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Genre: Visual novel dungeon crawler JRPG
Developer: MAGES. Inc.
Publisher: PQube Limited
Release Date: August 10th, 2020
Edited by AlexKnight2005
Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? – Infinite Combate is a more visual novel and a simple dungeon diving action-RPG, that is based on the anime series of the same name. The anime also goes by Familia Myth as the original title can be a mouth full no matter how you say it. The game takes you through the story of the anime. Infinite Combate comes out at a nice time for fans of the series as the new season currently coming in October 2020. The series itself takes a very video game-like approach to its fantasy world as you serve under gods as the gods unlock your experience to level you to become stronger. Unlike some that make it seem like a game they are playing, this makes it their real life.
Infinite Combate starts at the start of the anime playing as Bell Cranel, a beginner and sole adventurer in his house to his god. He strives to be a hero as the story progresses and you learn of the world it is. Between the graphic novel story, which is in the same order as the anime series, you fight in the dungeon in doing missions as you upgrade yourself. The story takes another odd turn as you play both sides of the story and, in short, two different stories once. You play the first chapter of Bell’s story in season one, then you play chapter one of Ais Wallenstein’s story. Her story focuses more on her as she is someone Bell is interested in and someone who is known as one of the best adventurers. It can be awkward as everything gathered in one isn’t for another, and Ais’s story is her at a higher level, so learning of the stats and scaling is odd as you play one person at the beginning and one at the endgame. The stories don’t line up as much other than taking place around the same time. It felt odd and broke the flow of the game going back and forth.
I want to talk about the visual novel side of the game first as it’s half the game. The visual novel side seemed odd as the story and dialog are exactly from the show. Voices are ripped right from the show to do this as well. Calling the visual novel side a copy and paste wouldn’t be wrong to say. This would work well, but they try to fast track many parts to the point you can’t tell what just happened or the screenshots from the show don’t make much sense. This could have been easily fixed if they just used clips of the show or edited clips of the show to the story then do a visual novel. Somewhat of an annoyance is the character introduction screens don’t have a set way they are introduced. Some are shown when the person comes in or is shown in the middle of the scene the person is introduced. They came off badly timed. The visual novel also doesn’t go far enough to show what is happening. Even more, screenshots could be used with the texts to help, but most of the time it’s just the still images of the characters with minor animations in the face to do the cutscene. It just felt rushed and lazy doing the bare minimum of what many bad visual novels do. Being a fan of the series, it was very easy to see the flaws but just doing text of the voice lines with no descriptions of what they fail to show what is going or explain makes it more of a mess.
The gameplay outside the story is simple, but not amazing, with more drawbacks to make it feel like a chore than being enjoyable. You can do side quests, but places in the dungeon are fixed to the point even loot drops are in the same locations every time. How you fight is very limited as you mostly have a standard attack and a more powerful sweeping attack. The fighting feels unpolished as all enemies that spawn walk directly at you, even getting stuck on rocks and obstacles between you and them as they continue to walk straight to you. Enemies are stun locked when you hit them, and using your strong attack or finishing your combo puts you in an animation lock. Every time this happens, you will be hit if you can dodge in time if the game lets you. This is the entire fighting system save for the abilities you can get even allowed followers at parts in the game, but these only make you hit harder for a time or do large damage in front of you. You do get a magical ranged spell, but it seems very useless compared to everything else. I wouldn’t even call the gameplay roguelike at all as it’s advertised. Even critical hits feel lackluster as it doesn’t do much more damage. The fighting and dungeon crawling feel like early alpha builds than a finished product. Damage bonuses from applying elements to your weapons feel unrewarding. And the limited choices of weapons and armor you buy feel just as unrewarding. The fighting becomes worst as the game progresses as you continue to do the same thing at the start of the game but now do it for longer. Quests in the dungeon don’t last long at all, and many don’t even require fighting as you can run by everything unless the quest is to kill “X” amount or a type. Part of me felt the visual novel would be better if they focused more on this or dropped it entirely. Controls don’t help it either as keyboard controls use the arrow keys for movement and Z, X, C, and V for everything else while items and support buttons are W, A, S, D, Q, and E. Controller didn’t work at all either. Music and sounds are very basic, and the only good audio or sounds were ripped from the anime for the visual novel part. Everything else was extremely limited and too simple.
Rarely do I run into a game I cant recommend to anyone. And even being a fan of the anime, I can’t recommend this to anyone, even a fan of the series. The game feels like a lazy cash grab with nothing to add to the story or does anything right other than using the voices from the anime in the visual novel part. I couldn’t believe I was playing a finished product of a game or visual novel. I felt they could have easily made a better visual novel using resources from the show they already taking resources from and made the gameplay better in any part of it. They both don’t mix well together, and add in the forced swapping back and forth between the stories just makes, Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? Infinite Combate a complete pass on anyone thinking about it with no real redeeming qualities to brag about.
Pros:
- Follows the Story of the Anime
Cons:
- Boring Gameplay and Combat
- Visual Novel Part Lacks as a Visual Novel
- Lots of Technical and Bug Errors
FoxieEXE gives Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? Infinite Combate a Drastik Measure of 3.9 out of 10 (39)
