Mugen Kouro / Infinite Space (DS)

[kryss]

Not enough time to play this as much as I want until we're flying to Calgary on Thursday, but I'll post my feelings so far.

There are lots of nice touches to this game, like when you have a view of the bridge on the bottom screen and the outside of the ship on the top screen, there's a little screen on the bridge with the image from the top screen on it. Reminds me of PSO and Mario Kart 64.

Navigating from planet to planet is straightforward, touch where you want to go and select "decide" (it's written in English too). Then it shows your ship slowly approaching. You can fast forward this or cancel it if you've made a mistake.

No avoiding battles per se, although you can decide to fight or evade. The battles are a little simple: advance, pull back, standard attack, all weapons, evasive manoeuvres. The closer to the enemy you are, the greater your chance of damaging them.

It feels kind of like an older RPG, as the narrative is also written on the screen to go with static images of what's going on. No cutscenes for the smaller stuff.
Pretty animated cutscenes when they do happen and cool ships but SHOCKINGLY bad sound effects during battles. Just when did we go back to the '80s?

So far, so good. Great? I can't say at the moment.

[abigsmurf]

So is it a strategy game a bit like Dragon Force (but with space battles obviously)?

Does the retail version feature that creepy pic of the main character staring through a window into space in all the cut scenes?

[kryss]

Never played Dragon Force so I can't say.

Yes it does indeed. Very off-putting.

[kryss]

I finally figured out why I kept losing my battles. Contrary to what I was thinking, I should have been taking out the smaller guys and then moving on to the mothership, rather than the other way around.
This small change in tactics has made such a difference to it. Without removing the small-fry from the equation you can't hit the big ships. How stupid is that?

At least I've found the fun, and I made a kick-ass destroyer and called it "Kaguya", double laser cannons and two sets of missile launchers. Open her up on an enemy ship and there won't be much left after.

[abigsmurf]

Wonder how many people have ships named "Yamamoto" when playing this...

Looking forward to this, it looks like the kind of strategy game I enjoy. Only hope it's relatively challenging, steamrolling the CPU is a bit dull.

[kryss]

You mean Yamato?

[abigsmurf]

You mean Yamato?

Bleh, it was early morning

[kryss]

About to crest 30 hours on this now.

I'm a little surprised by the language from one of the characters after I wiped out forces defending his planet: "sh*t, f*ck, *sshole"
Family game? Still, I'd feel like that in the same situation.

I also think I've come across what a large portion of the story is leading towards:

->Open Spoiler<-

a MASSIVE fleet of huge ships is coming to the region of space the game is set - and it's only the vanguard of a much larger fleet. The whole region has to mobilise or be destroyed. The anticipation of this plot line is keeping me playing.

[Sketcz]

edited

[Orgun]

The game says I need to anticipate what the enemy will do - how the hell do I do that?

The outline around the enemy ship/icon shows you what attack they're most likely to use next. Red - barrage, green - dodge etc etc (thats just what i've figured out myself, havent bothered reading the manual but it seems to be working).

[kryss]

Basically, put your shields up ASAP, stay out of range until you're gauge is in the red then move forward, normal attack, normal attack, retreat out of range again. Repeat.
Watch the outline of the enemy, if it changes down from red->yellow or yellow->green it means they put up their shields and can dodge a full attack. Best time to use a full attack is after the enemy has fired on you, as their shields will be down.

http://www.ntsc-uk.com/review.php?platform=nds&game=MugenKouroInfiniteSpace

[Sketcz]

Cheers Kryss - I might give it another go in that case.

[S3M]

Time to dig up this old thread...

Did any here in the end finish Infinite Space? Finally got to the end after 98 hours of play and it's a truly great game so much to see and do.

This is one of the few games I'm going to start again in order to follow the different stories paths and recruit different characters to my team. Really enjoyed the story, bar the very end which is clearly just rushed together to finish the game.

Fans of Mass Effect 3 who complained about the ending look like idiots, compared too the Infinite Space fan based were the ending

->Open Spoiler<-

all 30 seconds of it just leaves everything up in the air. Don?t even get me started on the sudden change of love interest to the bizarre hint of brother & sister love, because they couldn?t bring back the other character in time. They might as well have just stuck ?To be continued? for the ending?.

Still great game that just leaves you wanting more, combat does get a bit repetitive at time but I really enjoyed it. While the Melee command is next to useless in the main story battles. Fighters are truly king and allow you to waste capital ships, still early on there are a number of nasty difficulty spikes in some battles and later bosses you tend to use cheap fighter tactics to take then down.

I?m guessing it may be a very long wait for a sequel if it ever comes, but I would like to find out the fate of Yuri and his crew.