I’m fond of role playing games.

Really, I am–they represent some of the best games the market can offer.  They generally have the deepest stories, the finest graphics, the richest sound…a role playing game is like an excellent multiple-course meal.  There’s always a new flavor, a new experience around every corner and inside every dish.

It therefore doesn’t surprise me that I enjoyed Infinite Undiscovery, a game that forces me to ask the question, is it possible for Square (now Square-Enix) to make a game without beautiful cut scenes?  Even Einhander had some pretty good ones, and that was way back in the days of PS2.

Infinite Undiscovery’s plot is standard Square outlandish–a society of knights is advancing across the planet, steadily conquering everything in its path and establishing installations in their conquered regions, as part of a desperate bid to capture the moon and hold it in one spot.  This of course doesn’t sit well with the natural order of the universe, and thus any place that bears a chain that holds the moon in place is infected with a plague of monsters, disease and fear.  As is the case with this sort of game, you’ll thus be left to go forth, kill all the monsters you encounter, break all the chains holding the moon in place and set it back on its rotation, all the while fending off the Order of Chains, who first set out to subjugate the moon in the first place.

I know, it sounds lunatic, but as you play through Infinite Undiscovery (which is easily as silly a title for a game as Pandora Tomorrow) it’ll seem maddeningly close to making sense, and that’s a little bit scary, given the outlandish nature of the plot.

Playing the game is also fun, at least at first—you get a new and interesting combat system that basically tries to implant action gameplay elements into an RPG with a solid story.  Oh, sure—it doesn’t always succeed.  More than once I found myself running around a map looking for the one right turn in a seemingly impenetrable forest.  But still, I have to applaud Square-Enix for taking the chances in the first place.

And it’s not just the halfway decent gameplay that puts a spark in Infinite Undiscovery, it’s incredibly beautiful graphics.  The opening CG cutscene alone is a sprawling work of art.  Plus, it’s backed up by great sound and, for a change, fairly good quality voice acting.  That’s usually one of the biggest flaws in any role playing game—the voice work sounds like people who read the script cold yesterday trying desperately to figure out where they are.  But not in Infinite Undiscovery—this voice work actually sounds like REAL PEOPLE TALKING.   And in this business, that’s a rare thing.

In a market that’s so dominated by the same old, same old, it’s good to see that a game like Infinite Undiscovery can slip through the sea of first person shooters and breathe a little fresh life into our Xbox 360s.  It’s got its flaws, sure enough—but on the whole, this is a unique game that bears at least a test drive.