After an extended session with Infinite Undiscovery, where my ragtag team of adventurers meandered around in a sprawling jungle, guided only by the vaguest of blink-and-you-miss-it goals, all the while slashing away at clusters of generic but respawn-happy creatures, I had to ask myself what enjoyment, if any, was I gleaning from the experience? But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Infinite Undiscovery, the latest in a handful of Japanese RPGs to grace the Xbox 360, stars Capell, a travelling troubadour wrongly imprisoned for walking while looking like a certain fugitive. He is promptly rescued by a band of rebels and propelled (reluctantly) on a quest to stop an evil plot to chain the Moon – no, not a metaphor, metal chains and a satellite in bondage here. This premise makes sense in light of the revelation that the people of this world gain powers through ‘lunar glyphs'. Therefore, chaining down the Moon is, I imagine, akin to plugging your desk lamp into a nuclear reactor. Like all good power sources, this too is not without side effects, in this case, where the chains touch the ground, monsters spawn and wreak havoc.

Outlandish premise aside, the focus of the plot is on Capell coming to terms with his destiny while discovering the mystery (doppelganger, check) of his own past (amnesia, check). Fortunately this formulaic tale is spun into a fairly entertaining yarn with the help of a very Japanese sense of humour that fortunately works more often (even unintentionally) than not. Also of note is a large cast of characters that offer their own stories (some more than others) and at least a few likeable personas that make saving the world in their company more of a memorable class trip than an awkward elevator ride.

All class trips, and even uncomfortable elevator rides, have a clear direction and destination, but not so for Infinite Undiscovery. The journey of Capell & co. feels like episodic adventures that have little to do with each other, save for someone saying ‘let us set forth to the next kingdom!' – if that. The result is that until well into the second of this 2-disc saga, there's no clear direction for your party, how they'll save the world, or where the story's headed. Not even interesting character interactions can sustain the player long enough for them to get to the satisfying last third of this tale.

Infinite Undiscovery eschews traditional turn-based combat for a real-time, combo-based affair. During battle, you only have direct control over Capell, who is adept at swords and can effectively dispatch foes with a number of increasingly powerful combos. And while you have no control over other party members, battle commands can be issued to alter the way they fight alongside you. The friend AI is competent for random encounters, but when things get dicey they'll often fail to heal you, or do stupid things to get themselves killed early on.

Now you may think that the game is a simplistic action RPG, but with Infinite Undiscovery, nothing's ever so easy. Tri-Ace has seen fit to implement a host of features to offset the basic core of the combat. There is a stealth system that allows you to get the drop on enemies and vice versa, except you'll often be ambushed by enemies you've spotted from a mile away for no reason. Another feature allows Capell to ‘connect' with a teammate to use their special powers, a system that is also one postcode away from Broken. Also, good luck to you if you are thinking about using items during combat, because bringing up the menu does not pause the action or even slow it down. Starting to see a trend here?

Outside of combat you will find another mess of disparate systems that really don't make much sense. Talking to NPCs while ‘connected' with other characters can yield different responses and rewards. However, considering that you're joined by a cast of over a dozen characters and their love to spread out around town in their leisure time, the task of tracking them down, connecting with them and then returning to speak to NPCs is a punitive chore.

While not running around town interrogating citizens, Capell and his happy tree friends can spend time crafting items using ingredients found in the world. But there is no sense of discernable logic or cohesion and you often don't know what to do with things you have created thanks to crappy item descriptions. The worst part of it is that crafting takes time. Not convenient clockwipes that indicate its passage, but precious seconds – made even more arduous by the absence of being able to craft in bulk. It got so terrible that that I chose to spend money on potions even though I have all the requisite berries in my inventory to bottle enough of the stuff to put Coca Cola out of business.

Infinite Undiscovery further disappoints by screwing up even the filling of this underbaked pie - the questing. For starters, there is no quest log, unless you count the single line of vague description found on the pause screen, which, for its utter lack of usefulness, still managed to spoil a major plot point for me before it had occurred. Also, many times in the game you will be dumped out of a lengthy cutscene with little indication of ‘what's next?' And even when you have figured out what to do next, the arcane way that certain quests are triggered will still cause you to become stuck at certain points.

It is quite apparent that tri-Ace was inspired by MMO conventions and wanted to port that experience to a single player game - ending up with a questionable crafting system, sprawling environments and the lack of pausing during menu interactions. One interesting feature to emerge from this, though, is a multiple party system, where in a few specific instances, you can assign your comrades to up to 2 other parties to fight alongside you, or to take different paths through the same dungeon. It's more novel than actually being useful as you have absolutely no control over other squads, but it does make one feel like part of a larger team.

Visually, Infinite Undiscovery adopts a very standard anime character design that may seem rather bland at first, but does grow on you after characters are given time to emote. The game can look quite good in places, but too often the world lacks detail in its attempt to achieve a grander scale. The expansive environments do make for a more immersive experience as load screens are few and far between, but it also means you have to travel far on foot to get to that next area.

Like the rest of the game, the audio here is equally uneven, with some nice tunes thrown in with lacklustre voice work that range from serviceable to grating and laughable (bear voiced by a guy that says "roar”, I'm looking at you). For some reason, there are cutscenes that seem to be missing voice-overs which make very little sense as they are identical to every other fully voiced scenes complete with moving lips, except they're mute. It's jarring whenever it happens and really diminishes the quality of the overall experience.