Gamers Platform

Infinite Undiscovery for the Xbox 360 is the newest RPG from the excellent Square-Enix. This is Square’s first true step into the new generation, though it leaves much to be desired.

So, what’s wrong with it? Well, a lot of things, so I’ll go ahead and focus on the positives first.

Well, the battle system is interesting. It’s pretty basic, with lots of icing on top. It’s very simple. You control Capell. If you want to enter fight mode, you press the right trigger. This will draw out Capell’s sword, which will put him and all party members into fight mode. Once in fight mode, you can attack as well as issue tactics to your party members.

Not bad, right? Well, it goes a bit farther. By pressing the right bumper, you can bring up a menu which will allow you to temporarily control one of your three party members, and by controls, I mean issue commands. You won’t really have control over them, like you would in something like Tales. You’ll just be able to make them do a few things. For instance, if you choose to control Aya, you can usually either have her heal or use her arrow to shoot something like a barrel or an unsuspecting enemy. Yes, even in medieval alternate worlds, bad guys still leave barrels full of explosives just laying around.

So far so good, right? I mean, this certainly sounds like the makings of at least a decent action RPG, right? Well…the only real positive of this game is the battle system, and in all honesty, it’s nothing to write home about.

So, onto the negatives. This could be long…

Well let’s start with the graphics. I was surprised because this game is coming from the same people who are making Final Fantasy XIII. Seriously, Final Fantasy XII looked better than this; heck, Kingdom Hearts II looked better than this, and that game came in 2005! Trust me, I’m not exaggerating here people, this game looks really dated. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear this was a PS2 port. The environments look lame and pasted on. Absolutely nothing pops out at you. The character models are ugly and look more like animatronics than CG renders. There are many glitches, including my all-time number one pet peeve of video games, the dreaded, awful invisible walls. That’s right, in 2008, on a system as powerful as the Xbox 360, we have a game that has to rely on the age old cheap tactics of pasted backgrounds and invisible walls. I’m sorry, but in a post Lost Odyssey world, this is just unacceptable.

So, moving past that, let’s get onto the sound. The music is ok, nothing spectacular. The voice actors are ok, but I’ve heard better. The real problem lies in the external sound effects. This game not only uses invisible walls, but also suffers from the one footstep sound. For anyone who is not familiar with this, it’s essentially the use of one sound for all the footsteps. Sure, it may change depending on the terrain you’re walking on, but it still remains the same for every character. I had to check a few times to make sure I was in fact playing a game on my 360.

Then there’s the story. It’s a typical story: an oppressive government uses its power to try and gain total control over its people, and a group of ragtag freedom fighters rise up to take down the evil government, thus bringing peace to the world and freeing the people. The storyline has been overused. In this case, the government, or the game’s equivalent thereof, is building these giant chains all across the world in order to reach the moon and harness its power or something like that. It’s a really uninteresting story, and it’s even further bogged down by derivative and uninteresting characters. The point is that it’s nothing we haven’t seen before and nothing we most likely won’t see again. It definitely does not sell the game.

So that just about sums it up. Bad graphics, boring gameplay, uninspired story and characters, and virtually nothing to set it apart from the other RPGs available on the system make it the most average RPG you could possibly play.

SCORING BREAKDOWN:

STORY - 5/10

This story is mediocre, plain and simple. There’s nothing going on here to makes you want to continue playing. It starts off slow and never really seems to go anywhere. Sure, it could be called OK for what it is, but with games like Disgaea, which totally turn the cliché RPG story on it’s head, you really have to try hard to stay focused on something so basic.

GAMEPLAY - 6/10

The battle system is decent and provides some interesting customization and tactics settings. There’s not much else here though. The puzzles are lame, there are little to no changes to break up the monotony. You will get some fun out of discovering new combos, but pretty soon you’ll end up just button mashing.

SOUNDS - 5/10

The music is OK, the voice acting is less than sub par, and the sound effects could have been straight from Final Fantasy VIII, the PS1 game.

OVERAL - 5.5/10

Those looking for some solid RPG action on the 360, or really any platform, will want to look elsewhere. While Tales of Vesperia is certainly not breaking any boundaries, it is at least a solid, engaging, and (most importantly) fun game. This game really offers none of that. It’s bland, uninteresting, totally disengaging, and feels more like a chore than a game. I suggest skipping this one entirely, unless you got a weekend to kill, since, despite being two discs, it won’t run you that long. If you got a few days to kill, and have played all the other, much better games on the market, you may find this somewhat entertaining. Still, I would not recommend this as a purchase.