The two most important things in a JRPG are the characters and the story, neither of which is particularly redeemable. Firstly lets cover the entourage of misfits cast in this parade of disappointment. Generally the best protagonists in RPGs are the every-men who, through dedication and hard work, grow into the marvellous heroes that slay dragons and topple empires. JRPGs have the same sentiment but in Japan "every-man" evidently means barely pubescent asexual push-over and Capell is absolutely no different.

He has a largely unknown past but in the present he's a flute player who doesn't like to fight and who is mistaken for the actual hero of the story which leads to his place in the plot. His love interest is a hot little number who of course isn't (read: blatantly is) interested in him, which leads to a number of awkward lines of dialogue especially with the number of tertiary female characters who throw themselves at him.

The only other particularly notable characters are the children. If we refer to my pad of paper, we read: "Annoying kids need help finding their dad", "Annoying kids really don't seem bothered their dad is dead", and finally "Oh crap the annoying kids joined my party permanently." The two kids whose names I bashed out of my head are your basic magic users who wield instruments and are particularly talented with regards to the amount of annoying drivel they can spew out in every cut scene. Did you know one of them can even talk to animals?

The rest of the cast in this game is a veritable who's who of nobodies and characterless peons. Your party ultimately pads out to be 12 people strong, the most I have personally experienced in a JRPG. In spite of this huge cast of cardboard cut-outs the most you have in a party is 4 and you only ever truly control Capell with the option to "connect" with another character to briefly use their special skills (i.e. you connect with the archer to fire arrows at a switch).

Now that I have sufficiently bashed the characters let me commence similar treatment for the plot. It's argued that in RPGs there are 36 basic plots and every single JRPG uses the same basic story arch with one or two twist arcs thrown in. Generally they're understood to fundamentally be a base of "Daring Enterprise" and "Ambition" with a dash of "Obstacles to Love". This structure holds true in IU and it's only truly interesting plot feature is the basic premise of the moon being chained to the planet.

Wherever you go great chains reach up into the sky, eventually blending into that single great spectacle that is the moon in bondage. The group so lazily called the "Order of the Chains" dedicate their time to setting up and protecting these chains which poison the land around them and bring demons to ravage the locals. That is until our party of protagonists liberate them and shatter the chain. Without delving into much more detail (it hardly feels like there's much more to say) the sequences regarding the chains and the moon are generally quite interesting but always short lived.

Infinite Undiscovery has taken the Star Ocean approach to combat with a real time combo system being implemented, the primary difference being your lack of control over party members. The combat is simply a combination of X and Y with very little in between and every combo finisher is accompanied by the most irritating shout. Imagine hearing "Dancing Rapsodie!" every 6 seconds during a long fight... It's enough to drive a man to madness.

Your party AI are generally okay whilst in combat; sometimes they require a little more help with regards to healing (you can prompt a heal at any time) and they have a tendency to burn all their mana on trash, but that can be controlled. You can set your party to a series of different behaviours including "focus" which causes them to attack your target, "combo" which encourages them to build combo attacks with you, but most importantly "Save MP" which will be your mainstay for 90% of the game as you can't rely on them to use it efficiently and mana does not regenerate at all without potions.

My primary complaint with regards to IU is not actually the story or the characters but rather the fact that the whole game seems designed to hinder you. For the first 2 hours of playing I had to use GameFAQs three times and each time it's because I had missed some subtle line of dialogue which can never be replayed and isn't recorded anywhere. Your objectives screen reads something along the lines of "Travel to Timbuktu" but nowhere on your map or in the menu screen does it actually tell you where Timbuktu might actually be. I've wandered aimlessly for 30 minutes in an area not overly big just to eventually and somewhat accidentally stumble across my target destination. That's 30 minutes of skirting the edge of the map, no less.

When fighting a boss you are often left completely clueless as to exactly what the methodology for defeating them actually is and might even require you to use connect skills you never even realised you had. A simple puzzle in fact relied on you connecting to the child that could speak to animals, then using his skill to charm some specific creatures in order to open a door. Now imagine being posed with a riddle and no idea one of your characters can even talk to animals. It's absolutely infuriating and an utter waste of everyone's time.

IU has some reasonably entertaining set pieces and the FMVs are usually quite impressive but the vast majority of the scenery is barren. You traverse whole castles with only a candle stick per room but otherwise completely empty and the same goes for most of the places you visit. Graphically it's only just on par with your average JRPG this generation but then none of them are particularly impressive. Frankly if Infinite Undiscovery is the best Square Enix can do they can take their RPGs back to the PS3 because I'm really not interested in having them as a consumer. I can only hope that in the future something revolutionary happens because this genre has only gone backwards in the last 3-5 years. It's technically not a broken game, it's just a horribly boring one. I told you it was going to be a messy review...