Infinite Undiscovery
September 17,2008 - Square Enix has long been the benchmark for how RPGs have been played and perceived for years. With an impressive pedigree of titles under its wing, the company duo is no slouch when it comes to inventing impressive new franchises that share the same splendor and magic that made both the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series so popular. Infinite Undiscovery never reaches that high mark it strives for, but it still manages to create a solid adventure for avid fans.

To understand the basis of Infinite Undiscovery, one must first understand the truly devious and confusing title. There is nothing infinite about your quest, it’s very linear in terms of RPG elements (and only lasts about 18 hours long); simply head your own way, do a couple of side quests and continue on with your main objectives. Square Enix had to explain that the word Undiscovery is meant to express the way in which your simple decisions can change the outcome of numerous discoveries you encounter throughout the game. The main character, Capell, has a magical flute that can reveal hidden items’ locations, which helps in explaining the reference to Undiscovery. But it still doesn’t make any sense.

Whatever the title might be, Infinite Undiscovery has a well formulated, albeit peculiar, story line that only the minds at Tri-Ace and Square Enix could have concocted. A sinister organization known as the Order has taken the moon hostage. What their intentions are for the moon are revealed at a later time, but in order for people to take them seriously they have tied chains around the moon in order to gain complete control. The game begins with an innocent civilian named Capell who is thrust into a massive war after being mistaken for a past hero and fighter named Sigmund the Liberator. Because Capell himself is no Sigmund, he is soon met with other fighters who have agreed to help him on his dubious quest.

Infinite Undiscovery strives on the basis of teamwork. Needless to say, throughout the game you will be tasked with meeting numerous characters upon which you can have fight alongside you in battle. Up to 18 characters can be met through the course of the game, with only about 5 of them worth mentioning. The game does a good job of allocating the aspects of every character, what their strengths and weaknesses are and how well they fight in battle. But with just so many characters thrown at you, you will soon lose interest and just rely on the same basic trio throughout. That’s not to say you will stick with your same group forever, Infinite Undiscovery’s massive character list is important in the fact that you can create smaller teams of four to break up when you do battle. The separate teams often engage in their own battles and such, and only ever meet up at the end of a certain dungeon or mission. This works in some ways to offer up different aspects of fighting, but the overall micro-managing makes this task a heavy chore.

In order to fully utilize the two teams to their fullest extent, you must make sure everyone is not running around with just wooden swords and loin cloths. Equipping armor for eight people is no easy task, and avid RPG players will know that merely keeping your main party well-equipped can take hours upon hours of killing enemies for experience and money accumulation. To add insult to injury, there are a lot of moments in Infinite Undiscovery where your second team will die; all of them. It gets frustrating entering a dungeon, taking your time to pick your fights and using your items wisely, only to have your second team drop dead. Equipping the second team with essential items was never a main priority, but after seeing how useful they were in serious situations, it's worth the time investment. This scenario could make or break the game for you, depending on how much you enjoy interacting with your characters.

The combat in Infinite Undiscovery is definitely the highlight of the game. Symbolizing a style similar to that of another popular Square Enix title, Kingdom Hearts, Infinite Undiscovery uses a real-time combat system where the basis on hack-and-slash attacks are key to victory. Your basic approach to every battle is to just simply wail away at the enemy, unleashing volley upon volley of devastating sword attacks. You can issue magic commands as well, but most of the time you are often too worried about the constant bombardment of enemies to try and push alternate buttons during battle.

Thankfully, your heroic friends can do that deed for you, and they often do a pretty good job of cleaning up the swarms. You can also connect attacks between other party members, like instancing a moment when you call upon one member to fire arrows directly at a certain enemy. It’s useful, but many of the times these “connected” moments don’t aspire to much more than completing puzzles outside of battle.

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