Since Is It Wrong To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? Infinite Combate is such a mouthful, let's refer to this visual novel/dungeon crawler by Infinite Combate for the rest of this review so as not to quintuple the word count.
Good? Ok.
Infinite Combate is based on the anime Danmachi (See? I've saved all of us 10 words already.). In the anime, you follow along with Bell Cranel, a low-level rookie adventurer, and the only member of the Hestia Familia.
If you're not familiar with the anime Infinite Combate is based on, this is a world almost entirely driven by RPG logic. The gods have grown bored of their easy lives and have descended to the world to adopt mortals as their children, imbue them with power, and send them into dungeons for loot.
It all makes sense.
Is It Wrong To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? Infinite Combate Review
In Infinite Combate, you still follow along with Bell, but you also follow along with his crush, Ais Wallenstein — aka the Sword Princess — who is already an impressive adventurer. As a result, you get to see a little more of Ais than you do in the anime, which is a nice bit of clean fan service for, well, the fans.
The game can be fairly comfortably split into two parts: a Visual Novel, which is where the game is strongest, and a dungeon-crawler, where the game sure is a game.
Let's start with the good VN stuff. The first thing to note is that the voice acting is exceptional because of the original cast from the Japanese version of the show. It means that if you're used to watching the show subbed, you'll feel almost nostalgic playing through Infinite Combate. It also means there are plenty of moments that the young folks would describe as "totes emosh."
Oh So Pretty
The artwork is gorgeous, but there is a trade-off of sorts here. While everything looks great while not in motion, that's kind of all you get. There are some moments where character's mouths will move, but most of the time, there is no animation at all — other than the 2D models bobbing up or down as they speak.
It's almost unnerving, but you eventually get used to the disconcerting stillness as it matches oxymoronically with the excellent voice acting.
What if I Used My Light Attack?
In the game's dungeon-crawling sections, you take control of a chibi version of your character and run around plain dungeons fighting things with a light attack, a heavy attack, a dodge, and eventually, a magic attack and some support skills too. You can also just avoid them by running to the exit depending on the mission.
It's fine.
Honestly, there's so little to it that it's hard to even get that excited or upset by it. That, in and of itself, isn't exactly a ringing endorsement, but I have a feeling that most players will be happy enough to just mash light attack until the thing they're hitting falls over. The enemies get a little more resilient as you go, and some have different attack patterns, but it's not all that hard to stunlock them, so you're never going to feel very engaged with it.
The good news is that you don't actually need to delve into it that much. You level up as the story goes on, not because you've been fighting a lot of monsters. There's no EXP as such, so you don't need to grind unless you really want to upgrade a new piece of equipment. That means you can skip all but the most essential combat if you want to, and that's a nice touch.
Is It Wrong To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? Infinite Combate Review — The Bottom Line
Pros
- Excellent voice acting
- Fun story
- No need to grind
Cons
- Minimal animation in cutscenes
- Very basic combat
Overall, Is It Wrong To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? (sorry, Infinite Combate) is a fun little visual novel with some very, very, light RPG mechanics. It's not going to change anybody's life, but it does a good job of retelling the story of the anime.
For long-time fans, it's a nice chance to delve into the world of the gods once more.
[Note: PQube provided the copy of Is It Wrong To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? Infinite Combate used for this review]
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