To put it simply, I love the core gameplay of Infinite Undiscovery, but I'm pretty lukewarm on just about everything else it does. It's an action RPG, with a few mechanics that are familiar from the Valkyrie Profile series (air combos for extra XP, overkill meter, etc.), but if you've not played VP before, I guess I would liken it to Kingdom Hearts in a sense, in that you control the main character, named Capell, and everyone else in your party is AI driven, with the ability to give them rudimentary commands, like stay, spread out, combo, focus on one enemy, and so on. You can even call out for heals with the Y button, not only for yourself but also for the rest of your party. The computer AI is actually pretty good, but sometimes it's a bit overzealous, especially if you're trying to get thru an area without a lot of fights, or if you'd like for them to conserve their MP a bit more without having to issue the command (because then they rarely use specials or magic).

Combat plays out in real-time, where you'll simply walk around whatever area you're currently in (some of which are pretty large), and walk up to an enemy you can see and start combat. You can draw your sword with the right trigger, or sheathe it with the left to speed up your running. You have two attacks, a regular and strong attack, that you can combo together in a few different ways. You can also perform a series of special attacks, and you'll learn new attacks as you level up. Capell isn't a magic user in the game, but other characters like Eugene and Michelle specialize in heals and black magic attacks, which are carried out like anyone else's specials. You can also take a bit of control away from the AI with one character, by pressing RB and selecting one of the members in your current party. This allows you access to two of their special abilities, that you'll map out in the menu, allowing you to tell that character when to use them. They'll still run around and do their own thing (but they'll stick closer to you), and mostly it's a tool you'll only need to use to overcome a few puzzles here and there.

Leveling up is all automatic, with no option to adjust stats. You'll learn new skills as you advance in level, and there are your basic equipment options (head, body, weapon, accessory). There is a decent crafting system in place, which you'll need to use to obtain some of the best weapons in the end game, but it's also a bit of a pain to level up, considering that the drops from monsters are pretty few and far between. Even the shops don't seem to stock everything you need, but there is a bit of free DLC up now that adds some universal inventory to all the stores in the game, which helps to alleviate some of the issues I had with crafting while playing. There are different types of crafting available to all of the characters, like blacksmithing, alchemy, and cooking, and to use these skills they'll either need to be in your party at the time, or you'll have to hunt them down in a local town and link up with them using the right button. This is a pain, and it would have been more ideal to simply use a menu option to access all your characters abilities, especially considering that Capell can't craft anything himself.

As far as story goes, Infinite Undiscovery didn't do a whole lot for me. The idea is that a group of bad guys called the Order of the Chains are heralding the end of the world, after the world itself has been chained to the moon, which is now being dragged down to destroy the planet. A group of heroes, led by a man named Sigmund, are dedicated to destroying the chains and liberating the moon. Enter Capell, a guy without much combat experience in his blood, who gets mistaken for Sigmund and tossed in prison. He escapes and ends up joining Sigmund's quest, which is where the game starts to take off. The actual plot isn't quite as generic as some RPG's, but it has enough of the standard clichés to be instantly familiar to anyone that has been playing this genre for years now. The real crime comes from the majority of the poor voice over work, which really stands out in just about every scene. A few characters are ok, but the main culprits come from Michelle, the twins of Rucha and Rico (which are abominations by the way), Capell himself, Edward, and a few others.

Also, the game ends up tossing a fair amount of new characters at you in the final quarter of the story, and you never really feel any kind of attachment to these new guys, and I never found much reason to actually play as most of them by this point. I included them into the sub-teams when I needed to make up extra groups, like the final dungeon, but as far as actually using them for my main group, I never really felt like it was necessary.

The music in Infinite Undiscovery is pretty fantastic though, I definitely enjoyed the soundtrack and plan on picking it up at some point. In particular the title screen track is really great, and pretty memorable by itself. It's something I can easily hum along to even after finishing the game, and there's a common theme that's used throughout the game that works really well too. Unfortunately, the visuals aren't quite as polished as the music. It's not in PS2 territory, (and there were aspects of VP2 that I thought looked better than some things here) but it doesn't take advantage of what the 360 can do, with some bad texture work, and some stiff animation from characters in various cutscenes. A lot of the environments are nice and big, and I really enjoyed the majority of the dungeons, but it just doesn't look all that appealing when you take a close look at it.

However, I can absolutely appreciate the way Infinite Undiscovery plays, and I found the combat to be pretty addictive once you get the hang of things. The story didn't do a whole to propel me forward, but the boss fights were all pretty fun for the most part, so I was always willing to go ahead into the new areas and see what the game would toss at me. The regular enemies tend to get recycled with color swaps a bit too much, but not on the scale of Eternal Sonata at least, and like I said, the boss fights themselves seem to have plenty of variation. There are also quite a few side quests you can jump into, which I didn't play around with too much. The main story might be a bit short for some RPG fans, taking around 20 hours or so to complete the main game, but I found that to be just the right amount of time for this title, without feeling like things were dragging on for too long.

All together, I ended up enjoying Infinite Undiscovery quite a bit. It's not the best that Tri-Ace has created, but it's a pretty solid outing for these guys. If they're going to outsource some of the visual stuff though, I'd like to see them be a bit more demanding with the results than what we got here, but at least the soundtrack is really solid, and core gameplay is a lot of fun. This stands right up there with Lost Odyssey for me when it comes to 360 RPG's (I'm still playing Vesperia), and I definitely suggest checking it out, even if the story and visuals aren't too grand.