Overview and Highlights
THE ENCOUNTER RATE: There are a
few innovations that really made this game for me. I absolutely love
the option to adjust the encounter rate! Why haven't other RPG's
implemented something like this? Sometimes I just want to explore,
and in other games like this I lose interest because I often can't
risk going further and have to find my way back out of a dungeon to
survive. In Infinite Adventures, I can pursue little goals I want to
achieve without being bothered by random encounters. For instance, I
wanted to level up a few of my newbie characters, so I put two of
them in a party of higher level characters, and turned off the
encounters. I walked to a boss encounter, and then fought the boss—it
was a hard fight with my newbies, but I won, and they leveled up a
couple times! The encounter rate feature made this game so much more
fun to me, and it never felt like a grind because I could choose the
frequency for how often I'd be fighting lots of monsters.
THE
SKILL VARIETY: A lot of RPG's have complex skill trees, so
I guess this is nothing new, but I liked the skill trees in Infinite
Adventures. Each character had 3 different skill trees to choose
from, and it was actually possible to get some of the more powerful
skills before level 10 if you invested right. The skills were
interesting and changed the way I fought in battle, and they made me
look forward to battle, because I was always looking for a chance to
test various combinations of characters and skills. Monsters had
different vulnerabilities to exploit and abilities I might want to
suppress, so the variety of skills kept it interesting and strategic.
ENCOUNTER WARNING SYSTEM: I
thought it was a great idea to have a slowly changing color around
the map that showed me how soon my next encounter would be. Once it
started turning brighter shades of red, I knew my time was up. If I
knew I wasn't going to be ready, I could warp back to town, or do my
best to heal up my characters before the encounter started.
SAVE ANYWHERE: Thank
you, Stormseeker Games, for allowing me to save anywhere in the game.
I really, really hate save points that you have to trek with the risk
of losing all of your progress if you don't make it there. My time
for gaming is limited, and if I invest time and then end up losing
it, I may not come back to that game again. With Infinite Adventures,
I can just pick up where I left off!
FAIR MAPS: So
far, I've only been to dungeon station 4 (level 4), but the maps have
been fine. There are a few places where there were pitfal traps that
dropped me to a lower level, but it wasn't the kind of impassable
aggravating obstacle that I've seen in a lot of other games of this
type. There were also a few puzzle rooms, but they were fairly
intuitive and could easily be reset if I made a mistake. There has
been nothing so far that made me feel like I was stuck and couldn't
move forward—nothing that made me feel like I'd have to waste tons
of time walking around to figure it out. I play these kinds of games
for the strategy, battles, and the story, not be be frustrated by
infuriating map design. For me, a game needs to be fun and not feel
like a chore or a punishment to endure for the good stuff, so I'm
glad Infinite Adventures hasn't had any maps so far that froze my
progress.
BALANCED LOOT: Again,
keep in mind that I'm a low-clutter dungeon crawler where I prefer my
loot to be balanced like the Dragon Quest. I don't want to carry
around a million swords and struggle to pick which one to use. I like
having simpler choices with a few options to upgrade and fine-tune.
CHARACTERS: With
5 races and 10 classes to choose from, each class with 3 different
skill trees, I felt there was a lot of depth for strategic
customization. For character types, I could also choose--in most
cases--between two different art protraits with two different color
schemes each, and I could choose from a huge variety of voice types.
Each voice type gave more “character” to my character. I could
choose noble or common for my character's background, which
influenced my attributes and my skills. There is a lot of unexpected
depth to this game, and character creation was extremely fun!
GAMEPLAY: The
controls were fine, the game flowed quickly, and I could even adjust
the speed of the action during an encounter (I put it at medium so I
could better keep track of what was going on and study how effective
each skill was.) The game revolved around going through dungeons,
fighting monsters, leveling up and tweaking characters, returning to
town to buy, sell, rest, save, upgrade, take on or report quests, and
advance the main storyline.
PRICE:
$25
is a little steep for a game like this at first glance, which might
turn a number of buyers away. Without playing it, it's hard to
justify the $25 asking price when looking at the production values
and comparing with other games of the same price from much larger
game studios. But, if you look past first impressions, there is a
lot of game here. Consider this was done by one person who
understands old-school dungeon crawling fun at its best—this game
was more fun for me than other similar titles by big game studios,
and Infinite Adventures has great innovations that should really
become standards in this genre. I think it's totally worth the money.
Even more so when considering that it supports the efforts of such a
small game studio. A lot of thought and effort went into this game.
ONLINE
RECEPTION SO FAR: I
bought Infinite Adventures on the PS4 and was the first to rate it. I
rated it 5 out of 5 stars, but over several days, the rating dropped
to 3 out of 5 after others rated it. However, on Steam, I've seen
nothing but good reviews, with 14 positive reviews as of today's
writing. Perhaps the PC crowd has different expectations than console
gamers? One complaint that I've seen a few times in forums is that
there was a save file corruption issue at release, and though I never
experienced this myself, I can see how people would be angry losing
their saves after investing time in the game. This has already been
addressed, though, because Stormseeker Games has already patched the
game several times since release, so they are actively supporting it
and responding to their customers.
REPLAY
VALUE: For
me, there is replay value because I really enjoy creating new
characters and trying out new skill investments. You can create a lot
of characters and vary their skill investments, and I can see myself
trying a new game with a new hero to get a different Kessen skill
based on the different background choices I made. I'd definitely like
to try building my characters up from level 1 in different ways once
I better understand what character and skill types work together best
for my tactical preferences.
VERDICT:
As
mentioned, I ranked this 5 out of 5 stars. For me, this dungeon
crawler does so many things right, including some innovations that I
hope other developers take note of and make into standards for the
genre. Infinite Adventures shows what one game designer with a clear
vision can do alone and honestly, it is quite impressive. Somebody
give this guy some major financial backing, because I really can't
wait to see what he produces next!
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