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La Pucelle Tactics Review

Platform: PS2

The Quick Version

The Good:

- There are separate “Begin Battle” and “End Turn” commands, which give you a lot a flexibility and let you undo most mistakes.

- Travel between areas is instantaneous, so backtracking isn’t as tedious.

- Travel between conquered areas of a dungeon is also instantaneous.

- The story, while somewhat cliché, still manages to throw a twist or two that you won’t be expecting.

- The main character isn’t the useless piece of shit you usually have to deal with in JRPGs.

- Monsters are quirky and quite entertaining.

The Bad:

- With two or three exceptions, your party will become very useless in short order.

- Special attacks (spells and whatnot) activate instantly, so once you use one, you can’t undo it.

- You can’t turn off attack animations, so in later dungeons, expect to be waiting a long, long time.

- The story in general is very uninteresting.

- Almost everyone except the main character is worthless or a total asshole.

- The “arrange” function only serves to make your inventory even more disorganized. Also, there’s no “arrange manually” option.

- There are only three ways to organize your party: humans first, monsters first, and by level.

- The Dark World dungeons start the unholy tradition of randomly generated optional maps (that are invariably hideous) that would plague future Nippon Ichi titles.

The Ugly:

- While technically taking place over three different continents, everything in the game feels like it’s within walking distance of your house.

- The final area of the game has a teleporter maze. Good fucking luck.

- The main game can be finished before you reach level 50, but the strongest enemy in the game is level 2000 (that’s not a typo).

Rating: 2/5

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The Long Version

Background:

La Pucelle Tactics is a tactical turn-based RPG made by Nippon Ichi Software, which is better known for the Disgaea series. I like to think of La Pucelle as the proto-Disgaea, since many of the concepts present here reappear other Nippon Ichi games (and also because I’ve never been able to find Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, which came even before La Pucelle). More on that later. Many of you will recognize this as “that game”. Yes, that game you always see in the PS2 section of your local Gamestop and briefly consider buying before ignoring it in favor of something that doesn’t have “tactics” in the title. If this applies to you, then you have probably made a wise decision.

Plot Synopsis:

Prier is a sister in the Church of the Holy Maiden who also works as a demon hunter who is 16 years old (though her size in relation to other characters gives me the impression that 12 would be more accurate). In the world’s mythos, the fallen angel Calamity has a servant known as the Dark Prince who occasionally pops up to smack humanity around a bit. There’s also the Maiden of Light, who gives the asshole a kick in the nuts and tells him to make his own dinner. Now, when you picture someone called the Maiden of Light, do you think of a violent, loud ogre of a woman who beats the crap out of her brother and primarily attacks by ballshotting people or beating them to death with a blunt object? Despite wanting to become the game’s equivalent of Jesus, that’s exactly what Prier is. The first half of the game consists of lending a hand to the helpless locals and beating up their tormentors. For instance, you have to kill one guy who is convinced that ripping out people’s hearts Temple of Doom style will bring his wife back to life. There’s also another guy who is duped into buying a hair growth spray that creates furball monsters. The second half of the game is serious business, and you get to act more like a real adventuring party than the town’s militia. I’ll leave it at that for fear of spoiling the few twists that the game has.

With the exception of those twists, which I can count on one hand, the story is horribly uninteresting. It’s not entirely predictable, but it fails to draw you in.

Characters of Note:

Culotte – He’s the little brother character who is just as useless in combat as he is in the story. The only interesting thing about him is that his standard attack has him throwing school supplies while his ultimate attack involves a rocket, a stuffed cat, and said cat’s anus. Funny, right? The funny part is that I’m not kidding.

Alouette – She is Prier’s superior and a total bigot. She also has amnesia, which automatically makes her a shitty character. Later, she turns from a stupid crusader character into a stupid Jesus character who can do “miracles” and kill herself for the plot’s sake.

Croix – Yet another character with amnesia. Unlike Alouette, however, he isn’t a bigot. Instead, he’s a pedophile and Prier’s love interest. Considering how both of the people whom he’s romantically involved with during the game are half his size and look half his age, I can’t come to any other conclusion. He’s pretty handy in combat, having a gun and all. It’s too bad you can only use him for half the game.

Éclair – She is one of the many things in this game named after food items in addition to being a princess and wielding a lance twice her size. She is completely worthless until you find out she has a multiple personality disorder and unlock Dark Éclair, who has a beam lance. The game calls it an “aura lance,” but fuck that. It looks like it came out of Gundam. She would be totally awesome if she didn’t look like a ten year old running around in a bondage outfit.

Homard – He’s an air pirate. Yarr. He captains a giant blimp with a crew of cute little cat people and his butterfly mutant girlfriend thing who’s about as big as a water bottle. He also falls in love with Éclair, which leads me to believe he isn’t an actual sky pirate so much as he is a child molester.

Game Mechanics:

The combat in La Pucelle is both a blessing and a horrid curse. As I said earlier, it is a tactical, turn-based RPG. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, then just think of Napoleonic battles where people stand next to each other and take turns shooting. In La Pucelle’s case, all your characters start each battle inside your Base Panel, from which you deploy them to wage war with baddies. After you’re done moving your guys around and selecting targets, you can either press “End Turn” or “Begin Battle”. The latter executes all of your currently set actions, while allowing you to act with anyone you haven’t moved yet. Thus, if you fuck up and order your caster to whack the nasty grizzly bear, you can either cancel the action before doing anything else or if you “Begin Battle” before you notice, you can cover him with stronger units. The exceptions to this are special abilities and spells, which activate immediately. Thus, if you accidentally get your allies caught up in an area effect attack, you can’t cancel it. I found this extremely annoying.

An unfortunate flaw in the game is the inability to skip combat animations. That minute-long sequence of the giant cat with a rocket in its butt crash landing may be funny the first five times, but you won’t be pleased when your enemies’ turn takes three whole minutes.

You can also convert monsters to join your cause by purifying them. I’m not quite sure how it works. Perhaps your characters tie the monster in question to a chair and flog them until they submit. Unless you’re particularly fond of grinding out levels, you won’t be using monsters too often.

There are a few other concepts like weapon leveling, augmented stat growth, and dark portals, but I found none of them to be particularly important. I’ll spare you the reading.

Rating:

La Pucelle Tactics is an amusing little game, but it fails to impress on nearly every level. Long combat animations quickly bog down the battle system, the story is about as interesting as anything on G4 TV, the inventory and party menus are just for show, and there is no sense of scale whatsoever (characters of similar ages vary wildly in size and the world feels incredibly small). La Pucelle has the basis for a good game, but fails to utilize any of its potential by settling for a generic story and set of characters instead. While its debilitating lack of polish would be fixed in its spiritual successor, Disgaea, La Pucelle will have to settle for a 2/5.

Rating Scale

I'll be throwing out a lot more reviews in the near future, so I might as well give you guys my review scale. I think the ten point system is a piece of shit, so there are only five points in mine. After all, either something's good or it's not. Therefore, the 2-5 ratings are saved for good things whereas the 1 rating is for anything that is mediocre or outright bad. To elaborate:

5: Masterpiece - You absolutely have to see/play this or I will personally tie you to a chair and force you to. A perfect score isn't something I take lightly, either. You won't see me tossing these out to just anything (unlike certain review sites).

4: Excellent - With only a few minor flaws (or possibly one big one that the title overcomes), I highly recommend shows/games that I give this rating to.

3: Good - "Above average" is the key term here. While they won't blow your mind, these will definitely not waste your time. One significant flaw or 2+ large flaws will bring an excellent title down to this rating.

2: Serviceable - Bugginess (for video games), incompleteness, or an overall lack of polish mar these otherwise good titles. While certain aspects prove to be enjoyable, other flaws constantly taint the overall experience.

1: Shit - I don't care if it's just boring or if it truly sucks donkey dick in the traditional sense. Titles that are average in the eyes of the current media fall into this category regardless. Titles that try something extraordinary, but come up short are much more likely to earn at least a 2 rating than cookie-cutter titles that only settle for the status quo.

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