Traditionalism is well suited to many things in life. Like food – yes, we just pulled that out of the air, but bear with us. Since prehistoric times it’s been evolving and, like games, is a place where there is room for the old as well as the new. Traditional tastes alongside nouvelle cuisine. And, like food, games are always developing to suit current tastes and move things forward. Perfection is not a tangible goal, but Infinite Undiscovery seems stubbornly content not to learn; to stay static among its Eastern peers. Unwilling to accept the need to change, it’s still busy roasting mammoth over a campfire, while somewhere in a nearby restaurant, Lost Odyssey can’t decide between the chocolate ants and the stuffed truffles.

If you were to sit and write down all of the JRPG clichés that immediately spring to mind; actually, scratch that... that’s just an excuse so that we can. Starting from the top, you have the reluctant teen hero that dresses like an Aladdin panto reject. Then there’s the seven-year-olds that are remarkably good at fighting and whose sole purpose is to fail to understand how anything in the game works so that it can be explained to the player in a tedious stream of unbroken exposition. You know, the usual; what love is, how the sky works, why the bad guy is glowing red and so on. Other stereotypes are all present and correct too; the ‘nice’ romantic girl with the flat chest to provide the love interest. And of course the vixen type with massive hooters, who repeatedly waves them in the face of the androgynous lead character to show to the ‘nice’ girl that he’s a better man. Which is irritating, because if it was us? Hooters all the way.

And then there’s the environments. Forest level populated by wolves? Check. Desert level with living cactus monsters? Check. A ‘storming the palace’ level? Check, check, check. Visually, both in character and in terms of environment, it’s fair to say that Infinite Undiscovery not only offers us nothing we haven’t seen before, but also quite mindlessly plagiarises some rather obvious source material. And in terms of fidelity, it has more in common with FFXII or Skies Of Arcadia than other 360 RPGs. Everything is quite blandly textured, like an upscaled PS2 title.

But that’s not as big a problem as it sounds because the other side of that coin is cushioned; a warm, comfortable place that’s populated with old friends and familiar buttons. It plays like a TV guide in that, while there are no surprises, the knowing of what’s coming doesn’t completely destroy your enjoyment of the show. But it takes a lot of faith to make the leap of several patient hours before the game’s narrative really kicks into the gear marked ‘rewarding’.

What will rope you in immediately is the game’s combat system. Rather than spend minutes that roll into years teaching you to navigate a series of menus filled with words like ‘Demi’ and ‘Firaga’, from the outset your goal is far more simple: twat stuff. Of course you can set up far more complex interactions between yourself, your party and your enemies, hitting A and B for various combos will see you through if you choose not to delve. If on the other hand tinkering is your thing, you’ll need to find a quiet spot in which to do it; enemies aren’t considerate enough to wait while you swap your sword for a more impressive model, or arrange your magic alphabetically.

The experience carries with it that inimitable sense of exploration that you can only really get in a JRPG. It feeds your thirst to level up and see what’s around the next corner, and the set pieces and boss battles are well pitched. It’s far from the best on the 360, though, and don’t even think about it if you’re not a fan of the genre, but if you are you could do one hell of a lot worse than Infinite Undiscovery. Of course, you could also do better, but if you’re a fan and you haven’t played Lost Odyssey or Eternal Sonata yet, you have no right to call yourself such.

Dan Howdle