Was Infinity Strash: DRAGON QUEST The Adventure of Dai Worth It?

Become a hero and collect memories! Was Infinity Strash: DRAGON QUEST The Adventure of Dai worth it?

Background

I’m a huge believer in the power of names. You shouldn’t choose a game title (or child/business/pet name) that can be easily mocked. I know Square Enix has been absolutely killing it with the stupid game names like Various Daylife, Octopath Traveler, or Triangle Strategy, but this one takes the trophy for actually having trash in the title. Infinite Trash isn’t the worst game, but I think a lot of players would sooner toss this game in the garbage can rather than put it up on their shelf. Strash, by the way, is a portmanteau of Strike and Slash, so get used to seeing it.

This is a tie-in game to The Adventure of Dai anime series. It’s fundamentally a musou clone that retells the battles, with a lot of storybook plot dump sections interspersed. For some reason, the story just stops abruptly at roughly about episode 40 of the anime, so it isn’t a full retelling. It doesn’t make sense from a player perspective. The best way I can describe this is if a Bleach game ended before fighting Aizen, or a DBZ game ended right before fighting Kid Buu.

The combat in this game is very basic: three hit combos, with a variety of cooldown based skills. It’s pretty easy overall, and there’s limited customization. You have a few skills/spells to choose from, and you can boost your stats by increasing Bond Memories that can be leveled up in a roguelike dungeon mode.

What does Infinity Strash do well?

There is a large variety of enemies. Trash mobs aren’t ever really an issue (except for rockbombs), and you aren’t simply whaling on the same slimes over and over. There are quite a few bosses with patterns to learn in story mode. Combat is simple but effective, and the game runs fine on the Switch.

What could Infinity Strash do better?

There are moments where you’re fighting the camera as well as the enemies. Tracking feels weird and there’s no lock-on for mobs, so you may find your character dashing towards the wrong enemy, which gets tense during certain fights.

Customization options really aren’t there, and the Bond Memories system is janky as hell. Every important enemy has a stagger gauge that you have to deplete before you stop doing chip damage to them. This is thematic considering how many boss fights there are, but gets old. Your bread-and-butter three hit combo might as well be weightless slaps to gently caress enemies.

The Temple of Recollection mode (the roguelike dungeon) where you’ll earn currency to upgrade your characters gets stale pretty quickly.

The plot is told adequately, but not in a way that’ll really stick.

Was Infinity Strash fun?

It’s a fun, mindless romp, if you like musous.

Is Infinity Strash good value?

There is endgame content for players who want to 100% in the form of challenge mode (story mode fights boosted to high levels) and the Temple of Recollection.

However, this isn’t a long game unless you sit through each cutscene, and the content is padded by the roguelike dungeon mode. If you handed me Infinity Strash and Dragon Quest XI and said they were both $60 games, I’d laugh. In hindsight, I was probably too kind to Dragon Quest Treasures, which is also at that price point, but that game was clearly targeted at a younger audience.

Who is this game for?

This is a serviceable, brief action game for fans of The Adventure of Dai. I’m not sure that mainline Dragon Quest fans will get much out of it. Musou fans may enjoy it but will find that it lacks depth.

Was Infinity Strash: DRAGON QUEST The Adventure of Dai Worth It?

Infinity Strash is a shallow hack and slash that doesn’t meet the expectations of the previous action games in the franchise. Reception to this game has been extremely lukewarm, for good reason. One point in its favor is that it piqued my interest in the anime, so it worked as an advertisement. I had fun with this game up until the sudden ending, but I can’t really recommend it. Buy this game on sale, or watch the anime instead.

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