Serious LISA - The Painful relatable RPG. (certain spoilers)

Charlie

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In September of 2012, Austin Gorgensen (AKA Dingaling) released a game titled "LISA", which was made in RPG maker. By now the game is titled and known "LISA - The First", it was an open world game where you explore a world which told a very vague and ominous story.
You control a girl named Lisa, who's abusive turd of human filth father, Marty wouldn't let her leave the house. She runs away to a surreal and hypnagogic world That you, the player, must navigate to complete objectives, find certain items, and continue on with the game. Throughout the world and your exploration, you'll find a lot of things that hint and symbolize Lisa and Marty's relationship, and even imply that she was raped by Marty.

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After a year, Dingaling started a kickstarter campaign for a game called "LISA - The Painful RPG". The game was said to be a post-apocalyptic adventure infested with weirdos, perverts, psychopaths, and simply stupid people. The kickstarter went very successful, with a funding of $16,492 pledged of a $7,000 goal, LISA went into development and was released via Steam in 15 of December, 2014 for 10 dollars.

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(<--- dingaling's total time on RPG maker making all his games.)

LISA differs greatly than other RPG maker games on Steam, and truly stands out between all of them.

How?

When you boot up the game, you are greeted with the title screen of LISA, featuring Lisa hanging herself with 3 options to choose from, "New game", "Continue", and "Quit". We already can assume Lisa has died, more specifically by suicide due to her traumatic childhood from Marty.
The game starts off in a playing ground, with a young kid named Brad being beaten up by 4 bullies to a pulp. After they go away, you can interact with your friends whom were watching from the side and they feel sorry for you and sympathize for him before he walks away painfully to his home.

You stroll through a pretty normal looking suburban neighborhood, and at the end, reach a disgusting and wrecked house. This is Your house, Brad's. You are greeted with again - your piece of human filth turd Marty Armstrong, showing absolutely no sympathy or interest in making Brad feel better, and even shows both verbal and physical harassment before ordering him to go to his room. After you go up, and enter the door on the far right, you see a crib with a baby in it. Of course, this is Lisa, as Bard is her older brother.

You wake up to a post-apocalyptic world completely empty of women and a way for the human race to reproduce. Unlike games where gold or coin are the usual currency, this time it's pornographic magazines. It's a world where you barely have any friends and many enemies to "make friends".

After finding a baby out of nowhere, Brad shows the baby to his friends, Rick, Sticky and Cheese. They suggest to tell Rando about the child after finding out the baby is a girl. Rando is the military, scary leader of this world (The world also known as Olathe.).

Brad immediately rejects their suggestions, because he has no interest about giving humanity a second chance, and rather give HIMSELF a second chance. It is safe to assume he still feels guilt for his younger sister's suicide, and wants to redeem himself in raising this baby girl himself. His friends surprisingly agree to help aid in treating and helping the baby grow, now named 'Buddy'.

As years go by, we can see that Brad develops an unhealthy addiction to a drug called "Joy", which makes you feel nothing. He still suffers and sees traumatic flashbacks of his abusive father and sister, being his only way to forget about these memories is taking the drug.

After about a decade, we can see that Brad goes bald, and meets a person named "Terry Hintz" also known as "The Tutorial Master!". After saving him from a harmless dog, brutally killing it, you both return to Brad's house, you encounter your friend, Cheeks, soaked up in blood and beat to shit. Cheeks informs Brad that Buddy has been kidnapped, and shortly after dies of blood loss.

"Secret's out Brad... She's gone."

Now, we finally start the brutal, traitorous heart-stabbing adventure game which is LISA.
This game is a real gut-puncher. It will beat the shit out of you and your emotions.

LISA controls much differently than your normal RPG maker title. Presenting itself in a 2d side-scroller style with the ability of Brad lunging himself downwards and upwards to and from 1 tile high ledges. It makes the game less confusing and more fun to explore, with a "Wider focus on the x axis and with a briefer emphasis on the y axis makes for a more accessible overworld that doesn't and still has a lot to explore.".

There are 3 main areas in the game, which all lead to different sub-reigon that has bosses, enemies, etc.
There is NO grinding in the game, unlike most other exp-based games, and the only repeating enemies you encounter in the game provide you with underwhelming amounts of EXP, encouraging you to explore for bosses and secrets to level up and learn new skills and moves.

The game provides you with a very mindful and creative combat system. Brad has 4 options when fighting - "Armstrong style", "Skills", "Guard" and "Items". Armstrong Style is Brad's regular attack, giving you a sequence of a 5 hit combo using the WASD keys with each key striking a different move. Brad can also do special attack or "skills" which give enemies heavy damage and certain debuffs with each skill used, your SP depletes. If you string together the "Armstrong Style" attack with your skills, you can merge together the damage inflicted by the 3-5 hit combo and the skill unleashed as extra damage, inflicting more damage in a single turn.
(Some characters also have TP instead of SP, which will regenerate with each attack hit on an enemy or with each attack hit on that character.)
Each character has completely unique and different attacks and equipment, with unique animations and stats.

Also, your buddies are very expandable in the game. They can die. Forever. Either by being executed, mutilated by some Joy Beast, or, by your own hand. It's also pretty common for a party member to abandon you or get kidnapped when you rest for the night. You're NEVER safe in LISA.

When a character gets kidnapped by a nearby gang, you'll be required (optional, you can just forget about them if you want to) to track them down and pay to get them back. You can also attempt to kill the gang, which will result in your buddy dying eitherway, but with the chance of getting XP by successfully eliminating the gang.

One thing LISA executes really well is CHOICES. Many games give you the illusion that your choices actually matter when they actually same outcome. LISA's choices consist of "Hey faggot, give me your arm or your buddy dies.". These choices are extremely hard to make, since it changes something you will PLAY out rather than WATCH out, with actual consequences to each choice. There IS NO safe option, and each choice will alter the core mechanics of the game, making you think out what choice is best FOR YOU. And the promise Dingaling gave us with choices is delivered. The choices change the style of the gameplay rather than the story aside from some dialog.

Here is an explanation of one of the choices you can make.
As stated previously, Brad has an addiction to Joy. Joy is also an in-game item, which you can consume in and out of battles. Taking this gives replenishes all of your health and SP, alongside giving some HEAVY damage which can help you A LOT in battles.
The downside of this is if Brad hasn't taken Joy in some time, he will start to suffer 'Withdrawl'. This makes Brad inflict exactly 0 damage (aside from skill attacks, which will even inflict less damage than regular). The more you consume the drug, the more you'll be addicted to it, making it even easier to suffer Withdrawl. Is it worth it? That's up to you. This goes for other party members aswell.

There's also a hard mode in the game right now called "PAIN MODE", which replaces some bosses you encounter with even more bosses along with new bosses and a secret ending which was extremely satisfying and cool to see (Each checkpoint also has a one use time in pain mode.).

LISA will kick your balls and make you like it. There are moments in the game that will force you to do things you REALLY don't want to do, and the story is absolutely spectacular.

LISA was the best indie game I have EVER played. It delivers everything I look for in an RPG game and it's all for the price of 10 US dollars. The game ranges from 10 to 13 hours to finish excluding side quests.


score:

jim bonacci out o 10
 
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Vortigangster

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Oh boi it's been a long time now since I played this fucking gem


This part of the game honestly made me tear up, while fighting "The Failure" just outright made me cry, it honestly fucked me over really badly to the point where I couldn't even listen to the game's OST anymore without entering a depressive state.
And it's really fucking scary to think that a video game could have that much of an effect on me, Jesus.
 
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