I got the Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy down in my heart. WHERE?
Narrative: 3.5
Gameplay: 3
Visuals: 2.5
X-Factor: 3
LISA: The Joyful is a good game that unfortunatly is a sequel to a fantastic game. LISA: The Painful manages to balance unique, nuanced stories with the hilarity of its characters. Compared to the original, this game fails to capture the same Joy. By limiting the scope of the game to focus more intensely on one character rather than the party-based system in the first game, Lisa: The Joyful's combat sufferers greatly. One of the best aspects of the original is how deeply connected the story and characters are expressed in combat. That simply is missing in this game.

I think the best way to enjoy Lisa: The Painful is to think of it as a bonus mode of the original game. While still a good experience, temper your expectations as the game does not attempt to achieve the same feats as the original.

Here we have the conclusion of the Lisa trilogy. In this one you play as Buddy from the second game and it mostly revolves around her and what she wants to do with her life. It's a pretty good story and wraps things up for the character and the larger world stuff decently enough.

The game is a lot more straightforward than Lisa the Painful. In this, you mostly just play as buddy and having a companion is more of a story thing than actually integral to the gameplay. You just play as Buddy and she's fuckin done with choices being made for her and she's out to kill EVERYONE to make a name for herself. Buddy mostly attacks with a sword with skills that you have to time a button press just right to do deadly precision damage. It seems kinda weird at first but there's a skill she has that allows her to flash enemies which temporarily leaves them dumbfounded because she's the only female anyone has seen in decades so it kinda works. More importantly that and her deadly attacks tie into her ruthlessness as a character who is on a path of violence and will do whatever she can to forge ahead. I think it works ultimately.

The story mostly is about Buddy finding The List of warlords who rule sections of Olathe and how she intends to rule it all by killing them and taking her spot on top. She has a bit of a messiah complex after the events of the last game and everyone telling her how she's humanity's savior since she's the last woman and all. So in that way it's all fairly simple. There's some other worldbuilding stuff that gets expanded on and, much to my enjoyment, characters whose arcs get fleshed out more and resolved. Part of what bugged me in the last game was how the story really only focused on Brad. It was fine but I wanted more from the characters introduced that CLEARLY had more to show and this game delivers. What's more important is that the stuff regarding other characters fits in with Buddy's story and doesn't really feel tacked on thanks to both her importance in the grand scheme of things and other character's ties to her in the last game.

I don't really want to say much more than that. I think this is a solid series that deserves to be played and experienced yourself. The final game is a fitting conclusion though I do think it loses some of the charm and humor of the last game in favor of telling a more brutal and slightly more serious story. I really enjoyed it though and enjoyed the shorter no-nonsense notions of Buddy. Definitely recommend the whole trilogy.

shockingly, this DLC that's widely maligned by its own fandom ended up being something i enjoyed more than its base game. i think being shorter helped a bit, there's less room for jorgensen to misstep and make emotional moments that don't work, and the ones in here feel much more earned and impactful. that ending part with buddy coming to terms with brad in particular is a highlight of the entire LISA trilogy, easily.

the problems with this DLC are ultimately that it's very monotonous. i don't think you inherently needed to add party members to this to make it fun, but making the majority of the game be solo encounters basically requires a very turtle-y playstyle that gets very repetitive and boring. it's exacerbated by the fact that like 60% of the encounters in the game are joy mutants that all have roughly the same set of moves, and some of them have an obscene amount of health that makes the fight take like 3x longer than it really should. and while joyful is excessive in how it handles combat, it's honestly too minimal in actual story. i like that this is relatively terse and self-contained, but a 3 hour DLC that's mostly just encounters you could've gotten from the base game feels underwhelming.

still, i find buddy to be more fascinating and groundbreaking of a main character than brad, and i think jorgensen handles her with a shocking amount of tact. buddy feels just as asocial and isolated as someone who lived her life would be. i've seen the sentiment that people feel as though buddy is unlikeable and/or excessively abrasive, but i think telling a story where she acts like a quirky shut-in seeing the world for the first time like elizabeth from bioshock: infinite would not only devalue her character, but it would make the narrative a lot less engaging. she has baggage and trauma, she reacts in uncomfortable and challenging ways, and you don't necessarily have to like it, but you do understand.

on a final note, i really dislike the bits of lore that the epilogues add to the game. they feel unnecessary, and i greatly dislike the framing of "lisa was actually the source of all the darkness in the narrative and influenced buzzo to become a monster", something the game tries to hammer home two separate times. it removes agency from his character while simultaneously demonizing children of abuse as these horrific monsters, another abuse trope that jorgensen probably thinks is way more subversive than it really is.

either way, i enjoyed my time with this expansion and was pleasantly surprised to get more good than bad out of it, especially after the base game. it doesn't stand on its own legs by any means, though, so i doubt i'll ever revisit this considering it'd have to involve revisiting the entire trilogy. i'd rather put this set of games to bed and never come back to it.