LISA: The Painful

Not sure what to say, its a must-play honestly.
Story goes both hard, but also very funny. Characters are pretty good, and the combat is quite good, and not too forgiving. Cant skip mentioning the OST either, especially "Work Harder", quite a lineup.

First impressions aren't great. The game has mean mechanics like letting you die from falling off of ledges in the overworld and party members getting kidnapped when you rest. That's annoying but not deal-breaking.

But the game and it's characters just aren't that endearing. There's more referential humor than times your characters ever even interact.

If you want to have depression, sure, buy this game.

It's a masterpiece, and it will always have a special place in my heart.
It teaches you so many lessons to apply it in real life, but also it makes you reflect upon yourself too.

10/10

[Note: Going through and reviewing old games that left an impression me, since apparently I'd neglected to until now]

What can I say about LISA, that hasn't been said a thousand times over by other, better spoken people and reviewers?

I first played through LISA: The Painful back in 2016, and ever since then it has left a rather large impression on me. I'd say it's probably one of the single most important games I've ever played - and really did kick off a love within me of indie RPGs as a whole.

It's utterly gutwrenching - but balances it out by being this weird, quirky, dark humored affair. Despite really being a relatively stock RPGMaker combat game, there's nothing that's really matched it's vibes, aesthetics or sound. The powerhouse work of a single developer and composer. It's a very complete and focused experience.

You can see why it inspired an entire line of impressive fan games over the past decade or so - talented people trying to work on top of it's shoulders. I'd say a lot of those are worth your time, too.

The short of it - this one is always gonna be a recommendation from me. One with a lot of asterisks attached, mind you (ie, heavy content warnings), but one that I think is worth your time.

This game is way too weird. Well made but not recommended for anyone under 30.

that garth guy kinda cool and that bo guy too

thanks for recommending this to me chase Grant

Gut wrenching story. Surprising replayable.

A kind of indie Suikoden xd.




Overprotective

You come into our club... With no hair? You dandy FUCK!

i like playing with dinosaurs and hot wheels and the game is cool ig but i also like playing with transformers

Probably not finishing it. The music and nern aren't enough to carry the subpar combat system and exploration.

It's dark and beautiful and the storytelling is so compelling you almost forget the 8-bit graphics. I wouldn't change a thing.

omori for burnt out alcoholics

One of the best games i've ever played. Simple, well-made, the story starts funny and intriguing to heart-breaking at the end. Incredible work.

hard af sidescroller turnbased rpg with great taste; also really funny

"that was my gasoline bucket!"

5/5

My dumb potato bitch wife, God rest her soul.

Honestly was a kinda straight forward rpg even on painful (recommend any first timers to play normal) but is something I would highly recommend anyone who's looking for a shorter rpg that's both goofy and depressing

this game is one of my favorite RPG games i have played ever
it has good gameplay, a good story, good characters and overall is a great game
the only reason someone would not enjoy this is if they arent fond of difficult and unforgiving games
though i must say that i would not recommend the DLC it would be a better idea to just watch someone else play it in my opinion

GOTY 2014 (played OG on another account) -placeholder review-

This is the second most tragic thing to happen in my life...

It's a flawed must-play game, especially if you're interested in making games.

- It ping pongs between wacky humor and extremely dark topics, and I wouldn't say it always handles it with grace. But the game is very funny and the dark themes feel, at least, earnestly told.
- The strong writing is in the moment to moment scenes and unique meta gameplay. Not so much the overarching plot which is frustratingly straightforward with its themes.
- You could describe the game as wacky and jarring (in a good way), and that perfectly describes the soundtrack. The music is perfect for this style of game and really carries the experience for me. The songs feel designed to both instill horror and slap you in the face with hilarious sample choices. They could have mixed the music better and I'm glad they didn't, because I think it's mixed how it should be for this experience.
- The game is meant to punish you, permanently killing party members or taking resources from you unexpectedly. Roll with it.
- While I enjoyed collecting party members, the writing is clearly the strong part of this game and I found the combat wore on me after a while when I just wanted to get to the next story beat.
- The way people talk about this game is a bit intense. I get the sense that this franchise has attracted a faction of either young people or people that just likes edgy content in general, regardless of how it's told. These are not people that tend to read into a game. There's a lot to unpack here, but you're going to be frustrated by fans that seem to go with the most surface level interpretation of things.

Lastly, A disclaimer. I don't recommend playing the sequel to this.

This is the 2nd of three games. The first game was inspired by another indie RPG. So this game, while well written, also has this feeling of fan fiction stretched into a franchise. When I said the overarching plot was straightforward, I meant for this singular game. Unfortunately, it's inseparable from the franchise which has fallen into the trap of over-explaining every characters role and has collapsed under the weight of its own lore." I found this kinda stepped on the serious themes this game dealt with and just made it feel more like an SCP writer was really into rape scenes.

So if I were you, I would avoid playing the sequel to this and try to take Lisa: The Painful as is.

game gud

I completed this years ago, but finished Definite Edition just now, years later.

One of the best RPGs, also one of the most messed up ones.

Not for everyone.


+ Good character cast
+ Good story
+ Funny, but also tragic
+ Banger OST
+ Some replay value with different team setups
+ Solid DLC continuation with Lisa: The Joyful


* Game can be quite hateful towards the player, especially on Pain mode. This can but people off, but it's essential to set up the theme of the world. Not as punishing as something like Fear & Hunger, however


If you don't mind weird, dark RPGs that are punishing, this should be right up your alley.

10/10 ruined my life as promised

No joy. Only pain.

emotionally wrecked me and ruined my life

would play again

I played this game a few years ago but didn't finish it because it was hard. I decided to play it again a few years later and finished Lisa: The Painful and Joyful this year. In Lisa: The Painful, you play as Brad starts in his childhood when he takes a beating for his friends who stole a ball and goes back home showing that his home life is bad. His father Marty hates him for being a disappointment to him where Brad goes to his sister's room to check on her then goes to his room crying. We move on a few years later as Brad is an adult and he finds a baby that turns out to be a girl. In the world he's in no more women are meaning that the baby Brad has seen is the last hope for the world. He shows his friends and says that he will take care of her. A few years pass and Brad is strict with the girl named Buddy. He doesn't let her go outside because he's worried that men in the world would do bad things to her. He makes a mask because he feels like she deserves a chance to go out in the world instead of being stuck in a house all day of her life. He takes her outside and shows her a flower that has some life left since everything else filled with life is gone. After that, we go to the present where Brad helps a guy that's attacked by a dog and kills it. The man you recused named Terry joins him because he sees how lonely Brad is and joins his party. You return home to find out that Buddy is kidnapped and goes out to look for her. Now for the gameplay. The gameplay is similar to the Mother series if you played them. For some characters, you have to do certain moves to do them with TP and SP to use them. TP you need to get hit or hit enemies to raise it. For SP you have to rest or use consumables to use them. You can find magazines in the world of Lisa to use as currency to get party members, equipment, or other things you feel like you need for the game. Each party member has unique abilities that can be useful in combat. Every time you level up your stats increase and you can get new skills making combat easier. When I played this game the second time I used a guide since I had no idea what to do to make things easier for me. The music is a mixture of calm to dark when something serious happens. There are choices where you have to sacrifice your party members or other things that you can't avoid. There is Perma death meaning once you make that choice the option is final unless you save the game. There is another game mode you can choose but I chose the one you start with since I had no motivation to play the whole game all over again. In this game, some parts show Brad's past meaning that he has suffered trauma from all he's been through in his life. For resting you can either go to a campfire out in the open or a place where you have to use currency which isn't a problem since you can go to a spot where you can grind for magazines. There's Lisa: The Joyful since it's a game that's after Lisa: The Joyful where you play a character you see in the game. Pretty much an expansion to the first game where it shows the ending for the game. I recommend getting this game but it's pretty depressing to play through. I give this game an 8 out of 10. Have a good day.

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

Its really good

i lov game, good super. play now right

This game makes me want to end it all

this game will make you go from laughing out loud to stone cold solemn in like 5 seconds. banger game with a banger story with banger characters like bro everything bangs. something i really like is that this game invites you to play it multiple times. there are 30 different characters you can add to your party which means theres a shit ton of build variety. pain mode adds new encounters, a new area to explore, and a new ending. theres a lotta secrets i completely missed after beating it for the first time too so yeah i absolutely will be playing it again. for sure in the big 3 of indie rpgs to me

11/10

YOU ARE TEARING ME APART LISA!!!!!!!!!! 10/10

I might have save scummed, but in fairness on my first run I immediately got head damage.

the game is Painfully peak 10/10
reason:joy, brad, community, & memes

Is good.

My favorite adaption of the first Ice Age movie

The story is underwhelming and the gameplay is bad.

Writing this with tears in my eyes. I would recommend playing it, but that would be evil, I wouldn't wish this game on my worst enemy.


With that said- Well written, made me sob, I hated and loved my experience. Praise wally!

Una historia muy profunda e interesante, mecánicas rpg peculiares y únicas. Con un roster de equipo muy variado.

Juegazo.

I don't know what to say about this one... it was certainly an enjoyable journey of pain.

Worth it for Terry Hintz alone.

Great story, satisfying gameplay and a climatic soul-crushing finale. Don't put this one off for much longer.

Oh hello there! My name is Nern. I'm considered the greatest historian of our time... I've gathered a wealth of knowledge about Olathe and what happened here. Many tales... Would you like to hear? Hmm... I wish you were more enthusiastic... Oh well, I'll tell you anyway. Let's see.... Oh right! It all started with what I like to call, THE FLASH. I was sitting with my wife, god rest her soul, sipping on sweet lemon tea. I believe it was homemade by my sweet wife, God rest her soul. Or wait... Maybe she bought it from the store in a bottle. You know, like a plastic bottle? Well hold on now, that would be ridiculous to buy a bottle of sweet lemon tea, then transfer the contents into a glass. Why not just drink it from the bottle? I guess maybe so she could put ice in the glass? But then again, making tea homemade would be just as time consuming, if not more! That sneaky ♥♥♥♥♥... Anyway, I'll save that story for later! So, I'm sitting on my porch drinking sweet lemon tea. From a glass of course, ho ho! When suddenly... A great strangeness fills my body... Something was wrong... I've lived many years, and I've never felt something like this before. Do you know what it was? Yup! It was my rocking chair! That wooden son of a gun stopped rocking! So I looked down and realized a little rock had gotten caught beneath my chair! A rock under my rocking chair! What a day! I decided it was time for bed, I had had a little bit too much excitement for one day! Hoho! I slid into my jammies, brushed my teeth, and said my prayers. As I was climbing into bed I noticed my wife, God rest her soul, brushing her hair in the bathroom. As I peered across the hall my body swelled up with emotion...
"Why can't I be married to an attractive woman?"
"Is it me?"
"My bank account?"
I'm a tall guy, I workout forty minutes a week... Is that not enough? Now my neighbor at the time, Tom Forknight, was very short. His wife, Karen Forknight-Plateburger... Yeah, one of THOSE women. Well, she was more attractive than my wife. I'd say she was a soft six, whereas my wife was a hard four. What's the deal? I thought women liked tall men? Why was Karen with him? Anyway my horse of a wife, God rest her soul, crawled into bed next to me. She decided to leave the bedside light on so she could read her book. It was one of her romance novels again... Give me a break... As if I don't already feel inadequate enough... Not only do I have to compete with Tom, now I have to deal with these fictional hunks! Ay yai yai! At this point I had already suppressed the urges of intimacy, I rolled over and tried to sleep. Her bedside light was only of minor annoyance. I was able to drift off... Then I woke up to a big flash of light. That's about it. I can tell by the way you're walking away that you don't want to leave... If you really want to hear another story I'll tell you. Once upon a hot summer night. Sometime in July... Was it July? My local grocery store sells really good eggs in July. I don't know why. Do chickens operate better in heat? Fireworks maybe? I don't know. I don't want to get off topic. Point is, the eggs that Summer were marvelous! Anyway, my wife and I, God rest her soul, went to a BBQ that night. It was held at Dale Spooner's house.
Well, his backyard... Conny Spooner doesn't want people in her home, I think she's just an uptight ♥♥♥♥♥. So at this BBQ I see none other than... That's right, Tom Forknight... Now earlier in the day wife, God rest her soul, had made potato salad for the BBQ. Personally I hate potato salad, I'm a mashed kind of fellow. Hoho! So I sat in the TV room avoiding her till the BBQ. Once we were at the party, I made sure to distance myself from my dumb potato ♥♥♥♥♥ wife. God rest her soul, I just didn't want anyone to think I would associate with someone that would bring a potato salad! Anyway, Tom and his above mediocre wife were already there. And get this, they brought a fruit salad! With whipped cream! The nerve of those Forknights! Needless to say I gave my wife, God rest her soul, a couple choice words About whipped cream! Versus potato salad! ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! A real tongue lashing! Geez, you're kind of smothering me. I'll talk to you later.

It's an amazing ride that twists your emotions every direction possible.

i was going to hang myself last night but then i started playing this and now i want to live again

Lisa: The Painful is an extremely strange game. Or rather, it’s extremely simple at its core. But kind of strange in its plot. It’s a basic game with non-complex gameplay, made using RPG Maker. A classic indie in the vein of Undertale, where the focus is on the story rather than gameplay, and that becomes clear right away. In fact, the gameplay is pretty straightforward a classic JRPG with some minor modifications here and there. The exploration involves simple platforming and fetch style puzzle-solving. There's nothing overly complex about it. Because of this, I was judging game more on its story and atmosphere.
The game's graphical execution is excellent – rather standard pixel art, but the character, enemy, and environment designs look really cool. Especially the design of the mutated monsters. The game also has outstanding music that fits perfectly in dramatic and terrifying moments, as well as in absurdly comedic ones.
To be honest, it was the music that initially drew me to play this game. I heard the track "Devil's Bath Boys" and instantly became interested in playing.
Speaking of the story, I don’t fully understand it. Not in the sense that I didn’t get what happened, but rather, the motivations of the characters seem illogical. And that could be forgivable if it concerned secondary characters. But one of the most important characters, literally the second most important after the main character, Lisa (or Buddy) - whose name is in the title of the game, acts completely illogically in the situation she's in. The girl is kidnapped to be forcibly made to restore human civilization, and instead of thanking her rescuer, she starts running away and blaming him, even though Brad (the main character) has done everything to protect her, and later, to save her. The final scene of the game literally shows Brad, covered in arrows and wounds after a brutal battle, approaching Lisa, and she just starts accusing him and openly hating him. I just don’t get it.
In short, the authors could have given the story (since it’s such an important part of the game) more polish. Also, I’m not entirely sure if the player's choices affect the story. In some places, it’s obvious (if you spare a character, they might return later), but it’s unclear if this has a global impact. For example, from the start of the game, I decided that the main character was trying to overcome his addiction, so I never used "Joy" (a powerful drug in the game’s lore). I also tried to play as a good character, sparing enemies whenever possible. By all logic, this should have led to a good ending. But no. At one key moment, no matter what choice you make, the main character brutally kills another character, which drives Lisa even further away. It seems like the game deliberately has no good ending, no matter how many morally right choices you make. I hate when games do that. If your choices don’t matter, why give the player a choice at all? And if there is a good ending, why don’t objectively moral decisions throughout the game lead to a good conclusion? This is probably more of a rhetorical question, but this approach to the story bothered me. Especially since, otherwise, it’s quite good. The main character has a clear backstory, and therefore, motivation. The main villains didn’t appear out of nowhere - they are woven into the protagonist’s backstory. The world is like even more mad version of Mad Max, where literally anything chaotic or irrational can happen, and that works in the game’s favor. The game has excellent dark and/or absurdist humor, mostly revolving around the fact that everyone in this world has gone a bit insane.
Overall, Lisa: The Painful is a good game. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of JRPGs, but I have a deep appreciation for any indie project, especially those focused on storytelling. And in general, if you overlook the illogical actions of one of the main characters, the story in this game is quite good. Emotional, dark, irrational, with wonderful music and a solid dose of dark humor. This is probably the best way to describe this game.

no terry hintz date option

i cut my arm off to save a guy and he barely mustered out a thanks, 10/10

mental, creative and down right immersive.

A special game and a must play.

What an ending. What an absolute ending

the best and worst game on steam right now