Infinite Space

Woo boy, first proper ramble.

So, Infinite Space.

 

 

It was 2009, I had a DS and was desperate for a good Space Strategy game. Homeworld had a permanent place on my shitty old Windows 98 PC whenever I had a kick and Martian Successor Nadesico had rented out my DVD player for mech goodness.

Along came Infinite Space, which from big animated trailers produced ahead of release, promised massive space battles, Adventure across a giant connected universe with an anime art-style. That was pretty much an instant buy for the weeb of the "noughties".

The DS was not really the first choice for this sort of thing in my head, big space battles surely were better-suited for the PS3 or 360? But Infinite Space eventually won me over after a bit of a rough start, it's quite unlike any other Strategy RPG of its type and I daresay one of the most underrated gems on a console full of hidden gems.

Developed by Nude Maker and Platinum games with Sega as the publisher, Infinite Space told the story of Yuri, a young fella trapped on his small backwater planet in the ass-end of the Small Magellanic Cloud Galaxy, in a future where Mankind has ventured beyond the Milky Way and formed a giant Extra-Galactic Federation, connected by Mysterious Void Gates allowing a new Age of Exploration and trade.

 

Yuri - Generic Main Character Template

 

Yuri hires Nia, a Zero-G Dog (i.e. Mercenary) to break him out of his miserable existence and get him to explore the larger world above orbit. A initial adventure involving escaping a totalitarian Planetary Governor, a sister he forgot existed until he began his breakout, and Mysterious Epigraph belonging to his absent Father, Yuri steps out into the larger universe, with a small crew and crappy ship to start.

 

Nia - Underrated Waifu

 

 

And so begins the story. Of course, your ship gets improved as you go along with an innovative block puzzle-like system for adding components to your ship, allowing stuff like adding more crew or equipping different weapons for your ship, not to mention swapping out your shitty junker for over 100 Different types of ships from a variety of Interstellar nations and factions.

And that's really only scratching the surface, there is a whole combat mechanic involving boarding enemy ships and seeing large chunky 2D sprites of armies fighting each other in Rock-Paper-Scissors style matchups, dialogue choices that can affect what story path the Main Quest goes down and a LARGE twist in the middle of the game that in my opinion, REALLY cements the story as one of the more memorable ones in the DS library.

 

 

Of course, no Gem is perfect, unless your a jeweler who is that good or something.....I dunno. 

 

Infinite Space has a pretty steep learning curve in first few hours. Ship battles have a lot to keep track of, there is a fair few hard walls in the main story you will end up having to grind out better ship parts for, and not to forget I got through about half the game before I got the hand-to-hand combat mechanics, its rock-paper-scissors but there are some modifiers involved that does not make it so clear cut.

 

Also, this game has missables a-plenty. You WILL miss potential crew-members on your first playthrough and you WILL make bad dialogue decisions in story segments that will come back to haunt you later. Very innocent decisions made hours ago could have DIRE ramifications in the game's back half. Soooooooo, replay value I guess.

 

Another particular annoyance is the VN portions of the game, there are points in the game where you need to make dialogue decisions correctly in order to avoid a Game Over, fair enough, that's a trope as old as time. No, what's annoying is some decisions can have you hitting a hard Game Over due to taking the wrong direction or getting executed by walking into an enemy port in a segment where you are trying to jump from system to system discreetly in order to avoid the law. These are just small blemishes in my opinion.

 

Hifumi Kono - Director of such Classics such as Clock Tower.......and Nightcry

 

Hifumi Kono, the main writer and Director of the game, cited Sci-Fi Legends such as Arthur C. Clarke and Gundam Creator, Yoshiyuki Tomino, as major influences on the story and honestly, this is plain to see. You name a Sci-Fi concept, it will appear in this game in one way or another. Star Trek-esque Utopia's, Evil Empires that would not be out of place in a Galaxy Far Far Away, Cosmic Horror Nebula's that erase you from existence if you tarry near them too long and trust me, there is a segment near the end of the game involving a malfunctioning Void Gate which momentarily transitions this game into the horror genre for a good hour.

	In summary, Infinite Space is well worth acquiring of any of the above sounds good to you. It's certainly deserves more attention then it got back in 2009. If you can get past the crunchy graphics and have an open-mind with the rather typical first few hours, you'll find a good 30 hour Space Opera

Sources:

• Screenshots:
• https://www.hardcoregaming101.net/infinite-space/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Space
• https://www.platinumgames.com/works/infinite-space 
• Hifumi Kono - Bayonetta Electronic Press Kit (2009)