LISA - Nitro Rad

when I ask you what your favorite post-apocalyptic game is what's your answer the vast majority of people would easily say fallout 3 without any second thought but to me the answer that question will always be Lisa in September of 2012 Austin Jorgenson also known as dingaling released a game titled Lisa which was Maine RPG Maker 2003 now known as Lisa the first it was an open-world exploration game that told a very vague story it follows a young girl Lisa whose abusive father Marty doesn't let leave the house she decides to run away bringing her to a surreal world that the player must navigate in order to find various items sound familiar it's a lot like UMaine Ikki there's even a room that's pretty much the Nexus that you'll access all the different worlds from Lisa the first is a much smaller game though being a lot less open less confusing and much shorter it takes just under an hour to finish the game and even less if you know what to do throughout the game world you can find a lot of things that symbolize a relationship between Lisa and Marty there's even a number of things that imply that Lisa was raped by Marty again it's a lot like you may Nikki give him the small size of the game there's not really that much to talk about outside of the theory aspect which has created a lot of discussion over on a boa Chan about a year later dingaling launched a Kickstarter campaign for a game titled Lisa the painful RPG it promised to be a post-apocalyptic adventure full of weirdos perverts and just plain dumb people it would be a world plagued by drugs violence in the decay of human intelligence I was watching an interview with dingaling and he said that he used to really wanted to create a big world full of nothing but rip dudes that fought each other kind of like Fist of the North Star but then he started to think what would a world full of only men with no women really be like what would the men actually resort to in order to cope with that after the kick started going very successfully Lisa the painful RPG entered development and saw release via Steam on December 15th of 2014 the game released simply as Lisa for $10 like Lisa the first Lisa the painful RPG was also made an RPG maker but a more recent version of it obviously more recent than 2003 funny thing is if you go on dingaling steam profile you can see that he has over 6,000 hours logged into RPG maker that's nuts I know that typically when people make a game an RPG maker they often just put it up for free though it's not uncommon for games made in RPG maker to be put up for sale some of which even met with critical acclaim titles such as lone survivor into the moon beliefs ax sticks out from that kind of crowd it's just so much different than any other RPG maker title on Steam different how though is that a good thing or a bad thing why don't we take a look the first thing you see when you start up the game is a picture of Lisa hanging herself with your three options their new game continued and quit right off the bat we know that Lisa is dead more notably by suicide this is important it's here that we're treated to Lisa's droning depressing theme song for the very first time unless you've played Lisa the first that is then you would have heard it before except here in this game it presents itself very quietly being barely audible it makes the song a lot more unsettling because you only barely hear it in the background Lisa opens up with a young boy named Brad and his friends being beaten to a pulp by a couple of bullies his friends apologize and sympathize for him before he limps off to his house for a short time we get to take control of Brad after navigating a fairly normal looking suburban neighborhood you'll stumble across disgusting beat up wretched looking house this house is Brad's house upon entry Brad encounters Marty Armstrong Brad and lisas terrible awful human filth of a father showing zero interest in making Brad feel better at all he both verbally and physically assaults him before sending him up to his room if you enter the door on the far right you can find a crib with a baby inside this is presumably Lisa as Brad as Lisa's older brother once in his room Brad cries to himself as the games logo fades in already this game has left a pretty big impression on me to be quite honest I can tell that this is going to be a bumpy ride fast-forward decades later were now in a post-apocalyptic world completely empty of women and a way for the human race to reproduce currency now takes on the form of pornographic magazines as that's the only way men can now stimulate themselves it's a world where friends are scarce and enemies are plenty while taking a stroll Bradley stumbles upon a baby abandoned in a wasteland after bringing the child to his friends Rick sticky and sheikhs they inspect the child to learn that it is indeed a girl Brad's friends suggested to give the child Toronto the big shot military leader of this world each for different reasons Cheeks thinks that Randa would reward them while Rick explains that Randall's army would make sure she is used to give humanity a second chance Brad immediately shoots down the ideas because he doesn't care about humanity having a second chance but rather him getting a second chance a second chance of what raising a kid were never told outright but it is pretty safe to assume he feels responsible for Lisa's suicide so he feels he'd be able to redeem himself and raising this child himself his friends agree to help him take care of the baby girl that Brad decides to name buddy as years past Brad struggles with an addiction to joy a drug that makes you feel nothing he suffers from traumatic flashbacks and memories of Marty and Lisa the only thing that can help him forget is joy another decade passes but he has grown older and brad has lost his head of hair it's not long before Brad meets up with Terry hints the tutorial master after joining up with you you both head back to find a dying Cheeks who tells Brad that buddy has been kidnapped secrets out Brad she's gone it's now that we finally start the backstabbing heart-wrenching adventure that is Lisa the painful RPG this games opening is a home run if your head was the ball it scores enough points to win the game but at the cost of beating you senseless I'm going to tell you first and foremost Lisa's a game that's going to beat the everliving [ __ ] out of your emotions the game's intro sequence is pretty long-winded but it's good really good Lisa controls much differently than your typical RPG maker game it's on a 2d plane like a side scroller Brad is able to jump up and down ledges given there only one tile hi you're also able to drop off of ledges though dropping down more than three tiles and make you take fall damage it's a really interesting way to have the overworld set up and it makes exploring fun without being confusing enough to make you get lost honestly I find this map a lot easier to navigate the most top-down maps like what you would normally find in a typical RPG maker game having a wider focus on x-axis with a briefer emphasis on Y makes for a more accessible overall that doesn't fail to still have a lot to explore there's three areas in the game each being a small region that has many doors that will lead to different sub areas you'll explore each area looking for bosses to fight items to collect and means of advancing the plot so you can journey to the next area it's a really nice structure for the game because it delivers the world's openness in three big scoops this way you have lots to explore right away but not an overwhelming amount for an RPG Maker game the battle system is pretty interesting bread's got four options Armstrong style skills guard and items Armstrong style is your regular attack and will allow you to use the WASD Keys to enter up to a five hit combo each key does a different kind of attack Brad can also do special attacks that'll do increased damage at the cost of your SP you can string together Armstrong style attacks into special attacks by entering certain combos you can do additional damage this way if you take the time to remember each combo and use them frequently even if you don't remember them the button combo is always written beside the special move so you can check it in the middle of battle whenever you want it works like this if you enter a combo instead of just selecting a special attack he'll do the punches from entering the combo then do the special instead of only doing the special I played this game with a dual shock for trailer so I assigned the WASD Keys the four shoulder buttons and let me tell you there's nothing more satisfying and mashing those buttons at high speed and watching Brad Alisha fireball amongst all those enemies some characters also have TP instead of SP which is a meter that'll build upon doing and taking damage which will allow for bigger and better special tax depending on how much you have it charged up every character in the game has a completely unique kind of attack my favorite is Garth who delivers buffs and debuffs by showing the enemies or your party members pornography another party member throws legal documents at the enemies to confuse them but also gives them paper cuts that's just really funny to me this game has a lot of humor in it most of which comes from attack in item descriptions it's a lot like earthbound which has the exact same thing with its item descriptions the earthbound inspiration overall is fairly obvious visuals look pretty similar with its simplistic yet appealing visual design dingaling even mentions in the description of his kick-started that earthbound is one of his most favorite games of all time it's far from an earthbound clone however because it only borrows from the aesthetic value rather than on a mechanic level for example in earthbound you can only get up to three party members to join you in Lisa you're able to recruit a lot of party members and I mean a lot there are 30 total members you can recruit that's quite a bit more than your average RPG game not many of these guys you can just find through normal play though you'll have to explore and do a number of side quests to find them some of which you can just find in bars and can simply pay them a number of magazines to join your party others you'll have to do a quest or two involving getting a certain item or winning a certain contest two of the arguably better party members buckets and fly requires you to do some pretty out-of-the-way side quest but boy is it worth it when you realize that fly is normal attack does heavy damage to all enemies on screen thing is though party members are really expendable in this game they can die and I mean die as in they're not going to come back I'm not talking perma death or anything because when a character Falls you can just revive them it's just that there are many ways your party members to die whether it's game of Russian roulette being mutilated to death by a mutant being or by your own hand it's also not uncommon for a party member to abandon your group or get kidnapped overnight in Lisa you're never safe especially when resting for the night a number of shitty things can happen to you this is a post-apocalyptic world where everyone wants to screw you over after all sometimes bugs will poison your party your thieves will steal some of your items if you're lucky enough nothing will happen if you're really lucky though sometimes people might even leave you a gift though the gift isn't always as generous as you might think sometimes a party member will get kidnapped by a nearby gang requiring you to track them down and pay out the ass to get them back you can also try killing them but in doing this they'll execute your partner before the battle begins if the party member that got kidnapped wasn't very good sometimes it's actually worth it just for the XP of the battle you need all the exp you can get in this game because boss is near the end of each area are hard as hell you'll have to scour the world for some strong party members items and people to fight in order to level up this is one of Lisa's strongest features there is no grinding whatsoever in this game a lot of RPGs artificially lengthened themselves by requiring you to fight enemies over and over again just to level up so you'll stand a chance against the boss button Lisa the only enemies that you're able to have random encounters with which is only about four areas of the whole game you're not rewarded with enough XP to really level up from them instead the best way to level up is by exploring the world and finding side bosses and monsters to fight these guys will give you a lot of exp enough to easily level up your party this is the perfect way to structure an RPG giving you more for doing less that's fun instead of giving you less for doing more that's boring wait wait hold on slow down slow down so let me get this straight you waste less time but you have more fun why don't war are PGS do that one of my favourite side quests involves entering a wrestling league where you'll fight many people in the ring for those that are fans of mega64 Eric and Brian are in the game as a boss in the side quest they even have their own theme song and everything it's sick Lisa is loaded with references to wrestling and that's something I always welcome with open arms and video games pretty early on you'll get equipped with a bicycle that will not only increase Brad's movement speed but will also allow you to hop over small gaps the game teaches you this instantly this is a great example of tutorials teaching you through gameplay rather than explanation you see this gap right here immediately after moving to the right just to go back you'll jump over this gap automatically you now know that the bike can jump gaps without the game having to stop and explain it to you that's some damn good game design right there this suddenly opens up a world of possibilities of exploration suddenly giving you access to so many areas you didn't have before not only that but backtracking to those areas takes so much less time now backtracking is also made very minimal in this game as the landscapes are designed to make traveling back from much faster than they are to travel to but if that wasn't enough about a third way through the game you get an item that lets you fast travel between the three areas on that note I found a cool glitch that allows Brad to walk just as fast as he can bike but also climb ropes twice as fast dismount the bike on the same frame you get to the top of the rope it's really just as easy as that it's a totally harmless glitch that's actually pretty helpful for navigating the world a bit faster come to think of it it's a lot like you main ikki speed glitch so I'm fairly certain it's a fault of RPG maker one thing Lisa does really well is choices a lot of games have the illusion of choice it makes you think your actions are going to change a lot in the story but really the result is often the same the choices and Lisa journeyed the road not taken' inflicting the gameplay and difficulty rather than the story it's not like oh do you want me to kill the kid or do you want me to kill the old man instead it's more like hey [ __ ] I'm gonna kill your party members or I'll chop off your arms so you can't use combos anymore these choices are legitimately hard to make and that's because it's not changing something you're just going to watch it's changing something you're going to play I remember ding-a-ling talking about sacrifice on his Kickstarter he stated I want the world of Lisa to be hard on the player I hate playing a game knowing that if I make a choice it has to be the one I know the game wants me to do or the safe option or the one that just leads to the good ending the choices you make will change the core mechanics of the game it's not just superficial I want the player to really have to make sacrifices and for the game to affect the interior core of your experience that sounds like a pretty big promise the kind that game devs tend to break but don't worry because I can assure you with all integrity that he really delivered in this aspect the choices and Lisa don't really impact the story much save for maybe one or two changes of some dialogue though there's more to the decision-making in this game than just selecting dialogue options as mentioned before Brad has become addicted to a drug called joy joy is also an in-game item that you can use doing so will max out Brad's health and will make him do some serious damage for a number of turns this can really help during some of the boss battles it comes at a price however and that price is withdrawal sometimes if Brad hasn't taken join a long time he'll start to suffer withdrawal this will make him do no damage with his combo tags and significantly less damage with his special attacks the more you use joy the more you'll suffer withdrawal so is it really worth it well that's up to you some party members will also suffer withdrawal some of the really good ones will have this so again is it worth it to have this badass on your side if sometimes they'll start suffering withdrawal and just be completely useless for a couple of fights again the choice is all yours Lisa is a pretty challenging game but if that's not enough for you on january 2nd 2015 dingaling added a pain difficulty in this mode you can only use each save point once there's also some extra bosses along with older bosses being replaced with much harder ones completing pain mode also yields a secret ending which was super cool to see it links some extra story bits that were a tad unclear altogether Lisa's got one of those story were not everything is just outright told to you though you are given all of the pieces to the puzzle it's just up to you to put them together it's also extremely upsetting it'll kick in your teeth and piss in your mouth leaving a taste that's unpleasant yet strangely addicting there are moments of this game that actually force you to do things you just really do not want to do man I don't even want to touch up on the story it's just so good that I want anyone who plays it to experience it all completely for themselves Lisa is the first game on Steam I found myself getting all of the achievements in never before if I like the steam game enough to want to try and see everything in it Lisa has a fantastic presentation sporting both appealing visuals and a kick-ass soundtrack I heard a rumor that the entire soundtrack was made in the trial of fruity loops I don't know how true that is but if so that's pretty impressive the music has a great level of variety you've got your intense electronica for badass boss fights you're depressing acoustics for sad moments and chill tracks just for strolling around Lisa's visuals can be pretty disturbing at times featuring sprites of characters and monsters with a lot of gross and wrinkly detail one of my favorite characters in the game is wall-e a psychopathic fast-food restaurant employee that's worshipped as a God for delivering food to his village as you fight him more and more his mask cracks revealing that he's not even a person underneath but instead just a bunch of raw meat there are a few bits of criticism I would like to point out firstly there's a lot of cliffs right by entrances to some screens so you can just easily walk off getting yourself a game over if you're not paying attention this happened to me about four times on my three playthroughs of this game another thing is that the text seems to go outside the text boxes sometimes cutting off a few the letters then again Dingling is constantly updating a game and he's even patched on the things my friends and I have shown to him so I have no doubt the texting will get fixed eventually Lisa was hands down the best indie game I played all of 2014 it's everything I look for in an RPG and better yet it's only ten bucks Lisa will take you probably about 10 to 12 hours to complete even more if you do the side quests the game also has mad replay value while not sporting a new game plus has a lot of writing in the choices you can make in the characters you can use and of course instead of just being a typical night to write episode this is technically a review so that means I do have to give this game a score Lisa gets uh this game kicks ass so hard by it immediately out of ten if you like RPGs it would be a crime not to buy Lisa there's a reason why I was my number one game of 2014 because it's good hey guys thanks for watching and welcome to the end if you're still in the mood for videos on RPG Maker games I did - more recently on games called The Crooked Man and mad father you can watch those by clicking the links right here don't forget to drop the video like if you enjoyed it and to subscribe if you want to see more not your read content in the future if you want to see not you read updates a little more frequently I have a Facebook page that you're able to like and the link to that is down in the description below I really hope you guys decide to buy Lisa and if you do I hope you enjoy it as much as I did because I really really love this game so thanks for watching have yourselves a good night and as always take care over 6,000 hours logged in steam he's he's been on Steam that long that's nuts this games opening is a home and you have more fun why don't worry erbium those are not words if your head was the ball it scores enough points to win a home run that's not how baseball works geez

Channel: Nitro Rad

Views: 618,761

Rating: 4.942369 out of 5

Keywords: LISA, LISA the rpg, lisa the painful rpg, lisa the first, review, nitro rad, nitrorad, rpg maker, steam, indie, indy, indie game, rpg, amazing, apocalypse, good game, woahdang

Id: 3QnNzzO4J24

Length: 21min 29sec (1289 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 24 2015