The term hidden gem gets thrown around too often, especially when a console's library is small. So in a world where about 70% of the Vita's library have been described as 'hidden gems' (even if they suck), it was surprising to find an honestly really interesting game that I'd never seen discussed beyond 2 or 3 blog posts saying it's alright. After beating it twice, I'm both glad I did but can also see why it's not as well regarded as it had the potential to be.

Lost Dimension can be summarized as Fire Emblem meets Xcom meets Among Us. Each chapter consists of taking 6 of 11 characters, all with unique skillsets, through maps filled with enemies. When you're done with the missions each chapter, you'll be prompted to eliminate the traitor among your cast. In any given save, the traitors are randomized (except for the first one on the first run). Once they're gone, their learned skillsets can be equipped to other characters, unlocking further powerful abilities with certain combinations. There's also a social link system where you talk to your allies and get an exclusive mission that you must complete to S-Rank them.

Let me say this: the gameplay is really good. It's a tactical RPG where there's no grid to move along to like other ones I've played thus far. The attacks are either targeted or positioning-based. Although the maps reuse the same enemies constantly and aren't really interesting overall, building your characters and making them wreck shit up is really fun. There's a dude who can teleport, a dude who can copy another dude's skillset, a dude that deals massive targeted damage, a dude that does massive AOE damage, a dude who buffs everyone.. etc. The cast feels well balanced, and after you start losing characters, it only adds to the customization. In New Game+, this only gets better (and is probably where the game is at its best.) You'll get a ton of skill points from the get-go, so you can complete a character's whole skill tree very fast. Sure, the difficulty kinda turns to shit that way, not that it was too high to begin with, but it then becomes a test to see how low your turn count can go. 

The character designs and graphics are also neat plus the soundtrack is great. That's pretty much all the nice things I have to say about this game. Here's what doesn't work: 

>The traitor system is shit

Between missions, you get a cutscene where 5 of the characters talk and some of their voices are red. If no voices are red, none of those 5 characters is a traitor, If 1-2 of them are red, they might be a traitor (or not). If 3 of them are red, there's a traitor in that group. You also get around 3 "Vision Points" per chapter, which you use to find out for sure if a character is a traitor or not. You're not the only one deciding who gets the boot, though, so once you find out, you'll need to spam missions without the treacherous character to get everyone else to vote for them. So not only is it pretty much a crapshoot whether you find out the traitor or not, it's also annoying to then kick them out. What happens if you do have traitors by the end? You'll have to fight them in the final battle, but nothing up until the very last chapter changes at all. It poses questions such as "do you sacrifice a weaker ally and keep the stronger traitor that'll fuck you up later?" but realistically, the "fucking up" barely affects you and the only reason you have a traitor in your party is because you fucked up who to kill. Can't savescum that,by the way! Also, in the penultimate floor you'll have to choose 2 traitors. Remember this.

>The story is just ok

In your first run, you probably won't get what the fuck is going on. You're on this tower, you lost your memory, and there's an evil guy,climb tower fight evil guy save the world yeah ok whatever. In the second run, you'll start noticing some differences; suddenly, there's this really white child loredumping the fuck out of the game and it turns into a chosen-one plot and the bad guy is actually somewhat sympathetic, yada yada yada. For a game you gotta play twice, this should have probably been divided better instead of every big revelation being saved for the back half. It also has the Fire Emblem problem where, since the game doesn't know what characters you have, none of them have much bearing on the plot. (though at least they talk,sometimes)

>Your second run might fuck you over

Personal annectode time. I picked this game up somewhere during the last week. I got like 10 hours in and was like yeah this is fine I guess. I stop playing for a while. 2 days ago, on a caffeine binge while procrastinating doing my portfolio, I pick it back up and get to the end. "wow,this ending is kinda weird felt like there was a lot left unsaid also uhhh that sword guy in the beginning, I think I'd like to use him". I google "lost dimension endings" and realize oh, I gotta beat it again to get the real ending and a different boss fight. To get the "true" ending, you'll need:
-All characters S-Ranked.
-Eliminate every traitor correctly
In my first run,I had managed to complete 7 of the 10 social links, so all that was left was the sword dude, the magnet dude, and the buff lady (I had actually done that one but forgot to talk to her after the character quest,which is what actually triggers the S-rank). On a GameFAQs thread, I start reading that oh shit, the traitors are randomized, so it's possible that I don't even get to complete the social links before I have to kill them! The earliest you can trigger S-ranks is the 4th chapter, so it might take 2 runs to get the best ending or it might take 3,4,5 runs to get it. A few people recommend using your second run just to max the missing characters, even if they are traitors. Fuck that, I'm not playing this shit a third time. I pray to RNGesus and press on. 

Thankfully, it seems to be going well. I get to the fourth chapter in just a few hours between yesterday and today, none of the needed characters have been traitors yet and I managed to find the traitors out. I get to the elimination part. I had used Deep Vision to find out the copy dude is the traitor. Ok I liked him in a first run but fine. He gets booted off. The antagonist shows up and goes "uhhh yeah you got kill one more lmao". Fuck. This had also happened in the first run, but I assumed it was just because I fucked up and had one extra traitor,somehow. I gather that the telekinesis kid was probably the traitor but my dumbass teammates boot someone else off. Oops! Reloading the save file doesn't do shit either, the damage is done. 

So there's no way to get the true ending in this run now, right? I'm already dreading having to replay the game again and possibly fucking it up when I boot the final mission. The boss goes on the same spcheel, the telekinesis kid (fuckin called it) goes surprise! traitor. I beat him easily and get to the final boss. But wait, there's a cutscene that wasn't here before despite the boss being the same? Here's what's happening. The ending and the boss you get are unrelated. The ending only really requires you to beat the game a second time and have all the S-Ranks (afaik), but says nothing about no traitors. If you want a slightly stronger final boss, you do need to have no traitors, but all the lore that gets spouted at you in the last 10 minutes is the exact same. I beat the boss in one turn using a busted-ass move that allows me to skip the opponent's turn. I'm done. Just Youtube the true boss.

It's not often that I feel the need to 100% beat games or even 90%,80% or 70%. In this case (it's like 95% beat if all that was gonna change was the final boss), the feeling of finding a cool game not often discussed was what propelled me to want to see all of it. And even though I technically didn't, it was still a fun time, and this is for sure what I'd call a 'hidden gem'. Sure, it might obviously be a budget game, the mechanics might not fully gel with each other and it may be miserable to see through the end for a RNG determined fraction of players, but it warrants more discussion than Drive Girls ever should,so.. at least try it out.