I think a lot of the changes the ‘Definitive Edition’ makes end up laying the lore and themes of the game on a bit too heavy-handedly when the narrative structure of the original still blows my mind to this day at how delicately it’s all written; it’s one of the greatest and most sensitive stories about breaking the cycle of abuse ever to use and deconstruct the RPG medium, balancing on a proverbial metatextual tightrope.

This means that when there’s campfire conversations that explicitly mention crucial character connections that the player was best off figuring out for themselves, I can’t help but wonder if this is really the best way for a new player to experience the story of LISA (the truth is that it’s best experienced by streaming it in a discord call with your friend who knows the ins and outs of the game far better than you ever will, gently nudging you in the right directions to experience everything you should experience.)

However, I am not a new player, I am the hyperfan you stream the game to on a discord call, and the character exploration provided with the Definitive Edition hits the empty spots in my soul just right. It’s pure indulgence, but it’s my indulgence. That’s also how I feel about the secret boss, which I wish I could talk about, where 3 hours of tearing down the brick walls of LISA’s thematic and visual cohesion Gorbachev-style culminates in some of the most beautiful, gut-wrenching cutscenes I never even thought the game was capable of dishing out. It heaves under its own weight, nearly to the point of collapse, but just when you think you’ve reached some golden shining core at the centre of the story about the beauty of the world and the people within it, LISA rips you back to reality and dumps you back in Olathe, and you think to yourself: “I need a fucking cigarette right now.”

I thought LISA: The Painful had bared its soul to me and shown me everything it had, and I’d nearly finally chewed on it enough to let it out of my system, but Definitive Edition brought it back to make me cry one last time for good measure. Forever the best RPG ever made.

- Visuals: 8
- Audio: 8
- Gameplay: 9
- Story: 9
- Fun: 9

Read my review on the original game for my thoughts on just the base game.
As far as everything new in this game, they are alright for the most part. There are some various UI changes and such that I'm not personally a fan of though thats just the nostalgia speaking. I was also frankly disappointed by the lack of changes to original experience. DE was marketed as having a somewhat substantial number of “New Quests” yet as far as tangible additions to the game go, all they actually added was one new boss, one new enemy, some extra tutorial stuff (that is thankfully optional) and a number of campfire scenes. Outside of that they fixed some of the many glitches in the original.
Credit where credit is due though, the content surrounding the new boss is absolutely amazing. The campfire scenes are also for the most part, solid additions to help flesh out some of the cast. Overall a solid experience that is just as good as the original.

I don't have the right words to describe my feelings towards LISA: The Painful. It's impacted me on such a deep level that I don't know how to formulate the right sentences in the right order to explain it. It's a deeply personal game to me, a game that feels like only I and a niche of others could love. It's as if on some level, it understands me. And yet, it challenges my own beliefs. My own morality. It's one of those pieces of media that leaves me reflecting with questions of, "what would I have done? What could have happened to prevent all this?". It's one of the rare few video games that's left me reflecting like this — a sign of a great work.

And this is coming from a game with a fucking talking fish lawyer. This game is stupid, it is SO STUPID—

I really don't think I could do it justice here in this format, so I'll keep this brief. LISA: The Painful is a gift. It's simultaneously one of the most soul crushing and gut-bustingly hilarious games I've ever played. It has some of the craziest, coolest, absolutely bonkers music in a video game. It's a nightmare, it's a trip, it's an must-have experience. Not everyone will love it. Some may find it annoying. But with all my heart, I love it. You might love it too. Go play it and find out for yourself.

Leaves a lot to be desired. The small changes are appreciated such as the hotkey for the bike, descriptions on what status effects do, and the campfire scenes are cool and adds a lot to a cast of party members that desperately needed more interactions with Brad. With that said, this version of the game is far buggier, it crashed on me three times for reasons I cannot fathom, and I got softlocked in a fight at one point. Glitches and poor technical quality like that really make me hesitate playing this on Pain Mode, where I'd be in constant fear of losing a ton of progress not because of me playing poorly, but the game freezing up.

Also while I like the new boss from a conceptual standpoint, it was beyond overkill. In the advertising it was made out like there was going to be even more content and side areas, but this was the only thing added and it was padded out to an asinine degree in order to make the product look more worthwhile. The fight becomes incredibly tedious after a short while and in total took me 2 and a half hours to beat, roughly a quarter of my full playtime. From a story standpoint it doesn't even add much that longtime fans didn't already know and comes off as a tryhard weird mind fuck that you'd see in literally any other RPG Maker game that covers heavy subject matter. But hey, it boosted play time! That must mean it's worth doubling the price of the original game!

This isn't a terrible port or bad way to play the game by any means, but for all of the new stuff it does bring to the table, glitches and all, this is a pretty disappointing 'definitive edition' of one of my favorite games.

Work Harder died for this

I... I have so many thoughts.

I played the original version of LISA, and it's one of my favorite games of all time. This is technically a replay. The story, characters, gameplay and just everything about it made it one of my favorite games of all time. That all holds up with the Definitive Edition. This game feels special to me. It holds a place in my heart. I think it will affect me, subconsciously or not. It's not flawless, as I felt Area 1 could be a bit better, but this game is just- just AMAZING. I can hardly recommend it enough. I'm sobbing writing this review. Please, please, PLEASE play LISA: The Painful. If you liked OMORI, then I'm sure that you will love this game

This was my second playthrough of the game after going through the original way back when it was released. The first time around, I was really surprised, and I wondered how my impressions would be the second time around once the element of surprise was removed. I still ended up really enjoying this game.

What I really picked up on this playthrough is how much this game was a satire of the "Sad Dad" genre of games. The game has a lot of fun playing with tropes that, at the time, weren't tropes at all. Characters unload a litany of trauma and tragedy to an almost silly degree. Flashbacks from failed bulldozer drivers and inept assassins accompany fights. Most enemies have hilarious final dialog at their final deathblow. Six years later, critics would be whipping themselves in penitence of executing goons in Last of Us 2 while I had been mourning the death of The Shocklord at my hands for years.

I found that the humor of this game still worked well even on a second playthrough. The humor ranges from silly to downright vile. It doesn't waste an opportunity to put a joke or a gag in a character or area. The jokes are also usually pretty short, so even if one doesn't work for you it's over in a moment and it's on to the next joke. When it comes to humor in games I tend to like this approach the most.

Even though humor is so prevalent this game is most known for how grim and dark its story can be come. The trigger warning list on this game would be a mile a long as it deals with issues of addiction and abuse (physical, verbal, and sexual). It can come as a bit of a shock when the game decides to get serious because it goes so deep into it, but what I appreciate about the humor is that I feel these serious topics are never the butt of any joke.

Are these really serious topics handled with grace and tact? As someone with some personal experience with addiction its a hard thing to translate into a game, and I often wonder if we should really even attempt to. I do like how this game handles it though. The abuse elements feel a little cliche, but maybe that's the result of a decade of every other game being about trauma so that the topic itself is worn thin and reduced to schlock.

The game also has a unique look and sound to it. The character sprites I love. They're a mixture of Earthbound but have this almost doodle quality to them. Placing the game on a 2D plane makes it stand out from the zillions of other RPG Maker games out there. The soundtrack is frenetic and jumps wildly between genres. It is at times goofy, groovy, and harsh.

The gameplay also has some interesting mechanics. Party members can differ in how they play. Some characters play by inputting combo commands a la Xenogears. And just like Xenogears this gets old after about 10 minutes, but thankfully there's only a few areas in the game where there are random encounters. There's a lot of interesting emergent gameplay elements at play too. The second time around in this game I was definitely playing it just for the world and the story. The RPG portion was underwhelming.

This is a really special game and even though I have some slight gripes I can't help but love this disturbing and also delightful game.

LISA: The Painful RPG is a tricky one because the overt difficulty in the gameplay is not as hard as it first seems but the narrative difficulty is very challenging to this day. I was happy to revisit the game through this Definitive Edition, including playing a "Terryful" run where I get Terry to a high enough level to use his overpowered ultimate move and bring those skills to vanquish the game's superboss.

As for the new content, I think the new additions are mostly unnecessary and sometimes hurt the game's excellent pacing. Does that ruin it? Not really. It's still LISA, one of the best RPGs around. I know I'll be playing this one again.

this is a from the ground up remake of the original 2014 release with a focus on accuracy, quality of life changes and content additions that flesh things out just a bit more
on all those fronts this was a success
it's been a minute since i've went through this game completely, but with the exception of the, frankly, butchered rendition of Work Harder (it's not the sample, it's a remade song now and it sounds significantly worse) i didn't notice a singular thing out of place
i've read about people noticing the combat was somewhat slower due to some minor animation changes but as someone who is incredibly impatient at times and doesn't dig turn based rpg combat most of the time i had no issues here
the core game is retained, the content alterations are extremely minimal and no one is gonna notice it or care
quite literally a singular bit of a sprite alteration (a black character in a flashback joke scene had his lip color altered to not resemble a minstrel caricature), some punching sounds that i never noticed and another singular sound effect (there's a power ranger riff group that appears, and while they're making poses and doing their intros the sound of a monkey plays over the black ranger's dialogue which was changed to a goofy elephant sound)
which are at bare minimum whatever changes and at best (the ones with these little marks next to them) worthwhile changes that maintain what was funny about their contexts without the out of place racist elements

so don't feel like you're missing out if you buy this
it includes the legacy versions of the game if you're dying to see what they're like
but new content like extra campfire conversations that really flesh out your party members are things you'd be missing by making that decision
if you owned this before, you get the definitive version for free
which was a good excuse for me to revisit this absolute fucking masterpiece of a game

classic example of something that has a lot to talk about, but because it's something that is still relatively obscure i really don't want to
you really should just fucking play it
the power this narrative has still stands strong, it's an oppressively bleak treaty on the cyclical effects of abuse
it's also mad max meets mother 3 with a soundtrack that sounds like literally nothing else
the game happens to be mechanically deep and compelling on its own, but as the best games do the narrative and gameplay cannot be separated
few games avoid ludonarrative dissonance as well as this game does
extremely absurd, very funny, and really fucking painful

one of my favorite youtube videos is hbomberguy's essay on this game and its dlc sequel, which to me is the defacto "i wanna know what is going on with this fucker" bit of content i'd throw anybody's way
at some point he says something along the lines of "this game will directly inspire a future 'best game ever'" and i fully agree
it is a must play, and with it on all platforms you cunts have no excuse anymore

I really respect how committed the devs were to making this game as accurate to the original release given this is a ground up remake. Most of the game is perfect and an overall upgrade besides the combat, which loses a lot of the style the original had and is keeping me from actually recommending this over it.

Probably the most outstanding issue with the combat is the action text. The font is way too big compared to other UI elements, when you hit multiple enemies it can completely cover the screen, it goes over other menu boxes and is completely out of sync with actions as they happen. Certain moves also just have the text completely missing i.e. “_ is astounded by your stupidity” or “_ doesn’t want to do this”. The text that indicates damage taken or status ailments is also animated way slower compared to the original and is probably the cause of battles feeling way slower paced than they used to. The transitions after battle always feel a lot more abrupt than they did and the victory menu feels really buggy. The one great thing I can say about it is the animated backgrounds are a really nice addition.

People have also been complaining about the sound effects for Brad’s punches. The devs clearly wanted to distance this from the stock RPGMaker elements and I respect this decision. I think the new particle sprites are incredible and the new sound effects are mostly okay but the punch sound effects, as well as the sound effect for Brad falling flat on his face outside battle, feel considerably less satisfying.

Whether these aspects get changed or not will depend on if I recommend this over playing the original. The new campfire conversations are a decent addition but they kinda kill the pacing a bit, and some of the dialogue just feels like out of place fanservice. I really loved the new superboss though and I like that it feels tucked away so new players probably won’t find it on their first playthrough. Overall I am happy that this remake exists and the game is finally playable on consoles, I just feel it could’ve had an extra lick of polish before release.

LISA: The Painful is one of my favorite games ever made, so this rating is a surprisingly bitter one that I'm forced to make.

The story? Oh no nothing's wrong there. Everything writing-wise, both old and new, are top notch. The secret content is beautifully written (here's a tip, try resting at the very first campfire once you've acquired all the boat parts in Area 3) and it ties together well into the secret content of LISA: The Joyful - Definitive Edition. All in all, it's a great package deal.

but

This Unity remake is marred by a number of minor flaws that all come together to make certain experiences feel less... weighty. Many of the sound effects feel less punchy than they used to. Some of the battle animations happen too fast. Some attacks don't even register properly, meaning certain storytelling moments in combat (which I will not spoil) lose the weight and impact that they had previously.

It's genuinely unfortunate that I have to discuss this at all because I am incredibly sympathetic to Dingaling and Serenity Forge. Remaking an RPGMaker game in Unity while retaining the feel of the original game and allowing for Austin to use the new engine for some new, creative sequences (see my earlier hint if you would like to learn more). Even so, it's a criticism I really hoped upon release that I wouldn't have to make.

They're still patching the game, so it's not as if these problems will necessarily be around forever, and hell, the overworld itself is translated near flawlessly. It's just in combat where the problems lie. I really hope it gets fixed up so I can give this version of the game the five star rating it deserves.

So which should you play? The original? Definitive?

Honestly, I would almost argue playing both. Do one run in the original game, then do a run in Definitive. Definitive adds new content that is 1000% worth playing despite the hiccups, but I think that a first time player would be losing something if they only played Definitive and not the legacy version. It's a tough sell, but I think this game is just that good. I literally played it twice in two days. It's the kind of game I relish.

But I think it's time I give LISA a rest....

is what I would say if I didn't have something to say about the Joyful!!!