Yup, here I am. Upto no good again. Starting off with a rant right when I'm back to posting stuff here on gamejolt.

It's still the holy month of Ramadan. And I was planning to be back to posting after Ramadan was over. But since I don't have anything interesting to do in the given time, I'm putting my time on writing this.

So basically, I was looking through the negative reviews of Lisa in Steam. Looking for an interesting one, in particular.

This one you see right here caught my eye because...

I think you can guess why it caught my eye yourself once you go through the review.

And although this review is like a decade old, it still has got some interesting points in it. So I'll be going through it and share what I think about the points it shares.

"The most boring game I played in all 2015 and one of the least interesting RPGs I ever witnessed. I never played Earthbound, but after enduring LISA: The Painful RPG I am glad i did not play it. Although i can at least say this: This is probably the least disgusting entry that ever got shat our from the bowels of the RPG Maker engine."

Not much to say on this. But yeah, from the language and wording used here, you can tell this review isn't gonna be particularly pleasant for many fans to read.

"Say, you are an "Indie Game developer". You use a free stock game maker software. The first game you made received slight recognition, so what do you do? Make your own game engine and try to actually learn how to make a game properly? Hahaha, No! You make a kickstarter and ask for free money to do the same thing you did 10 years before. And while you do that, you make no effort to put your shekels to good use. You just make a game that is mechanically even less advanced than your last one, cut off a little content and sell that almost a year later after your initial launch! Good riddance Jorgensen, thats almost how the triple A pros do it."

... Okay yeah you can see it, this is one of THOSE types of reviews...

The type in which even the developer is defamed in the way you can clearly see here. And I absolutely HATE these types of reviews. Like why even bring up the dev in a sphere where you are meant to explain why a game is good/bad unless it is absolutely necessary?

It would've been one thing if this portion of the review came from an absolute legend of game developers, which is probably not the case here. People mocking the dev and calling his game making skills bad (especially when it's not true) while knowing absolutely nothing about game developing themselves has always irritated me.

These two phrases, "You make a kickstarter and ask for free money to do the same thing you did 10 years before." And "You just make a game that is mechanically even less advanced than your last one." In particular is very defaming. Compare Lisa The First and Lisa The Painful, in what way does First look the same or more advanced than Painful?

This review almost reminds me of that one OMORI hater's comments I saw on Youtube. Those comments were also defaming the developer of OMORI, OMOCAT. In almost the same way you see here. Except that hater was a Lisa fan 😑

"LISA biggest problem aside from it's very "developer" might just be it's inmarketable Name. It tells you nothing about what this game is, what you can expect, play or what it is about. Except for some lose ties to a forgotten old attempt of a game it does nothing."

Okay so firstly, how can you expect a game's name to alone be able to tell you what you can expect to find in it? And why would it, even if it could? Isn't that the job of "description"?

Besides that, I don't think the name "Lisa The Painful" DOESN'T say anything about the game at all either. It clearly has "Painful" in it. Which is one of the few things the game is about and one of the few things you can expect to see in it, pain.

And I'm not really sure what's so irritating about it that it's being regarded as the other "biggest problem" of the game. Cuz let's say, there's an absolutely goated game having a (normal) name which explains literally nothing about it. How would the name not explaning what to expect from the game be so irritating to the point that you wouldn't even be able to enjoy what the game actually has to offer?

"Which is probably why LISA bit the dust in comparision to the spergehttilordfest that became the Insufferable entity known as Undertale."

... Woah, okay... So this guy's list of games they hate doesn't only include Lisa, but Undertale aswell?

I've seen people prefer Undertale over Lisa, seen people love Lisa but hate Undertale, but seeing someone hate both of them? That might be new.

Now it's almost scary in a way to think if this guy was to write a review on OMORI. Because considering the reasoning they're giving on why they think Lisa is bad, and the fact that they didn't even spare Undertale... I might not even want to look at that review...

Now, whether Lisa "dwarfed" in comparison to Undertale, that is an entirely different topic which I'm not planning to touch in here. Though I MIGHT in a different post in future.

"I had to pick my poison and so I went for this. This did not mean i enjoyed it however, it was just the lesser of 2 evils. In this game you take control of a man that could just be Jet Black from Cowboy Bebop thrown into a setting similar to Fist of the North Star. Except everybody is a sodomite and/or addicted to a mutagenic form of heroin. The prologue of the game in itself was as overstretched as it felt like a chore."

Not much to say on this one. Cuz from what I'm understanding, the reviewer didn't even like the concept and theme of the game as a whole. Which is something maybe none of us, including the dev, can do anything about. And we're not forcing anyone to like something they obviously don't like because... Obviously, who are we to do that?

"LISA tries very hard to be a tearjerker. It did little to nothing for me in that regard except acting overly pretentious trying to make me feel sorry for 16 bit stickmen. You are supposed to make "emotionally deep, meaningful" decision (which are little to none make in general with small or similar impact on the story, whether or not you actually do something or not). The most important part may just be if you are willing to get your arms amputated. Don't."

It wasn't trying to be a tearjerker for like 90% of the playthrough. Atleast that's what it seemed to me.

As for the "choices" thing, yeah, most of them didn't really seem very emotional or deep even for me because... The characters you may or may not sacrifice your arms for aren't really the most memorable (am I seriously the only one who sees most of the characters you recruit in the game that way???).

And even if you do sacrifice your arms for any of the characters, they do literally nothing to show gratitude. Forget gratitude, they don't even do something as bad as to mock you for it to make you feel mad at them. They do literally nothing. So it's not like making a choice really ends up or even feels deep or meaningful in anyway.

And yeah, the choices also don't bring any major change to the plot. Which, even I can agree, is disappointing. Because the fact that sacrificing your own body parts for others you have as your allies, brings little to no change in the plot of the game? That's pretty bad honestly.

However, it does bring a sort of dilemma. You have to either end up sacrificing a party member which might be so important that losing him affects the whole game, or sacrifice your arm which, again, will affect the whole game. That's what I can say in defense.

"The protagonist adoptive child is a massive ♥♥♥♥. For all I care he would have went better off to throw her off a cliff or feed her to wolves the second he found her. She act as much as an ungrateful ♥♥♥♥♥ as inhumanly possible and does nothing but cause trouble, pain and death upon her surroundings."

... I might be seeing a Buddy hater for the first time...

And I personally see no reason to hate her, honestly. The game implies at times that Brad was a bad parent, so she wasn't really being ungrateful by fleeing from him. If her fleeing from Brad is what this is referring to as being "ungrateful".

As for the sufferings Buddy "caused" upon her surroundings, I'm pretty sure similar (otherwise the exact same) things were already happening everywhere in Olathe even before she was discovered.

So if something is to be blamed for the sufferings that occurred, it's the "flash" event. Not Buddy.

And even if she did kill people in her surroundings, she probably only did it when she was threatened by the men around. That's why she didn't kill Rando or Marty, as they did nothing to threaten her and even treated her nicely.

"LISA gameplay has little going for it. A pokemon game from 1996 was more immersive. Even Cthulhu saves the world (which you can get on steam for 2 dollars) felt to me more complex than this ever could. It breaks down to finding the few overpowered team member to cheat out the shallow combat system. Once you have the oil and fire combo going your are set for the pity rest of the game. Except when you feel like collecting useless party members and find the few scattered secrets in the game that do little to nothing for the main Quest progression except XP."

I'm not saying much on this because I didn't play the game myself. Though I might disagree that there's only "little" going on in Lisa.

"The graphics are dull. for the most part. The level design looks all the same in all level, only varying in color for the most part. The sprite work deserves an honorable mention. The characters look mostly unique and represent the feel of a post apocalyptic world full of wacky murderous weirdos accurately. Same goes for the sound design. It's not outstanding, but it does it Job. Thats all good I can really say about it. If you are into wrestling and old Simpsons you will maybe get some joke references."

I might have to agree with the first two sentences because really, the graphics didn't seem great to me either.

And I'm not sure if I have to comment on the rest of the portion here or not.

"Id' like to say the developer tried the best he could. But that would be a lie. This project was a lazy attempt from the start and you are left with a semilinear game that plays each battle of identically after a certain point once you turned into a snowball. The end is as unsatisfying as the beginning. The only thing it did for me was feeling like the game was missing act IV. But i guess Jorgensen saved that for the DLC."

I'm a bit confused with the wording used at a point here...

However, the first few lines are again defaming. The team was already small. The budget was small too. And the game was in development for only two years.

Even if this game isn't the best thing out there, calling it a "lazy" project is just blatantly wrong. Because you CAN'T tell me that it took no effort to make all those sprites, areas, soundtracks, and everything else. You simply can't.

As for the "each battle runs the same" argument, that's just how it is in most of the indie story games.

The rest of the portion is mostly just... Doesn't need commenting as it's personal dissatisfaction.

"Which you can buy for 5 dollars. Don't do it. Not only is It overpriced. it is imbalanced. It's only excuse is an attempt to tie up the lose unexplained end of the stories with a combat system that focuses single handedly on a timed twitch of the finger. If you thought the combat system in the main game was repetitive, you don't want to experience this. You have 1 (read) one character at all times, with the exception of having a clone of the former main character for a short time. It's short. It's dumb. It's unjustly hard. I did it though but there was little pay off for having a beneficial numbers on the RNG generator."

I've never watched a full playthrough of Lisa The Joyful, so I can't tell if it's actually as bad as the review makes it seem like. Though I know one thing, It is hated even by a few people from the Lisa fandom itself.

However, based on what I've heard about what the main dev was going through at the time he was working on Joyful, I don't think we can blame him for how the DLC ended up. Because if he already hated writing the new protagonist, how'd you expect the game to end up being good in any way? Not to mention the dev lost his father at the time.

Also, this portion again brings up the "repetitive combat system" argument. Which, I'm again saying, is just how it is for most indie story games. They usually focus alot more on the story instead of the battle system, especially if they are Earthbound inspired.

"All and All i can say is, LISA: The Painful RPG fails on the delivery. It is overpriced for what it offers. I expected nothing and still got disappointed by running and jumping through the same screen for 40 hours, pressing the same buttons. I doubt I will ever play this again. It felt like a cheap cash in for some guy who desperately needed money and I feel regret for falling into his trap. It takes a certain kind of ruthless audacity to charge money for a supposed royalty free RPG maker game. Never again."

Now this portion is just enraging. Particularly for me because it reminds me alot of that OMORI hater's comments in Youtube as I mentioned above. That commenter, too, was calling OMORI overpriced multiple times and kept subtly insulting the main developer.

Again, why even bring up the main developer in this at all? Just to insult him? Insulting him just because the game didn't suit your liking won't make the said arguments valid.

And what does this even mean by "it takes a ruthless audacity to charge money for a supposed royalty free RPG maker game"??? It took the dev alot of his energy to make the game. Obviously he'd charge money for his project even if he doesn't have to pay a percentage to the engine's creator. Even I'd do that. Not to mention it's nothing unusual.

If Lisa The Painful would've been something like Yume Nikki, it would've been valid to refer charging money for it as problematic. But since Lisa isn't something like Yume Nikki and is a game with something actually clear to offer, with a lot of work put into it, I don't see at all how selling it for money is somehow "ruthless".

"Oh and thank you for the flipped bird you gave to your customers Dingaling. Twice. After a Metal Gear 3 ladder. I will not forget that."

... That was literally just a troll...