what an absolute masterpiece

lisa the painful is an rpg that will make you scream, cry, and shit your pants from laughter, one after the other, multiple times. it perfectly balances comedy with heavy narrative aspects which work together to create such a life changing experience.

what i think sets apart lisa from most other games in general, let alone rpgs, is that it uses the mechanics within it to expand upon the narrative that you're being given through other conventual means, like dialogue or flashbacks. one key example of this is with the party member system; you're given countless opportunities throughout your adventures in olathe to recruit members onto your party, making friends not a scarce resource. however, as your party size is limited to four, brad included, you have to make some pretty difficult decisions about who exactly you want to accompany brad, and with so many different team comps and personal preferences, they are really difficult choices. this mechanic is expounded upon with one of the heaviest elements of lisa-- character death. you will lose several characters. with the abundance of insta-kill moves on the plethora of joy mutants and big bosses, that's almost a fact of lisa the painful. however, with the many additional party members, a character loss (coupled with brad not being able to perma-die and how strong he can be on his own), game-wise, is usually not the end of a run. this allows for very powerful narrative elements, such as kidnappings, sacrifices, and ultimatums. throughout lisa, you'll be regularly faced with a decision to either kill a party member, or lose something of value. because of the aforementioned dynamic of multiple characters, these are real choices you have to grapple with; do i kill off a bro whose been with me for a while, or do i lose all of my items? for most games, keeping your party member would be an instant choice, no questions asked, but for lisa, party members are a resource. you'll also regularly lose members of your party that you have fostered emotional connections with, and the loss will absolutely ruin you. on my first playthrough, during the peter fight, jack, who had been with me for a while at this point, got his head ripped off. i teared up.

narratively, the party mechanics work extremely well. brad, throughout his time in olathe, is a very very troubled dude. he's addicted to joy, he's lost most of his friends, and he has one very important goal-- find and protect buddy. brad's path to this goal is not only destructive on the world, in which you as the player start to question if brad is even the good guy, but it's also incredibly self-destructive for brad. as you lose party members, and, if you make certain choices, limbs, the loss in brad's life starts to compound onto you, the player, and you start to feel a little empty. as the ending plays out, with brad hitting old marty, and buddy, with brad fighting through rando's entire army by himself just to reach her, with brad's fight versus rando, you feel empty. especially after abandoning your party members, and then eventually having to kill them yourself, there's almost nothing left to drive you forward, just as there's nothing left for brad, except buddy. everything in brad's life was destroyed or sacrificed at his hands, all for buddy, and in the end, she doesn't want him in her life. she blames him for everything that happened to her. and in that moment, you're given a unique option, making yet another powerful choice, but this time, as buddy, not brad. you can fulfill brad's last wish, a hug, or you can say no. this was one of the hardest choices for me, personally. i wanted so bad to give brad a hug, for everything he's been through, but then i realized.. of course i did, in essence, *i* was brad. i have been playing this game through the lens of brad this entire time, but buddy, or bloodiest wolf, or any of the countless people brad has hurt in his self-destructive path, didn't view brad as a hero of olathe, working to save someone who was like a daughter to him.. brad was a monster, a selfish asshole with no regard for anyone else. and it all effected buddy the worst. she had to grapple with so much, brad's abusive habits, the love she did have for brad despite it all, her existence as the last female in olathe, sticky's sexual abuse, and so much more. i chose for buddy to hug brad in my first playthrough. in my second, i chose for buddy to say no. both times, i regretted my decision. that is the case for almost every decision in lisa. every decision is an internal struggle within you as the player, and no decision in olathe is free of future consequence or emotional turmoil. you will make difficult choices, and you will regret those choices as you progress, and then you'll go back and do it all over again.

narrative aside, lisa's gameplay is a hoot. the battle mechanics are simple rpgmaker turn-based combat, with a little flair in combo moves and the debuff system. the buffs and debuffs are based around actual real life analogs, such as depression or drunk, which do add nice little bits of emersion for me personally. i'm not a big fan of vague "takes additional ice damage!" debuffs in games. most of the status effects in lisa feel meaningful in combat, and all of them have viable uses and party compositions that could be built around them, leading to insane replayability.

the soundtrack of lisa is so so good. austin jorgensen did an amazing job composing the music for lisa and it's one of my favorite OSTs. the use of motifs in almost any medium of art is super enjoyable to me, being able to see repeated pieces of music or art to represent a more abstract thematic concept is so creative, and much of lisa's music finds a home in several places as callbacks or motifs. my favorite example of this is child's call. you first hear this track when on the playground at the start of the game, and as brad walks back to his house, beaten up after he just stood up for his friends. this is heard again a little later after exiting a house in the first town you come across, where brad enter's a joy hallucination. marty is standing there, with a baby, a sprite identical to buddy's but is assumed to be lisa, and he drops it, telling brad to 'deal with it.' this ties two important narrative aspects together-- brad's self-destructive tendency to protect those he cares about and brad's dark past, one that isn't explained very much at all in lisa the painful. buddy is seemingly dropped into brad's hands at the start of the game, similar to marty's abandonment of lisa, and brad ends up on an extremely self-destructive path to get her back when she is inevitably taken, an aspect of brad's character that we see with the first instance of child's call when brad takes a beating to protect his friends, and a path that is exacerbated by brad's joy addiction that eventually leads to his hallucination. however, child's call also ties together brad's dark past, as it plays when the player discovers brad's broken and poor home life, as well as marty's abusive tendencies-- abusive tendenices shown within the hallucination, and that would eventually lead to lisa's suicide.

also, the characters are super unique and discernable from each other. i always felt like i had a new experience when trying out a different team comp or individual party member.

the secrets in the game also add a lot of replayability, with countless hidden and small details that add a lot to the world-building of olathe, and just boost my enjoyment of the game entirely. mad dog's implied son is a good example of that.

overall, lisa the painful is a heavy, expertly crafted narrative of the miserable journey of a broken man. it is truly a life-ruining experience. masterpiece