Game Review: Infinite Undiscovery (XBox 360)
I truly thought this latest release from Square Enix, featuring seamless realtime battles, would be the end-all and be-all for the Japanese RPG. Looking at images from the trailers, I was amazed at just how much artistic endeavor must have gone into creating this. And the game is truly beautiful.
The main flaw this game has is control-related. Maybe they needed this to go through QA again? Certainly, there was no one in development to advocate for the player, because the control scheme is so clunky that there's no way anyone will enjoy playing this game beyond a couple of hours. And I suspect that wasn't what the developers intended, since the game comes on two discs.
The concept is that by using these newfangled tactics there will be an infinite world of discovery available to achieve victory. My problem was that there were so many things one could do that it diminished the value of the game. Rather than simply allowing the player to switch between characters, we are expected to perform Connected tactics and basically request our fellow characters to perform certain tasks. Unfortunately, the characters we're supposed to connect with are a bunch of idiots. Example: At one point, to open up another level, I need to attract two different types of animals to a gate where they will basically be used as keys. To attract these animals, I need to have one of my fellow characters cast a sort of charm that will allow me to command them toward me. The charm eventually wears off, meaning I need to cast the charm multiple times. But when I request the secondary character to cast the charm, he's busy playing with his belly button hair, so the animal crawls back to where it came from. Over and over, again. Another example: while storming a castle and being pelted with boulders by an ogre on a precipice, I try to use the archer character to shoot the ogre down. The aiming is so terrible that I end up wasting three shots to hit the ogre once. These shots are dependent on magic points, so I am eventually left without enough points to take another shot. My ballistas uselessly rest on the battle field, taking boulders until they crumble. There's no way I can see to move them, or to actually AIM them at the castle door, which is what they're supposed to be shooting at, right? My character is immediately stoned to death. Considering there are "infinite" ways to win, I really didn't see even one.
The other problem has to do with the age-old lack of direction. The maps are fairly nice to look at, but they give you no direction on where you're supposed to go. I had to enter the graveyard a second time because the map did not indicate a destination for me. I simply thought I had gotten to the end. So I made my way back toward town, spent a good 15 minutes going there, only to find I hadn't completed the quest, so I had to go back, only to discover the monsters I had killed the first time were BACK!!!
At another time, I ended up traipsing through a forest I didn't even need to enter, spending 20 minutes going down that path, just to come to a dead end. I then backtracked, only to find an obscure hole in the wall I could go through to go in the correct direction.
These problems with the game are not a FEATURE. They are a bug. There was nothing enjoyable about wasting a good 45 minutes of my life wandering down wrong paths.
Throw in an infinite number of enemies, without the ability to pause the game and use items or check maps and the little "realtime" feature starts to grate on your nerves.
It was ultimately more enjoyable to just play something else, and that's pretty sad. Thankfully, it was a rental.
Sifted: 5/10 - I give it 5 points for the beauty of the game. I take away 5 for the gameplay/controls.
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