First Impressions: Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Infinite Combate

 

*Editor's note, The Geek Getaway received a review copy of the game from PQube.

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Infinite Combate is a visual novel and rogue-like dungeon crawler hybrid developed by Mages and published by PQube. The game is based on a series of light novels that were adapted into a series of mangas and then an anime series. Although I had heard of the series before playing the game I have neither read any of the light novels or mangas nor have I seen the anime. 

The gameplay in Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Infinite Combate follows a "read a bunch then explore a dungeon" loop that works pretty well. The writing, while not groundbreaking, serves its purpose. In fact, a few characters like Ais and Bete come across as pretty interesting. The combat is nothing to write home about, playing very close to other rogue-like overhead dungeon crawlers such as Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon and Azure Dreams. The dungeon crawling is real time and not turn based, so it is a bit more action oriented than those games I mentioned.

I've played about 10 hours worth of the game and it is pretty fun so far. None of the dungeons are overly long or require too much grinding. The controls are tight and very responsive. The visual novel sections are a bit dry at some points but those moments are mostly tied to the many tutorials the game has. There were a few terms, such as "Vanargand" and "Nine Hell" that I have no clue as to their meaning and I have yet to see an explanation for. If the game can keep the fun up then it will be an easy recommendation from me but only time will tell if that is the case.