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dkirschner's Lisa: The Painful RPG (PC)

[June 18, 2016 08:26:12 PM]

Thought this was a sequel to Lisa "The First." It's sort of a similar game, but not really a sequel. It's similar in style (another RPG Maker game) with a great art style and kickass music, plus similar adult themes. Actually I was reminded of Children of Men because it's about a man, Brad, trying to protect the last female in the world, who is hunted by a bunch of gangs who want her for this or that. The little girl is named Buddy (I don't think it's the titular Lisa), but Brad's father is the abusive Marty from Lisa "The First." I assume Brad and Lisa were siblings and this takes place in the future long after Lisa killed herself.

It's an Earthbound style RPG and it is super weird. The first companion you get is named Terry Hintz (class: Hint Lord), and you guessed it, he dishes out tutorial information as he imposes himself on your party. He is utterly useless now in combat, with skills such as Inform, Little Cheer (restores negligible HP for 1/2 of his SP), and Verbal Bash. Great. Right after I got him, some gang of dudes captured him and then gave me the choice of letting them kill Terry or taking all my items. Well, I felt bad for Terry because he is a likable character who makes puns, so I lost all my items. I hear you must make many other choices like this between A and B that both are terrible options. So your party members can permanently die. Yikes.

My second companion I encountered while exploring some cliffs. He was sitting in a chair and told me some inane, rambling story about his wife cheating on him. It was funny and surprising tossed into my exploration, and he eventually told me about the apocalypse that happened, setting the context for the game world. I thanked him and exited the screen. Walked through the next screen. And there he is again, standing before a bridge. He tells me another random story. I thank him and leave. Next screen, there he is. He tells me one more story and joins my party. His name is Nern (class: Orator) and he just tells stories to support the party, rather like a bard. Also pretty useless in battle right now.

So. I can't stress how weird this game is. It's got dark humor. Some of it's laugh-out-loud funny; the writing is pretty good. Just one more snippet of what is happening right now so I can quit. I loaded up my game and walked to the right of the screen. There's a guy in spiked armor with a bondage mask on sitting on a stool. I interact with him and it goes into a fight. His name is Dayspa Henning. Day spa? Okay. It's random, made me chuckle, but I don't get it. Am I supposed to get it? Are all these names inside jokes? Brad uses some "Armstrong style" technique in combat (he was a martial arts teacher?). Terry Hintz just launches himself headfirst into Dayspa and does negligible damage. Nern has a pistol and shoots. Dayspa never attacks for some reason. After a minute, he says "Wha?" and wakes up. Apparently he was asleep. Resume combat. I kill him and he says, "Well, I guess I can sleep a lot longer now," explodes, and disappears.

Nern says, "Sweet lemon tea!" in victory. I watched the end of the game on YouTube. Brad is missing his arms. I can only imagine how that happened. I'm curious, but don't have motivation to continue after the first couple hours of this 12-ish-hour RPG.