Infinite Undiscovery





Developed by tri-ACE (creators of Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile) and published by Square-Enix, I.U. is a 2-disk, 30ish-hour action-adventure-RPG which ultimately can’t quite decide which of those 3 categories it wants to belong to.

It has ups and downs, there are many issues with it that there shouldn’t be, but there is also some fun to be had here if you are looking for a long-ish game that is more action-based and not so stat-intensive as so many other RPG’s are.


In the Beginning….

A 16-year old boy named Capell sits in a jail cell, accused of being Lord Sigmund, aka the great ‘Liberator’ who has been destroying the chains which unnaturally bind the moon to the world, put in place by the fearsome Chain Army. Capell’s appearance may make him a twin for Sigmund, but his personality couldn’t be more different.

A non-combatant, flute player by trade and generally whiny runt, Capell is an orphan who dislikes trouble, hates fighting, and just wants to be left alone to play his flute.

Mistaking him for Sigmund, Sigmund’s buddies bust him out of prison, and Capell is set on a path that will ultimately test his faith, strength and compassion, and change him in more ways than he could imagine.


Lights….Camera….Action!

This game is packed full with real-time battles. And this is real real-time, not that half-baked phoney stuff you might have seen in games like FFX-2. Basically, if you don’t want to get your ass whipped, you better get pressing buttons.

Two basic attacks assigned to A and B (weak and strong) to swing your sword, combine in different ways for different results. Capell cannot use magic, so you’ll be pressing these two buttons a lot during your adventure.

Other characters possess different abilities, such as Magic, Summoning, Possessing wild animals, or being able to enter FPS view with a bow & arrow equipped.
To use these abilities, you’ll have to “sync up” with that character by pressing RB then the button corresponding to that character (so long as they are in your current party). It’s a long-winded system that ultimately offers little payoff, so you’ll only be using it when you have to in order to proceed.



Let’s get the Party started!

You can assign up to 3 other characters to Capell’s main party giving you 4 characters at once to play with (though aside from sync’ing up you can’t control what the other 3 do). You also, in places (mainly dungeons) have the ability to create up to 2 other 4-man parties as well, which will act on their own following their own path through the dungeon and give you items/exp etc. when you meet back up at the end.

Throughout the game there are a total of 18 characters which you can use to form parties. Sounds good in theory, lots of choice of characters/abilities means you can customise Capell’s party to your liking. Sadly, it ultimately becomes almost un-doable as you have far too many characters to keep upgrading in terms of weapons/armour, and you have no way of knowing if/when you will be forced to use certain characters, and it is a certainty that at some point, you’ll be up against a strong foe with a less-than-ideally equipped group.



Equipped for battle, Fol-low me!

Money in the I.U. universe is called Fol. No idea why, but it is. If you want to keep your weapons, armour, and items in check, you’ll need to accrue a huge amount of Fol from fighting enemies over and over and over.

At certain times in the game, it seems the developers almost realised this as certain characters ‘gift’ you with huge amounts of Fol; around 12 hours in, a Queen gave Sigmund/Capell 100,000 Fol. Sounded great when I got it, but after looking in the shops to find better equipment, the 120,000 Fol I had in total was barely enough to upgrade my central 4 characters let alone the other 11 I had in other parties / reserve.


At the start of the game, I was forced to spend around 45 minutes battling enemies to level up and gain Fol to kit out my basic 4-man party for the more dangerous territory ahead; ultimately it ends up feeling like a way for the developers to make the game last that bit longer.

The game uses the standard approach to weapons and armour; certain items for certain characters. Capell & Sigmund need “knight” armour and swords, the 8 year old twins need kids clothes and toys, the girl needs skirts and blouses with a crossbow, the big guys uses little armour and a huge axe, and so on.




Let’s go exploring! (without a map.. or compass.. or sense of direction at all….)

The world is pretty large, and as you do not have a ‘world map’ such as those used in FF7, 8 or 9, you are going to be travelling everywhere in ‘real time’, and on foot. So you’d better make sure you know where you want to go – and that’s where this game get’s its first big annoyances/problems that shouldn’t be.

Firstly, there is no compass, so when characters give you directions such as “she ran off to the north”, you have no idea which way north actually is.

Secondly, you don’t have a pre-set map. Yes, it seems that, despite inhabiting the world for 16 years, having companions with you who have travelled all over the world already and having them tell you “we should go to X”, none of them actually have any clue as to where you are heading or have directions/maps already.

The map is filled in as you walk around an area, which is a real nuisance; you can end up spending ages and ages doing circles around the same area looking for where to go next, but without a map to guide you or a compass to even give you the general direction, it can be tricky especially if what you ultimately are needing to find is the small entrance to a cave hidden away in a rock formation.

In many cases, I actually came across towns and dungeons (that I couldn’t enter yet thanks to an invisible barrier, as they form part of the quest later on), before I found the actual place I was looking for by accident.



Character Develop-wha?

DevelopMENT. Or lack of it. Aside from Capell, who does go through noticeable personality changes in the course of the game, the other characters don’t really change, and they're stereotypical at best; the cute and “well endowed” lady of the troupe has a seriously low IQ, and loves to squeal, shriek and dish out hugs, which of course the hardly-endowed attitude-filled teenage girl hates. Sigmund is arrogant and brash with his power as the only one who can destroy the chains, and so on.
Perhaps its too much to expect a 30-hour game with 18 characters to spend time progressing each one, but still, it feels a little stand-still most of the time.



Sight unseen…. You can’t come in!

This game suffers from possibly the worst “invisible barrier” syndrome of any game I’ve played. They are all over the place, and it’s damn annoying.

Want to walk up that hill?
Can’t; invisible barrier.

Want to walk through those flowers?
Can’t; invisible barrier.

Want to walk around the side of a village instead of going through it at the expense of loading times?
Can’t; invisible barrier.

Want to go down the stairs instead of using the slope 10 meters away?
Can’t; invisible barrier.

Want to go in the house through the demolished wall instead of the door?
Can’t; invisible barrier.


You get my point. There are other ridiculous elements as well;
Every (and I mean EVERY) set of stairs inside houses mysteriously has a barrel at the base of them, so you can’t climb them.

You can't so much as hop over a low fence, curb, or even some random small rocks in your path, you have to run around everything.




Cut Scene’s ahoy! But god knows when or where…..

There is an insane amount of cut-scenes in this game. Most of them will end up with you putting down the controller as they are 5+ minutes long. This isn’t a bad thing in itself, they help the story progression and are a hallmark of Square-Enix games, after all. Mysteriously though, around 20% of the cutscenes don’t have any voiceovers on them, so you’d better turn on subtitles from the start or you might be a bit lost.

The problem is that often, the story progression is dependant on a cut-scene happening, and you have to go to the exact right spot to trigger it. It’s not enough to walk into the town/village required, you’ve got to enter the right house, and sometimes even speak to the right person. It’s OK at first, but when faced with the later towns which can take in excess of 15 minutes to explore, finding the exact individual to speak to trigger the cut-scene so you can then leave the town and move on is a real pain.




Graphically average, Musically acceptable

The graphics (including the FMV featured in the game) aren’t going to blow you away; at times, it barely seems to rival those found in the PS2 game Final Fantasy 10. That’s not to say the graphics are bad – they look the part, the landscapes and horizons span off into the distance (although you are sandboxed in by the invisible barriers)

The music is the standard RPG fare, light piano melodies for the towns/menu’s etc, fast-paced strings and drums for the battles.







But it’s not all bad!

Although much of the above may sound like this game is not good at all, there are a few shining gems in here that do make it a game worth playing.

The story, while linear, has enough twists and turns to keep you wanting to know what happens next.

So long as you keep your main 4 characters in your party throughout the game, their abilities will grow quickly and within no time at all you’ll be kicking the ass of anything that comes your way.

The environments you play through vary greatly, and each continent / dungeon / castle / city / town looks and feels fresh and new.

The AI of your teammates is, 90% of the time, very good; they attack what they should, heal you when you’re down, choose themselves whether to use items or magic, and generally aid you very well.

Exploration is a major part of this game, and if you don’t mind spending an hour roaming around a jungle looking for treasure, enemies and the next town, you’ll enjoy it.

Unlike other games, when the lead character (Capell) dies, that’s not Game Over; you lose all control, but so long as you have a revival item in your inventory, the AI will (eventually) revive you back into the fight.




Pro’s

A nice action-adventure game with RPG elements that is easy to pick up and play even if you’re not a real RPG enthusiast

Advanced levels of team-mate AI help you through the game a lot

Environments look nice, character design is good, most voice acting is done well and there are a lot of different abilities to learn for each character.

Story plays out well, with twists and turns you don’t expect.



Con’s

Stupid amounts of backtracking to purchase key items that are only available from 1 or 2 stores in the whole game (such as Revival potions).

A need to accrue around 250,000 Fol to upgrade your characters every time you find a new town or village.

Too many ‘playable’ characters to manage properly leading to little character development

Invisible barriers are everywhere. And annoying as hell.

During boss fights, AI seems preoccupied with attacking and healing requests go unanswered. When you are ‘dead’, it takes them a long time to use an item to revive you, and despite the 30-second window given only to Capell between ‘death’ and the Game Over screen, they will heal/revive other AI members first.



Stats

Graphics – 7/10
Suits the style, but won’t blow you away when you see it.

Voice – 6/10
Main characters are voiced well, but other characters are not, and the lack of voice in 20% of the cutscenes is just weird

Music/Sound Effects – 6/10
As with graphics, suits the style and the RPG-side of the game, but nothing memorable or so annoying that it’ll get stuck in your head. If you played the game on mute with your iPod on instead, you wouldn’t miss a great deal.

Playability – 8/10
Even those with limited RPG experience will be able to pick up and play this thanks to the mostly action-based controls.

Longevity – 7/10
Being more on the action side than RPG, there are very few side-quests, none of which enhance the story. The story itself will take you around 20-35 hours the first time, though most of that will be spent either trying to find where you are meant to go next, or grinding on enemies to make exp & Fol to upgrade your characters.
(on my first playthrough I got to disk 2 in around 9 hours)

On a second playthrough (if you cared to do it), knowing where to go, what to do and skipping the unneeded cutscenes, I reckon it’s feasible to do the game in under 15hours.

Replayability – 3/10
Once you’ve done this, you’ve done it. There is nothing to be re-discovered, no secret dungeons to beat, no additional story elements to uncover. I honestly can’t see anyone wanting to do it all over again, especially with the short timespan it’d take.


Overall – 7/10 (not an average of the above scores)




Closing Comments
If you can put aside the (numerous) flaws, there is a nice game here to be played.
The story and characters are good, and despite the RPG elements of the game looking complex at the start, it’s almost pick-up and play thanks to the in-game tutorials and simple controls.

RPG fans looking for a solid RPG akin to the Final Fantasy series will be disappointed, as would those who wanted an action game; I.U. has elements of both, but somehow the two just can’t seem to find a way to co-exist.

I guess part of it is down the personal preference – I’ve always had issues with “real-time” RPGs; to me, a true RPG is turn-based fighting, it’s what defines the genre in my mind. Putting in “real time” combat takes away what I liked best about an RPG, and from my point of view, instead simply creates an action game which wants to appear to be an RPG.

This is most certainly the case here.

Very nice review pete....
If it aint turn-based it aint what i thought it was

shame really.

was a good read, I've been waiting for a Decent RPG game to play on 360 but this doesn't seem to be the one since you said it can't decide what type of game it wants to be. and i've had it said by alot of people Last Remnant sucks as well IS NO ONE UP TO THE CHALLENGE?!

Yeah, this probably won't give you the RPG fix you're looking for sadly




I hope not!

I'll post a review of that once I've had a chance to play through enough of it to get a good view on it, probably around Monday afternoon

good review pete

I wasnt sure about this one myself, and I`ve heard a few negative things about Last Remnant as well. getting Lost Odyssey for chrimbo though, so that will take a fair chunk of time until FFXIII is finally released

ah, lost odyssey, now THERE is a damn good RPG
enjoy the 4 disc's of turn-based battle & joy mate

lost odeyssey is an awesome game it will take up alot of hours to do it all one of the best rpg's ive played since the final fantasy series

As a (small) addendum to the above review;

It gets worse once you get well into Disk 2.
Recieving around 40-50Fol for defeating an enemy, and needing over 200,000 Fol to buy one sword or piece of armor alone - that means defeating around 4000 enemies to purchase a new weapon, 8000 enemies to upgrade 1 character, making a total of 144,000 enemies needing to be defeated to equip all of the playable characters with equipment EVERY TIME you go into a town to progress the story.

SO, yeah, not going to happen.
My main character is OK(ish), the rest haven't been able to be upgraded in the last 3 towns/dungeons, and I'm now getting my ar$e handed to me by the regular enemies in the dungeons let alone the bosses (9+ tries on the last boss I fought, and I've still got 3 dungeons, 3 bosses, 3 chains to cut (another kind of boss after the main boss) and the 2 final bosses to go )


I can't honestly say I'm going to finish it, in all likelihood I'll get totally raped in the next dungeon before getting anywhere near the boss/chain, get as pi$$ed off as I've gotten tonight and throw it in the 'trade-in' pile before unwrapping The Last Remnant and getting started with that (at least that one is turn-based )


End Review / Rant