La Pucelle: Tactics (PS2 Review)

Before video games became the rage that they are today, there was a quaint fantasy game called Dungeons and Dragons, better known as D&D for those within the inner circle. It was in these imaginary worlds where players could step outside of their ordinary skins and don the likeness of a sexy female Elven mage or a brawny Dwarven fighter in the comforts of their homes and dorm rooms. Although D&D never reached the popularity level of today’s electronic wonder machines, it still maintains an existence in the dusty corners of hobby shops throughout the world.

 

Unlike our polygonal entertainment, the required supplies of the game were extremely minimal, as you just needed a set of 6 funny-sided dice, a couple sheets of paper, a few pencils and an active imagination. Even though there were established rules, weapons, races and monsters, there was nothing written in stone that stated you must abide by these, and only these, organized boundaries. You could explore lost tombs, uncivilized wildernesses or even sail the open seas in search of riches or adventure. Complete days might be lost while walking through a darkened street on the seedy side of a town or you could spend a few hours crossing the vastest of oceans. Time was strictly relative and was completely within the control of your venturing party.

Video games have tried, since their early days, to replicate the freedom and entertainment value of Dungeons and Dragons. Until recently, this just hasn’t been possible, mostly because of the memory storage capacity of gaming cartridges. Now that DVDs have become the media of choice, expanded worlds with tremendously vast landscapes are now the expected norm for fans of role-playing games (RPG). However, the blending of genres across the board have converted many conventional RPGs to action-adventures or brought the stat building aspect, that most die-hard fans enjoy the most, to other very different games that really shouldn’t have included them in the first place. The existence of the old-styled RPG seemed to be moving in the same direction of other extinct genres like the side-scrolling platformer or 2-D shooter. Or at least that is what I had thought before laying my RPG-deficient hands on a copy of La Pucelle: Tactics.

 

There are actually two separate forms of RPG games. The most common is the traditional approach where the story and adventure of the game precedes the importance of the multiple battles that one might encounter. Usually gamers have some limited strategic planning, mostly in the equipped weaponry or armor and setting up a limited battle formation (Final Fantasy, Wild Arms), but these are neither exceptionally life threatening or fatal when an incorrect choice is decided upon. The lesser-known variant is the strategy or tactical RPG (Front Mission, Tactics Ogre, Xenogears) where the main focus is the battle and how it is conducted, while the actual adventure is secondary. It is from this species of RPG that La Pucelle has been created.

Legend warns that one day the Dark Prince, beloved and powerful servant of the fallen Angel Calamity will rise to cover the world in darkness. But where there is darkness, so must there be light. When the Dark Prince appears, so too will a girl known as the Maiden of Light, servant of the Goddess Poitreene and worker of miracles…

This is the overall back-story of La Pucelle and the time of the Dark Prince’s arrival is fast approaching. You are in control of Prier who, along with her younger brother Culotte, was orphaned upon the untimely passing of her parents. With her main objective of becoming the Maiden of Light, they both have joined the Church in hopes of meeting their destiny headfirst. Prier is a brash, young girl who was forced to grow up sooner than she should have been to help take care of her brother. Although she is becoming a fierce Demon Hunter, she still has yet to conquer her worst enemy, her boisterous mouth. Often speaking out loud before thinking things through, it is constantly getting her in trouble with the hierarchy of the church and it is up to Sister Alouette to help transform this headstrong girl into her presumed destiny. If and when she actually succeeds I’ll leave for you to learn on your own. Nevertheless, there is quite a bit of story details that need to be experienced for the player to get a full feel for the happenings of the game and players will have to get used to sitting through some rather long conversations to be brought up to speed. 

Gameplay is one of the options that are given to the player in truckloads. According to Nippon Ichi, you can expect to be enjoying this game for quite a long time. Packing over 120 hours of gameplay, broken up into twelve different chapters, you can expect this title to take up weeks of your life. Along with the standard missions, there are also hidden and side quests to be discovered and conquered. Moreover, there are almost 150 unique items to be collected and leveled up throughout your journey. 

One of the most unique aspects of the battlefields is the inclusion of dark energy portals. These are multifaceted objects that serve a tremendous amount of different purposes. First and foremost, portals are the doorways for additional enemy creatures to enter the field of combat. The longer that they remain open, the more likely that a new baddie will spew forth, possible turning the tide of the fight against you in a single stroke. You do get some warning when new creatures are about to pass through the portal, as black smoke will begin to issue from the doorway one turn before the creature arrives. 

Secondly, these portals radiate a constant flow of negative elemental energy that weaken your forces whenever a character is directly exposed to it. Your forces, enemy forces, special directional items and even the flow from another portal can manipulate the direction of flow. When the flows of two or more portals meet, their elemental force will be mutated into a combination of both and have a completely different effect on those in its path. To put this in clearer terms, if a blue flow (ice) were to meet up with a red flow (fire), it would create a purple (status change) river after the junction. Players can close these portals, and use their energy flow against any in their path by chanting a purify spell over their beginning. Some portals require multiple spells before they can be sealed, so it is not always wise to send a character off on their own in case they do not have enough internal strength to get the job completed. The computer AI keeps excellent track of your movements and will usually go after a lone person rather than take on a group of characters. You are also occasionally blessed when closing one of these portals by gaining a useable item for your party. These are completely random and have no discernible pattern for knowing ahead of time which ones will give up the goods.

Thirdly, in closing these portals, the player that performs the action will have the status of his or her items increased according to the length of the flow. As items increase in experience, your player will permanently level up any reflective personal attributes. In this manner, you can control the direction that you would like to have your character grow and leave the randomness of advancement out in the cold. Also, you can unlock special moves that will happen at random during regular melee battles or increase the range of your spells. One additional highlight happens when you can manipulate the dark energy back upon itself. If the path you have created is fifteen blocks in length and there is an enemy force inside the contorted circle, you then will perform a miracle attack. The specific attack depends on the color of dark energy used and adds a serious additional punch to your already completed attack. 

The battles are turn-based; however there is a variation here on the normal meaning of the term. Turn-based is broken down into your turn – their turn, but characters can be positioned numerous times for different operations and can be reused over and over as long as they do not initiate the casting of a spell or a melee battle. What this basically means is you can alter the movements of your character to redirect different portal energy flows, and then have them return to their original starting point to do something else. Furthermore, individual characters can participate in numerous battles against different monsters depending on their positioning within the grid. Any character directly behind or to the sides of an initiating person will contribute in the skirmish, but in doing so they are not locked into fighting this one specific enemy. By properly positioning your team, you can have a large group of character fighting against different individual enemies so the all can receive the experience points and enjoy the advantage of superior odds with no actual penalty. If you thought at the beginning of this review that I was overstating the deep strategy that this game can encompass, I’m sure by now you have rethought your position.

If you are expecting this to be a pickup and play title, I’m sorry but you are going to have to do some instruction guide reading just to have some idea on what is going on in the battlefields. There is so much depth involved with the tremendous amount of variables that you can get your party decimated in a short few seconds, even though you have all of the upgraded armor and weapons that money could buy. Between the elevation adjustments, elemental effects, directional facing of the forces and the flow of dark energy on the board, you really need to sit back and look over the field of battle before dispensing your party into the sights of the enemy. They put the word tactics into the title on purpose and you really must utilize them if you expect to have any lasting success with the game. Rushing in blindly where angels fear to tread will usually result in you seeing those two horrible words, “Game Over,” more times than you would like to count.

Players are also not restricted to use only the normal set of human characters within the scope of their assignments. By using the purify spell on the beasties scattered throughout the battlefield, gamers have the ability to increase their party size on the fly. Depending on the experience level of the creature, you will have to repeat this purifying process accordingly to win them over to the side of light and, once turned, can be given articles to advance their statistics in the same fashion of any normal being. Boss creatures are, of course, immune from this recruitment process, which is satisfying as some of your leaders can be a bit more advanced than the rest of the individual party members. Players are limited on how many controllable characters can have on the field of battle and additional beings cannot be used in substitution if one of your selections receives a knockout blow. I’m sure you noticed that I used the wordage, “knocked out,” rather than killed since you can recover lost participants by returning to the world map page, along with recharging and spent powers or lost hit points. However the amount of times that you back out from pushing forward and going out to lick your wounds will effect you final rating for the chapter and could cost you a nifty prize upon completion.

I realize that it’s all starting to sound complex, even if you just take the freedom of what you can do with the acquired monsters, but I have yet to scratch the surface on their full potential. Every time you clear a battlefield, random training options will appear in the respective menu section. It is here that you can help out your beasts by exposing them to different training exercises. Some of these will raise their various attributes while others will increase their overall happiness factor. This is important to know, as statistic increases will reduce your monster’s happiness. If it gets too low, they will run away with whatever objects they were carrying at that time. Balance is the key for moving up the experience ladder. Another special function monsters can provide is special items by trading them in at the local store. As long as the stats of both the items and the monster are of an acceptable level, you cannot only get an upgraded item at the time of the trade-in, but also receive an additional gift of their belongings if they have met with foul play and passed on to their reward.

But that is not all you can do when visiting the town store. There are bunches and bunches of items that can be bought, if you have enough cash. By closing portals and physically defeating monsters, your overall wealth will increase. You even have the opportunity to double your total portal amount by shutting all of the openings on the entire level before you wipe the last beast from the face of the earth. You can also sell off any extra items that you either no longer need or may have acquired by closing portals. One exceptional touch is the ability to participate in a store survey whenever you have purchased something. This survey lets you have a direct input on what types of items (expensive, cheap, offensive, special or defensive) you would like the store to carry and they will try to meet your requests upon following visits. There also is a customer rating that increases with each purchase, but I haven’t found out exactly what this affects at this time.

Usually one of the biggest weaknesses for a title of this gender is actually one of its strongest attributes, the voice-overs and text translation of the character conversations. Games that come from the shores of Japan and then are converted here in North America have a nasty habit of giving the player a bunch of conversations sowed with incomplete sentences or broken translations enough to put any language professor into an immediate rage. Even though there are the rare occurrences where the written text does not exactly match up with the spoken word, everything is understandable and flows well enough to get an honor roll grade in any classroom. Players also have the opportunity to have the voices speak in the original Japanese, which should make any hard-core player ecstatic, or English and both versions match up extremely well with the character’s personality. 

The list of voice talent is extremely impressive, as Nippon Ichi seems to have acquired some of the best available. Jennifer Hale (ER) does the voice of Prier, Jill Talley (Seinfield, Frasier) does an excellent job for Culotte and Colleen O’Shaughnessey (King of Queens, Malcom & Eddie) handles the responsibility of the amnesia-stricken Sister Alouette. Moreover, gamers with serious sound systems can take advantage of the Dolby Pro Logic II surround sound support. Having some quality speakers really lets you enjoy the complex musical soundtrack and helps to keep the feel of the game alive.

Graphically, players are presented with a pixilated style most reminiscent of old school RPGs seen on older systems. Although some might be upset that there is not a tremendous amount of extra eyecandy with the cut scenes or live action sections, I really didn’t miss not having them. La Pucelle was created in the tradition of previously successful titles and Nippon Ichi seemed to be more concerned with the quality of the gameplay rather than being worried about dazzling the player with over-the-top visuals. This gets high scores in my book, as it should with any “professional” gamer. All of the characters are instantly recognizable on the 3-D battlefields, which also can be rotated whenever the land elevation or environmental obstructions get in your line of sight. For those opportunities when you happen to have a monster in your party that is also of the same type in the opposing forces, you still can tell which is which by the colored life bars underneath each being on the field. Characters that have completed their turn actions have an additional symbol floating over their heads, so you can tell with a glance if you have missed any opportunity to move or fight with one of your party members.

My biggest complaint would have to be a truly minor one by all normal standards. This is something that has always bothered me for games with an excess of playing time, and that would have to be the lack of an autosave feature for your game. It never fails. I seem to get all wrapped-up in what I am doing and will be trucking right along, making excellent progress, then I stumble into a battle that my characters are in no way, shape or form ready to handle. Usually the party goes down fast and hard and I’m presented with those terrible words, “Game Over.” It’s then that I realize that I’ve been playing for five hours and haven’t saved the game, or my progress, since I started up my PlayStation 2. Well, we are in the 21st century and I have seen this feature in effect for quite some time now. I don’t think that it would be too much to ask to have the system keep a current file updated on the memory card every time it goes to a loading screen. I understand the desire to shorten up loading screens and delays from the action, but I would rather sacrifice a few seconds every so often than have to lose hours upon hours of progress because I didn’t look before I leapt.

The extras for La Pucelle are exceptionally limited. There is no online play or cute mini games included within the adventure, which I’m sure that hard-core strategy fans won’t miss in the least. However, in the game’s defense, it really isn’t necessary with over 120 hours of gameplay jam-packed into your expected playtime. There are multiple endings for each of the chapters, which can change the outcome of the game over time and does offer some interesting replayability for those willing to invent the hours necessary to find and experience each and every possible option.

To put things mildly, La Pucelle: Tactics is rocking my socks off. I speak in the present tense; simply because of the extensive amount of gameplay, and time restrictions for getting this review done, just haven’t allowed me enough time to work my way completely through each and every chapter. However, you can bet that I’m going to break from my normal tradition of putting a game away once the actual article is completed and make sure to run this game until the very end. The extensive customizing presented to the gamer is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before and the mental stimulation received from planning out battles has ignited something I thought long since dead. Whether you are a role-playing newbie, or an established veteran, you should find this title extremely enjoyable. Moreover, since a player can redo the same battlefield numerous times, and the placement of the objects, portals and creatures are all placed at random, you should be able to play the same battles, or the entire game, over and over again without worry of the strategy aspect becoming stale. Nippon Ichi and Mastiff have come up with a sure-fire winner. Pick this one up at your earliest convenience.

Difficulty: 9

Control: 9

Visuals: 8

Sound: 9

Replayability: 10

Overall: 9.2