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LISA: The Painful - Definitive Edition

The Fish

Arcane
Joined
Feb 25, 2014
Messages
1,216
Managed to complete it. It's a shame the difficulty became fairly trivial towards the end but it was ok overall. Jrpg mechanics always seem to be a little lacking and it would have been better if the punishments for your decisions felt a little more severe. The problem is if party members's combat abilities are too generic and uniform then it doesn't really matter if you lose a few in a game of Russian roulette. And that's inevitably going to be the case given the lack of combat depth and the vast number of potential allies.

To its credit I would say this is the game The Last of Us should have been.
 

Crooked Bee

(no longer) a wide-wandering bee
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Stefan Vujovic

Educated
Joined
Feb 6, 2013
Messages
93
Sorry for the double post, but this game deserves it. I have fallen in love with it, something i haven't felt since a long long time. I am not even a half way trough and i am already considering what characters and choices will i make in the second playthrough. The attention to little details, characters, cheeky mature apo-story and humor, every fucking thing is top notch... Seriously i can't believe this isn't on the top of the page when everything considered this is even better then earthbound.
 

Berekän

A life wasted
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Joined
Sep 2, 2009
Messages
3,097
Finished this yesterday. I don't usually like JRPG's, I find the combat lacking and simplistic, this one's not an exception, and the equipment system is trash, however this game introduces a few ideas that make the combat a bit more interesting during the beginning, since you have a combo attack system that makes it possible to use special skills during a "normal" attack and there are a few companions with interesting mechanics, like one that doesn't have a normal attack but instead four no-cost skills with a very high chance to inflict a condition on a single enemy. However it doesn't take long for the novelty to wear off and you're left with a simplistic combat system that becomes a chore later on, where you're most of the time fighting with the menus to input the orders and finish the combat as fast as possible.

The game loves to punish you at every chance it gets in lots of ways. There are scripted events where you'll have to make a choice, others where you won't get that choice, random events that can fuck you up... it's pretty cool and even has it's fair amount of C&C (admittedly, simplistic, but much better done than most). It's a great mechanic that really makes you feel you're in a ruthless, dangerous world. At least until you realize how meaningless and easy it is to recover from any of these punishments and the illusion is kind of broken. And there are lots of things you can miss, characters to recruit and secrets to find.

It follows the current trend of not explicitly explaining anything, instead leaving most of the storytelling for you to find out in clues and shit. I'm not the biggest fan of "read the description of this drink coaster to find out what happened to that character's brother" since I usually miss most of that shit, however I later enjoy reading about all that I've missed, so I guess this is mostly a matter of preference, there's not much deep to the worldbuilding but some of it it's there, if you want to look for it. The main story, however, it's quite straightforward, aside from some things unexplained that have been told by the developer will be explained in a sequel, so yeah...

The music is weird and trippy, perfect for the game and I enjoyed it a lot. The character sprites are also very good and have a lot of charm, but I can't say the same about the maps and/or backgrounds as most of them are very plain and uninteresting.

The game has a lof of black humour and it's full of funny characters and dialogue but also tries to approach much more mature aspects. While I feel both areas are very well done separately, some of the topics don't mix too well in the game, like, I can't feel guilty for my character slaughtering a bunch of dudes because they're mindlessly rolling on barrels and attacking me.

Overall, despite the criticism, I enjoyed it. It's a game full of good ideas that could use a better implementation but ends being a very enjoyable experience nonetheless.
 

Lagole Gon

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Finished it yesterday. Ehhhh...
+ Thick, unique atmosphere. This game will give you a rough mind fuck and you will love it.
+ good sense of dark humor.
+ a proper representation of the incoming machete apocalypse.

- it's a jRPG. Duh. But not only in terms of mechanics. At the end of the game storyline feels a little bit like an edgy animu.
- some e-celeb cameos. There's fucking Jim Sterling in it. Well... at least you can kick his obese ass.

Give it a shot. Don't expect anything amazing from the storyline. Just enjoy the ride in the mad and manly world. No girls allowed.
 
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Phage

Arcane
Manlet
Joined
Jan 10, 2010
Messages
4,696
Finally got this game during the steam sale and played through it.

I think it's a labor of love and that shows through and through. The developer - DingalingBoy has 7.5k hours in RPGmaker. My understanding is he was sitting at around 5k when Lisa was finished. I'm presuming that's not including hours he spent on spritework and various other stuff. That's an immense amount of time. After browsing the forums, of which he is quite active, I found some other interesting tidbits, like how every single time you jump or go down a cliff it's a seperate event inside of RPGmaker. Even with copy+pasting, that's a ton of time spent just making the game work it the way it does.

Point being that this is obviously something that was special to the creator, even if he acts otherwise in interviews.

That said, some of the criticisms in this thread are quite valid. Losing a companion doesn't feel like it matters that much, and it's truthfully quite easy to metagame the big choices. Worse yet, some of the more drastic story-based choices don't really change anything.

Regardless, the story was still quite enjoyable and while a lot of the humor is hit/miss, it hit enough that I found myself chuckling frequently. It pulls off Earthbound's ability to shift between being nonsensical and taking it self seriously. Though, I'd argue that it pulls it off even better than Earthbound does. Not sure about Mother 3, that's still on my list to play. I like that the world's lore is mostly in the background, though the Joy stuff involving the professor was perhaps a bit too abstract. Presuming the sequel will answer a lot of those questions.

One of my GOTYs for 2014. Still haven't played Dragonfall though, so that could push it out.
 

4249

I stalk the night
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Nov 19, 2014
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1,216
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Game's in Midweek Madness on Steam for 50% off. The fucking sale image though :lol:

spotlight_image_english.jpg
 

Gozma

Arcane
Joined
Aug 1, 2012
Messages
2,951
Is this interesting at all in terms of picking what to do in a fight/while moving around or is it just gum chewing? I've watched a lil bit of an LP of it and the humor stuff looks OK, but I'm worried the sound effects and stuff in combat will give me a hate-on a couple hours in if it's really rote.
 

Jinn

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2007
Messages
4,930
LISA the Painful not only surprised the shit out me with it's overall quality, it's bizarre setting, and combat that I found quite enjoyable, but has also become one of my favorite games of all time. Needless to say, I'm incredibly excited for the release of LISA the Joyful. I can't wait to see how the creator wraps up this story. LISA the Painful left a lot of intriguing questions lingering at the end of it that I'm excited to see fleshed out.
 
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Latro

Arcane
Joined
Jun 5, 2013
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7,345
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Vita umbratilis
20+ song OST? Not bad, when Dingaling was giving a AMA on 8ch he had said the soundtrack was gonna be much smaller. Not quite as big, but that's pretty respectable. Can't wait to play this.
 

toro

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Apr 14, 2009
Messages
14,031
Finished the game. No words. I'm emotionally drained and I don't know what to think.

This might be the best game I've played this year.

Unfortunately someone needs to play all the games to get the full story: Lisa: The First, Lisa: The Painful, Lisa: The Joyful.

The first game is available for free: https://rpgmaker.net/games/4412/downloads/

The creator managed to hit the perfect combination of dark humor and absolute desperation. I never played something like this.

I will not spoil the story.
 

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