Lisa: The Painful è un giavellotto d'acciaio incandescente scagliato a tutta forza verso il giocatore, nelle cui più profonde viscere penetra e si contorce, amplificando il dolore man mano che la storia progredisce.
Esistono tanti videogiochi capaci di colpire nell'animo, magari tramite l'esplorazione di tematiche personali o risvolti narrativi che aumentano l'empatia verso certe scene, ma mai come in questo caso burattino (il protagonista) e burattinaio (il videogiocatore) condividono la stessa anima, nella - quasi assente - gioia e nel - frequente - dolore.

L'intricata e complessa trama di questo indie, sequel spirituale di "Lisa: the first", ruota attorno a Brad Armstrong, un uomo burbero, solitario e dall'oscuro passato, che vedrà sconvolgere la sua vita in seguito alla scoperta di una neonata abbandonata in un mondo post-apocalittico, in cui follia e depravazione hanno avuto la meglio su ragione e umanità; Brad decide dunque di "adottarla" per tenerla al sicuro, ma, diversi anni dopo, questa ragazzina verrà rapita. Il protagonista, uomo ormai divenuto vecchio e stanco, deciderà di intraprendere un lungo viaggio per, a suo dire, trovare la giovane e salvarla dallo sfruttamento del mondo.
Ciò che colpisce maggiormente di tutta questa drammatica epopea è proprio la caratterizzazione di Brad, che per il suo ruolo nella narrazione dovrebbe essere considerato un eroe, e probabilmente è proprio quello che crede di essere, ma se osservassimo con uno sguardo più distaccato il susseguirsi di eventi e scelte, capiremmo quanto in realtà dovrebbe essere considerato alla stregua dei più beceri villain, e ciò si riflette parecchio sulla vita di tutti i giorni, su quanto sia relativa la barriera che separa il bene dal male. Quanto diritto abbiamo di decidere anche per i nostri cari cosa sia giusto o sbagliato? Non è la stessa "protezione" una forma di violenza? Oltre a questi concetti, il protagonista di LTP viene presentato come un uomo estremamente fallibile, un drogato, una persona che fa di tutto per farsi detestare ma che, al tempo stesso, pretende l'amore e l'affetto di chi gli sta intorno.
In sostanza, Brad siamo noi!
Chi per un aspetto e chi per un altro, troverà parecchia affinità con un personaggio di fantasia, colui il quale sarà chiamato a compiere diverse scelte morali che, per quanto non avranno ripercussioni sulla storia, saranno drasticamente importanti a livello di gameplay; in questo modo non è tanto il gioco a soffrire, ma siamo noi, persone reali, a subire le conseguenze delle NOSTRE scelte. E non si parla di cose di poco conto, ma di eventi che porteranno a interi rimescolamenti delle strategie messe a punto dall'inizio del gioco.

Lisa: The Painful, a differenza del suo predecessore, si presenta come un gioco di ruolo a turni occidentale, con piccoli elementi platforming, parecchio ispirato nelle meccaniche e nell'assurdità di certi combattimenti ai capolavori di Shigesato Itoi, ovvero i Mother.
Sebbene le lotte in sè per sè siano molto basilari, con qualche piccola apprezzabile eccezione, a rendere il gameplay loop più vario e divertente ci pensano i nostri compagni di squadra. Il nostro party sarà composto, come in molti giochi di questo tipo, oltre che dal protagonista, da tre individui, che possiamo "arruolare" nel nostro team tramite o, semplicemente, un pagamento, oppure piccole quest secondarie a loro collegate. Il mondo di gioco sarà pieno zeppo di possibili componenti del party, quindi non solo potremmo spezzare la "monotonia" della quest principale andando a svolgere attività differenti, ma in più avremmo una maggiore personalizzazione dello stile di combattimento e delle tattiche di gioco. Ogni npc avrà le sue peculiarità, talvolta nonsense o esagerate, e sarà sempre un piacere intercambiarli per provarli in battaglia.
Altra peculiarità di LTP è la sconfinata lista di bonus e malus, che fortunatamente non bisogna imparare a memoria grazie ad un piccolo reminder durante le lotte, alcuni dei quali rappresentano status più classici come "rabbia", "ustione" o "sanguinamento", mentre altri si differenziano per il loro "realismo", come per esempio "ubriachezza", "astinenza" o "imbarazzo" e così via. Purtroppo però solo pochi sono gli status realmente importanti e più frequenti in battaglia, dunque non sarà possibile creare build ad hoc per sfruttare al meglio determinati malus o bonus.

Il comparto artistico di questo gioco mi lascia interdetto: se da una parte mi sento di lodarlo per la sua capacità di creare scene suggestive, talvolta anche molto disturbanti, con pochissimo materiale a disposizione, dall'altra parte non posso che mostrare un certo disappunto nel vedere una scarsa varietà sia di ambientazioni che di nemici. Una parte interessante di questo setting distopico era la presenza di creature (un tempo umane) mostruosamente deformate; si aveva dunque la possibilità di creare un proprio vasto catalogo di atrocità viventi in stile "Fear & Hunger", ma ciò non è avvenuto. I nemici diversi dai semplici umani incattiviti, anch'essi dal design non troppo brillante, sono troppo pochi e molti sono simili tra loro. Stesso discorso, con ancor più convinzione, va fatto alle ambientazioni che, ok che si tratta di un setting apocalittico in cui tutto è appassito, ma riproporre per 10 ore di gioco praticamente gli stessi asset con colori e filtri leggermente diversi viene a dar noia.
Fortunatamente, in questo caso, viene in soccorso il buon level design a distogliere l'attenzione del giocatore.

Tirando le somme, Lisa: The Painful è una perla rara che, sebbene sia imperfetta, nessun amante del videogioco in quanto arte dovrebbe lasciarsi sfuggire, anche se la difficoltà, pur regolabile, potrebbe risultare proibitiva per la maggior parte delle persone. Ma si sa, il fallimento fa parte della vita e tutto quello che possiamo fare, come il nostro Brad, è cercare di accettarlo, per il bene nostro e di chi ci sta intorno.

"You don't understand. I've been dead for 35 years. Today is the day I live."

The Painful journey to Oblivion

Lisa: The Painful is the sequel to Lisa: The First which I also made a review, you can find it here if interested.

Let me start with a question: Is it painful to enjoy something that hurts? In Lisa, what doesn't hurt you makes you stronger and what does hurt you drags you deep into the abyss. It's a paradoxical pleasure between finding the right spot of comfort and experience. Not deliberately hurtful at least to us, nor "enjoyable" for someone that doesn't just get it. It's the same feeling as watching a sad movie, why would you ever want to cry all by yourself? It makes us think beyond what we're used to, get us outside our comfort zone for a while and experience a tale that can sit with us or leave as it came.

The Painful tell us the story of Brad Armstrong, a lone drug addict dealing with his troublesome past that suddenly finds the cure under the apocalypse: A girl in a world without women. Brad sees this girl not as a way to re-populate the world, but as a opportunity to protect her from the cruel world outside the comfort of home. During Brad's many blackouts due to his drug addiction, finds out his girl was gone. With nothing to lose, Brad sets up on an adventure to save his "child" which he called: Buddy. One of The Painful many strenghts is the setting or the place where these events occur: Olathe. A rural town, well not anymore since it has become a desolated desert in the middle of nowhwere, ruled by anarchy and the survival of the fittest. Little to no civilizated people exist, and the ones that do are under a group meant to survive among themselves. It's common for any apocalypse setting to enphatize on the sense of survival, a basic instinct among humans and animals but with The Painful there is a catch: It's a land were women doesn't exist, thus dooming humanity to extinction. A treat that doesn't differentiate from good nor evil. But it can be cured, this is where Buddy comes into play.

During Brad's journey he'll encounter a colorful cast of characters that will either help him, for self-fullfiling purposes or lunatics which will attack at sight. Most RPGs tend to rely on mythical or unexplainable creatures; your gods, your slimes, your demons, your monsters, etc. But The Painful keeps itself grounded and personal when it needs to, doesn't it? I'm lying! Fish Lawyer, Furry Artist, Bear-Man, Tiger-Man, Duck-Man and Queen (Man) can all be in your party. You get the idea. The Painful doesn't take itself serious all the time, as it finds the right moment to have jokes and moments were it knows it can't get playful with you. All characters have something meaningful to say, specially with the Definitive Edition which expands on this aspect in particular. Now it's not just about the journey itself, it's also about the little moments you share with your party; see them grow and fight alongside you but keep it mind these are total strangers that you've never met before. Everything culminates in a wacky, varied yet believable cast of characters that I personally grew up to love even if Brad can only exchange a conversation or two with each of them.

Compared this to The First, The Painful includes a new combat system which let's you slay everyone in your way with your fists. It follows the typical JRPG combat system; Stats, characters and attacks. The Painful adds an interesting system of combos only made for Brad which unlike the main attack, they deal extra damage. For example: "A, B, B" is the command where you throw a fireball, but if you feel confident it is possible to extend it as I said before to: "X, X, A, B, B" or "Y, A, A, B, B" always respecting the right command to the activate set attack. It's not as deep as I thought it would be at the start but extra damage is extra damage; the classic risk/reward balance. Outside combat, the exploration is set in a 2D plane all the time, unlike most top-down RPGs. This sets right for The Painful in particular, as the map is as linear as it gets with some secrets in between. That isn't bad per-se, not at all as verticality also help the maps feel bigger in a sort of weird match between a limited in movement platformer and a RPG. With Lisa there's always a catch, the little devil in the details is that mix between platformer and RPG is both a blessing and a curse, why? It is possible to die if you are not careful, from falling in a bottomless pit. Instant "Game Over", goodbye 1 hour and a half of process. Pain Mode it's the so-called "hard mode" in The Painful but it is not hard, is terrifying. It will only let you save once per "Save Point". So be extra careful while exploring Olathe if you chose Pain Mode. In case you skipped the text box to which warns you about Pain Mode, don't worry as save points are unlimited so you can save as much as you want. I started with Pain Mode, and even if the game is fairly short, some stupid deaths made me question if going forward without a guide was a good idea.

Pain comes in many forms, so does the decisions you'd have to make moving forward. You don't win, and at some point you'll lose someone or something you value precious beyond battle. It is as easy as letting it go, but hard as is to accepting that it is no longer with you. That is Pain. One of The Painful most devastating features is that your never feel safe. From anything, fron anyone. Everything here is meant to hurt you one way or another, because Brad isn't the chosen one in this story he is but a mere puppet driven by his mere instincts. Don't expect a hero which wants to save the world, he's just human hopelessly needing something to cling on. He's not instrinsically evil either, as it is easy to empathize with him.

The Painful for me is interesting to analyze from an outsider perspective, as someone that never played the original on PC back when it come out. So my feelings are quite fresh, and as a game as old as 2014 it holds up incredibly well to this day. It is a must for any RPG fan looking for something different. You like Fallout? Here. Earthbound? It might interest you. Omori? Absolutely.

Unironically one of the most painful video game experiences in my life.

This game does that one thing, which I love very much: it mixes stupidity with seriousness, and it mixes these two things ABSOLUTELY GREAT.

I laughed from the jokes and almost cried like a little baby from the plot. I mean, seriously, this game almost traumatized me, and I'm the dude, who's seen a lot of awful shit in his life.

The gameplay may be too harsh, but you'll or get used to it, or drop the game entirely. These RPG Maker games, you know...

There're also a lot of annoying moments, which may prevent you from beating the game, but there's only one way to deal with it: struggle, bitch. Just like Brad does.

Oh, by the way... Don't forget to beat The Joyful after The Painful. It'll break your mental health completely!

I had heard this game was a pretty heavy game with a weird whimsy to how it handles things, and that's pretty close to the truth. LISA is like if Mad Max were a JRPG with an Earthbound-like whimsy to it. It's a really fun, albeit a little unconventional, JRPG that I enjoyed a lot ^w^. I beat it twice. Once on normal mode with the "Joyful" ending, and then again on Pain Mode. The first time through took me about 13 hours, and the 2nd took me about 7 hours.

Pain mode can be activated (a bit too easily, imo) by picking a choice at the beginning of the game, but it's not exactly hard mode. It just adds a couple extra (and not very hard) mini-bosses as well as making each save point only usable once. It adds an interesting level of planning to the game as well as challenge of just "don't die, lol", but it honestly doesn't change the overall game enough to realllly warrant it for most people, and the 1-use save points make it too hard to make it really recommendable to ever do on your first playthrough.

The story of LISA has you in the shoes of Brad, a man living in the post-apocalyptic land of Olathe after some catastrophe has led to the disappearance of all women and a society of only men dreading their eventual extinction. Fates change when Brad happens upon an infant lying in a field, and upon bringing it back to his camp of friends discovers that it is indeed a baby girl. Brad decides to raise the child as his own adopted daughter, as his friends help keep her a secret living in a cave below their tent. Years pass as she grows into adolescence in total secret. Then one day, Brad returns to see that his friends have been murdered and the girl has been stolen away, and Brad sets off on a mission of revenge to get her back. This is an extreme simplification of these events, but LISA's story takes a series of turns that get the story to a pretty dark place. I'm not quite sure I'd compare it to Undertale (not just because Undertale came out nearly a year later), as the path of the story is linear and doesn't have that level of choice-making, but by the end of the game you will certainly begin to question whether Brad is/has been doing the right thing. I'm leaving it really vague as to not to spoil, but I personally really enjoyed the story and how it deals with themes of 'what it really means to sacrifice for someone else' as well as 'when justice becomes injustice.' I do feel it's worth specifying very clearly, though, that LISA deals implicitly and/or explicitly with themes of violence, emotional/sexual abuse, and sexual violence, so if those aren't the kinds of things you can handle, playing through LISA is probably not a good choice for you.

The gameplay is fairly standard JRPG, but not that typical in some ways. The game has very few areas where you could actually grind for EXP. Most enemies you fight are single-battle enemies or mini-bosses who die when you beat them, so you can't re-fight them. There are some fields of snakes or trash men at certain points, as well as a wrestling ring you can get to later that you can use to grind for EXP, but they're the exception rather than the rule. Random battles are not something LISA has many of.

There are a TON, like 25, playable party members, all with fairly varying styles of how they play. Brad, for instance, is one of few characters who can use combos of the WASD keys to both do 5 regular attacks, or chain them together to activate one of his special moves (a very tiny bit like Sabin in FF6, but your D-pad inputs do damage as well in addition to the moves taking from a mana pool). There are a few more standard spell-users, a couple more combo-users, but you also have characters who need TP (which is basically a "rage" mechanic) where they get MP by both taking damage and dealing damage with their normal attacks. Out of the 25, there are some team compositions that are better than others, of course, but there are very few party members who are straight-up awful. Members who are very powerful often aren't very flexible, and vice-versa. And those who are fairly powerful and flexible strategically are often addicts and that's something else entirely.

Brad is a recovering drug addict from the drug Joy (and if you don't take any or give any to other party members, you get a secret ending on normal mode). Several party members come already addicted to Joy, and if they don't take it they go through withdrawal. Taking a Joy gets you the Joyful status effect which makes all your hits crits for like 1-5 turns (which can be very powerful on a character like Brad who effectively can get 4-5 standard attacks + a special move off all in one round). Being in withdrawal basically sets your attack power to 0 as well as tanking your speed, defense, and max HP, so it REALLY sucks. Your special attack doesn't decrease though, so you can still do special moves to hurt stuff, but it's nothing like not being in withdrawal. You can either get out of withdrawal by taking Joy, of which you cannot buy and have a very limited supply of the stuff you can find (there is a hard limit in the game of the stuff, so you NEED to conserve), or go through however many turns of combat (usually around 10, but it could be way less or even more than that) and it will eventually go away until it comes back again sometime while you're wandering the overworld. Addiction adds a whole new level to how you strategize the boss fights, but the game is very beatable without it if you find a team that works for you. (I personally really liked using Nern, Fly, and then either Jack or Carp).

One of the last things I'll mention is that there are SO many party members (all but 3 of which are optional and need to be hunted down, and most of them aren't too hard to find) is that there are some things that will permanently kill party members. Mostly it's story choices or optional bosses, but how because them permanantly dying IS a thing that can happen, that's why something like Pain Mode with limited saves would be so ill advised on your first runthrough. Because EXP grinding isn't easy to do to grind up a new character, losing a team-mate REALLY sucks if you aren't expecting it, so save-scumming is something that is basically mandatory to conserve your sanity XD

Verdict: Highly Recommended. LISA is a fantastic JRPG that is pretty far off the beaten path as far as a typical narrative or mechanics go. I even didn't mind immediately replaying through a fairly long game because the character variety is so great and the world is just so cool. This is a great game totally worth picking up if you want something to make you think a bit but not too far from the mechanics you're familiar with in a JRPG.

Not to sound dramatic or like ubiquitous, but it really is a masterpiece.

I played through this probably over 5 years ago and that playthrough I really ripped through it in a few days, I mean the world is just so fun to explore its wild.

I thought I'd go faster this time, but I actually was able to explore MORE. I feel as though I saw things fresh, and just more.

Just really a good game. Funny. Heartbreaking.

Haven't played Lisa: The First, but I'm on Mac, so Idk if I'll be able to. Onto Lisa: The Joyful!

intrigante, explícito, arrasador. poucas experiências foram tão emocionalmente destrutivas para mim como esse jogo e me traz uma alegria descomunal ver ele ganhando cada vez mais tração e atenção. sistema de rpg arrasador e completamente integrado a atmosfera avassaladora do jogo, narrativa incrível e demonstração simples e efetiva não só dos ciclos de abuso (principalmente cometidas por homens), mas como ele afeta a percepção da vítima e o jeito que ela interage com as coisas ao seu redor. Brad talvez seja um dos melhores personagens de RPG que já vi. parabéns dingaling.