Good gravy. I am not sure I have ever played a game like LISA: Definitive Edition. It’s sadistic, warped, contains disturbing content that is certainly not suitable for children, and it gets you in the feels in every direction. Picture playing Binding of Isaac and then make it about ten times darker than it is currently. Yep. You’re there.
I’m going to stop the usual introduction and just get right into the details. Buckle up and don’t be afraid to cringe a bit.
Story
The wasteland of Olathe is dying and it’s due to an all-male surviving world that is desperately doing its best to keep itself alive. Hope springs forth in this dark scenario when a man named Brad Armstrong happens upon an abandoned child who he names Lisa, and who is the last remaining female on the planet. Burdened by his demons and wanting to put his drug-filled life back on track to do some good before he passes, Brad does his best to raise Lisa and protect her.
As she gets older, Brad’s ability to keep Lisa a secret becomes less and less likely. When she finally goes missing, Brad goes on a journey to find her before it is too late and makes some hard choices along the way to ensure her survival.
How this isn’t a movie is astonishing. The story is one of the darkest I have played in my 40+ years of video games. It brings a very real set of scenarios to the forefront, even before Lisa goes missing. Brad’s abused life is thrown into the mix and gives him rhyme and reason for who he was before Lisa and gives him the motivation to become something else when she goes astray. All of it is dark, all of it is uncomfortable, and all of it is well done in writing and story execution without apology.
While I certainly did cringe at a few moments, especially innuendos cast down from the baddies in the game when Lisa goes missing, I couldn’t take my eyes off this worldly trainwreck because I wanted Brad’s plight to be one of redemption. This story is so good on many levels, and it doesn’t hold back on those levels that make you feel horrible on the inside, or even that you can relate to depending on how your life has gone. Those latter levels help magnify the story and force you to engage and involve yourself in the world that you must traverse Lisa and Brad within. It’s uncomfortable most of the time and there is occasional humor to offset it when it gets too dark.
What makes it an even darker experience is one of the gameplay elements that play within the confines of the story, which is branching narrative choices. Tipping the hat towards Knights of the Old Republic, Developer Dingaling Productions put in branching choices that change the direction of the game and its complexity. And those branching story moments are powerful, and at times feels like there is no right answer, even though the choice could be dreadfully impactful. For example, there will be a point in the game where Brad is given the choice to cut off an arm or have his friends (your other players) murdered. The game will do what it promises, and the outcomes are incredibly different depending on the choice and how that choice shifts the story. You will find a lot of uncomfortable moments in the story like this, and the payoff isn’t roses, rather it’s survival, but regardless it’s a good design that works within the story as a whole.
The story lies at the forefront of this game and mixes well with the gameplay, though tends to pick it up from time to time when it needs to do so. When you play the game, buckle up for the story and make sure you fully think things through when you run into the eventual forks in the road. If you don’t, then make sure you go back and replay it for a different outcome. There are a nice set of combinations that can happen as you journey through Olathe.
Forking A
While the game doesn’t look like much in terms of presentation, it does bring a powerful story to the forefront of the gameplay that shifts the dynamics of the gameplay within the branching choice narrative. And you know what perfect genre fits branching choices? It’s going to be action RPG all the way, though instead of real-time action, you’re going to get some turn-based RPG action. Yes, there can be action in turn-based RPGs, but the gameplay design is like you would expect.
Anyway, the turn-based backbone of LISA: Definitive Edition works like ye olden days of 90s RPG action. Think Phantasy Star and you got it. Anyway, when Brad is traveling through Olathe, he will run into enemies, some hiding and some in plain sight, and the game will shift into a turn-based screen. You choose an action, either guard, skills, or try to escape, and you ping-pong back and forth with enemies until someone falls. It’s not a difficult structure to grasp, especially if you’re a seasoned gamer. The big difference is that LISA: Definitive Edition is actively doing its best to see that you lose. When I say actively, I mean a tad bit worse than Binding of Isaac. For example, you will find that larger enemies will suddenly and randomly take a chunk out of you when they can during a fight. You will lose a lot of these fights if you’re not properly prepared. It’s a chore to grasp and get ahold of this type of gameplay, but you’ll keep coming back to the game because you’ll want to progress the story. Much like Dark Souls, you’ll die repeatedly but keep coming back for more just to see what the next great thing might be in the narrative. This type of gameplay makes us all sadists.
Outside of progressing the story, which again, is the forefront of the game, what else is there? The game is huge, and that’s not just because you get the definitive edition that contains everything you ever want to play. There are plenty of different levels to explore in LISA: Definitive Edition which makes it fun to find oddities and discover secrets that lie within the game. For example, you might find a kidnapped man during the game that begs you to free him. You’ll be tasked with choosing whether you can take him captive or leave him. He has no point in the story other than to build on the warped world of Olathe, but his mere presence silently encourages you to keep after every nook and cranny of the world. For the record, I rescued the poor guy…then found out he could be sold at a shop for a pretty price of 300 magazines (the currency). Hey! I needed armor and a new weapon. I felt bad. But, c’mon, a new weapon and armor. Anyway, the game is huge in scope, and it doesn’t play it dry when it comes to using space for fun, frightening, yet purposeful reasons.
Getting back to oddities, the game is full of them. To the brim. The story caters hard to the point that this is an all-male-led world. That doesn’t mean badassery, but rather quite the opposite – lunacy. You will find people dressed up as Power Rangers, wrestling men, and even a weird-looking Grimace at a holy shrine to McDonald’s. It’s a gross shrine, but holy nonetheless in its delivery of heavenly food. Food that falls from the heavens. It’s weird. Anyway, you’ll find a good mix of weirdness in this game that openly pushes you to keep watching, even when it gets out of hand and gross. I’m not sure what the production meeting for this game looked like over at Dingaling Productions, but, good lord, the minds of those folks are quite different. I respect the hell out of them, but it still doesn’t make feeling uncomfortable at times an ‘okay’ gaming place to be. Again, ten times the darkness of Binding of Isaac, and that’s saying a lot.
Now, unlike Binding of Isaac, it isn’t best to travel alone in the game. The game sports a bevy of different characters that can travel with you on your way through the darkness. Each character has their own personality and brings their own unique style. We’re talking about up to 30 different characters that can join your party. Each person a masterpiece in warped and wacky with their own set of traits and different ways to kill…or try to kill. For example, there is a fellow traveler named Terry. Terry’s huge skill is to slide and headbutt an enemy. We’re not talking about a cool slide with a seamless move to take down the enemy. We’re talking about a trip, falling on his face, and sliding right into the enemy. It’s odd, it’s hilarious every time Terry does it, and it’s the very definition of characters you meet and how fights go. You will run into these types of unique characters and all of them are regretful throwaways at any given point. They’re unique and wonderful in their own way, but you have a good supply of them in case they die. What is the last game you played that was turn-based that did that? It’s stupid fun and they’re all expendable.
Staying with fighting, the system in this game is not too complicated. You have hit points, special points, and items that you can use during a fight that can help, heal, or harm you. A lot is going on in the backend part of the game that is oddly satisfying to toggle and juggle. Each character is loaded with special offensive skills. Nearly every time a character levels up, you get a special skill added. Sometimes it is a new skill, and sometimes it’s a different, more powerful level of a previous skill. You will want to get into fights to gain these things because the game is built for you to sustain these skills across many battles. While the enemies want you to die every chance they can get, the game wants you to succeed and it does its best through this backend to make sure you push forward, even when the odds aren’t in your favor.
What is in your favor in the game are the many types of items you can purchase with your magazines. This could range from different types of alcohol that might buff you in certain areas but have less chance of success because you’re drunk. This could be tea or a variety of jerky to heal you up, or it could be as powerful as TNT. Typically, in a turn-based game, items are purely secondary, but items in LISA: Definitive Edition are quite useful and sometimes more powerful than the skills the team possesses. Adding useful items, and sometimes hilarious ones, makes this gameplay a bit deeper and makes you want to explore, collect magazines, maybe even complete a side mission or two, and gobble up new items. It’s more motivation to explore and the payoff from having some of these items is quite satisfying. Having played hundreds of turn-based RPGs, this is the first time in a long time that I felt items played a significant role in the gameplay. That’s just good design, and it balances out the fighting.
The only knock I have with this journey of a game is how it starts out. Getting established and figuring out what works and doesn’t in LISA: Definitive Edition is a chore. While the game does show some mercy to you by offering up varying difficulty settings, it’s still a chore to understand that you need to hang in there at the beginning. Believe me and Will Silberman can attest, I had a lot of gripes at the instant uphill battle I faced at the beginning of LISA.
On top of that, trying to grasp the controls which are better through a console controller, in my opinion, can be tricky as well. When you begin the game, you start as Lisa. How she works and functions differ from Brad. Brad can’t jump over ledges, Lisa can. It’s that sort of minor detail that isn’t fully explained to you at the beginning, but you figure it out through the story later. Anyway, there is a fair amount of frustration at the beginning, but, wow, does the gameplay payoff big time once you get going. Hopefully, people aren’t turned off by the start.
Overall, the gameplay that developer Dingaling Productions brings to the table is unique in its style and execution. It offers up more than just a basic turn-based RPG experience. The story and its gameplay design work well together and bring fun times even when the times are dark as hell.
On that note, let’s wrap up.
Conclusion
LISA: Definitive Edition from Dingaling Productions is a warped, twisted, dark game that doesn’t pull its punches with any of its storytelling. The complementary gameplay helps to enhance the story and create some major connection between game and gamer. It’s something to behold, even if the beginning feels impossible to overcome.
