I hadn't heard of LISA until about a month ago when I saw it pop up during the autumn Steam sales. What drew me in at the time was the seemingly straightforward pixel graphics and plain backgrounds in the preview screenshots (which indicated to me a low-budget work) combined with the overwhelming amount of praise found in the Steam reviews section. Normally, the Steam reviews on a game rarely affect my decision in making a purchase, but after reading some of the reviews and how emotionally charged they were in praising the game for its narrative and style, curiosity got the better of me and I decided to take a closer look. So does LISA hit hard "right in the feels," as one reviewer would have it?
Drenched in black comedy, LISA introduces players to Brad Armstrong, a broken man in a broken world. As a child, Brad had to deal with schoolyard bullies and an abusive father. Now a grown man, Brad carries his life experiences with great burden and difficulty, resorting to a drug called Joy in order to numb his mind and body. The world Brad lives in experienced an event simply called "The Flash" in which all women died, rendering repopulation impossible and effectively dooming the human race (similar in style to Children of Men, in which infertility is the cause of the apocalyptic backdrop). Brad lives his life in a dirt hovel with some childhood friends until he discovers an abandoned baby girl in the middle of nowhere. Seeing the child as a second chance to redeem himself from the shadow of his father, Brad takes it upon himself to raise the girl, christened Buddy, and to protect her. Several years pass and Buddy grows up and one day the secret is out; raiders come and take Buddy away and Brad places responsibility upon himself to rescue the girl.
Inspired by Earthbound, LISA presents a return of older RPG conventions in its game mechanics. However, by emulating something of an NES experience, the game suffers a great deal when it comes to technical use. Equipping and managing party members quickly becomes a chore and the general lack of a streamlined user interface had me wondering why I couldn't just use my mouse instead of having to go through multiple motions in order to bring up one screen. Such a design decision may create a more authentic RPG experience for some gamers, but there is a reason why outdated conventions are outdated. The lack of a quick save feature outside of fights creates irritating moments where a player may be forced to load from a checkpoint multiple times, making the trek back to a fight, all while praying to the RNG for good rolls in order to defeat a boss. Combined with the infamous cliffs that result in instant death placed in strategic locations, there will be a great deal of revisiting the same areas over and over again, ultimately cumulating into a frustrating gaming experience.
The game suffer's from a general lack of feedback, an important aspect to indicate to players what works and what doesn't. There are two culprits in this case: navigation and combat. Navigation doesn't suffer as badly as the combat; the backgrounds are plain and the paucity of landmarks boils getting from point A to point B to memory as passages and doorways look similar. The ultimate villain is the combat system where so much information is hidden from players. Certain status effects such as burning, poison, bleed, stun, and tripped are self-explanatory, but others are more vague in their function. Crying, weary, stink, and weird are some of the more enigmatic status effects that may take some time to understand; even then it may just be better to consult a guide. Moreover, something as simple as enemy health isn't displayed, leaving players to wonder how far into a fight they must plan for. Some enemies harbor resistances to various effects in varying degrees and there doesn't seem to be any logic conveyed to players as to what kind of tactics are working, often resulting in the aforementioned prayers to RNG. You may never find out an enemy has 40% resistance to stunning attacks and simply think you're getting bad rolls when attempting to stun the enemy. This lack of information leads to a deficit in the player's tool belt when trying to solve a problem and reduces some areas of the game to brute force trial and error.
There is a large emphasis on "ruthless choices that that permanently effect [sic] towns, characters, life" as stated by the game's Steam page. I cannot express how untrue this is. The choices to be made are ruthless, I'll give it that, but they aren't emotionally motivated or impactful as most of the decision making prompts are there to simply fuck with the player in a gameplay sense, not a narrative one. For example, one fork forces Brad to choose between the lives of his party members or all of his hard earned items. But here's the major problem: for all the weird, quirky, and cooky characters there are, none of them are characterized beyond one or two traits that make them eclectic. Ultimately, any value you attach to your party members is going to be motivated by how much utility they present in a fight. Your party members are essentially walking bags of numbers and you'll feel sad and angry that your bag with the biggest numbers died in order for the game to up the emotional ante. Any kind of backstory or exploration of motive from all the unique characters is essentially nonexistent and any kind of investment into the characters is impersonal; I truly wish the party members were more fleshed out in their relationship to Brad.
Technical gripes aside, LISA offers a bold exploration of depression, domestic abuse, drug addiction, and gender roles to name just a few themes. A Mad Max-esque vision of the darkness in human hearts is complimented by the carefully limited color palette and dirge-like music and in other sections contrasted by the bright colors and strange rave-like music as some celebrate to the end as they lose inhibition and control of themselves. An intriguing exploration of Brad's past, his mental image of his father, and motives for saving Buddy is examined, but the weak pacing of the game places all the interesting story elements in the far back as the first two-thirds of the story is narrative cannon fodder that focuses more on the environment and its inhabitants rather than Brad. I feel that the storytelling could've been more homogenous rather than having a stark break between sections as it would streamline the storytelling process and prevent elements of the plot from being forgotten or becoming stale.
Ultimately, LISA is a clear example of an intriguing narrative executed poorly as frustrating mechanics and a lack of technical polish tarnishes the game's victories. Suffering is another theme conveyed in the game, but the game seems to feel that frustration and suffering are the same thing. Brad's suffering mechanically translates to a series of difficulty spikes in-game but the game backs itself into a corner when the game has neither the complexity nor the depth required to create a smooth spectrum of difficulty. Instead, what we have instead is essentially a numbers game that artificially increases the game's difficulty. This effect is exponentially made worse when you simply can't care enough for your companions to really make a meaningful choice when, for example, choosing which companions should live and which should die.
LISA is certainly a dash of the strange. It's eclectic style and oftentimes clunky revivals of old technical tropes found in older RPGs makes for one peculiar game. I have to praise the game's humble beginnings as a Kickstarter project and the subsequent follow through to see the game onto Steam, completed and even expanded upon with an additional DLC storyline which builds upon the original game's plot. Still, I hesitate in recommending the game. I don't think LISA is for everyone; the game isn't broadly appealing but the game does have a strong cult following within the gaming community. If you're looking for something close to home in terms of an RPG but strange and different in unsettling ways, LISA may be the game you're looking for.
Ultimately, LISA is a clear example of an intriguing narrative executed poorly as frustrating mechanics and a lack of technical polish tarnishes the game's victories. Suffering is another theme conveyed in the game, but the game seems to feel that frustration and suffering are the same thing. Brad's suffering mechanically translates to a series of difficulty spikes in-game but the game backs itself into a corner when the game has neither the complexity nor the depth required to create a smooth spectrum of difficulty. Instead, what we have instead is essentially a numbers game that artificially increases the game's difficulty. This effect is exponentially made worse when you simply can't care enough for your companions to really make a meaningful choice when, for example, choosing which companions should live and which should die.
LISA is certainly a dash of the strange. It's eclectic style and oftentimes clunky revivals of old technical tropes found in older RPGs makes for one peculiar game. I have to praise the game's humble beginnings as a Kickstarter project and the subsequent follow through to see the game onto Steam, completed and even expanded upon with an additional DLC storyline which builds upon the original game's plot. Still, I hesitate in recommending the game. I don't think LISA is for everyone; the game isn't broadly appealing but the game does have a strong cult following within the gaming community. If you're looking for something close to home in terms of an RPG but strange and different in unsettling ways, LISA may be the game you're looking for.
