Lisa: The Analysis

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so attached to an expendable resource in a game.”
plays Pathologic HD
“DeLicIoUs...E G G”

To quote someone, "My horse of a wife, god bless her soul, went to the kitchen and got me a glass of iced tea."

"This game copied Undertale!"
"This game copied YumiNiki!"

It's all Mother/Earthbound guys.

My god were those patreon names real?

"Several rats, each of which with unknowable arcane power" has completely blown me away.

I gifted this game to a friend, and I quite honestly remember a text from him at 1am that simply read 'Screw Buzzo' in caps several dozen times after one choice, before shouting 'I just asked him a question!'

"...unless you're a pretentious weirdo who likes to read into things."

ears perk up

My friend got to the "Hurt buddy/kill your party" choice. He sat there for 15 mins. He did not say a word. He made his peace and his choice, saved, and demanded to play literally anything else. He only finished weeks later.

Ah, the series that made me 30% less happy. Permanently.

So, with the whole player narrative thing, I remember when I sat down with my friend to play through the game, she lost two people to the russian roulette event until Rage Ironhead managed to beat the third guy thats necessary to defeat until you can move on. Rage wasn't really being used in the party, so she decided to keep using Rage and see how far he could go.
And then Rage just kept winning. He just stormed through the goddamn Russian Roulette winning every round. Rage became a hype machine, and the somewhat forgettable character became, in this one game, a supreme legend. Then we got to the final round, and the final opponent shot himself, but SURVIVED. And then, when the round kept going, Rage finally bit the bullet.
Next round, Olan was used and we beat the last guy, but the memory of Rage Ironhead would live on.
Never forget, Rage Ironhead. The Luchadore who single-handedly broke the LISA Economy.

the "dad comforts you" is geniunely sad

CAME BACK JUST TO POINT OUT THAT IN THE DEFENITIVE EDITION, HBOMBERGUY ITS IN THE SPECIAL THANKS!

There's something that HBomb didn't point out that I think is a HUGE part of what make Painful great and different that other RPG's. When he said that there's a finite amount of mags and you will need to be smart and choose what you buy wisely, that's not entirely true.

It becomes so obvious that in most RPG's you just have a TON of money, so you can just load up on whatever you see in a store. When playing LISA, you don't have that luxury: when you need weapons, you'll be selling everything you don't think you'll need and picking characters to upgrade and which to decide will stay weaker because the weps can be so expensive (looking at you, Queen Bands...). But you can have that ton-of-money experience where you can just buy everything, but there's only one way to get that many mags: Russian Roulette.

You can make a KILLING playing RR. The mags increase by 50 when you win a game (you first make 100, then 150, then 200, up to 450, I believe) and they stack, easily giving you 2,000+ mags if you make it to the end, giving you all you need to buy everything. But, obviously, that comes at a price. If you want that wealthy experience where you can buy things without thinking, you have to risk all your friends. You WILL lose party members. When going for it, expect to lose 5 or 6 of them. And while you're rolling in mags and you get Buckets to join, you now have less friends, and if you lose them to perma-killers, suddenly you're alone or surrounded by low level members... was it worth that risk?

It's just a great acknowledgement of how much money you have in most RPG's. That ability to just have everything and stock up on healing items before a big fight does exist in Painful. But you may lose your party in the process. So most players will choose to spend wisely and scrounge around mags instead of potentially losing their friends.

Such a genius way to handle currency.

"Did i do the right thing"
This Sentence got me right in the feels as is played the game myself...
Emotionaly devistating fully thoughout.

"I hope you're watching this at night. If you watching this in the morning you might just have a really sad day. It's not really a morning thing"

Ideal warning placement right at the end of the patreon credits.

the final part of The Painful where you unlock "Cry" and "Scream" gets me so hard every time.

In an interview Austin Jorgensen once said that the story if Lisa was inspired by his ex-girlfriend. Without going into too much details, he explains that she had a fucked up upbringing with her father that she could never quite get over and he said that it affected their relationship is a really bad way. He wanted to do whatever her could to help or "fix" her but he failed to do so and the relationship ended. So the character of Brad can definitely be seen as an extension of himself as a protector and may have also been a conduit for personal reflection. This is speculative since he hasn't directly said this but much in the same way that Buddy doesn't want Brad controlling her life, its possible Austin's relationship ended because he was trying to fix a problem that wasn't his to fix? I don't want to make too many public assumptions beyond my own private interpretations but I highly respect his level of humility by pouring himself into this game. I mostly wanted to bring up the backstory on the creation of Lisa because I think it provides a different perspective for the next time someone plays it, looking at some of the characters, decisions, and story beats as metaphorical and allegorical to a real life experience from the creator.

The scene where brad is only one at lisa's funeral brought me to a waterfall of tears. Not becuase im a little bitch (i am) but because the game's writing and visual story-telling is so on point and grounded.
This is one of the best stories ever told if not the best.

I thought the ending for Joyful was legitimately brilliant because of the way it was framed - Sure you had the deus ex potion that cured you of your illness, but the game positions the question in a way that asks you "do you really want to take it?" Taking the potion discards the comforting delusions and "joy' you receive from those delusions. By taking the potion, you're essentially leaving Brad and Rando behind, and at that point in the plot, she realized how much she truly valued her memories of them.

But the game respects the player's intelligence to make the right decision - To be stuck in the past and comforting yourself in your idealized delusions only leads to disaster. The better for Buddy is achieved by suppressing that joy and assuming your own personal responsibilities to better herself. The easy way is to avoid personal responsibility and not take the potion, the harder way was to take it and face the hardships that's to come with grace.

I think it's important to note that Buddy's delusions were more gleeful than Brad's. Whereas Brad was hunted by drug usage, Buddy was embellished by it.

Man I'm glad I finally got around to watching this in full. Absolutely fantastic breakdown of the series.

I wish my big dumb brain was able to conjure insight and deconstruction half this smart.

Lisa: The First
Lisa: The Painful
Lisa: The Joyful
The names of the games are amazing and really bring home the idea of causality, despite the fact Lisa herself is not in Painful or Joyful she is arguably the impetus for the events of both games