The SRPG genre is one I have not played much of, and to date I have yet to completely finish a SRPG. For those that I have played, some combination of the story, characters, or gameplay just wasn’t enough to keep me invested. To my surprise and delight, that has all changed thanks to Lost Dimension. The story is not super original — the premise is that, one day, a massive, mysterious structure known as The Pillar lands on Earth. Its landing was preceded by numerous violent impacts around the globe by its sci-fi weaponry, killing over two billion people. A strange humanoid known as The End is responsible, and he warns the world that in thirteen days, he will finish the apocalyptic deed he has started, and he invites the people of Earth to stop him. Special Forces are deployed but quickly wiped out, leaving only a select group of Gifted people known as the SEALED to be sent in. Of these, it appears that only eleven have survived.
These eleven characters are who you will take control of, the main protagonist of these being Sho Kasugai. You essentially play as Sho, but your involvement with the other ten characters is constant and deep. The adventure begins inside the bottom of The Pillar. Robotic enemies welcome you for an introductory mission with tutorial prompts before you are placed in the “lobby” from which you make all of your in-between mission decisions. The breadth of available decisions to make expands as you advance through the story, and thusly go up to higher floors in The Pillar as you pursue The End. Along the way, The End, who exists in another dimension, drops in at scripted times to chide and prod your team.
His tactics are very interesting, and a huge reason why I have found Lost Dimension to be so interesting and compelling. What The End does is instill suspicion in your team very early on. The eleven members of this group, who have only recently met each other, have really only one thing in common — they have their own special Gifts, such as levitation, pyrokenesis, super strength, teleportation, and premonition, etc. They’re also in The Pillar with a common goal, to save the world and stop The End, but, maybe not everyone is here for that? Maybe there is a traitor amongst the group? This is exactly the toxic mentality that The End instills in his would-be killers, and this instantly created a 9-9-9/Zero Escape vibe for me that I really dig.
So even while the over-arching story of apocalypse/mass destruction/save the world is pretty generic, the characters and the interplay between them are fascinating. The characters are well designed and quite diverse, with personalities ranging from meek followers, to hot-headed loners, to guys that just want everyone to get along, to about anything else. A skilled doctor is on the team, a high school girl who wants to be a singer, Nagi the female soldier/assassin who can levitate, Mana the girl who believes cuteness is the only virtue worth having, Marco who is timid but telekinetic, and so on. Each character has a distinct visual appearance and each is voiced over. Most of the game is told in on screen dialog, but I liked that the start of each response begins with a sound and small animation of the character responding. For example, if the response is generally positive, you might see the character nod and say ‘yes’ or they may looked surprise and make say “hmph” or something like that to give the dialog that you’re reading more impact.
In between missions, one common task that Sho needs to do is talk to the other characters. Not all characters will have something to say everytime. You won’t waste any time though because the Talk screen shows you different icons next to character names that indicate if there is any reason to talk to them, or if it’s a basic, neutral conversation, or a camaraderie-building one in which your relationship with the character will change. Character relationships are important to the outcome of who is deemed the traitor, it’s a system that I don’t want to get too much more into so as to avoid spoilers. That said, each character has five states ranging from Hatred to Close. You build relationships by talking to them, choosing the “right” option in dialog, fighting with them in missions, using health or other items on them, etc. Character Quests can get unlocked as you go, in which Sho and a specific character are assigned to a mission (with other team members supporting).
Before speaking about missions, I need to tip toe around a little bit more detail for the traitor mechanic and Sho’s special position. Sho has a Gift of premonition, or vision, and with it, he can hear things and even see future events. This is used pretty nicely, although perhaps a bit too predictably. After each mission, you are taken to a screen in which Sho says he hears the voices of the other (five) characters that were in the mission with him. For a few seconds, you see them flash on the screen and all talk at the same time, and it’s just a cacophony of everyone chattering over one another. Your goal it to try to listen and watch to see who might be the traitor in this group. In the “lobby” room I mentioned earlier, you can go to the Visions section and mark each character on a per mission basis with a color indicating if you think they were the traitor or not. You can also spend precious Vision Points (just three of these per floor) to enter a brief mini-game that I don’t think it’s possible to actually fail. Here, you can specify one character and find out for sure if they are the traitor or not. Another great thing about the traitor mechanic is that, after the first traitor, the next traitor is completely random. It even changes from floor-to-floor, and certainly from game-to-game. It really keeps you on your toes and I found it very compelling trying to figure out who to watch for.
In stark contrast to all of this internal conflict and suspicion, the Gifted have to really work together in combat. Each mission has the same type of general flow. First, you start at the “lobby” room where you talk to the other characters, equip your items and spend points to get new goodies, check your Vision info, upgrade individuals’ Gifts, and so on. When you select the Gate, you will then see the mission list, which is kept nice and tight. I was glad there weren’t like four or five missions available. Usually there is just one to three, and within those you’ll have a Main Quest to advance the story and Sub or Character Quests that you can use to modify character relationship, earn more XP, get more out of the game, and all that. When you select a mission, details are provided such as win/lose condition (generally to win you must have at least one team member surviving and defeat all enemies, or at least the ‘boss’ enemy), enemy type and placement, and then you must fill in the Position list. The Positions are which characters, in addition to Sho, you’re taking into battle. At most, you will take Sho and five others of your choosing. You can see their start positions on the mini-map provided, but that’s it. The mission then starts and it’s time to battle.
While I haven’t played a lot of SRPG games, I thought the mechanics of Lost Dimension were well paced (i.e., you don’t “unlock” all gameplay mechanics for several hours) and not hard to understand and apply. You can also re-read the tutorials on these anytime from the pause menu. There is an appreciable amount of depth here to be sure. The player’s turn is always first, and depending on how you slotted your Positions from earlier, you start with Sho or another character. Each character’s turn has a few choices — you can obviously move within a certain area, with how far you can move being dependent upon the character. You can Attack if an enemy is in range, use a Gift if the applicable, interact with an object (such as a button or collectible), use an Item, Wait, or Defer. Now Deferring is absolutely vital for success as you get deeper into the game because it literally lets you give one character multiple turns, so long as the character who is Deferring is close enough to the character you want to Defer to. One way I used this was to give my main gunner, Toya Orbert, extra turns sometimes to do his damage, or maybe give Sojiro Sagara an extra turn so he can Heal or Revive a fallen team member.
As divisive as The End tries to make your team, in combat, they have to rely on each other and this comes into play largely in the form of Assist Attacks. These are almost like giving yourself multiple extra turns. Say you have four characters close to an enemy. You have one of these four attack, lets say from the back, which nets extra damage. The other three, if they’re in range, will Assist with their base attacks, often netting a Critical hit in the process. The enemy will do this to you as well, and they can do some absolutely ruthless Assist combos. Even with boosts, none of your characters are particularly tank-like, so you have to put them in the right spot to Assist, but not get Assisted-against, if you know what I mean.
Sanity is another neat gameplay element. In addition to HP and GP (Gift Points, you need x amount of these to use characters’ Gifts), you have a purple meter in the HUD known as Sanity. Each character has their own Sanity meter. Taking damage or using Gifts docs the Sanity meter a certain amount. If you Wait on a turn you can gain five points of Sanity back. So even though you might have a lot of Gift Points, you can’t keep spamming your Gifts lest your drain the Sanity meter and go Berserk. Berserk is crazy (har har!); when this happens, look out. It can be a good thing with some careful planning and maybe a little bit of luck. When you have a character go Berserk, you do not control them for I think at least three turns. During this time, they do massive damage and are not discriminant against who they do it to. So they will literally take out other team members if they’re so inclined. It’s quite a thrill to see this unfold, and it literally can be a game, or mission-changing event, for better or worse.
Generally, most missions take anywhere from five to twenty minutes, and to that end I do wish there were some save or checkpoint mechanic built-in. There is not unfortunately, but perhaps even better is that you can quit a mission and restart it at anytime, penalty-free. You can even fail a mission and there is no lasting penalty (i.e., you restart with any Items and things you had before failing or restarting). I’m pleased to say that most missions, with good planning, are usually doable on the first try. Not being much of a SRPG player, I was glad that I was able to suceed without much grief. Sure, some of my missions were completed with literally one team member left standing and I got a D rank, but D’s passing, right? Regardless, from my perspective, Lost Dimension was more engrossing and enjoyable because the missions were not super tough. SRPG veterans or those maybe less interested in the character relationships and traitor mechanic may very well find the combat, and thus the game, too easy.
I’ve made it pretty clear to this point that I am quite impressed with the gameplay. The presentation quality is pretty strong as well, not surprisingly the weakest part of the package are the in-mission visuals. The setting of the missions changes from one floor to the next, but the design is understandably basic. No mission setting is particularly large, and it would be quite alright if you got the name of a mission mixed up with another one as there is not a big difference in their appearance. But that aside, graphically I experienced no technical issues, always a plus, and I quite liked the character dialog animations and most of the Gift animations, too. Lost Dimension also has one of the coolest looking Title Screens I’ve seen, by the way. The audio is great too, the sort of ambient spooky music that plays during some scenes is fitting for the suspicious/Zero Escape eeriness, and the voiceovers are great.
Lost Dimension should be Found on a PS3 (or Vita) near you. Let’s head to the summary…