You. Yes you, the person reading this. Look into my eyes, because I'm speaking directly to you. If you've already beaten LC, congrats! You can skip this paragraph. If you haven't started, consider this a formal warning: don't try to beat this game. If you are anything like me, you will have read what other people have posted, and said "I bet I can handle it". That hubris will destroy you. By all means you should play this, as there really isn't another experience like it. But please take my advice if ever at any point you're starting to have doubts - cheat, watch a playthrough, anything. When the grind sets in, Lobotomy Corp is an agonizing, repetitive experience that I somehow still recommend.
Let's start with the basics - I'm going to split the (non-VN) game into three stages: experimentation, management, and combat. Only one of these stages, experimentation, is interesting. Probing the Anomalies for the best output while making them not slaughter an entire department is fun and rewarding as you can then work with them in safety once you have the knowledge you need.
This lead us to the management stage in which you send an employee to do the work you already know will turn out alright. And then you do it again, and again, ad nauseam until the end of the day. Unless you forget the specific trigger for a given Anomaly, the majority of your days are just going to be repeating the same steps over and over. If you do mess up, the results are usually catastrophic enough to justify restarting the entire day.
When things do get shaken up, we get the combat stage, which is also incredibly tedious. It functions like a 2D RTS, with you selecting individuals or dragging a box for multiple guys before sending them off to fight. There are no control groups, no ways to split your guys between melee and range, and often times health bars will cover each other up. Unless an enemy is weak enough to just throw guys at, the best course of action usually involves some sort of cheese. Combat comes out as a sloppy mess that is unfortunately mandatory to master for completing sidequests for the true ending.
Okay, so the game's not good, but how's the story? The part everyone says the whole is worth it for? Yeah, it's great. I'd even say it's pretty fantastic. Every character and story beat was on point, and it left me wanting more. The Lore, while not expansive, gives you the perfect amount of info that you know what's going on but are still curiously in the dark about the nitty gritty specifics. If Lobotomy Corp was just a visual novel I'd probably give it a 4/5, but I can't do that in good conscience - I'm rating the whole package here. And at the end of the day, I can't even say what the best way to experience Lobotomy Corp even is. I can only hope that, if you are reading this, you don't do what I did. Don't fly too close to the sun.
Let's start with the basics - I'm going to split the (non-VN) game into three stages: experimentation, management, and combat. Only one of these stages, experimentation, is interesting. Probing the Anomalies for the best output while making them not slaughter an entire department is fun and rewarding as you can then work with them in safety once you have the knowledge you need.
This lead us to the management stage in which you send an employee to do the work you already know will turn out alright. And then you do it again, and again, ad nauseam until the end of the day. Unless you forget the specific trigger for a given Anomaly, the majority of your days are just going to be repeating the same steps over and over. If you do mess up, the results are usually catastrophic enough to justify restarting the entire day.
When things do get shaken up, we get the combat stage, which is also incredibly tedious. It functions like a 2D RTS, with you selecting individuals or dragging a box for multiple guys before sending them off to fight. There are no control groups, no ways to split your guys between melee and range, and often times health bars will cover each other up. Unless an enemy is weak enough to just throw guys at, the best course of action usually involves some sort of cheese. Combat comes out as a sloppy mess that is unfortunately mandatory to master for completing sidequests for the true ending.
Okay, so the game's not good, but how's the story? The part everyone says the whole is worth it for? Yeah, it's great. I'd even say it's pretty fantastic. Every character and story beat was on point, and it left me wanting more. The Lore, while not expansive, gives you the perfect amount of info that you know what's going on but are still curiously in the dark about the nitty gritty specifics. If Lobotomy Corp was just a visual novel I'd probably give it a 4/5, but I can't do that in good conscience - I'm rating the whole package here. And at the end of the day, I can't even say what the best way to experience Lobotomy Corp even is. I can only hope that, if you are reading this, you don't do what I did. Don't fly too close to the sun.