LISA: Definitive Edition Review – The Complete Suffering

LISA is a series as iconic as it is obscure to the mainstream eye. Told over titles ominously named THE PAINFUL and THE JOYFUL, LISA is a story of survival and sacrifice, of dealing with the trauma of your past and moving forward into the future. It is considered by many to be the darkest, and perhaps best story told in an indie RPG, garnering a cult following that remains strong nearly ten years later.

Whether you’re new to LISA or looking to replay it, the definitive edition is by far the best way to experience the series. Containing both THE PAINFUL and THE JOYFUL, the definitive edition tells the entire LISA story with improved graphics, hud, quests, and more. The definitive edition also brings the game to consoles for the first time ever, introducing the craziness that is LISA to a whole new audience. It’s the original LISA experience remastered and improved for fans new and old to enjoy, and packages everything together neatly so you can get all of your pain in one sitting.

But what is LISA?

When it comes to gameplay, LISA is a pretty standard and uninventive RPG. Turn-based party combat is inter-spliced with a somewhat open world full of exploration puzzles and a frustratingly minimal amount of guidance. LISA certainly isn’t winning any awards for its gameplay, and if you can’t keep your attention through RPG-maker-style games you won’t be able to do so here. The reason LISA is the beloved classic that it is, however, is thanks to the game’s phenomenal, often absurdist, and deeply depressing story and characters.

The LISA series takes place in a post-apocalyptic version of Earth, where men are the only remaining population, with all women and seemingly all hope for the human race’s survival vanishing into thin air. That is until our first protagonist, Brad Armstrong, finds Buddy, a baby girl, by complete chance one day. Brad dedicates himself to protecting Buddy and keeping her existence a secret, and the events of The Painful begin when an attempted kidnapping separates Buddy from Brad, who is determined to get her back.

Judging by the premise of the game, it isn’t hard to imagine the kind of subject matter you’ll be facing in LISA. Hidden behind absurdist humor is an unfiltered look at a dangerous world full of perverted and unhinged men, unbound by law and driven often by singular and predictable desires for violence and harm. An addicting drug that warps the mind and body is prevalent across the remainders of society, and vicious warlords fight over wasted territory and fight a bloody war to capture and control Buddy, who is still a child.

There is a phenomenal amount of tension in your quest to save Buddy in THE PAINFUL or playing as her in THE JOYFUL, and it’s a tension that the game can only pull off by being straightforward and blunt with its subject matter.

Blunt though it may be, LISA manages to tow the line between being honest and respectful towards its audience. It is shocking, gross, and often morbid, but never feels exploitative or grotesque for the sake of shock value. The game knows how to use its themes of violence, perversion, and suffering to provoke feelings in the player, without making the whole game feel like torture.

You will suffer in LISA, though. The game is built around forcing the player to make difficult and game-changing decisions, the consequences of which are not always felt right away. You will lose items, friendships, limbs, or even people as the game presents an honest look at the suffering caused by uninhibited violence and drug abuse. Monsters will assail you in shapes and forms in LISA, from horrific mutants to raiders to the memories of your life before the apocalypse.

Not every character in LISA is a monster, but they are certainly all human. The richness of the characters encountered through the game is impossible to ignore, be they antagonists, party members, or just background nobodies. Everybody has something to say, and it is easy to imagine the world of LISA as a real, living place.

Between the displays of uninhibited human nature is uninhibited absurdism. Dark comedy and silliness are present everywhere in LISA’s setting, cleansing the palette between hard decisions and heartbreak. Fourth wall breaks and absurdities are so well baked into the game’s setting that a joke can be present during a truly traumatic scene, without breaking the tension.

It’s certainly hard to pull to mind another game like LISA, that can so easily tell an absurd joke in one scene and then immediately transition into unsettling and tension-filled imagery.

As I mentioned before, some may find the gameplay hard to sit through, while others may be so enthralled by the story they hardly notice. There are no mission objectives, maps, or journals to keep track of your quest to find Buddy. Combat encounters can be drawn out and dangerous, depicting an extreme version of wasteland battles where it often will take your entire party some time to knock down one foe.

While LISA prides itself on the difficulty of its turn-based encounters and offers the choice to up the challenge even further, you can also enable an ‘easy mode’ to focus more on exploration and story than actual combat encounters. Though I stuck true to the game’s intended difficulty in my first playthrough back in 2017, I’m grateful to have had the easy mode option this time around, as the story really is what I feel LISA is all about.

Try Hard Guides was provided with a PC review copy of this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website! LISA: Definitive Editions is available on Steam, Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch.