Zill O’ll Infinite Plus isn’t a game many people have heard of, much less played, so I’ll start out today with a basic introduction.

Story

You get to pick your Main Character’s gender and personality through a quiz at the beginning. Apparently this affects where you start, who your starting partner is and what your initial motivation is.

In my case, there’s a dark god named Ulg somewhere, and some evil people are looking for dark relics to try and revive him. MC’s dad was killed by one such person and her brother went missing, so she’s roaming the world looking for revenge and her brother, in that order.

There’s also plenty going on about fallen heroes and corrupt kings and palace intrigues and warring nobles, plus a healthy heaping of fantastic racism (elves hate dwarves, humans hate everyone, cones hate humans, boldans are just chilling) but so far I haven’t had to get gotten involved in anything too heavy yet. My involvement will probably change how history works out one way or another, but since I haven’t gotten that far yet I can’t say any more.

Characters

Mine’s a redheaded girl I named Shenando, just to show off my awesome naming sense. I have a partner named Sera who is also looking for my brother Roy… I think? Anyway, we’re working together. My two other party members are named Luluantha and Fety, but as far as I can tell they’re not important to the story.

Apart from them, Zill O’ll seems to have a LOT of important player characters and NPCs, and just as many unimportant ones who still happen to have portraits. The scantily-clad hussy on the cover appears to be one of them, though she has only shown up once in the 17 hours I’ve played so far. If you meet a character and spend enough time talking to them and progressing their events, they may eventually join your party.

Ideally I should be mixing and matching parties, but I’ve stuck with a set party for the following reasons: 1) I’m used to them. 2) I know their strengths, weakness and abilities and how to work around them 3) I can only get one person’s ending anyway, so there’s no point raising everyone’s affection all the time. 4) Switching characters can only be done in one specific location on the map, and I don’t feel like trudging there all the time. 5) You need special one-use-only ores to strengthen weapons and armor. Once I’ve spent the money and effort powering one person up, I don’t want to let them go till I’ve gotten my money’s worth.

Gameplay

The world map is in board-game format, with your MC as a piece. It reminds me of Grand Knights History, as does the heavy use of yellow and brown tones in the color palette. Moving from place to place takes days off the calendar, and supposedly specific things happen at specific times of the year. The only thing I’ve experienced is my “birthday” so far.

While there is some story progression to be done, all I’ve been doing right now is sidequest upon sidequest upon sidequest. Sidequests give you 1. Money 2. Soul points (more on those in a sec) 3. EXP, and are the best way to power yourself up. They come in four varieties: 1. Fetch quests 2. Escort quests 3. Extermination quests and 4. Search-and-rescue quests. Nothing too complicated.

Souls: The souls you get from quests are plugged into the soul grid seen in the screenshot above. As you add soul points, the “souls” move closer and closer towards the left (in the direction of the “Get” arrow) and eventually you “get” a soul. Souls simply shape the character’s growths upon leveling up. Brave souls will get more STR and VIT, Cool souls get more AGI and DEX, Search souls get more INT and MIN, etc. You can switch souls on the fly to help your characters grow more effectively, although STR, AGI and DEX seem to be the most important stats.

Skills: Unlocking souls unlocks different Attack, Magic, Support and Auto skills. These can be purchased with skill points, earned mainly from random battles.

Battles: Standard turn-based battles. Enemies can be seen on the map and can be approached from behind to get a free turn. There’s an element system that’s actually pretty important: Light <-> Dark, Fire > Water > Earth > Wind > Fire. Enemies level up as you do, plus you get more EXP from quests than from fighting, so…yeah. Luckily there’s an ability that makes you invisible to all the enemies in one room, and Escape works 100% of the time so…yeah.

Sound and Graphics

The soundtrack is very, very good. Like, “trying really, really hard to make this good” kind of good. I haven’t heard a soundtrack this overwrought and this painstakingly plotted out since FF9. What stops me from calling it “excellent” is that same “trying too hard” feeling and the fact that while most tunes are good, a few of them don’t really fit the mood when they appear.

Voice acting is non-existent.

Graphics are late PS2 level. Lots of yellow and brown and blooooooom. I love the character designs though.

Progress Report

Level 32, 17 hours, almost no story done at all. I love not having to progress until I’m good and ready, and I think I’m ready now. Not sure what I need to do and where I need to go to move on, but there’s an “Information” option that lets you consult your party members. One of them is bound to know what I’m supposed to be doing right now.

Everything else I’m doing right now

Not playing anything else. I’m back home for the first time in a while, which means I have access to the family Wii. I don’t think there’s anything more interesting on it than Wii Fit and Wii Sports, but I’ll have a footle around to see if they’ve bought anything interesting. I also want to start a couple of other things soon.

That’s it for today!