The best game ever made and it's not even close

Good funny game. Very wholesome and family friendly!

This might be the most overrated game I've ever played. Not the worst though, I'd say it's a 6/10, but I don't get how anyone could call this a "cult classic" or think it should have the same success as UNDERTALE or other indie games. Are you insane ? Are you on Joy right now ?

There are good things. The music might be weird, but most of the time it's very good. We can agree on this : the music slaps.

The artstyle, both in and outside battle is... okay. Not the best, I've seen better on other RPG maker projects, but it works pretty well most of the time, both on the silliness and creepiness sides.

The story and writing are... How to put this without being rude. It's... okay at best ? It's hard without spoiling it, but... Very hit and miss, sometimes it works (humor is mostly good), sometimes it falls flat, both because of the writing itself, and the topics it handles. Which are sensitive and complex : you can't just throw them in for the feelz and shock value.

I've seen how the fans are on other reviews, so I might get insulted. But I'm sorry, there's nothing spectacular here. It just throws horrible sh*t where everyone is miserable for shock value, kinda horror porn mindset, and it's not handled very well. There is nothing deep, nothing complex, no hidden message or complex symbolism : everything is very clear, and making something brutal and edgy doesn't make it magically good. The storytelling isn't particularly good, and ends up somehow confusing while still telling a very simple story (which is understandable when you know that the game was just a Hokuto no Ken fangame at first and story came later), the ending isn't particularly heart-wrenching (I mean it's sad but... I've seen way better than this). I played the original game (before DE) in 2018, and I had FORGOTTEN everything but one particular passage, and it's NOT related to the story. That's how impactful the story is.

I mean, if you're a teenager or in your early 20s, or haven't played much, I can understand how it could amaze you because how brutal and unexpected some things are (for a video game, because it's common in other art forms), but if you're an adult and still think this is peak fiction, you should really try to broaden your horizons. There are countless TV shows, movies, books and of course video games that handle these kind of stories and topics a thousand times better. The plot is literally TLOU but badly executed and written. If you want full post-apocalyptic despair, The Road is 10 times better, if you want a rollercoaster of emotions in a J-RPG with weird sh*t going on, Earthbound, Mother 3, Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass or OMORI are all way better than this to name just a few... it feels a bit like an OFF from Wish, honestly.

Did you notice I still didn't talk about, you know, the core of a video game : THE ACTUAL GAME ?

Well, if I were a game design teacher, I would take this game as an example, because every, and I mean EVERY ORIGINAL GAME DESIGN IDEA goes from "bad but only a slight inconvenience" to "dumbest sh*t I've seen in 25 years of gaming".

RNG-BASED UNPREVENTABLE INSTAKILL PERMADEATH.

There are certain words that should never be in the same sentence. That's some of them.

I know the game is supposed to be brutal, it's a post-apocalyptic setting, you're supposed to feel miserable and go along with the consequences of a harsh environment. I know it has "painful" in the title. And I would be ok with it if the game design was properly made. Like it has some sort of a balance in the long run, that everything was thought of. For instance, one of my favorite game is Pathologic 2, where you handle a plague outbreak. It's extremely hard, you're supposed to feel like sh*t, you can't save everyone and everything feels very punishing and unfair. And I love this game even if it's painful to play.

So why do I love being miserable in Pathologic but not in LISA ?

It would be easy to say "because it's a good game, and LISA is not", but let's be constructive. It's because when you learn the way everything works, it almost become a piece of cake, and in the long run, the RNG balances itself. Everything is randomized, so if you reload your save, you won't get the same encounters and items, but somehow you'll get a similar value and some food and medicine. So you're ok with RNG, because there's no scenario where it could outright ruin your save and you couldn't do a thing.

That's good game design : the game is extremely punishing to the point of not being fun for most people, it feels like you can't win, but if you lose, it's your fault. It's because you played badly and took bad decisions, not because of a dice throw.

Well, as pretty much every RPG Maker game, at its core LISA is basically an Excel spreadsheet with pictures and music. So it's not a matter of skill or knowledge : it's all in the almighty RNG hand. And you can LITERALLY have your save ruined because of the RNG, needing to start from the beginning. So what I mean by this is you can't just be ok with getting screwed, because you can't be sure it's on purpose and that you'll see the end of the game. Starting over doesn't mean you will do anything better because it's RNG based, and as the gameplay is not particularly fun or engaging... Well.

So what happens is that you just reload your save when unfair sh*t happens. Which sometimes is "not at all" but sometimes is "absurdly a lot". Like FFS, you have a random event when you try to rest, and again, it ranges from "minor inconvenience" to "FUUUU-". There is a possibility to permanently lose a character. It's supposed to be a what, 5%, 10% probability ? Happened to me 13 TIMES IN A ROW. So you save before SLEEPING, and sometimes spend 10 minutes reloading your save because you can't even heal to keep progressing. It becomes a general rule : you save before doing ANYTHING. I think I spent 10% of my playtime reloading saves. Mind you that there is a hard mode with one-use save points. Pure genius.

And every original idea is like this : sounds good and thematically fitting, but nope, it's bad. There is a reason some things are not done, and it's not because nobody thought of it.

I won't even talk about the roulette. That's the only thing I remembered from my 2018 playthrough. Wonder why.

There are other stuff that deserves to be called out. Falling to death for instance, where you could just need the player to press the left/right button again when on the edge, so you don't fall by accident. Or every mini game, which are all either frustrating or boring (so fun to mash spacebar for 2 minutes straight), but that's long enough.

So, should you play this ?

Even in 2014 when it was initially released, there were similar games that were better in any aspect. I still don't get how it managed to sell that much copies. There weren't that much indie games around, but still. There were Yume Nikki inspired games though, and some of them were better.

In 2024 ? LOL. If you want to feel miserable, I can name you 10 games that will destroy you much more than this AND aren't a pain in the a*s to play.

Or you could also turn to another media; watch something, read a book. This game doesn't tell much by its game design (beside Joy addiction and a few "sacrifices", but they're so force fed in your mouth that it falls flat), so you don't have to play to experience that kind of dread.

To end on a positive note : congrats to Dingaling for making hundreds of thousands of dollars with that though. I still can't understand how or why, but I'm happy he made the project he wanted to, and it paid off very well.

To end on a negative note : Steam reviews used to be pretty accurate about the quality of a game, when it was overwhelmingly positive and people praised it like a messiah, you could expect great stuff. Well, I don't know if I'm becoming old and hard to impress, but that's not the first game that people acclaim like it's god tier and it turns out to be mid at best.