Product Description

Mistaken for a renowned hero, Capell is thrust into a conflict to sever the chains that bind the moon to his world. Traverse a seamless, expansive world with a party formed from 18 characters. Rise against the wicked Order of Chains in fierce real-time combat, but beware not all battles are won by force. The most obvious solution is rarely the right move. Shatter the chains and release the Order's grip on the world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1712 in Video Games
• Brand: Square Enix
• Model: 90812
• Published on: 2008-09
• Released on: 2008-09-02
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platform: Xbox 360
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .57" h x 5.43" w x 7.52" l, .33 pounds

Features

• A seamless, real-time battle system that maintains a strategic, party-oriented format
• Players are confronted with a variety of dramatic situational battles such as executing a daring escape while a gigantic ogre follows in hot pursuit, or waging battle amidst towering tsunamis. Dynamic environments change and respond in real time, creating
• Combat, exploration and other actions all take place within the same environment, seamlessly shifting between each game facet. Battles are carried out in real-time, bringing vibrant fighting sequences of the STAR OCEAN series out of the traditional battle
• A twisting, 30-hour storyline co-written by Ryo Mizuno, creator of Record of Lodoss War
• 17 characters join the hero, Capell, with unique Connect Ability actions that allow the player to tap into their abilities and take direct control

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Customer Reviews

A real "love/hate" relationship
This game was awesome for some reasons and totally sucked for other reasons. So i'm gonna do the typical "pros & cons" review to keep it simple.

Pros:
-Almost no loading time: i mean zero ... the most loading you'll see is when you start up the game. Once you get going whether it's transitioning areas, entering battle, or even going in and out of buildings (an act that some games have murdered with load times) is all but instant.
-Awesome cinematics: Ya this story is HUGE on the storytelling thing. It can be a bit much i'll admit (like put your xbox into screensaver mode long cinematics :P) but the upside? -> you can just hit "select" and jump right thru them if you don't care about the storyline (which sadly is one of this game's strongest points.
-Good visuals: The graphics are of course stunning and the "world and dungeon" designs are all pretty unique. You won't see any copycat map setups here, each area has it's own unique layout that will keep you interested.

--------------------------------------------

Cons:
-Controls: while you have freedom of movement and can try to circle around your enemy to attack, the controls are lacking when it comes to actually attacking your enemy. You have 3 basic combos, and you gain special attacks as you level up that you can "chain" into your normal swings. And when i say "chain" i mean struggle to get an effective combo together. Basically your basic attacks are performed by tapping A or B and your special abilities are activated by HOLDING A or B, an act which, in my experience, the computer seems to have difficulty distinguishing between.
-Spectator Sport?: You are very involved early in the game; meaning the outcome of battles and events relied heavily on YOUR personal participation. However about half-way thru (either right before or right after i inserted the second disk) while i still found it enjoyable to beat on the trash mobs and minibosses, i soon realized that my role as an actual "player" would come to a grinding halt very soon. I think it was the second or third main boss i came up against when i realized this fact -> "Holy crap, for me to win this fight, i have to pretty much stay AWAY from the boss and let my secondary group (which can't die by the way) fight him themselves and when they weaken him enough i run in and hit the big chain that we're trying to destroy." Rinse and repeat that and you have the last few major boss fights. Sad right? My jobs were to: A. stay alive and B. hit the chain. Because heaven forbid i actually try to ATTACK the boss, he would 1 or 2 shot me into oblivion everytime.
-Saving: or lack thereof. Save points are few and far between almost to the point that i found myself constantly thinking "holy crap if i don't find a save cube soon i'm gonna have to do all this crap over again if i die!" which brings me to my next con ->
-Death: ya it sucks. Especially when you've been playing for half an hour or so and still haven't come across any save cubes so then you get to have the fun experience of repeating the aforementioned half hour of gameplay. And as i mentioned about the boss fights; it is VERY easy to die. You can die one of 2 ways: A. your whole party including you die (that's an immediate game over) or B. you die and some of your party is still alive; if they don't rez you in a certain amount of time .... ya you guessed it ... game over. It wouldn't be so bad except your CPU companions aren't all that bright. You could die ... and have a healer that could rez you in the group OR even a whole stack of rezzing potions in your inventory. So while you're laying there ... slowly dying ... you'd think that they would pick ONE of the 2 options to get you back in the game ... wel i'd say that happens about 50% of the time. I'm not joking. They CPUs are idiots ... so i won't even make a separate section in the cons for them.
-Skills and leveling: you level up like nobody's business in this game, but at what price? A lot of your time is spent scrolling through countless submenus making sure that none of your 12 or so party members hasn't learned a new skill that you should apply to their combat abilities. Not to mention the massive skill and item database. This game is so high maitenance i felt myself going cross-eyed trying to keep all the information straight. In fact to even USE any items you have to bring up the menu (which makes you stationary and completely defensless) and scroll through all of your other crap to find the healing or mana regen potions you thought you bought but you can't remember what they're called cause there's so many different kinds and while you were trying to find them either you or the rest of your party was killed cause you couldn't move or help them ..... ya that pretty much sums up item usage. There are so many other issues i had that would fall under "maitenance" that i really just dont' feel like listing them. Suffice it to say it seemed like a lot of work for very little benefit.

Summary:
Well if you like a good story and some nice cinematics this game is for you. If you like PLAYING a game maybe with a little bit of customization and some freeroaming quests, this game is NOT for you. And yes the only reason i rated this game 3 stars is cause i LIKE cinematic/storytelling games :P.

Rough around a few edges, but very well done
I've read a lot of positive and negative reviews myself, and most are fairly accurate. There's definitely a niche of gamers that this will really apply to, but should still be a worthwhile purchase (or rental for those who can play for a week straight) for any RPG fan in general.

The story is by far the strongest point. There will be times that make you cry, times that make you laugh, and times that make you so raging mad that you forget a certain character is fictional - like a good book. Great cinematics, great voice acting, great plot.

The combat is fairly hit-and-miss (no pun intended). It took me until my 15th hour of playing to really figure out how to use combos and party orders (focus, combo, free, etc) to my advantage. Learning how to get some HP and MP back by using ground combos was very important. However, there is rarely a chance to take advantage of Connect skills, since you can't call for healing while connected, and battles are too fast or too on-the-edge to bother with another character's skills. Many of the boss fights are great and very challenging - sort of from the Kingdom Hearts genre.

One major disappointment, although I am still a good 5 hours from the finish, is that the game brings strategic situations into play with a flourish, then all but ignore them for the rest of the game. The first hour of play is heart-pumping escaping and racing the clock, then soon after that is a great siege scenario... then it drops off to the occasional ho-hum "win before time runs out" scenario, if at all. They could definitely have taken advantage of multi-party situations more - so far there has only been one (absolutely fantastic) section where that occurred.

I couldn't be happier with my purchase, though, and the only reason I probably won't play through it again is that so many good RPGs have come out or are coming out for the 360 - Vesperia, Last Remnant, Fable II, etc... hard to keep up with!

Fun, worthwhile game despite major design flaws
Infinite Undiscovery is kind of a tough game to summarize. There is so much wrong with it, so many aspects of the gameplay that are either good ideas handled clumsily or just plain bad ideas... yet despite all that, it's still pretty darn fun to pick up and play. It looks great, and it has an interesting story, endearing characters, and a nice brisk pace. The basic gameplay is solid and entertaining, yet it just can't seem to stop tripping over itself with poorly implemented gimmicks.

Among what I would consider the major problems are:

- Opening the menu does not pause the action. I can appreciate the touch of realism they were trying to add, but in practice, all this does is make item use, or any other menu-based function, completely untenable during a battle.

- The Connect system. Again, it sounds cool in theory, but in practice it's just too awkward and time-consuming to be practical during a pitched battle.

- The maps are massive and confusing to navigate. It's easy to get turned around and start travelling the wrong way, and the mini map is not much help. In addition, it's sometimes not clear where you're supposed to be going next-- a character might tell you what town you're headed for, but there's no overworld map and no way to know where the town actually is in relation to your current location.

- Sparse save points! It can get really annoying when you've been playing for 45 minutes without spotting anyplace to save. And there's absolutely no excuse for not putting a save point before a boss battle at the end of a long dungeon.

- Too many junk characters in the party. With almost 20 main characters, there just isn't time to develop all of them. The core group of Capell, Aya, Edward, and Sigmund are well sketched and even memorable, but aside from them and a couple of others, the rest fall by the wayside. There's just no reason to have to manage nobodies like Kiriya and Kristopher, especially in a game that might well take you only 18-20 hours to beat.

The most frustrating thing about the game is that it puts it worst foot forward right off the bat. The first couple hours of the game are stuffed with questionable ideas, including a "stealth" section where the already tough navigation is hindered by darkness and a disabled mini map, and several unintuitive mandatory Connect sequences. The thing is, once the game gets going, it starts dropping the gimmicks and focusing on the core gameplay, and becomes infinitely more fun. It's such a cliche to defend JRPGs that start slowly, but this is one instance where the game really does get a lot better after the intro. After such a poor first impression, though, it would be hard to blame someone who just put the game down rather than giving it another chance.

With a little bit of tuning and editing, this could have been a classic game. Instead, it's a deeply flawed game that still contains a lot of opportunities for fun. The question is whether it's worth your time to go digging for it. Personally, I would still recommend the game to JRPG fans, but you should know what you're getting into.