More Complete Thoughts on Infinite Space

As I stated before, the writing in Infinite Space is top-notch. Its even very humorous at times. There is quite a bit of reading, but it is broken by gameplay enough to make it not only tolerable, but I genuinely look forward to what they characters are doing in between battles.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the game, it is an RPG (complete with random battles) set in space. You travel from planet to planet, buying new spaceships for your armada, equipping them with more powerful weapons, and hiring new crew members to assign to work in different capacities (according to their strengths) on your various ships.

Infinite Space really is a thinking man's game. The battle system takes a second to learn, but could take years to master. At its heart, the battle system is an active time bar, akin to the 16-bit and PS1 Final Fantasy battle systems. A ship can attack when the bar is 1/3 full, or it can with until 2/3 (at least) full to launch a more powerful attack. However, this attack can be avoided by issuing a command available when the bar is almost empty. Each ship had a different range of attack and can be moved to different rows so that your more durable ships can take the brunt of the blows.

Outfitting the ships and your crews can be the most time consuming aspect of the game. Instead of having traditional RPG stats of Attack and Defense and Speed, the characters have attributes such as Leadership, Piloting and so on. There are dozens of different positions on each ship to fill, and finding each characters forte is essential to your ship operating at optimum levels. You can also upgrade and change the weapons systems of your ships and add medical bays and crew quarters. It's pretty epic for a little DS game.

The character designs are varied and they have a nice subdued anime style. The battle ships have a lot of variety as well. The battle graphic are nothing to write home about, but quite a lot can be going on there, so the technical limitations are understandable.

I'm personally not an advocate of voice acting in any particular game, especially not on a little DS card. The silence is welcome in a game with this much reading and menu navigation. The music is nothing special, but is never distracting either.

Give this one a shot if you're looking for something to really scratch your head over.