Developed by PlatinumGames and published by Sega on March 16, 2010, Infinite Space is a quirky science-fiction RPG that is unlike any of the other Nintendo DS games. The story is epic in scope, the battle system is simple but intriguing, and there are hundreds of parts with which to customize your fleet.Infinite Space starts out on the planet Ropesk, focusing on the main character, Yuri, who wants to be a "Zero-G dog." That is, someone who explores space. Unfortunately for Yuri, his home planet is under the rule of a dictator who forbids Ropesk citizens from leaving the planet - and fiercely punishes those who would attempt to leave. Yuri begins his journey by hiring someone from off the planet to help him get away, and though things go wrong, Yuri comes out of it as the captain of his own ship, with the potential to assemble a whole fleet during the rest of the game. I won't spoil anything, but this game will likely take upwards of forty hours to complete, all the while dazzling you with a story that is actually very good for a Nintendo DS game. It's nothing compared to a novel, but those who come for the game-play will be pleasantly surprised.
The fleet customization, as briefly-mentioned above, is top-notch. You acquire new ships by getting their blueprints and having them built. You acquire internal parts, such as cargo holds, crew quarters, radar arrays, medical bays, etc. and weapons in the same way. Each ship has its own layout, and internal parts are like Tetris blocks that you must fit inside. Adding weapons to your ships is much more simple, with ships having slots for different sizes of weapons.
As for the actual game-play, Infinite Space is broken into three main chunks: battle, navigation, and hubs. On different planets, which serve as hubs, you will advance the story by going to taverns and other places of interest, by selecting them from a menu. You may access shipyards and save your game from these "hubs" as well. The navigation system consists of selecting paths through hubs, which are of varying distances, and letting your ship go through. Traveling longer distances will fatigue your crewmen, which makes battle more difficult, as fatigue makes your "action" gauge refill more slowly.
On the topic of battles, they may be entered at scripted points or at random while traveling. In both cases, you maneuver your fleet back and forth as you play chicken with the enemy fleets. As you do this, there is a sort of rock-paper-scissors action system, in which you can take one of three actions in exchange for depleting your generic-looking action gauge.
Those three actions are to dodge, fire a normal attack, or fire a barrage. To dodge will cost one bar of power from your action gauge, which regenerates over time to a maximum of three bars. It makes all barrage attacks miss against you until you take another action, but normal attacks become more accurate. A normal attack is just an action consuming one bar that does damage. A barrage costs TWO bars of energy but does THREE times the damage of a normal attack - unless your opponent is dodging. This turns battles into an interesting game of cat and mouse, where you will advance and retreat while making sure to pick the right times to come out of your dodge for a critical barrage. It's worth noting that these battles will often be difficult and you may find yourself having to spend time grinding random battles until you gain enough money to buy a big enough ship to advance without getting extremely good at fighting.
The artwork in Infinite Space is standard JRPG fare. You have a lot of anime characters and few of them ever show emotion. The 3D graphics are also passable for a Nintendo DS game, but will fail to "wow!" anyone. Overall, it's fairly generic and not worth talking about. The sounds are much the same, with the explosion and laser noises one would expect from a science-fiction space combat game. The music, on the other hand, ranges from annoying (rarely) to quite catchy. The tavern theme will likely be a favorite for many as it perfectly sets the atmosphere for tavern areas and is also an enjoyable tune in its own right. The navigation theme, on the other hand, is just an upbeat piece that isn't really pleasant to listen to and doesn't seem to fit the game.
All in all, Infinite Space is another very solid title. It's already a couple of months old, but it's definitely worth buying if extremely-customizable space RPGs are your thing. It's not perfect, and it's not one of the best titles on the system, but you will enjoy very much if you've been waiting for something like this, and you will still have a lot of fun with it if you're just looking for a good game and have played everything else. In the end, even with its flaws, Infinite Space is one of many strong Nintendo DS games and will make a great addition to any collection.
