Recent reviews by Vyse Rogue King

Literally the best platformer i've ever played and the music is amazing to boot

Classic arcade gameplay with fun art style and sweet music.

Before anything else if you aren't up to feeling depressed don't play this game. I can assure you those who love it would say the same. This game was designed to be a downer.

I feel bad talking bad about a game I got as a gift but I feel like it must be said. With all the praise the game gets I feel I must be the Devil's Advocate. Also it may say I've only spent an hour and half. But I played when my internet cut out for a while. I'd say there should be about 5 more hours on that time. This is probably mostly just opinion but bear with me.

Overall I personally don't recommend LISA. Even as a fan of the Mother series and it's successors The charm doesn't seem to be there. I see much of it as flawed. Execution fallen flat. Many may like it but I feel people shouldn't play simply because of all the hype. IMO Be wary.

The gameplay is my biggest gripe. It doesn't feel new. Yes it's just like Earthbound but still there isn't as much polish. Shoving a metric butt ton of party characters does not an interesting rpg make. Obviously you're just gonna pick the best ones and leave the others sitting around like imperfectly bred pokes in the pc. There isn't much strategy to picking who to use it's more of who can do the most damage and/or heal the most. A good RPG gives you a handful of characters and tells you to make due.

I know why they gave so many characters and it's because it has to compensate for the "pain" Which is just another way of saying how many ways you can be screwed over by RNGeesus. Perma death is a thing and it can happen on a whim. Not like Fire Emblem/XCom/Valkyria Chronicles where you made a fatal error. It's because that's just how the dice rolled. The enemy did an insta-kill move you didn't dodge or resist and that's that. It isn't common and you may not have had it happen to you but it's there. If there's anything I know is that for me that one percent of failure is a very real threat with my luck. But simply put It's more like getting annihilated by critical hits in a Nuzlocke run.

Then there's Joy addiction. Oh boy what fun it is to sit through a withdrawal. Every 300 frames/5 minutes that you don't transition between areas the game flips a coin. This determines if any of your Joy addled party members go into total noodle arm mode. Pretty much reducing any physical attacks they do into someone throwing cotton balls. You don't get over it through time though. It's either by resting (a risk depending on where you sleep) or going through 20-30 turns in battle. It takes a mildy interesting idea of dealing with addiction through gameplay and turns it into a major inconvenience. Especially since you can work around it with special attacks. I've had withdrawals from medication and I can tell you it sucks. But the way the game handles it doesn't drive it home. If it had actual symptoms of withdrawal like wooziness (occasionally miss) weakness (halved damage) or nausea (sp drain) as simple examples then I'd be ok with it. However as it is, this is less like heroine addiction and more like having a piss drunk friend that you have to take care of. Yes I know the world is supposed to be "unfair" and that it was done this way to hammer that fact in but It's just lazy. I could go on for millenia about this but in short it's just fake difficulty.

Another aspect about having so many party members is the choice to save one's life. The game storepage seems somewhat proud of that. I personally haven't done chosen against it because I am a goodie two shoes but at the same time I think that it would just be easier to plan accordingly so I can send off a weakling. Because I've looked into it and there are no ill effects whatsoever. Most of the characters have little personality beyond their character design so one wouldn't feel torn about losing someone. This isn't like Mass Effect where a choice between Ashley or Kaiden must be made (although I've never liked either character) But these are people you can learn to care for. Sacrifice is hollow here.

The story is definitely slow. I do appreciate that it fills itself in through bits and pieces but the more it does it seems too simple and shallow. It is rather cliched imo. Especially in Brad. He's got the best intentions but is much like his father. Classic apple and tree scenario. The abusive father thing is also there. What annoys me is that the father seems to just be an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ just to fill the role. Right in the beginning it felt like he just had to hurt him. His reasoning barely held up. Having read up on the backstory his actions simply don't make sense. There major are lulls in the story as well where basically it's just dealing with whatever shows up. And whenever anything does happen it just feels like it's trying to be total grimdark. I assume the pacing is meant to keep the player from burning out however instead I started to dread the possibility of the next story event. Another problem is that some of the character interactions frustrate me. Although that's probably my personal gripe with a lot of tragedy stories shining through. In tragedies character flaws will always explode even in the most level headed man for no apparent reason other than to produce a negative outcome. I tend to sit on the cold logical side so it's always a pain to me. Oh well not everything can be Hamlet.

In regards to the humor it's kinda hit or miss for me. I started to just turn off later on because I simply stopped caring for the jokes so I couldn't even give them a fair shake. I just wanted to get through the dialogue. Don't get me wrong I love dark humor, I have the entirety of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac (which I would recommend for fans of this game.) sitting on my bookcase but this stuff just couldn't jibe with me. Maybe it was too predictable maybe it was just that the tone didn't quite match. I just can't put my finger on it.

If there's something good I could say it's that the music can be pretty kickass at times.

Put simply I say meh to this even in all my negativity. Pessimism HOOO!~ Although it's a meh that means that I'll probably never pick it back up to finish.

Burned down a house mid cooking lesson with my mortal enemy
10/10