I got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart… This was a very pleasant surprise. If you’ve never played or even heard of Lisa, it’s a pair of RPGs (the original, a take on Yume Nikki, isn’t included here) set in a post apocalypse where all women are extinct. It has influence from Fist of the North Star, a quirky sense of humour and a strong vein of horror, pain and misery; they’re dark, silly, wonderful games. I fully recommend going into them blind, and the review will discuss plot points in a way that includes spoilers, so bear that in mind.
The Painful
First up is the meatier of the two offerings: The Painful. The aforementioned apocalypse is in full swing and there are no more women left on Earth, which makes the female baby crying off screen all the more shocking. You are Brad Armstrong; a depressed drug addict who was horribly abused as a child and as a result turned to martial arts to channel vicious, murderous rage he can barely control. He takes the baby in and names her Buddy, brushing off his friends’ insistence that the local warlord Rando would be better equipped to handle such a thing. No no; this is Brad’s responsibility, and he’s finally going to do something good; he even kicks the drugs for a time and makes Buddy a mask so she can go out in public. But then Buddy vanishes, and Brad sets off across the wasteland of Olathe to find her, running into a variety of misfits, mutants and a man who despises him for reasons he can’t recall. That’s the set up, but the game is far more concerned with the characters than the plot, which is largely just travelling right in pursuit of Buddy until something blocks your path. The titular Lisa appears only as apparitions silently watching Brad from above: she’s Brad’s sister who died long ago, the implication being she took her own life due to the abuse she suffered at her father’s hands. Everything Brad’s been through, as well as his addition to “Joy”, a drug that makes people feel nothing alongside granting a buff in gameplay, makes him comically serious and stoic; conducting himself in even the silliest of situations with complete stoicism in a manner reminiscent of Kazuma Kiryu. Unlike Kiryu Brad has no sense of honour or nobility; he’s selfish, willing to coerce people into his party by holding their loved ones hostage and will kill anyone or anything that picks a fight with him or blocks his path. His rage manifests itself at several key points outside of gameplay where it gets the better of him and it’s played entirely for drama; he’s a thoroughly damaged man who desperately needed help at a point in his life that he’s well past now. It’s a good thing he’s living in the post apocalypse and on a quest to rescue his daughter, except the game deconstructs that notion in some of its darker moments, and it can get really dark at times. It’s balanced with some genuinely really funny writing and situations, and you can go off the beaten path to do all sorts of things like become a pro wrestler, dabble in sex work and race shopping trollies by rocking back and forth in one; the two tones sit alongside each other surprisingly well. The silliness is deeply ingrained in the world, but not Brad, so it feels natural when his true nature rears its ugly, blood soaked head and doesn’t clash with the fun stuff. It all ends the only way it can though, and it hit me like a tonne of bricks even on my third playthrough.
Gameplay wise, it’s an RPG-maker turn based RPG: you move along a 2D plane, gaps and doorways in the environment lead to hallways and caverns that then lead to new areas, and random battles are rare. When combat does occur it’s a difficult but satisfying affair; there are a variety of status effects that can be employed by party members you recruit from around Olathe and the game teaches you the importance of them with your first team mate; “Lord of the hints” Terry Hintz, a man who initially can’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag but can slag the enemy off until they start crying (obscuring their vision) or become so mad that their attacks might just hurt themselves for massive damage. Getting to grips with these, especially that second one and setting enemies on fire, is essential as the game goes on, especially when you encounter Joy Mutants: horrible, once-human mounds of flesh with loads of health and who might waste turns coughing up blood and crying at what they’ve become, or might just bite a party member’s head off and permanently kill them. It’s rare that fighting one is mandatory, but doing so is usually worth weighing up the cost against what they might be guarding. Brad can string together button presses to unleash different Armstrong Family Karate techniques or select them from a menu (which only does one load of damage instead of an amount per move in the combo), and they offer certain status debuffs like knocking an enemy down or stunning them, and he’s a reliable damage dealer when he isn’t suffering from Joy withdrawal. That’s where the gameplay element I mentioned earlier comes in: while on Joy Brad’s stats are increased across the board and he hits like a truck, but when he’s in withdrawal his manual attacks do no damage and his stats are all lowered. Certain other party members are also Joy addicts and suffer the same problem, which is another thing to take into account alongside the various status effects you have available to you, as well as whether your team mates have regular special attacks or ones reliant on “Technique Points”, which start a fight low (unless you drink booze before hand) and increase as they do regular attacks, or if another party member buffs them. There’s a fair amount to take in but it never gets overwhelming, and the near total lack of random battles means you’re able to plan ahead once you’ve seen what’s coming. That’s not to say you can’t grind, either; joining the wrestling promotion gives you an opportunity to do so, which is useful for trying out new party members. That usefulness of team mates also plays into a few scripted, unavoidable story moments where Brad has to choose between either losing party members or all his items (depending on the situation) or lose one of his arms, which limits the attacks he can do and increases his need for Joy.
So what’s new in this “Definitive” edition? Well I’ll get into some of it when I talk about the Joyful, but in Painful there’s at least one piece of new music on the excellent soundtrack, an optional easy mode and a new tutorial book written by Terry. There are some new characters to meet, and the main thing is a series of conversations Brad can have with party members when you rest at campfires. Resting at campfires is potentially dangerous, but thankfully the conversations count as a separate thing and don’t automatically carry on into potential disaster without letting you save first. I only saw a handful, the best being Brad opening up to Terry (who fancies himself Brad’s best friend) about whether pursuing Buddy is the right thing to do, and how even when he tries to do good he ends up hurting people. Terry is overjoyed (not in the drug sense) at Brad confiding in him and gives him a big hug as the camera slowly pans up to the sky and someone speaking in text says “Just promise me Brad that you won’t become a monster like everyone else.” Bloody hell. It was like something out of Cowboy Bebop, it was beautiful. At first I thought it was Lisa talking because it happened in an area full of apparitions of her, but maybe it was Terry. Either way it was moving.
The Joyful
So you can buy the definitive edition of this separately but I wouldn’t recommend doing so because it’s really a DLC epilogue for The Painful, and in its original PC release it was exactly that. SPOILERS for The Painful to follow.
It takes place right where the main game left off: Brad is a Joy Mutant who’s single-handedly slaughtered Rando’s army, Buzzo wrangles him and keeps him under control as Buddy and Rando escape into the wasteland, stopping briefly at a list of the top ten warlords in Olathe, three of whom Brad dealt with already. A flashback shows Brad’s ruthless training regime to toughen Buddy up and prepare her for life in the post apocalypse and it’s clearly sunk in: Buddy is blunt, direct and brutally violent and she’s set her sights on wiping out everyone left on the list and becoming the strongest. Best boy Rando reveals himself to be Brad’s adopted son (something Brad himself cruelly denied) and sweetly, albeit naively, tries to guide Buddy down a less nightmarish path but she won’t be swayed, and most of The Joyful is spent tracking down each warlord and putting them down. It has a less vague story than The Painful for good or ill, and does explore some of the lore more clearly, like Buzzo being wrapped around Lisa’s finger and tormenting Brad in her memory, something he regrets, as well as direct interaction with the man responsible for Joy and the resulting mutants. It doesn’t get in the way, but none of it is as good as the series of boss fights against Olathe’s toughest. Combat has to deal with the fact that Buddy spends the majority of her time fighting alone and so is largely easier but can still be challenging, and balances it out by outright telling you to use Joy, removing the threat of withdrawal and giving Buddy a new combat system where pressing a button with the right timing makes her do heavy damage, something that’s all but required for the tougher fights. There’s not much more to say without spoiling anything, which I’ll be doing in the next paragraph to discuss the ending, so skip over that if you want to go in fresh.
Okay, so, when you’ve got to the end of Joyful, killed all the bosses, heard that actually Brad was a good dude who loved you and everything bad that happened was Buzzo’s fault because he was all torn up about Lisa, the game gives you the option to take a Joy vaccine, and not doing so sees the game end with Buddy becoming a Joy Mutant. Personally I’ve never taken it and don’t intend to ever do so, because after everything that’s happened, after Buddy has sought power and safety through extreme violence and has completely disregarded the idea of living safely and restarting the human race, the idea that she can just take a pill and give up on that doesn’t sit right with me. She’s like a little Jason Brody: killing his who she is, and there’s no going back. Joyful is bitter, nihilistic and depressing and I wouldn’t have it any other way: this is the natural conclusion to the events leading up to it, and for the game to give you the option to magically undo all that feels false. The whole thing, reinforced by the song that plays on the title screen and in some areas, feels like waking up the night after something terrible happened and knowing things are ruined. A new dawn on a pile of ashes; a bloody, emotional punch in the gut as the cycle of abuse and murderous rage continues and humanity’s last hope shoots for power and dominance and ends up a mindless mass of flesh, crying over things she can’t quite recall.
In terms of what’s new it’s finally time to talk about the elephant in the room. Both parts have censorship not found in the original, something publisher Serenity Forge are open about and some of which is unique to the PS4/5 version. Now, normally I’m not one to talk about censorship in videogames because the topic has been soured by people complaining about single frames of arse being removed at the developer’s own discretion as if they’re prosecuting at the fucking Nuremburg Trials, but this is worth discussing. The changes are small, but strange; poison-healing cigarettes are now “Candy Cigarettes” and in The Joyful booze is now “Soda”. There’s also a message in both games when you boot them up that says “The protagonists in this game are over 18 years old”. This is not true. Buddy is a little girl, and in this new definitive edition she looks no different; she’s clearly still a little girl, so that message is a lie. Is it gross that people are flustered by seeing a little girl’s bare chest? Yes, but it makes sense in context. Why is Buddy not allowed to drink alcohol when she’s still able to murder people? The changes are flimsy, and just come across as pathetic on Sony’s part: it’s a dark, grim game for adults where horrible things happen, and Sony attempting to make it slightly more palatable by making changes that just clash and stick out as obvious censorship make them like seem out of touch, pearl-clutching moral guardians.
So then, should you play Lisa Definitive Edition? Yes, absolutely. If you can handle its darker elements, which you really should look into beforehand if you think they might be an issue, you’ll find a rewarding, engaging, beautifully written RPG that masterfully mixes goofy comedy and harrowing emotional gut punches. The censorship is more baffling than intrusive, and didn’t affect my enjoyment of the actual game itself. I loved it when I first played it, and I love it now; it’s a masterpiece and I’m going to go back through them both looking for secret stuff and doing Joyless and Pain Mode runs of The Painful. Fully recommended.
KILL HER BRAD ARMSTRONG
By James Lambert
@jameslambert18
The Reviewing Floor 