Infinite Space

[Scorpio]

Finally got the game a few days ago and have been enjoying it immensely so far. As I told Walter, the start of the game reminded me strongly of Outlaw Star, which was a very positive association, and it only got better from there. The game jumped in with both feet and although I felt like things were being kind of rushed, it took me a good four hours to get past the first part (where did the time go?!? ) I felt the learning curve was perfect, personally. They give you optional tutorials for the two combat modes, and besides that the workings of the game seem pretty intuitive and logical. I'm rather glad there was no boring tutorial. My only complaint really is that melee combat has been a total disaster for me, with my opponent constantly picking my weakness and wiping out my units before the command gauge recharges even a fourth of the way. Even with good security personnel I'm at a loss. Hopefully as I get bigger and better ships my crew numbers will increase and I'll actually have a chance to adjust tactics...

But yeah, 10 or so hours in and going strong. I really appreciate the nod Aaz, I would never have picked it up otherwise.

 

[Aazealh]

I really appreciate the nod Aaz, I would never have picked it up otherwise.

Well I'm glad you like it! And I'm sure you'll get a knack for melee battles quickly enough.

 

[Scorpio]

Finally finished my 55+ hour odyssey through space... and wow, what a ride. I'm still digesting some of my thoughts on the story, but

Spoiler

one thing that especially impressed me was that in the very beginning of the game Yuri said he had no family then, poof, all of a sudden he had a sister. This literally bugged me the ENTIRE GAME, not just a passing, huh, thats weird, but something that actively bothered me- but the story masterfully explained it and left me with a gaping jaw in the process. Especially replaying that early stage after finishing the game, I just really appreciated how well done that scene was. I complained in this thread earlier that the beginning moved too fast... but that was because things were literally popping into existence from nothing.

One thing I didn't like though...

Spoiler

Valantin's Deus Ex Machina Gun. I work so hard grinding out the fame and fortune to get my own Corsair, and my shitty High Stream Blaster only does ~1000 damage to a single ship. Why even bother when Final Roar does probably at least 4x more? The ability to break formation? Just use formation foe first. And to top it off I only had the Corsair for a very short period before I finished the game, and now I have almost no extra credits in my game plus. Sigh.

 

[Aazealh]

Spoiler

one thing that especially impressed me was that in the very beginning of the game Yuri said he had no family then, poof, all of a sudden he had a sister. This literally bugged me the ENTIRE GAME, not just a passing, huh, thats weird, but something that actively bothered me- but the story masterfully explained it and left me with a gaping jaw in the process. Especially replaying that early stage after finishing the game, I just really appreciated how well done that scene was. I complained in this thread earlier that the beginning moved too fast... but that was because things were literally popping into existence from nothing.

Yeah, it's really very well played and I also loved how it was done.

One thing I didn't like though...

Spoiler

Valantin's Deus Ex Machina Gun. I work so hard grinding out the fame and fortune to get my own Corsair, and my shitty High Stream Blaster only does ~1000 damage to a single ship. Why even bother when Final Roar does probably at least 4x more? The ability to break formation? Just use formation foe first. And to top it off I only had the Corsair for a very short period before I finished the game, and now I have almost no extra credits in my game plus. Sigh.

Spoiler

I actually never used the High Stream Blaster, nor did I bother getting the Corsair. The Evstafi suited me well enough. The one thing about the game I disliked if I can say that, is that I really hoped Nia would have survived and come back to Yuri. Yuri himself seems to hope for it, and Niall's survival makes it likely, but they decided to move the story more toward a Yuri/Kira thing. I can understand it but it's not what I hoped for.

Anyway, how did you like the song that played during the credits and during the battle with Niall?

 

[Scorpio]

Yeah, it's really very well played and I also loved how it was done.

Spoiler

I actually never used the High Stream Blaster, nor did I bother getting the Corsair. The Evstafi suited me well enough. The one thing about the game I disliked if I can say that, is that I really hoped Nia would have survived and come back to Yuri. Yuri himself seems to hope for it, and Niall's survival makes it likely, but they decided to move the story more toward a Yuri/Kira thing. I can understand it but it's not what I hoped for.

Spoiler

I also had an Evstafi, and it was quite a ship. I just wish the game had given me the funds necessary to build a dream fleet after compelling me to collect so many blueprints and modules over the course of the game. What good is having all of this really awesome stuff when you don't have the funds to utilize it? And the blueprints/modules don't even carry over to game plus? That was a tough pill to swallow, at the least I would have liked to be reimbursed for the value of my final ships for the game plus, but as it stands I have only a pocketful of extra credits going into a brand new game... Also, I completely agree on the Nia thing. In my mind, I expected her to come back at some point during the final chapter using the remodeled Daisy (which never surfaced again after it left the fleet in Semias' hands) and, I don't know, something exciting would happen. I wasn't too disappointed by the Kira relationship as that was the logical progression after Nia's death, but as you basically said her death feels very... unfinished. And in that sense not very satisfying. Maybe she'll be back in the sequel?

Spoiler

Anyway, how did you like the song that played during the credits and during the battle with Niall?

Oh man, I am so glad you brought that up,

Spoiler

a showdown that had been building up for over half the game, Yuri finally to avenge the death of his lost love, two extraordinary commanders in a battle to decide the fate of the entire universe and suddenly... cheesy j-pop?!

Spoiler

I loved every minute of it

 

[Aazealh]

Spoiler

I just wish the game had given me the funds necessary to build a dream fleet after compelling me to collect so many blueprints and modules over the course of the game. What good is having all of this really awesome stuff when you don't have the funds to utilize it? And the blueprints/modules don't even carry over to game plus? That was a tough pill to swallow, at the least I would have liked to be reimbursed for the value of my final ships for the game plus, but as it stands I have only a pocketful of extra credits going into a brand new game...

Spoiler

Hahaha, well you're rewarded for finishing the game with space junk, just like me! But I agree that you're never given an easy opportunity to create the ultimate ship with every single module installed. I longed for it like you did, but I also understand why they didn't make it happen. Forcing hard choices on you is more interesting than allowing you to become invincible (and it's not like the game's very hard to begin with).

Spoiler

Maybe she'll be back in the sequel?

Spoiler

One can dream... I've been thinking of getting a Corsair before fighting Niall for the first time just to see if I might be able to save her.

Oh man, I am so glad you brought that up,

Spoiler

a showdown that had been building up for over half the game, Yuri finally to avenge the death of his lost love, two extraordinary commanders in a battle to decide the fate of the entire universe and suddenly... cheesy j-pop?!

Spoiler

I loved every minute of it

Spoiler

Yeah, it's the "M4 Part II" of Infinite Space. And as a matter of fact I'm listening to it right now.

 

[Scorpio]

Spoiler

I longed for it like you did, but I also understand why they didn't make it happen. Forcing hard choices on you is more interesting than allowing you to become invincible (and it's not like the game's very hard to begin with).

Well that's the thing though, why is game+ so gimped when it could have made all my dreams come true?

 

[Aazealh]

Well that's the thing though, why is game+ so gimped when it could have made all my dreams come true?

Spoiler

The New Game+ has all the characters retaining their levels, so I'm not sure it can be said to be gimped. If I'm not mistaken you get additional blueprints too.

 

[Scorpio]

Sorry, I phrased that a little wrong. It's only gimped in terms of what was in my imagination when I heard about a new game+ option, where in my mind it was more of a sandbox thing; demolishing foes with super advanced ships, a chance to really play around with modules and different fighters/weapons, and a chance to have every character in the game a member of my crew at once. In those terms I feel it was a little disappointing, but don't let my whining fool you- I'm not that torn up about it, it's just the only aspect of the game I can harp on.

Also, could you perhaps point me in the direction of those artbooks you mentioned earlier?

 

[Aazealh]

Sorry, I phrased that a little wrong. It's only gimped in terms of what was in my imagination when I heard about a new game+ option, where in my mind it was more of a sandbox thing; demolishing foes with super advanced ships, a chance to really play around with modules and different fighters/weapons, and a chance to have every character in the game a member of my crew at once. In those terms I feel it was a little disappointing, but don't let my whining fool you- I'm not that torn up about it, it's just the only aspect of the game I can harp on.

Ah, well yeah it definitely has its limits.

Spoiler

Maybe you should try the special mode that lets you concentrate on the action if you didn't though.

Also, could you perhaps point me in the direction of those artbooks you mentioned earlier?

Sure, this one is the real artbook and that one is more of a game guide.

 

[CowTip]

So, due to the high praise here and my own draw to niche games that often have big payoffs, I managed to snag a copy of this game. I feel a little bad because I bought it used (thus no cash for the developers), but I honestly couldn't find a copy around here. I feel lucky that I found a used copy (I'd checked around a few times in a few different places with no luck). Sure, I could have gotten it off of Amazon, but I never got around to it.

Anyway, I'm 15 hours in and just hit chapter 7. I was pretty stunned when I checked a walkthrough just to find out that I'm only 1/3 - 1/2 through. I'm not used to DS games lasting much longer than 20 hours. So far I'm really enjoying the game and it's definitely my style, but I can see why this game doesn't hold much mass appeal. A lot of the game really does feel like you're just sifting from one menu to the next or reading a cutscene and also, maybe this changes more down the road, but the battles seem fairly simplistic. I personally love a game with good story though and so far I'm really digging the surprising depth here. I haven't felt like a character is pointless yet as even the random crew members you recruit sometimes have comments and scenes where I wouldn't expect them. Many other games like this will give you an introductory quest to get a character and then basically ignore that they even exist. I've got people from a guild that I simply paid money to get onto my crew continually popping up here and there and I think that's really cool.

That said, I've had a few gripes so far. As I mentioned earlier, the battles seem really simplistic and even though I realize that a lot of RPG's these days are similar in this way, I get sort of bored with how each galaxy repeats the same two or three ship formations with every random encounter. As such, I usually use the same tactics over and over again (and even though you can run from almost any battle, the game really straps you for cash making it tough to avoid them). On top of all this, I always get the feeling that I wish there was more I could do during battles. The introduction of fighters has helped a bit, but at least so far, they're so unimpressive in battle I usually outright ignore the fighter/AA options. I realize that they've just been introduced though so I'm hoping they play a bigger part later in. Unfortunately though, I'm nearly 20 hours in and battles are really not very exciting. Fly into range, blast the guy in front a few times, hit the dodge button, wait for your gauge to go up, fire a few more times, rinse repeat. That said, I also think the difficulty curve seems sort of unbalanced. When I first started the game, I was dying like crazy. It seemed like every ship completely outclassed me and I barely had the cash to upgrade to anything better. I also didn't completely grasp the enemy tactics and don't feel like the game did a great job of explaining things to me. I realize now that you need to look at the color outline of the enemy ship to predict behavior, but before I found that out on my own, I was more or less just hitting commands at random. I was also frustrated by playing a good 30 min to be hit with an unavoidable ship battle that destroyed me just to be hit with a hard "GAME OVER" screen forcing me to redo everything again. I realize some of this is due to newer games spoiling me and back in the day this was the norm, but what I wouldn't do for a rematch option. Also, I realize there's an autosave function, but with how often you visit planets and how insufferably long it takes the game to save, I can't stand leaving it on. I save like crazy now, but it's admittedly sort of annoying. It would have been nice if they just warped you back to the last planet you visited after death. Just my opinion though. After I finally managed to get a few more ships and learned how to read the enemy though, the game has become insanely easy. I rarely have any issues, even on bosses so far. Again, I keep hoping that things get shaken up eventually, but 20 hours is a long time to wait for battle evolution.

Also, don't get me started on off-ship battles. The rock-paper-scissor system is really terrible and doesn't really offer any real strategy. I've had battles that I've won without getting touched and then I've had battles where I've started out with 1500 health and the enemy 400 and the enemy almost obliterate me simply because they somehow kept choosing the option that beat mine. These battles are frustrating and not really fun at all. I really dread melee battles. I also am greatly annoyed by the fact that in ship battles, if I want to actually see how much damage I do to a ship, I have to sit through the extremely long battle scenes. Sure, it's fun to see your awesome squad of ships unleashing hell on your enemies, but it's just not something you want to sit through hundreds of times. Thankfully they added a way to skip these battle scenes (I honestly would find the game unplayable without that option), but I really really hate that I have no idea how much damage I've done. I've looked through the options and I don't see any way around this. I've actually had one or two battles where I was murdered because I couldn't see that I was missing many of my shots.

However, where the game really shines is with ship customization. I really love the number of modules and how you equip them on your ship. It forces you to really think hard about how you want your ships to be built and what aspects you want that ship to focus on. The same is true for crew customization. I love the options available there.

Spoiler

For instance, I recently got the "HELP" character (which I thought was an awesome addition btw. That hit me straight out of the blue that the help menu character would keel over and then be reborn as an awesome laser shooting combat robot ), and I have had a tough time between sticking her in one of the areas where her stats are insanely high or keeping her in the op position where her stats stink but she has a level 5 ability that helps the battle gauge charge faster.

If customization is your thing, Infinite Space is great. The game also feeds my OCD by making me constantly revisit planets in the hopes of finding new scenes and/or characters. The story is also surprisingly adult. Not something you usually expect coming from a Japanese story writer who chooses to make their main character 15 years old

Spoiler

I recently got through my first encounter with the flux universe and I was genuinely sort of creeped out about it. Maybe it was the screaming sounds in the background.

Again, I really enjoy Infinite Space and I'll definitely be sticking with it until the end, but I won't pretend that it doesn't have some flaws. It would be great if they were able to make a sequel because I really think this is the start of something that could be absolutely incredible, but I'm not really getting my hopes up. Sorry that I sort of wrote a book, but it's been a long time since I've stumbled upon a game as unique as this one. Thanks for the recommendations guys.

Also, my ship names so far (They're really stupid )
Destroyer - BOOMY
Battleship - BIGBOOMY
Cruiser - MOOCRUISER

>.>

 

[Aazealh]

I've had battles that I've won without getting touched and then I've had battles where I've started out with 1500 health and the enemy 400 and the enemy almost obliterate me simply because they somehow kept choosing the option that beat mine.

Are you sure their melee stat wasn't just higher than yours? Because that's really the most important thing.

These battles are frustrating and not really fun at all. I really dread melee battles. I also am greatly annoyed by the fact that in ship battles, if I want to actually see how much damage I do to a ship, I have to sit through the extremely long battle scenes.

Tap the screen once and it'll skip straight to the enemy receiving damage. Tap again and it'll skip that too. It's not everything or nothing.

 

[Scorpio]

The introduction of fighters has helped a bit, but at least so far, they're so unimpressive in battle I usually outright ignore the fighter/AA options. I realize that they've just been introduced though so I'm hoping they play a bigger part later in.

Fighters become absolutely key later in the game. I guess you could theoretically do without them as long as you had good AA... but I wouldn't even want to imagine doing without their awesome anti-ship capabilities. I would have been toast on so many occasions without them.

The rock-paper-scissor system is really terrible and doesn't really offer any real strategy. I've had battles that I've won without getting touched and then I've had battles where I've started out with 1500 health and the enemy 400 and the enemy almost obliterate me simply because they somehow kept choosing the option that beat mine. These battles are frustrating and not really fun at all. I really dread melee battles.

I used to be like you, melee fights used to be all or nothing and a roll of the dice. But once you raise your combat stat with security rooms and good personnel, and get a few ships with high crew numbers... melee combat is a blast. Every time you pick a command, that is when the computer will do the same. That is the key. If the computer is currently winning, it will either assume you are going to counter it and counter that counter, or sometimes it will stay the same. Those are the two most common options, so you really have to think, and if you stay a step ahead you will either be winning or it will be a tie. It is surprisingly strategic, and some of my best, non-story memories of the game are some of the later dungeoncrawls through pirate lair's, because they were such tense, back and forth affairs with everything on the line. Ship melee becomes boring because you just select shoot every time, as even if you're losing the computer will often change his tactics or decide to retreat and then you just keep gunning him down. With pirate lairs, there is no retreat

And that point kind of ties into your comments about the save function and lack of rematch. While I agree the save function took longer than I would have liked to do its job, being able to redo battles you've lost imo would kill all the tension this game has to offer. You mentioned you thought the majority of the game was too easy, well, remove any consequence for dying and you're just compounding that problem. As it is, when you're suddenly faced with a life or death situation, you REALLY don't want to lose.

 

[CowTip]

Are you sure their melee stat wasn't just higher than yours? Because that's really the most important thing.

I usually have a melee stat of around 50-55 when I know a battle is coming, usually with deathblow or similar. I think that's pretty high for where I'm at right now (when properly prepared my melee stat is higher than any other stat honestly).

Tap the screen once and it'll skip straight to the enemy receiving damage. Tap again and it'll skip that too. It's not everything or nothing.

I am aware that you can skip straight to the damage scene, but even that goes far too slowly for my tastes. An option to make highly abbreviated battle scenes would have been appreciated. Something akin to some tactics games where you just see the damage pop over the enemies head or at the very least an overall report of how much damage I did during the last salvo. If you want to know how much damage you did, you at the least have to sit through a pretty slow scene of all your shots landing on your enemies; unless there's something I'm missing.

I used to be like you, melee fights used to be all or nothing and a roll of the dice. But once you raise your combat stat with security rooms and good personnel, and get a few ships with high crew numbers... melee combat is a blast.

See, I just can't see how there can really be much strategy. The fight I mentioned earlier about the 1400 to 400 fight was actually a slow and painful death. I would pick slash and the computer would pick leader. So I'd pick slash again in case they switched thinking I would, and they stayed leader. So I switched to shoot, they switched to slash. So I switched to slash, they switched back to leader. It was incredibly frustrating honestly. After they killed me, I went back with the exact same set up and managed to win the fight in about 30 seconds. The leader powers help a little bit, but even those, only being able to use them once per battle (as far as I can tell), if they get blocked they can't even help you out that much. It feels a lot like an actual game of rock-paper-scissors which is pretty much all dumb luck anyway. I really hate that life or death is based so much on a random system.

And that point kind of ties into your comments about the save function and lack of rematch. While I agree the save function took longer than I would have liked to do its job, being able to redo battles you've lost imo would kill all the tension this game has to offer. You mentioned you thought the majority of the game was too easy, well, remove any consequence for dying and you're just compounding that problem. As it is, when you're suddenly faced with a life or death situation, you REALLY don't want to lose.

I definitely understand what you're saying and it definately adds some tension, but it sometimes gets really annoying. Having to skip through a number of cutscenes you've already seen before just to get another try at a battle can be tedious. For instance, walking through a pirate base that literally only has one direction because you were murdered at the final fight is sort of annoying. I grew up with RPGs that were unforgiving in their difficulty including losing up to around 3 hours of work sometimes, maybe I've just gone a little soft. I've actually had a few games with harsh save systems where I've died without saving for a long period and then basically quit because I was too disgusted to think about replaying so much lost effort. The risk can be a cool feeling, but I just don't enjoy skipping the same scenes again and again just to get caught back up again.

It was mostly only an issue at the start though. I rarely die anymore so it's not much of a problem, but I get the feeling that the steep difficulty early on might have been what scared away the original owner of my game (He quit about 2.5 hours in according to his save file).

 

[Lithrael]

Yeah, I'm fairly early in the game too, ch 5 or so, and fighters and melee both still seem pretty pointless, though at least I got a tip on melee (

Spoiler

always pick shoot no matter what

), and I too took a while to realise about the ship outlines and worse, how to tell if your weapons were in range or your special was still active. At least I finally seem to be at a place where I'm getting enough money to play with a little.

Oh also the G at the end of the money counter looks like a 6 and I keep thinking I have a whole nother digit of money than I really do.. @#)*&...

 

[CowTip]

Yeah, it also took me a bit to realise that there was more to range than just the bar at the top of the screen. I realized that different weapons had different ranges and I thought the line represented only my farthest reaching attack and that I'd have to guess for the rest. I was pretty glad when I noticed the weapon icons changing colors. Amazing how much faster stuff dies when you fire all your weapons at them

 

[Aazealh]

I usually have a melee stat of around 50-55 when I know a battle is coming, usually with deathblow or similar. I think that's pretty high for where I'm at right now (when properly prepared my melee stat is higher than any other stat honestly).

If your combat stat is higher than that of your adversary then there's no reason for you to lose as long as you're playing your cards properly.

I am aware that you can skip straight to the damage scene, but even that goes far too slowly for my tastes. An option to make highly abbreviated battle scenes would have been appreciated.

Have you tried changing the battle scenes in the option menu? That might be what you're looking for. But in any case, it sounds to me like you're being overly picky for no good reason here. The same goes for your complaint that the game is too easy, which was followed by a complaint that death should have no consequence.

I get the feeling that the steep difficulty early on might have been what scared away the original owner of my game (He quit about 2.5 hours in according to his save file).

The difficulty isn't steep at all. It's just the learning curve. The game's not all that hard in general, like most other games nowadays.

 

[CowTip]

If your combat stat is higher than that of your adversary then there's no reason for you to lose as long as you're playing your cards properly.

Honestly, in a completely random system there's no real way to 'play your cards properly'. There's no real strategy in rock-paper-scissors. I honestly think they could have made it a lot more strategic and thus more fun. What they implemented into the game comes across as about as basic as you can get for a fighting system. I will note that since that one fight where the computer happened to pick the weakness for every choice I made I've had absolutely zero problems with any melee battle. Maybe it was just a fluke, but since it happened once, I know that the possibility is always there. I looked around to a few places and I see similar stories to my own as well as people backing up the "Only shoot" tactic. Losing a melee battle definitely gets a lot harder later on due to your ability to equip multiple security rooms as well as some of the more awesome melee skill crew members eventually acquired, but in general, I just don't find melee battles deep or fun really. It's really the only part of the game I can truly say I don't like.

Have you tried changing the battle scenes in the option menu? That might be what you're looking for. But in any case, it sounds to me like you're being overly picky for no good reason here. .

I rechecked all the config options and then checked the manual. The options are: Cruise Scenes, Encount. Scenes and Launch Scenes. Cruise only has to do with cruising animations. Encount. Scenes I still can't really figure out. It just says "Choose one of two presentation styles of enemy encounters" but I haven't noticed what that really does yet. Launch Scenes only gets rid of the pre-fire dialogue between your crew as far as I can tell. There's no way to speed up the damage screens. Right now with 3 ships it takes around 15 seconds to see the amount of damage I do if I choose to sit through only the 'hits landed' scene. It's not a huge deal and far from a game breaker, it's just something I wish was a little different. Being able to skip those animations and still see the damage I've done would be nice.

The difficulty isn't steep at all. It's just the learning curve. The game's not all that hard in general, like most other games nowadays. The same goes for your complaint that the game is too easy, which was followed by a complaint that death should have no consequence

My problem is that the difficulty curve is completely backwards. The game starts out pretty difficult and then gets exceedingly easier if you know what you're doing. I realize that this is partly due to the game having such a broad array of customization available to the player (much like FF8 could be stupidly easy with the right junctions or incredibly difficult without them), but I usually prefere a game that starts off a little easier and then ramps up the challenge. This gives you the chance to ease more into a game rather than cold-cock you in the face right at the outset. I mean, in the very first chapter you can run into forced battles where you can easily be destroyed in one hit if you screw up once and by that time you've barely figured out what's what in the game. Look at how long it took us to figure out more intricate details such as watching enemy ship outlines and figuring out weapon range indicators. The game doesn't ease you into that sort of thing, they more or less just toss you out there and force you to figure things out. I can deal with that sort of challenge, but plenty of people won't. Lots of people will immediately throw the game aside and call it trash simply because they think it's unfair. I think most people judge a game based on the first few hours of gameplay and if you find yourself frustrated by a constant game over screen right from the onset, you're likely to not continue.

As for the easy/death thing, my complaint was more towards the start of the game and I even stated that it was just personal preference and that I may have been spoiled by recent games. I did mention that death has barely been a problem past the first few chapters. I've just come to a point where I feel like death where you're instantly hurled back a few cutscenes doesn't really add to the overall difficulty of a game. You're just trudging through the same stuff you've already trudged through. The same cutscenes you've already read, the same battles you've already fought. You can save at every planet to avoid this problem, but I don't see how saving adds to the difficulty of a game outside of testing your own patience. Sure, it can add some tension when you're about to die and you haven't saved in awhile, but I'd argue that that's more negative stress than positive stress. When I die I don't usually feel like "Man! What a challenge!", I'm usually feeling "Crap, now I have to go watch all those cutscenes again." Especially with a combat system this luck based (will the enemy barrage like I expect them to or will they just hit me with normal over and over again), it would be nice to just get thrown back to a previous planet then having to re-play through old content.

Again, I can deal with systems like these just fine, but a lot of people won't. Many people would die after one especially long period without saving and just call it quits right there. You can call them wimps, but they're likely to not have good things to say about the game.

I'm still enjoying the game though. Just hit chapter 8 and I'm at around 20 hours now. I decided to go the

Spoiler

Nova

route.

 

[Lithrael]

I'm just starting ch 7 I think. I haven't figured out what the Encounter Scenes options do either. But I have started to remember to use the cam button at the bottom right during battles and tap the different ships to check em all out, which is fun.

At this point the only thing I really wish was different: I wish the tavern 'friends' dialogs weren't ordered randomly (and/or that there was a 'skip to the end' button rather than just a 'go faster' one). It seems so pointless to have to sit through the same dialog multiple times just to see if anyone else still has a dialog waiting to come up.

I also wish you could set the dialog boxes to be transparent. The artwork obviously goes all the way to the bottom of the screen, but you hardly ever get to see the bottom half of it.

 

[CowTip]

About the artwork thing, if you hit the start button it'll get rid of the dialogue box until you press start again allowing you to see the full picture. I'm glad they thought to add that feature in. Took me a bit to notice it. I agree with the random tavern dialogue as well. Maybe a better solution would be to just not even let you talk to your friends unless they had something new to say. Would save some time talking to friends on every planet.

 

[Aazealh]

Honestly, in a completely random system there's no real way to 'play your cards properly'.

The system isn't completely random though, that's the thing.

There's no real strategy in rock-paper-scissors.

Yes there is, actually, but that's not the point here. The game's melee system allows for course correction so it's miscontruing it to compare it to a plain old Rock/Paper/Scissors game. It is pretty basic, but your complaint still sounds hollow to me since very few games actually allow for truly strategic maneuvers.

Right now with 3 ships it takes around 15 seconds to see the amount of damage I do if I choose to sit through only the 'hits landed' scene. It's not a huge deal and far from a game breaker, it's just something I wish was a little different.

That's the standard for RPGs if not lower really. And it's not like you're counting the precise amount of damage you deal with each landed shot, right? Again, this seems like a hollow complaint to me. If you'd prefer to skip the battle scenes completely then maybe the game just isn't for you.

My problem is that the difficulty curve is completely backwards. The game starts out pretty difficult and then gets exceedingly easier if you know what you're doing.

But I just told you that it didn't. It only seemed difficult to you because you didn't understand how the game worked. It's as easy in the beginning than it is in the end. Try replaying it and you'll see what I mean. That's why it's called a learning curve. I'd agree that a longer tutorial would have been useful, but the Help menu's there for a reason, and I personally didn't need long to understand how combat worked.

As for the easy/death thing, my complaint was more towards the start of the game and I even stated that it was just personal preference and that I may have been spoiled by recent games.

That doesn't invalidate what I told you.

When I die I don't usually feel like "Man! What a challenge!", I'm usually feeling "Crap, now I have to go watch all those cutscenes again." Especially with a combat system this luck based (will the enemy barrage like I expect them to or will they just hit me with normal over and over again)

Sounds to me like you're just not enough into it yet. There's almost no luck to the battles, rather they are quite strategic most of the time. You know, like in real life when you aren't told in advance exactly what your opponent will do, but can predict it based on what you're doing and what he's doing, and can then counter it if you're fast enough. The fighting system has more depth than you give it credit for.

At this point the only thing I really wish was different: I wish the tavern 'friends' dialogs weren't ordered randomly (and/or that there was a 'skip to the end' button rather than just a 'go faster' one). It seems so pointless to have to sit through the same dialog multiple times just to see if anyone else still has a dialog waiting to come up.

Yeah, that's a complaint I agree with. I also wish the "Tavern" spots were more varied.

 

[CowTip]

That's the standard for RPGs if not lower really. And it's not like you're counting the precise amount of damage you deal with each landed shot, right? Again, this seems like a hollow complaint to me. If you'd prefer to skip the battle scenes completely then maybe the game just isn't for you.

I don't want to skip the battles, just the long battle scenes themselves. Luckily, many RPGs have learned about the problem with long battle animations and dealt with them, but that doesn't mean I haven't suffered through countless rpgs that are painfully slow. Nowadays I prefer having options. See this video for a good example involving the recent remake of Persona for the PSP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_GYXYQYZps At original speeds, the game is a downright tedious chore, but speed up the animations a bit and suddenly having so many random battles doesn't seem quite as painful.

Other examples I can point to are those of tactics style games. Most tactics games have fancy animations, but many of them have options to turn off battle animations or shorten them drastically. Here with Fire Emblem, you can either sit through long battle animations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvIEbvFFQJE or if you like you can shorten them to just show you how much damage you've done: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1fT2HQFX_Y . Infinite Space thankfully gives me the option to skip battle scenes, but if I do so, I don't have any idea how much damage I've done. I'm forced to either suffer through long scenes over and over or play blindly. Again, it's not a huge issue, but I wish they'd worked it out a bit better.

But I just told you that it didn't. It only seemed difficult to you because you didn't understand how the game worked. It's as easy in the beginning than it is in the end. Try replaying it and you'll see what I mean. That's why it's called a learning curve. I'd agree that a longer tutorial would have been useful, but the Help menu's there for a reason, and I personally didn't need long to understand how combat worked.

Learning curve definately takes into account the perception of difficulty though. Just because firing a rifle and hitting a target can be easy to someone who's had a lot of practice, that doesn't mean that it's easy for someone just starting. If they were going to just throw you into the game and made you figure things out for yourself with only text descriptions from the help menu, they could have at least made earlier enemies not be so unforgiving. That would have helped a lot with the early difficulties for new players.

That doesn't invalidate what I told you.

The point was, I'm not complaining about the game being too hard or being too easy. I spent that paragraph explaining that I don't see death as it's handled as affecting the difficulty at all. It just adds more tedium in retracing your steps.

Sounds to me like you're just not enough into it yet. There's almost no luck to the battles, rather they are quite strategic most of the time. You know, like in real life when you aren't told in advance exactly what your opponent will do, but can predict it based on what you're doing and what he's doing, and can then counter it if you're fast enough. The fighting system has more depth than you give it credit for.

Well, I'm probably coming across as too harsh. I really don't mind the ship battles. I've actually had one or two that have been pretty close (I had one battle where I literally finished with about 10 health left on my flagship that was the only ship left standing that I had to pull a few hit and run strategies to pull off). There is a good deal of luck though insomuch as that many battles I can go in to I can replay a second time due to death etc. and the enemy will randomly do completely different things. One boss battle I had, the enemy would store up to red and then just continually fire normal shots at me. I wasn't strong enough to deal with such repeated hammerings and died, but the second time I came back he would only charge up to red and then barrage repeatedly. There are strategies for dealing with most things an enemy pulls on you, but rarely can you go into a battle and fully know what to expect as far as their tactics go versus many other games that most of the challenge is just learning a certain boss's patterns and techniques.

 

[Walter]

One boss battle I had, the enemy would store up to red and then just continually fire normal shots at me. I wasn't strong enough to deal with such repeated hammerings and died, but the second time I came back he would only charge up to red and then barrage repeatedly.

I remember experiencing frustration in these kinds of battles, but really, I was just playing too aggressively.

I realized about 1/4 of the way through the game that in boss battles, it's often better to just play it safe, stay out of their range until you have a full gauge, wait for them to attack, then go in full force and retreat for another full gauge. That applies whether you're confident of your abilities or not, because some of the early bosses can really decimate you if you're too aggressive. Also, once you get fighters later in the game, you'll have an extra tactical option available to you. Around the 40-hour mark, my group of fighters could wipe out 5 ships in a random battle in about 20 seconds flat.

Status update, I'm finally at the end of the game, 58 hours in. Probably another 2 hours until completion.

 

[Aazealh]

Here with Fire Emblem, you can either sit through long battle animations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvIEbvFFQJE or if you like you can shorten them to just show you how much damage you've done: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1fT2HQFX_Y

Yeah yeah, I know what you mean, but I don't think the game lends itself to it all that well. Timing is a very important part of battles, and the longest sections aren't so much the ones showing the damage as the games of cat and mouse you play with the opponent. Infinite Space's battles are also designed to be a lot more cinematic than those of games like Fire Emblem that were always crudely depicted. Honestly I think it just goes with the game, and while I get your point, I can't see it as anything but capricious. Sure, it'd be cool to have the option, but like you said it's really not game-breaking. I know if I started voicing complaints along those lines for every game I played I'd just never stop.

Learning curve definately takes into account the perception of difficulty though. Just because firing a rifle and hitting a target can be easy to someone who's had a lot of practice, that doesn't mean that it's easy for someone just starting. If they were going to just throw you into the game and made you figure things out for yourself with only text descriptions from the help menu, they could have at least made earlier enemies not be so unforgiving. That would have helped a lot with the early difficulties for new players.

But I didn't find the early enemies to be unforgiving myself. The game mechanisms not being especially easy to grasp isn't the same as the game being harder early on than it is later on. There are games that are actually like that.

The point was, I'm not complaining about the game being too hard or being too easy. I spent that paragraph explaining that I don't see death as it's handled as affecting the difficulty at all. It just adds more tedium in retracing your steps.

See it however you want but I don't see what it's affecting if not difficulty. That kind of topic (death in games) can quickly start running in circles too. I'd understand if you underlined more that saving takes too long, making auto-saving a bother, but that death involves replaying through certain parts is such a staple of video games that it goes way beyond Infinite Space itself.

There is a good deal of luck though insomuch as that many battles I can go in to I can replay a second time due to death etc. and the enemy will randomly do completely different things.

Uhh, luck isn't unpredictability. Sorry but like I said, there's actually little luck to the battles when you understand how everything works. Maybe you personally sometimes win through luck, but that's a different thing entirely.

 

[CowTip]

Yeah yeah, I know what you mean, but I don't think the game lends itself to it all that well. Timing is a very important part of battles, and the longest sections aren't so much the ones showing the damage as the games of cat and mouse you play with the opponent. Infinite Space's battles are also designed to be a lot more cinematic than those of games like Fire Emblem that were always crudely depicted. Honestly I think it just goes with the game, and while I get your point, I can't see it as anything but capricious. Sure, it'd be cool to have the option, but like you said it's really not game-breaking. I know if I started voicing complaints along those lines for every game I played I'd just never stop.

It's nothing that's really hampered my enjoyment of the game, just a small annoyance that's sort of nagged at me since the start. I'm mostly just grateful that they included an option to skip at all. I don't think that I've ever played a game where I thought everything was completely perfect (Well... Mario Bros. 3 maybe >.>). That doesn't stop me from enjoying them.

But I didn't find the early enemies to be unforgiving myself. The game mechanisms not being especially easy to grasp isn't the same as the game being harder early on than it is later on. There are games that are actually harder early on than later on.

It definitely sounds like you picked up on the mechanics faster than me. I think I died about 10-15 times before I picked up on the enemy ship outlines. The problem I had was, at the start you really only get the two ships, one of which is pretty terrible and the battles you can't run away from one barrage and you're dead. Heck, one normal shot on your little ship could blow it to pieces. At least later in the game it takes a couple rounds for you to die usually.

See it however you want but I don't see what it's affecting if not difficulty. That kind of topic (death in games) can quickly start running in circles too. I'd understand if you underlined more that saving takes too long, making auto-saving a bother, but that death involves replaying through certain parts is such a staple of video games that it goes way beyond Infinite Space itself.

Well, my original idea of having them return you to the last planet was more of a way to do away with having to go through the process of saving at every planet as a whole. I actually don't mind losing battle progress or even having repercussions of death such as losing money or something similar, it's just that I've always hated having to mash buttons to get through cutscenes or re-wade through title screens for no real reason. Not only that, but I feel like it can diminish the overall effectiveness of a scene sometimes too.

Spoiler

Take for example the first trip to the flux universe. As I mentioned earlier, it was sort of creepy for me, but had I forgotten to save and then died after those sequences of events, I would have had to go through the whole thing again and more or less just mashed my way through. The overall impact of that sequence of events would be gone and I'd just be turning my brain off through the whole thing.

I've learned that there are other ways to inflict drawbacks to death than just a hard "Game Over" screen. It's also sort of cool that way because then they give you the choice between continuing on with your newfound penalties or reloading your most recent save if you really want.

Again, my complaints are minor and more as to why I see the game as somewhat inaccessible. There's plenty to see here if you're willing to sink some hard time into the game, but you really do have to stick it through a ways to get there. And I know that sequels are definitely not cure-alls to everything, but they've got a great system in place here that if expanded on just a little bit, could really be something else. They went for something really grand in this game, and I'd say that they pretty much succeeded, but I can only imagine what a few tweaks and expansions could lead to.

That said, I'm really getting ahead of myself. I really need to play more. I think we can all agree that for a DS game, Infinite Space is very ambitious. I liked your comment earlier on what people would think if it had come around during the original Playstation era. It definitely has that feel to it and seeing as how the PSone era was one of my favorites for RPGs, I'm sure that plays into my overall enjoyment of the game (and yes, I was around through the NES and SNES 'golden ages', Dragon Quest is one of my most favorite jRPGs of all time, but Playstation era RPGs just engrossed me so much more. Like I was playing more than just a video game).