OniBarubary
Banned
Lisa: The Painful RPG is a game that was Kickstarted a brief period of time back and came out in 2014. It was made by one man, Austin Jorgensen, in RPGmaker with additional help in music from a few other sources. I'm pretty sure the game was made on a budget of 16,500 dollars. It goes for 10 bucks on Steam or the website. At it's base, it is a turn-based RPG that is very reminiscent of Earthbound.
There are plenty of indy games, many with more expansive budgets, more complicated and intriguing combat systems, better graphics and more replayability.
So why am I making this thread? We have an OT. Why am I trying to get as many people to read and see this thread as possible? To convince even just a handful of people more to purchase this relatively unknown indy game?
Because this game was the best gaming experience of 2014 for me.
I regularly go through threads on here reading about people playing games that are life-changing for them, that affected them in some deep way, or that they look back on even years later as something that stuck with them.
This is that game.
Before getting into too much, let's go over the generals before heading into the specifics.
The World of Lisa
So, here's the world of Lisa.
You are Brad, a balding, poncho-wearing drug addict in a post-apocalyptic world where every woman on Earth has died and only the men are left. Needless to say, everyone is terrible and a pervert. One day you find a young baby girl and decide to take her back to your home that you share with your three childhood friends and hide her away from the world. One day, after succumbing to withdrawal and going on a binge, you come back to find your secret is out and the roving bands of marauders that occupy the world have discovered your secret. The girl and your friends are gone. And you have to go rescue her.
That's the plot of the game, in the same way the plot of James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake is "Some guy died"
Gameplay
At it's heart, Lisa is a simple turn-based RPG. You equip your weapons and armor and such, can use items in battle, learn skills and such. Some characters have an MP-esque system, some a Stamina-esque bar that builds with regular attacks and taking damage. Brad and a couple other characters use a Dial a Combo system much like Xenogears where you can input up to 5 attacks assigned to four buttons and if you enter the right sequence it activates a special attack. There are unique status effects like crying, withdrawal, being drunk and such. You gain experience to level up your stats and learn new special abilities.
Battles are pretty tough. There is generally no way to grind in the game; there are 3 specific places that you can but the rewards for doing so are paltry enough that past catching other members up to more used ones it doesn't give enough to make it worthwhile. Most battles in the game will be won based on preparedness and utilizing your abilities well. And you will more than likely die a lot, no two ways about it. The battles in this game are really rough. Very simple but still, sometimes the luck of the draw will just not go your way.
Outside of battle, the game itself takes place on a 2D plane that you can travel up and down on based on cliffs that you jump up or down. It gives a very different feel to the game as it is not top down, but set up more like a platformer of sorts (not really, but hey). You'll find the world populated by many NPCs to talk to, a pure plethora of who will join your party if you fulfill certain criteria such as paying them, bringing them some booze, beating them in battle or having a certain item equipped. And trust me, you will need them for reasons I will go into later.
There is also an optional mode called Pain Mode that really ups the difficulty. Basically, every save point can be used once and then explodes. You can only save once per point which makes when you save drastically important. It also adds a number of bosses to the game, changes some others and gives you a special ending. Only try if you're a real masochist.
There are some mini-games spread here or there, racing on a motorcycle or slamming your action key in a bulldozer, but it mainly keeps to the moving along your 2D plain, going up and down cliffs and heading through places until you fight enemies. There is a ton of optional content; places to go, enemies and bosses to fight and items to get. A lot of it isn't necessary to beat the game but is worth doing simply for the entertainment factor.
Now that we have that out of the way, let's get down to a bit more of the...nitty gritty. The depth of this game.
Tone
This game is funny as fuck.
This game is dark as fuck.
It is at once a game that has made me laugh out loud hard enough to wake up room-mates and made my stomach sick enough that I had trouble pressing the key to scroll the next line of dialogue. In one of the funniest scenes I've ever been involved in in a video game, a fish lawyer with legs and a hat defended me in court after I stole a map from a town of fishmen and said the following to the judge after I begged him to stop talking:
The humor in this game is a riot. Because of the dark tone of it, there is a lot of dark humor surrounding death, sex, death, more sex...um...well...mostly those two. There's an enemy that when you encounter him has a gun to his head and before you can get a move off in battle he shoots himself, dies, and the battle ends in your victory. That's it.
One of the early areas of the game has you stumble upon a guy who is raising a bunch of orphan boys. When one of them plays with matches and lights one, he asks Brad to grab him the bucket of water which you can see right next to you. As Brad picks it up and throws it on the match the kids alight in a roaring blaze and the Orphanage owner tells you that was his bucket of gasoline and to go get the bucket of water that is up on top of a cliff. On your way back down with the bucket, the kids have already turned to ash. And when you talk to the poor owner he lets you know that this is the "2nd worst day in his life" I may have had tears from laughing so hard.
The currency in the game is porno mags. That's how you buy items in this game.
Then again, you have this:
What's this? This is the Title Opening. What happened before this? The game opens on Brad's friends getting the shit kicked out of them by bullies because they took the bullies basketball unknowingly and Brad steps in to say that he was the one who did it and as such gets fucked up. On Brad's way home through a nice, suburban neighborhood he eventually reaches a trash-filled, dilapidated hovel. Upon entering, a fat man in a hawaiian shirt watching TV is not shocked that his son comes home again, beat to shit. After throwing en empty beer bottle at Brad and telling him to go upstairs to his room, Brad enters his room, stumbled over to his bed, sits down and starts crying.
Cue title.
This is not a nice game.
Your main character Brad is not a saint. He is addicted to Joy, a drug in this post apocalyptic world that people take because it simply makes them feel nothing which is the happiest they can feel. This is backed up by the game system; if you use Joy all your hits become criticals for a while. But don't use Joy and you'll go through withdrawal which drops your attack stat to 0 until you recover from it by sleeping or waiting it out in battle. The more joy you use, the shorter it lasts and the quicker and longer you go into withdrawal. And as shit gets more fucked up as you go, he will crave it more and more.
Something that many people are wary of when it comes to games with heavier themes or darker tones is "edginess" a term I can't personally stand but can understand. Edginess can come from a place that doesn't seem genuine, that seems to be dark and fucked up just for the sake of it without any underlying purpose or impact other than shock value.
This is not an edgy game.
It's tone is consistent and purposeful, it's themes are dark and strong, backed up by the plot and characters of the game in ways that make sense. The topics it addresses are real, come from real places. The things that shock you will shock you in a deep place and not just splash some blood at you and expect you to freak out. Semi spoiler for a specific fight near the end of the game:
There is a fight towards the end of the game that every single person tried the same thing; I watched 10 Let's Plays/Walkthroughs of this game and every single person did the same thing, and I guarantee that people on this board that played it did as well. First, you saw that escape wasn't an option. Then you selected guard every turn, maybe for one or two or four turns to see if you could avoid this battle somehow. When you realized that you had to fight to keep going and you couldn't just wait the battle out...you did it. You had to. But you didn't want to. And it fucking hurt inside.
Every single one of you knows which battle this was. And if you play this game, every single one of you that does will remember it too.
That brings me to one of the aspects of this game that illustrates just how heavy and dark this game gets.
Choice
See that guy right there? In the snazzy leopard print? He's Terry Hintz. He's the tutorial guy who'll teach you how to play the game as you start out. He'll show you how to fight, how to manuever the stages, equip items and be generally annoying. At the end of the prologue, you'll get waylaid by a man who seriously hates you. And since he hates you, he gives you a choice.
He can take all of the items you collected since the start of the game to set you up for the next area.
Or.
He can kill Terry.
These are the choices you have to deal with. And this first choice? This is nothing.
Big Spoiler Coming Next, but not super story related.
After the first area, you will get waylaid again by Buzzo and his Joy Band and he'll give you a delightful choice. He either kills the second party member in your party slot, or take your arm. If you kill your party member he is gone forever. If you choose your arm it makes you unable to use combos that used that arm forever and lowers your attack and defense permanently.
The choices you make impact the game in permanent and incredibly strong and often terrible ways. This is not making a choice that later gives you a different colored set of armor. These are not choices that you'll see the effects of later on. They are immediate and painful choices that will impact battles from that point til forever, that you will have to deal with immediately and until the credits roll. Choices have importance and weight with immediate relevance.
The game throws so many party members at you because a lot of them aren't going to live to see the end of the game. Hell, even choosing your favorites and using them at the end of the game
Story and Lore
To say this game is heavy is an understatement of the highest caliber. It's like tying a rock made out of your fears and insecurities to your leg and throwing it into an ocean of your self-loathing, drowning in darkness as you sink deeper and deeper until you can't remember what light and happiness ever looked like.
And it works. The story works.
I went over the story above earlier and at it's bare bones, it's about trying to rescue a little girl. But at the end of the game, at the end of the day, it's really not. It's about what people live with and carry around. About what consumes you and drives you. I'd compare this game to a beloved title that people adore but that would pretty much give away the plot and ending of the game (spoiler: it's
The Last of Us
It's about trauma and how it shapes you and controls your life. Brad has a very powerful line at the end of the game
about how Buddy never had a choice
I don't want to go into the story much because that is the most powerful part of this game and will stick with you like a needle in your stomach long after the credits have rolled. It is incredible that a game that looks like Earthbound on an NES cart can destroy me emotionally moreso than almost any other game I've played in a number of years.
On a separate note, the WAY this game tells it's story is of a style that a large number of people adore nowadays. It is very very minimal and, though a ton of people are going to get their undies in a knot over my comparison, it does it in a similar style to Souls games. Brad's journey is straightforward and linear. But if you don't pay attention, if you don't explore the optional areas, if you don't read into what the game shows you then you will miss out on some of the most important information in the game. You won't know who the last boss is. You won't know why the game is called Lisa. You won't understand why Brad does what he does.
See those terrible monsters above? You fight so many of them. And if you don't pay attention you'll never know why they exist. How they came to be or why they're there. An explanation that is literally tied into a gameplay mechanic.
The aformentioned last boss? You know who he is, but do you really? Did you see how he holds his head? Did you notice his belt? His speech? Did you see the one cutscene that clues you into all that?
Most people will never know who Mr. Angolini is. You see him during the game. You are shown who he is but still when that battle is reached barely anyone remembers him. But he was there. And you know him.
Because there are no random battles (mostly) you'll be facing unique enemies almost every single time. And you'll notice that each of those enemies has a name. All of them, if you select them in battle, are people. Each battle has purpose, impact and weight because each person you kill exists as an actual person and not a nameless mob. They all have their closing lines. They all have their unique attacks.
These games have an incredible weight to them that I can't accurately describe. There is a scene in the game that put a terrible lurch in my stomach. After I got through it I actually had to pause the game and take a break. I couldn't just move on from it it was so unsettling and unnerving to see. The kind of act that can only reach that deep in a person because of how invested they are in the world and it's characters. It shook me.
And that's what you'll get if you play this game.
Play this Game
I'm not going to lie to you.
Do not play this game if you want to feel good.
But I think video games exist for many reasons and can show us many things. They are capable of that. And though it's not a nice game, I think it's a powerful game. I think it's an important game and more than that it's that fabled "experience" that so many AAA devs claim to want to give us but are incapable of. I will not find a big budget game that is capable of making me feel the emotions I felt in this one. This game is an experience and it is one that you will not forget if you play it.
I made this thread and spent close to 3 hours writing it because I think this game is worth it. I think for 10 dollars there is no better game out there that will stay with you longer after credits roll. I think that it deserves more. I know it's doing relatively well but I want more people to play and experience it. I want it to reach as many people as it can.
If this thread gets even one person to play this game who would not have otherwise than I will consider it a success.
One final caveat: I will warn people that this game tackles some dark shit so it may not be for everyone and that's fine. It may trigger some people. It is a violent game. There is rape. There is dismemberment and excessive blood. There is drug use and it's consequences. There are children in this game and I will not spoil anything for people, but they are not safe from the effects of this horrible world. So if you are not able to stomach those things in service of a powerful and emotional story than this game may not be the game for you.
But honestly, I beg you to get through it because it will be one of the strongest gaming experiences you will ever have.
Also? The soundtrack?
Is phenomenal. It's like Earthbound electronica jazz fucking your ears.
War Season
Air Raid
Summer Love
Beam Brain
Listen to that shit. Over 70 unique tracks.
Anyways, thank you very much if you took the time to read this thread. And thank you very much if you decided to pick up the game. I promise you it is worth it.
(Thanks to all the pictures I borrowed and the sites that hosted them).
