Oh boy. With a title like that, how are you supposed to describe this?
Infinite Undiscovery is a 2008 Eastern RPG for the Xbox 360, developed by tri-Ace and published by Square Enix.
The moon has been chained to the planet by an organisation called the Order of Chains, founded by Leonid the Dreadknight. Each chain causes the earth to wither around it, and unleashes monsters and natural disasters. Only The Chosen One has the power to break these invulnerable chains and free the world from their malign influence.
The main character, Capell, is not The Chosen One. He just looks like him.
Gameplay is similar to tri-Ace's Star Ocean series. The player has direct control over the main character, Capell, while the AI controls the other characters. The player can "connect" Capell to any character in his active party in order to use their skills, and must do so in order to deal with certain puzzles, destroy certain obstacles, or perform item crafting in towns.
It's also incredibly pretty.
Tropes present in this work:
- All Men Are Perverts: Inverted with Capell. To thank Capell for saving Leif, Faina offers to do anything for him. Turns out that Capell just wants a future meal from her while Faina is ready to do anything.
- Bears Are Bad News: Gustav the bear, for Capell's enemies. Capell can ride on his back and the bear in question can kick a lot of ass. And he breathes fire.
- Big Bad: Leonid the Dreadknight is the ambitious leader of The Order of Chains who wants to use the Chains to bind the moon to the Earth. This is slowly killing the planet, unleashing natural disasters and monsters, and it is up to Capell to stop him. Later it is revealed that he was doing this to get closer to Veros the Crimson One, the god of the moon.
- Brutal Bonus Level: It's tri-Ace, so of course it has some variant of the Seraphic Gate, Gabriel Celeste and Iseria Queen included.
- The Corruption: Late in the game, the party encounters a phenomenon called "Lunar Rain". While beautiful to look at, lunaglyph-bearing meages exposed to Lunar Rain find their bodies inundated with more lunar power than they can safely handle. If the condition is left unchecked, they become invisible, superpowerful monsters called Vermiforms, who kill everything they can, including you and the rest of your party. Only the unblessed can see them. Aristos, however, are immune to Lunar Rain's effects. This figures in the plot, and also becomes a gameplay element.
- Cursed with Awesome: Unblesseds, who are immune to Lunar Rain and the only ones who can spot Vermiforms.
- Day-Old Legend: Upgraded weapons have different backstories.
- Disc-One Nuke: With proper abuse of the crafting system and some farming in the right areas for materials, you can end up with some endgame equipment before you get to the third chain.
- The Dragon: Leonid.
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: Kiriya.
- Dull Surprise: Caitlyn Glass and Laura Bailey are the only actors worth noting here. The rest of the cast have a bad tendency to either be completely flat-toned, or enunciate in really weird ways.
- Failure Is the Only Option: It doesn't matter how quickly you reach Sapran when it comes under attack from Vermiforms. Faina, Leif, and most of the townsfolk will still die.
- Fantastic Racism: Comes in two flavors:
- First, there's the distinction between "meages" and "aristos". Meages look like ordinary people, and are ruled and protected by aristos. Aristos are meages that have been transformed through a lunar rite. They are distinguished by a crescent moon halo that's centered on their shoulders.
- There are also the "unblessed". In this world, people normally receive a "lunaglyph" at birth. The "lunaglyphs" grant their bearers magical powers. However, those born under a new moon, or during a lunar eclipse, do not receive a lunaglyph. They are the "unblessed", and are basically pariahs. No government will protect them, and they are frequently exiled from their hometowns. At least one country legally requires that all unblessed be killed at birth.
- Femme Fatale: Saranda.
- Guide Dang It!: The locations of the "Secret of" Item Creation quests. The official guide says you need them to make certain items but it doesn't say a single word about where they are and how to accomplish them.
- Heroic BSoD: Capell goes through this when Faina and Leif are killed by Vermiforms during an invasion in Sapran. Capell then starts to resent Lunaglyphs and their users, believing that if they weren't Unblesseds they (The Unblessed) would've been protected and thus still alive as well as setting a personal goal of ridding the world of Lunarglyphs. His journal entries and attack voice reflect his new attitude. He gets better, but still succeeds in his goal.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Lord Sigmund, for Capell. Also, the Emir, for Aya.
- Idle Animation: Rico and Rucha never hold still. At all.
- Improbable Hairstyle: Komachi's hair is tied by a bow...which also happens to be her hair.
- Actually, if you look, there's a hairclip keeping it in place. Doesn't explain how she maintains that style through dungeon after dungeon, though...
- Interface Screw: When you're confused, the controls get really wonky.
- Jerkass: Edward, who initially treats Capell like The Load, and later as Lord Sigmund's
Replacement Scrappy, to the point of simply referring to him as "Impostor." - Jerkass Gods: Veros.
- Large Ham: Leonid's acting is... interesting, but the real winner here is Edward. He is always yelling and overreacting to everything, especially when he's a vermiform. Just listen to those shrieking laughs.. Weirdly enough, he gets less hammy after his Character Development kicks in.
- Leaked Experience
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Near the end of the game it is revealed that Lord Sigmund is Capell's father.
- The Man Behind the Man: Veros.
- The Masquerade: After Lord Sigmund's Heroic Sacrifice, Capell decides to pretend to be Sigmund so the world doesn't lose hope.
- Mistaken Identity: Everybody thinks that Capell looks just like Lord Sigmund, the Liberator. It gets old after a while, as Capell himself acknowledges.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Subverted. Upon killing the final boss, Veros, all existing "lunaglyphs" vanish from their owners and no more can be created. Subverted in that, despite granting awesome magic powers their owners, everyone who has one is in constant danger of being turned into superpowered, invisible, genocidal monsters. Killing Veros also has the side effect of cutting off the power source of all the Aristos, putting them into a deep sleep. Indeed, even during the epilogue set two years after Veros' defeat, Kristopher is still caring for the still asleep Seraphina. However, the Aristo members of your party knew this would happen.
- Noob Cave: Graad Prison.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Aya realizes this between her and Saranda. They both would support the ones they loved. Saranda to Leonid as much as Aya to Capell.
- Only Sane Man: Capell, at the start of the game, wants to know exactly why he's being dragged along to save the world, and why are these kids following him around?
- Playing with Fire: Aya.
- Rebellious Princess: Aya, the first member of the Liberation Force Capell meets, is revealed to be the princess of the emirate of Fayel.
- Relationship Upgrade: Aya and Capell, just before the final dungeon. In a nice touch, Aya's status page actually reflects this.
- Reverse Escort Mission: In the beginning, you are vulnerable due to carrying an injured companion. An NPC will escort your character, but only halfway to your destination. After that, you are left to take the rest of the way while a dragon chases you down breathing fireballs.
- Superboss: Several in the Seraphic Gate, but the biggest are tri-Ace regulars Gabriel Celeste and Iseria Queen. Strangely, they look like Faina and Leif.
- The Stoic: Aristos in general, most notably Savio, Touma, and Seraphina. Seraphina especially, who speaks as though she were a robot (i.e. always putting logic first, and using percentages and probability to describe things).
- Take Up My Sword: Lord Sigmund finds himself unable to break chains, so he has Capell do it. At the next chain, he is killed protecting Capell.
- Theme Naming: For special attacks. For example, all of Aya's battle skills are named after birds (Sparrowrain, Peacock Plume, Cardinal Cloak, etc.), most of Edward's are water-related (Turbulent Swing, Twinstream, Rising Current, etc.), Komachi's are named after trees (Ash, Hornbeam, Crowfoot), Vic's are insect-related (Sliding Stinger, Dragon Flyer, Mantiscissors) and Capell's are music-related (Slashing Canon, Symphonic Blade, Eternal Refrain). The only person who really doesn't seem to follow this is Touma.
- Ungrateful Bastard:
- No matter what they have done to save the world, as soon as he finds out that Capell isn't really Sigmund the Emir has the Liberation Force arrested. The fact that Capell also reveals himself to be an Unblessed doesn't help.
- Edward gets like this a bit as well, refusing to accept Capell in any way after Sigmund's death and Capell assuming his identity, at least until his Break the Haughty moment.
- Well, Excuse Me, Princess!: Capell and Aya's relationship starts off as this.
- Word Salad Title: What, exactly, is an undiscovery?
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: To the point where characters have their stats decrease if they encounter certain enemy types. For example, Aya, who hates bugs/reptiles, will go through a stat reduction if she encounters them.
