As someone who has spent hours dabbling into RPG Maker, I always knew that as a game making tool, it had incredible potential. It was by no means the most complex program, but it had all the tools for a gem to be crafted. However, despite the years of its existence, it felt like it never crafted anything that fully clicked. OFF has a fantastic story and great visuals, but puts little attention towards combat. Omori's few good aspects are stuck under heaps and heaps of flaws and bad design. All the various horror games such as Ao Oni or The Crooked Man are generally enjoyable horror experiences but completely ditch the RPG formula.
As an avid turn based RPG fan, Lisa is easily the best I've ever played. For a while, I've struggled to find a JRPG that mixes all the genre's strengths into one package. One with great gameplay would have mediocre story, and vice versa. Story wouldn't tie into the gameplay in satisfying and impactful ways. Combat was diluted with endless, useless systems of high yet shallow complexity. My initial love for these games would always fall off as these cracks in their systems bore deeper. However, Lisa has reaffirmed my love for the potential of the genre by being a shining example of nearly every good aspect about turn based RPGs.
The gameplay was the part I was easily most worried about. There is a depressingly small number of games which I would say respect turned based combat, understand what makes it work, and executes it well. RPG Makers games were usually guilty of not. However, not only does Lisa nail it, but it also handles it in a unique way. In most RPGs, battles are almost entirely confined to the fight itself. You're usually given a moment to prepare, and rarely what happens outside of battles will affect you in them. Lisa instead takes the survival and resource management aspects of turn based combat and spreads it throughout the whole game. The whole "I can't use these items now I may need them later" feeling actually matters here as some items you get cannot be regained. Damage you take cannot always be healed, and you gotta charge forward with low health. And even if you find one, most heal spots have potential risks, including permanent debuffs, losing party members, and getting into fights. You can get randomly ambushed just walking around. Dialogue choices can have extremely dire consequences. Everything in this game sets you back, but you have to keep marching. However, the gameplay isn't carried by this either. Combat is still really fun. Don't expect anything amazing, enemies are usually pretty one note and can be tackled with the same strategy. The best thing battles bring to the table though is the potential loss of party members. Specific enemies can instantly kill your teammates permanently. Forever. If you don't save scum, you'll have to reorganize your team and start your strategy from scratch.
However, that brings me into my first, and probably only issue; Lisa is too forgiving. Even on Pain mode, It's simply too easy to get past all the management and consequences. Money and experience can be infinitely farmed, items can be infinitely bought, and saves can be infinitely loaded. I only ignored these aspects out of respect for the spirit of the game, but I cannot overlook them. I can understand these being in the normal mode, but I really think pain mode should've taken the extra step forward, especially since it is possible to beat the game with these restrictions. I placed all of these on myself and got by. It made my experience better, but I could never get the nagging feeling in my head to reload and save resources or characters to go away, which took away from the experience as a whole. Not nearly to a degree of ruining the game, but I could never consider it the best of the best because of it.
The story is what most people find memorable about the game, and for good reason. I won't go into detail, but I do wanna mention one major thing; how it ties into gameplay. I've always thought that JRPGs are ripe to implement story and combat more seamlessly than other genres. The turn based nature allowing for story beats to happen step by step, as well as the heavy use of text to showcase battles allowing for dialogue and wording, levels and skills allowing for character growth to be easily and immediately reflected into combat, character visuals and names being able to change and reflect revelations, etc. The simplified visual nature of turn based combat allows for so much to be expressed that wouldn't be possible in other games is one of JRPG's biggest strengths, and Lisa has the shining example of this. I won't say specifically, but it's the fight on the first island after making the ship. This fight plays like a normal battle, but every aspect of it tells you about yourself and who you're fighting. I rarely cry, or even get even close to it in games, but this fight got me the closest to it in a long time.
Another big strength of the story is the focus. A lot of games really put importance on the big picture and what's happening inside of it, however Lisa doesn't care about that. The game is obviously post apocalyptic, but what happened before is almost entirely unknown. Any time you view life before, or have it mentioned, it's purely to drive the characters forward. Things like the mutants have little but vague hints as to why they even exist, and the game is all the better for it. For both serious and comedic purposes, the game focuses solely on the characters and their actions, and its the only thing that drives the game forward. The history of the world matters to you as much as it does to the characters themselves, so you rarely hear about it. I really like this approach, and I like how it thematically ties into Brad too.
To move on, Lisa has a very unique handle on its world. It's hard to describe how Lisa combines it's comedic and depression, serious sides. It's not like a coin, as that would imply two completely separated halves. They're moreso blended together, with both happening simultaneously. There will be moments where you'll go through a depressing cutscene where a long time party member gets murdered, and then a minute later you'll walk into a house where Poopsock Gonzalez will tell you the tragic tale of how he became known as Poopsock Gonzalez, before joining your party. This dichotomy wouldn't work if it weren't for two reasons; the first is how the comedic and depressing elements tie into the world. In most games, comedy is meant to relieve the depressing parts, to take you out of the sad and bring you out of the world with something disconnected to be comedic. However in Lisa, every joke is grounded within the boundry of the world itself and how it works. Humor and gags are so common and relentless in Lisa that they retroactively become part of the world itself, likewise with the depressing elements. You eventually just accept both as part of the world itself, and so you're never taken out of the moment by random bits. A shining example of this is the scene where you have to ride the body after the cutscene that nearly got me that I mentioned earlier. You're so depressed by this point that this very small, slight gag honestly does nothing but make you feel worse, and it's genius. The second main reason is because the game is actually really funny and really depressing. It is probably the funniest game I have ever played, and one of the most relentlessly sad games too.
Finally, there's one more element I want to bring up, the general scuffed quality of Lisa. In most games, a game being scuffed or not well made in parts would bother me. However, Lisa is able to get by this by having the scuffed feel be a perfect fit for the feel Lisa is going for. It's hard for me to fully articulate, but the general idea is that I think having the game have higher quality visuals, music, mechanics, etc would take away a crucial feel towards the game.
In the end, I am left saddened that Lisa is an exception in its genre. How is stagnation even possible to happen when that is the case? We need more games like Lisa, ones that take a look at the genre they come from and innovate on what can be accomplished while staying true to what made said genre so established in the first place. Lisa doesn't feel like a loveletter to JRPGs, nor does it feel like it exists to be a solution to it's issues; rather, it feels like being a JRPG was just the natural fit to an already incredible idea for a game. And one day, it will click.
As an avid turn based RPG fan, Lisa is easily the best I've ever played. For a while, I've struggled to find a JRPG that mixes all the genre's strengths into one package. One with great gameplay would have mediocre story, and vice versa. Story wouldn't tie into the gameplay in satisfying and impactful ways. Combat was diluted with endless, useless systems of high yet shallow complexity. My initial love for these games would always fall off as these cracks in their systems bore deeper. However, Lisa has reaffirmed my love for the potential of the genre by being a shining example of nearly every good aspect about turn based RPGs.
The gameplay was the part I was easily most worried about. There is a depressingly small number of games which I would say respect turned based combat, understand what makes it work, and executes it well. RPG Makers games were usually guilty of not. However, not only does Lisa nail it, but it also handles it in a unique way. In most RPGs, battles are almost entirely confined to the fight itself. You're usually given a moment to prepare, and rarely what happens outside of battles will affect you in them. Lisa instead takes the survival and resource management aspects of turn based combat and spreads it throughout the whole game. The whole "I can't use these items now I may need them later" feeling actually matters here as some items you get cannot be regained. Damage you take cannot always be healed, and you gotta charge forward with low health. And even if you find one, most heal spots have potential risks, including permanent debuffs, losing party members, and getting into fights. You can get randomly ambushed just walking around. Dialogue choices can have extremely dire consequences. Everything in this game sets you back, but you have to keep marching. However, the gameplay isn't carried by this either. Combat is still really fun. Don't expect anything amazing, enemies are usually pretty one note and can be tackled with the same strategy. The best thing battles bring to the table though is the potential loss of party members. Specific enemies can instantly kill your teammates permanently. Forever. If you don't save scum, you'll have to reorganize your team and start your strategy from scratch.
However, that brings me into my first, and probably only issue; Lisa is too forgiving. Even on Pain mode, It's simply too easy to get past all the management and consequences. Money and experience can be infinitely farmed, items can be infinitely bought, and saves can be infinitely loaded. I only ignored these aspects out of respect for the spirit of the game, but I cannot overlook them. I can understand these being in the normal mode, but I really think pain mode should've taken the extra step forward, especially since it is possible to beat the game with these restrictions. I placed all of these on myself and got by. It made my experience better, but I could never get the nagging feeling in my head to reload and save resources or characters to go away, which took away from the experience as a whole. Not nearly to a degree of ruining the game, but I could never consider it the best of the best because of it.
The story is what most people find memorable about the game, and for good reason. I won't go into detail, but I do wanna mention one major thing; how it ties into gameplay. I've always thought that JRPGs are ripe to implement story and combat more seamlessly than other genres. The turn based nature allowing for story beats to happen step by step, as well as the heavy use of text to showcase battles allowing for dialogue and wording, levels and skills allowing for character growth to be easily and immediately reflected into combat, character visuals and names being able to change and reflect revelations, etc. The simplified visual nature of turn based combat allows for so much to be expressed that wouldn't be possible in other games is one of JRPG's biggest strengths, and Lisa has the shining example of this. I won't say specifically, but it's the fight on the first island after making the ship. This fight plays like a normal battle, but every aspect of it tells you about yourself and who you're fighting. I rarely cry, or even get even close to it in games, but this fight got me the closest to it in a long time.
Another big strength of the story is the focus. A lot of games really put importance on the big picture and what's happening inside of it, however Lisa doesn't care about that. The game is obviously post apocalyptic, but what happened before is almost entirely unknown. Any time you view life before, or have it mentioned, it's purely to drive the characters forward. Things like the mutants have little but vague hints as to why they even exist, and the game is all the better for it. For both serious and comedic purposes, the game focuses solely on the characters and their actions, and its the only thing that drives the game forward. The history of the world matters to you as much as it does to the characters themselves, so you rarely hear about it. I really like this approach, and I like how it thematically ties into Brad too.
To move on, Lisa has a very unique handle on its world. It's hard to describe how Lisa combines it's comedic and depression, serious sides. It's not like a coin, as that would imply two completely separated halves. They're moreso blended together, with both happening simultaneously. There will be moments where you'll go through a depressing cutscene where a long time party member gets murdered, and then a minute later you'll walk into a house where Poopsock Gonzalez will tell you the tragic tale of how he became known as Poopsock Gonzalez, before joining your party. This dichotomy wouldn't work if it weren't for two reasons; the first is how the comedic and depressing elements tie into the world. In most games, comedy is meant to relieve the depressing parts, to take you out of the sad and bring you out of the world with something disconnected to be comedic. However in Lisa, every joke is grounded within the boundry of the world itself and how it works. Humor and gags are so common and relentless in Lisa that they retroactively become part of the world itself, likewise with the depressing elements. You eventually just accept both as part of the world itself, and so you're never taken out of the moment by random bits. A shining example of this is the scene where you have to ride the body after the cutscene that nearly got me that I mentioned earlier. You're so depressed by this point that this very small, slight gag honestly does nothing but make you feel worse, and it's genius. The second main reason is because the game is actually really funny and really depressing. It is probably the funniest game I have ever played, and one of the most relentlessly sad games too.
Finally, there's one more element I want to bring up, the general scuffed quality of Lisa. In most games, a game being scuffed or not well made in parts would bother me. However, Lisa is able to get by this by having the scuffed feel be a perfect fit for the feel Lisa is going for. It's hard for me to fully articulate, but the general idea is that I think having the game have higher quality visuals, music, mechanics, etc would take away a crucial feel towards the game.
In the end, I am left saddened that Lisa is an exception in its genre. How is stagnation even possible to happen when that is the case? We need more games like Lisa, ones that take a look at the genre they come from and innovate on what can be accomplished while staying true to what made said genre so established in the first place. Lisa doesn't feel like a loveletter to JRPGs, nor does it feel like it exists to be a solution to it's issues; rather, it feels like being a JRPG was just the natural fit to an already incredible idea for a game. And one day, it will click.
Zoftcustomer
1 year ago