some of there special attacks.
All in all the characters in IU are a pretty diverse bunch, ranging from your classic hero (Sigmund), to a pair of twin children (Rico and Rucha) and even a Bear (Gustav), one of the problem sections is not all the characters can travel with you in your main party as you begin to enlist more and more members to your rag-tag army...
The Secondary characters (as they are flagged) are usually along for the ride and to help out with the story IU has, these characters cannot be part of the main party, but you can still talk/link with them in the different City hubs you visit within the game which will be often a neccessity if you intend to make use of IU's excellent crafting system, which I definatley say is a must because it really adds to the feel and immersion factor of the game.
As usual however there are those party members you will find you just cant be without as the game advances, luckly IU has plenty of them so you will find yourself often torn between choices as one character could be excellent for one section of a dungeon, but another better in the next, theres also a definate likeability factor in the characters as they have there own unique personalities and make you want to know more about them, on the other hand there are a couple that are just....outright annoying and you feel you would be better off without, but this is more a marmite thing I've found as some of the characters I hate, others love and vica versa, its all down to whom you can identify yourself with more behind the characters you pick in your chosen four...
Characters get a not too shabby 8.1/10
-Gameplay
IU plays with an interesting combo's system where you can trigger special chains of actions off with the hold of a designated key, you can also issue commands to your AI characters using a scrolling option and a healing shout command for when you require it, IU's combat system is very pick up and play, but will take a while to master, leaving a smile on your face when you pull off devestating link-up combos outright obliterating bosses with ease.
The most exceptional part of IU's gameplay is its crafting system however, taken from the modern MMORPG model of personal crafting, modified and improved for the single player RPG. I can guarantee you will pass hours upon hours crafting, which is often an extremely rewarding experience, however it again isnt without its problems...
For some reason or other Tri-ace decided to put a % modifier chance that crafting an item will fail outright, breaking not only the item, but the materials used to begin the procedure...This can often turn expensive and outright frustrating as some of the items required to make the better recipies are rare and drop only from monsters or the games special dungeon, The Seraphic Gate. I recommend being near a save point and save prior to beginning a recipie that requires expensive materials or youll find yourself throwing your controller at your screen....quite often.
Bugs hamper it from being everything it could be 7.6/10
Controls-
The controls for IU are very pick up and play, with useful tutorials that will teach you the ins and outs of each system as you advance through the game, if you forget how to do a particular thing, there will be stored help manual containing all the tutorials for you to revise over.
Most of the time, the AI is very responsive to any command you may issue, however there is the odd occassion where they will outright ignore a heal command, so some players have gotten used to spamming the heal command button to make sure the AI picks it up, Doing such a thing can be quite annoying as the Voice over constantly prattles on for healing, which will give you a headache..and fast...
Easy to learn hard to master... 8.0/10
Graphics-
Nothing short of stunning, The characters are extremely well designed and thought out, with excellent details, right down to the freckles on Cappell's face, most of the environments are exceptional and beautiful as well, and make very good use of the 360's rendering engine capabilties..
The graphics run very smooth, even in graphic heavy situations like battles, due to the 360's hardware issues however, you will experience a slight slowdown when multiple special skills are being used due to the extreme use of bloom and spectacular lighting, but this seemingly helps the combat rather than hinder it.
Graphically IU is one of the 360's better games, making plenty of use of the 360's hardware, and pushing quite a bit of it to its limit...
Another Square-enix success 8.9/10
Sound-
Exactly what you would expect from a Square-Enix game, nothing short of brilliant.
The music is flowing and well fitted to its situation and environment with some striking pieces of music conjured from the guys at Square-enix, they have opted for a more Orchestral theme for IU and it fits fantastically.
The Voice acting as I previously mentioned, is a bit of a mixed bag, great in places and inspired, downright awful in others and horribly realised. Some voice actors for characters are better than others, some are downright rubbish, Ill leave it to you to find out whom
The sound effects of the game are again, excellent with sword clashes, the flickering of flames, chain clattering and so forth, I've yet to see a square-enix game do badly on the sound department, and IU is no exception, and thats a good thing...
Brillant music, awesome sound effects, but let down by the hit and miss voice acting 7.6/10
Unique/Extra Features-
The Connection System: Square-enix and Tri-ace decided to try a pretty new system here, that they have pulled off without a hitch, to allow the free control of your own character without the hinderance of constantly switching or all being controlled by multiple lists of different set commands, they have opted for a pretty simple system known as the connection system.
The connection system, allows you to manually take control of an AI control character, without actually stopping controlling your own, as both characters "link up" and work together closely, a small list of commands will appear on your screen as the "linked" character follows yours around closely. Issuing one of these commands will trigger the character to use that special move, some of these are given a special linked-art icon which will trigger an extra powerful linked special or even an ability to steal or grab out of reach items from chests...
The Crafting system: As mentioned before, this is definatley one of IU's major strong points, boasting an intuitive crafting system that you can spend...literally hours playing around with, its also a very rewarding system, allowing you to obtain excellent armor and weapons either unavailible to you at that point in the game, or improve the rarer weapons and armor into there ultimate form. Its also the only way to learn every single spell/skill in the game (an achievement unlock, if your a bit of an achievement hunter) as you have to use the scribing with the materials that you manufacture/obtain to make the books that teach these skills.
It does have its flaw with the possiblilty of complete failures however, but this can be worked around by saving before crafting more expensive/rare items with components you dont want to risk losing.
The Live market currently has a free download that will add some of the more exotic and rare items to the vendors around the world, personally I didnt take it as it can really wreck your immersion making some of the more powerful items, much to easy to obtain too early...
Decent systems, a fun crafting system, but not as much as we have come to expect from a Square-enix game as there could have been 8.0/10
Replay Value-
IU has excellent replay value boasting several difficulty unlocks (hard, harder, Infinity) that will throw greater challenges, but more reward your way as you play through again, down to the excellent dungeon that seems to have become a Tri-Ace Flagship statement, The Seraphic Gate.
If your one for dungeon crawling, or a bit of a completist, this game will definatley have plenty of replay value to you, and definatley challenge you to your limits, the game also has plenty of levels going right up to 200+ for each character, and you will often find yourself just playing for the crafting system, just because of how well designed it is!
3 extra difficulties and an extra endgame dungeon that boasts hours of replayable content!
8.9/10
Overall Rating-
IU for me is a very well designed game, but it does suffer from drawbacks such as poor voice acting in places and silly things such as the crafting systems ability to fail and break items, also the games slow pace at the beginning can often offput many would-be players.
If you can push past the initial parts of the game and put up with the often shaky voice acting, you will find IU an excellent gem to play and one you will be glad you did.
Storyline: 8.4/10.
Characters: 8.1/10.
Gameplay: 7.6/10.
Controls: 8.0/10.
Graphics: 8.9/10.
Sound: 7.6/10
Extras: 8.0/10
Replayability: 8.9/10
Overall I give Infinite Undiscovery an 8.0/10 !
Thanks for reading
Storyline-
Infinite Undiscovery has a pretty much similar to most modern RPG storylines, but with a twist! You take on the roll of the reluctant hero Cappell, who is mistaken for one of the games main protaganists Sigmund and Imprisoned by the gastly Knights of the Order of Chains, an evil order led by the Dread Knight and main antagonist of the game Leonid. After a short introduction Cappell is rescued by a young female hunter named Aya, whom has also mistaken you for Sigmund the Liberator (as he is known) after which you both work together to escape the prison and make your way through the forest, all while being treated to a quick tutorial of the games basic commands, via an information pop-up screen.
During your escape you encounter a very bad tempered Ogre that chases you up a flight of stairs, which can be a slightly frustrating experience as he often rushes at you knocking you down and taking quite a bit of health...luckly the AI is pretty intelligent and will heal your character when your health falls into critical zones, leaving you to keep a close eye on your own character...
After the escape you meet a large group of the main protagonists of the game, most importantly Sigmund The Liberator! Sharing an uncanny resemblance with Cappell, things definatley become more interesting and you embark on a journey with the group meeting others that become enlisted along the way as you work on smashing the chains and liberating the moon in some pretty stunning set piece fights and nicely worked cutscenes..
The storyline advancement however is problematic, some parts are slow and dont advance the story very much, and others advance it all in one chunk, letting out several key factors out in one scene.
Another problem is direction, there isnt very little sense of it, and if you dont listen intently you can often miss directions and end up getting quite lost or heading around for hours looking for the next part you should be heading to.
Voice acting is also somewhat choppy, In some places of the game its exceptional, and helps the story vastly, in others the voice acting is terrible, badly thought and often regret listening to the particular cutscene, luckly there is a subtitle option so if the voice acting is being pretty bad, you can knock the sound down and read what there saying instead. Luckly the voice acting only suffers in a few sections and isnt an overly common experience...
The storyline gets an 8.4/10.
Characters-
You take the control of the games main Protaganist and reluctant hero Cappell, there are plenty of other characters that will join you upon your journey but they are usually controlled by the A.I, however you are granted some degree of control over them, by being able to pre-set certain commands, and use the connect system to manually control some of there special attacks.
All in all the characters in IU are a pretty diverse bunch, ranging from your classic hero (Sigmund), to a pair of twin children (Rico and Rucha) and even a Bear (Gustav), one of the problem sections is not all the characters can travel with you in your main party as you begin to enlist more and more members to your rag-tag army...
The Secondary characters (as they are flagged) are usually along for the ride and to help out with the story IU has, these characters cannot be part of the main party, but you can still talk/link with them in the different City hubs you visit within the game which will be often a neccessity if you intend to make use of IU's excellent crafting system, which I definatley say is a must because it really adds to the feel and immersion factor of the game.
As usual however there are those party members you will find you just cant be without as the game advances, luckly IU has plenty of them so you will find yourself often torn between choices as one character could be excellent for one section of a dungeon, but another better in the next, theres also a definate likeability factor in the characters as they have there own unique personalities and make you want to know more about them, on the other hand there are a couple that are just....outright annoying and you feel you would be better off without, but this is more a marmite thing I've found as some of the characters I hate, others love and vica versa, its all down to whom you can identify yourself with more behind the characters you pick in your chosen four...
Characters get a not too shabby 8.1/10
-Gameplay
IU plays with an interesting combo's system where you can trigger special chains of actions off with the hold of a designated key, you can also issue commands to your AI characters using a scrolling option and a healing shout command for when you require it, IU's combat system is very pick up and play, but will take a while to master, leaving a smile on your face when you pull off devestating link-up combos outright obliterating bosses with ease.
The most exceptional part of IU's gameplay is its crafting system however, taken from the modern MMORPG model of personal crafting, modified and improved for the single player RPG. I can guarantee you will pass hours upon hours crafting, which is often an extremely rewarding experience, however it again isnt without its problems...
For some reason or other Tri-ace decided to put a % modifier chance that crafting an item will fail outright, breaking not only the item, but the materials used to begin the procedure...This can often turn expensive and outright frustrating as some of the items required to make the better recipies are rare and drop only from monsters or the games special dungeon, The Seraphic Gate. I recommend being near a save point and save prior to beginning a recipie that requires expensive materials or youll find yourself throwing your controller at your screen....quite often.
Bugs hamper it from being everything it could be 7.6/10
Controls-
The controls for IU are very pick up and play, with useful tutorials that will teach you the ins and outs of each system as you advance through the game, if you forget how to do a particular thing, there will be stored help manual containing all the tutorials for you to revise over.
Most of the time, the AI is very responsive to any command you may issue, however there is the odd occassion where they will outright ignore a heal command, so some players have gotten used to spamming the heal command button to make sure the AI picks it up, Doing such a thing can be quite annoying as the Voice over constantly prattles on for healing, which will give you a headache..and fast...
Easy to learn hard to master... 8.0/10
Graphics-
Nothing short of stunning, The characters are extremely well designed and thought out, with excellent details, right down to the freckles on Cappell's face, most of the environments are exceptional and beautiful as well, and make very good use of the 360's rendering engine capabilties..
The graphics run very smooth, even in graphic heavy situations like battles, due to the 360's hardware issues however, you will experience a slight slowdown when multiple special skills are being used due to the extreme use of bloom and spectacular lighting, but this seemingly helps the combat rather than hinder it.
Graphically IU is one of the 360's better games, making plenty of use of the 360's hardware, and pushing quite a bit of it to its limit...
Another Square-enix success 8.9/10
Sound-
Exactly what you would expect from a Square-Enix game, nothing short of brilliant.
The music is flowing and well fitted to its situation and environment with some striking pieces of music conjured from the guys at Square-enix, they have opted for a more Orchestral theme for IU and it fits fantastically.
The Voice acting as I previously mentioned, is a bit of a mixed bag, great in places and inspired, downright awful in others and horribly realised. Some voice actors for characters are better than others, some are downright rubbish, Ill leave it to you to find out whom
The sound effects of the game are again, excellent with sword clashes, the flickering of flames, chain clattering and so forth, I've yet to see a square-enix game do badly on the sound department, and IU is no exception, and thats a good thing...
Brillant music, awesome sound effects, but let down by the hit and miss voice acting 7.6/10
Unique/Extra Features-
The Connection System: Square-enix and Tri-ace decided to try a pretty new system here, that they have pulled off without a hitch, to allow the free control of your own character without the hinderance of constantly switching or all being controlled by multiple lists of different set commands, they have opted for a pretty simple system known as the connection system.
The connection system, allows you to manually take control of an AI control character, without actually stopping controlling your own, as both characters "link up" and work together closely, a small list of commands will appear on your screen as the "linked" character follows yours around closely. Issuing one of these commands will trigger the character to use that special move, some of these are given a special linked-art icon which will trigger an extra powerful linked special or even an ability to steal or grab out of reach items from chests...
The Crafting system: As mentioned before, this is definatley one of IU's major strong points, boasting an intuitive crafting system that you can spend...literally hours playing around with, its also a very rewarding system, allowing you to obtain excellent armor and weapons either unavailible to you at that point in the game, or improve the rarer weapons and armor into there ultimate form. Its also the only way to learn every single spell/skill in the game (an achievement unlock, if your a bit of an achievement hunter) as you have to use the scribing with the materials that you manufacture/obtain to make the books that teach these skills.
It does have its flaw with the possiblilty of complete failures however, but this can be worked around by saving before crafting more expensive/rare items with components you dont want to risk losing.
The Live market currently has a free download that will add some of the more exotic and rare items to the vendors around the world, personally I didnt take it as it can really wreck your immersion making some of the more powerful items, much to easy to obtain too early...
Decent systems, a fun crafting system, but not as much as we have come to expect from a Square-enix game as there could have been 8.0/10
Replay Value-
IU has excellent replay value boasting several difficulty unlocks (hard, harder, Infinity) that will throw greater challenges, but more reward your way as you play through again, down to the excellent dungeon that seems to have become a Tri-Ace Flagship statement, The Seraphic Gate.
If your one for dungeon crawling, or a bit of a completist, this game will definatley have plenty of replay value to you, and definatley challenge you to your limits, the game also has plenty of levels going right up to 200+ for each character, and you will often find yourself just playing for the crafting system, just because of how well designed it is!
3 extra difficulties and an extra endgame dungeon that boasts hours of replayable content!
8.9/10
Overall Rating-
IU for me is a very well designed game, but it does suffer from drawbacks such as poor voice acting in places and silly things such as the crafting systems ability to fail and break items, also the games slow pace at the beginning can often offput many would-be players.
If you can push past the initial parts of the game and put up with the often shaky voice acting, you will find IU an excellent gem to play and one you will be glad you did.
Storyline: 8.4/10.
Characters: 8.1/10.
Gameplay: 7.6/10.
Controls: 8.0/10.
Graphics: 8.9/10.
Sound: 7.6/10
Extras: 8.0/10
Replayability: 8.9/10
Overall I give Infinite Undiscovery an 8.0/10 !
Thanks for reading
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