Infinite Space

[Discoalucard]

www.hardcoregaming101.net/infinitespace/infinitespace.htm

Infinite Space is a title from the Nintendo DS' days of experimentation, alongside such mechanic creating oddities like The World Ends With You, and it plays like no other title in the system's library, or anything in most every other genre.

[dsparil]

Infinite Space is my favorite DS game even though it only has like 2/3 of the plot that it should. It's weird how the political narrative gets wrapped up well, but sci-fi plot just sort of pops up here and there and then gets wrapped up really quickly in the last chapter. I think you even miss out on a chunk of that story if you don't pick the Zenito route in act 2. It makes me wonder if there was supposed to be an act three that got axed for time.

The combat is actually pretty easy if you use this basic strategy:
1) Stay out of range and Dodge
2) Wait to have 3 AP
3) Get barely into weapon range
4) Immediately Barrage after the enemy attacks
5) Dodge, get out of range and repeat from 2

It works pretty well overall, but not enough to be outright game breaking.

[JDarkside]

Aug 18, 2016 9:58:11 GMT -5 dsparil said:

Infinite Space is my favorite DS game even though it only has like 2/3 of the plot that it should. It's weird how the political narrative gets wrapped up well, but sci-fi plot just sort of pops up here and there and then gets wrapped up really quickly in the last chapter. I think you even miss out on a chunk of that story if you don't pick the Zenito route in act 2. It makes me wonder if there was supposed to be an act three that got axed for time.

The combat is actually pretty easy if you use this basic strategy:
1) Stay out of range and Dodge
2) Wait to have 3 AP
3) Get barely into weapon range
4) Immediately Barrage after the enemy attacks
5) Dodge, get out of range and repeat from 2

It works pretty well overall, but not enough to be outright game breaking.

Pretty much my go-to, but the sheer difference in stats and the obtuse nature of the system and how it's explained makes this really difficult to figure out when starting.

[GamerL]

I briefly tried this game out a few months back and it's a very cool, very unique game, but like all JRPGs seemed like a huge time sink.

It is such a clever take on spaceship combat though, I get that vibe that the basic idea behind the game came from someone watching an old episode of Star Trek where the Enterprise gets hit and it shows the bridge "tilting"

[Kubo Caskett]

If I remember that game is pretty darn expensive since like some games of high value (quality wise), it didn't get a lot of copies made and of course suffers having higher than necessary prices; supply and demand.

[TΛPETRVE]

I'm pretty sure the correct terminus is Small/Large Magellanic Cloud, not Magnetic.

[aganar]

I remember liking Infinite Space alot. I found Yuri annoying in the first half of the game, but he gets much better in the second half. The battle system was great. You could really go nuts with all of the tweaks you could make to your ship, as well as rotating the crew around to see who would do better in what spot.

Could've done without the incest, though. Japan just loves its incest.

[zerocrescent]

One of my favorite DS RPGs, heck, one of my Top 5 DS games. Really got into the story, and one of these days I hope to play through it again some day with some different choices (IIRC, I went with Kalymnos, Gov't, and Enemonzo/L last time). One of my favorite aspects was the noticeable size difference between the ships; nothing quite like seeing a battleship that could eat your little destroyer for breakfast, then eventually getting blueprints for an even bigger battleship/carrier than that.

Re: the above strategy. Yeah, that's pretty much the strategy I used for a lot of the later boss ships, it helps that the AI is easy to predict (and you can see their meter status). I remember that Fighters were particularly game-breaking, since you could pack your carriers with a bunch of hangers, send off a huge swarm of fighters, and the enemy ship would get torn apart or become a sitting duck, while your ships could just hang back at a safe range.

[TΛPETRVE]

I find it quite amusing that this game is still obscure as hell, even among Platinum fans, while on Steam there had been an influx of superficially similar (if mostly way, way more shallow) space travel sims and RPGs over the past years - including a mod for the much-revered FTL, as well as an entire standalone series of games, both also bearing the "Infinite Space" moniker.

[GamerL]

Aug 21, 2016 4:21:23 GMT -5 TΛPETRVE said:

I find it quite amusing that this game is still obscure as hell, even among Platinum fans, while on Steam there had been an influx of superficially similar (if mostly way, way more shallow) space travel sims and RPGs over the past years - including a mod for the much-revered FTL, as well as an entire standalone series of games, both also bearing the "Infinite Space" moniker.

Agreed, it's odd that this game is so obscure.

Of course I never would have heard of it either if not for JDarkside mentioning it on here once before he wrote the article.

It may have something to do with the fact that the DS was pretty on it's way out by 2010, I can't think of many significant DS titles from this decade.

[zerocrescent]

Its obscurity isn't entirely surprising. The most pre-release hype it got was when it was announced, simultaneously as part of Platinum's first trio of titles (MadWorld, Infinite Space, Bayonetta) and as Sega's big DS RPG push (Sands of Destruction, 7th Dragon, Infinite Space). There wasn't much of a marketing push for it, outside of some anime mini-webisodes. That's probably why it shocked everyone, Sega included, when it debuted at the top of the weekly sales charts in Japan and pretty much sold through its first print run (92% sell-through, according to Wikipedia). Unfortunately, the "surprised Sega" part of that sentence is pretty important, because Sega apparently hadn't planned on making a second print run so soon (if at all), and, I believe, it would take somewhere around 5 weeks to manufacture a new run of DS carts. Presumably, by the time the second run hit, any launch momentum would have evaporated, as everyone moved on to newer releases.

Moving on to the US release, it was notorious for having a really small print run (Some estimate <25k copies). It seemed to only be available at GameStop (and maybe a few other places in extremely limited quantities), and if a store received any copies, it was just enough to cover their pre-orders, with maybe one for the shelf if they were lucky. It sold out almost immediately after release. That's why, up until the VG+ reprint a few months ago, many folks eventually realized that the only way to get an affordable English copy was to import it from Europe, where it had a decent-sized print run, though I'm not quite sure about how it sold over there.

It's too bad, I'd think that if it released on 3DS instead, with a digital copy on the eShop, it would've had a better chance in the marketplace, since supply shortages wouldn't drive up the price to play.

I'll also point out that, aside from Sega's role in its obscurity, there are some aspects where it doesn't leave a good first impression. As the article says, the difficulty is pretty front-loaded; there are plenty of systems that aren't adequately explained/surfaced, such as the effects of crew fatigue and how to prevent it from getting too high (A common mistake that new players make for the first major boss battle is to head directly to the boss planet two jumps away without stopping, when the correct method is to stop at the planet in between jumps to reset fatigue).

[Alshoff]

Fighters trump any other weapon in the game. They ignore ship row/position and can attack anything. They freeze a fleet in position so it can't get into gun range. Enemy fleets rarely have more than one or two carriers, so it's easy to overwhelm them. One section in the game, the player enters an area where their ship guns only cause about a point of damage to enemies, but if they have three of the best carriers available, they can rip right through those ships.

There is grinding to pay for upgrades and blueprints, though, so the fighters being overpowered helps get through that quickly, at least.

In a way, the combat isn't complex enough, or certain features could be changed to make it more interesting:

• Enemy ships can escape from melee battle. It's annoying and probably should have been disabled. Maybe there could have been a capture mechanic or a higher reward for defeating an enemy in melee.
• Fixed super-weapons on ships are kind of useless. Firing them instead of a Barrage is usually pointless. Giving them a separate power/charge gauge would make them more useful.
• Anti-Aircraft guns are also useless. They take slots that could go to offensive weapons. Making them passive and turning these into a ship module instead might make them more useful. Maybe have them shoot down missiles as well. (There are anti-beam systems in the game, can't remember if there are anti-missile.)
• Fighters could be less overpowered if they didn't regenerate during battle. They'd be one-use weapons per battle, unless one character had a "Repair Fighters" command. AA would be used to hold off enemy fighters, then launch your own at the most opportune moment.
• The enemy usually puts its strong ship in the rear. It makes sense since that's their flagship with long-range guns, but it also means their weak ships will be cut to ribbons quickly. (Most players probably put a battleship in front to soak up damage.) Maybe the size of the ship should affect hit-chance more. A battleship in the rear would be easier to hit than a destroyer in the front. Destroyers could carry short-range, powerful weapons to discourage closing in.  Or they could specialize in AA weaponry.
  

Overall, Infinite Space is a good game that could use some refinement in certain areas.

Edit: I probably should have added that there is a Sega employee in a tavern in somewhere in the second half of the game. It's just there as a joke.