Shoutouts to Lisa: The Painful for being the very first video game I've played that made me cry at some point!

This game is probably my favorite RPG at the moment, and it's for a really good reason: The game is great at whatever it does. It tells an extremely tragic and dark story that will absolutely destroy you mentally after it's all over. The battle system is pretty good, I mostly admire it for trying to shake things up by having button commands for attacks on some members. This game's music is absolutely perfect for whatever tone it needs to set. If the music had to set some sort of tone, you best believe it will. This is also the very first RPG I've ever played that actually made me go out and talk to all of the NPC's, since I never knew when I would just go ahead and find a cool new party member, or something else entirely. This game does take a while to beat, but that didn't stop me from completing 4 playthroughs of the game. It genuinely made me want to replay it due to the vast amount of choices you have in this game that directly affect gameplay, and with the vast amount of party members there are to find, you best believe your team can change up if you want it to. A somewhat challenging first time romp through the game, but the absolute blessing to this game is a lack of grinding. There are clearly built-in places TO grind, with enemies that 100% drop money, or guaranteed hordes of enemies that give 2000 xp, but I never needed to ever use these places other than just to see what my party members would learn at max level, but it's nice to see these areas put in for those who feel that they need it. My complaints about this game are minuscule. The main areas of this game are separated into a large sum of caves you have to traverse through to find other sub-areas, and these are very clearly meant to have an order in which you travel through them, as one cave might have this very powerful boss battle, and the cave right next to it could lead to a village, and your first time through you wouldn't just know these things, and it may frustrate you a little bit, as it had me, but nothing experience ruining. Expect to get a couple of game over's your first time through. There is just one more criticism I have in the form of RNG, in particular, a required event after the 1st area of the game will require you to win 3 rounds of gambling away your party members, which you most likely don't have a lot of at the time, and usually it involves a lot of restarting back to your last save in case too many of your members die, which was actually rather annoying throughout all of my playthroughs, especially ones where I went for 100%. But even so, this game's hiccups I've mentioned are nothing in the face of everything else this game brings to the table. A fantastic story, great gameplay, and amazing music more than make up for the one or two bumps in the road I had with this game. If I could recommend this game to you, I would ask you to prepare yourself mentally first and foremost, and then let this game mesmerize you, as it has me.

An overall score I'd give it is a high 9/10. It is absolutely one of the best games that I have ever played. I'm just shocked I haven't played it sooner, honestly!

Shoutouts to Lisa: The Painful for being the very first video game I've played that made me cry at some point! This game is probably my favorite RPG at the moment, and it's for a really good reason: The game is great at whatever it does. It tells an extremely tragic and dark story that will absolutely destroy you mentally after it's all over. The battle system is pretty good, I mostly admire it for trying to shake things up by having button commands for attacks on some members. This game's music is absolutely perfect for whatever tone it needs to set. If the music had to set some sort of tone, you best believe it will. This is also the very first RPG I've ever played that actually made me go out and talk to all of the NPC's, since I never knew when I would just go ahead and find a cool new party member, or something else entirely. This game does take a while to beat, but that didn't stop me from completing 4 playthroughs of the game. It genuinely made me want to replay it due to the vast amount of choices you have in this game that directly affect gameplay, and with the vast amount of party members there are to find, you best believe your team can change up if you want it to. A somewhat challenging first time romp through the game, but the absolute blessing to this game is a lack of grinding. There are clearly built-in places TO grind, with enemies that 100% drop money, or guaranteed hordes of enemies that give 2000 xp, but I never needed to ever use these places other than just to see what my party members would learn at max level, but it's nice to see these areas put in for those who feel that they need it. My complaints about this game are minuscule. The main areas of this game are separated into a large sum of caves you have to traverse through to find other sub-areas, and these are very clearly meant to have an order in which you travel through them, as one cave might have this very powerful boss battle, and the cave right next to it could lead to a village, and your first time through you wouldn't just know these things, and it may frustrate you a little bit, as it had me, but nothing experience ruining. Expect to get a couple of game over's your first time through. There is just one more criticism I have in the form of RNG, in particular, a required event after the 1st area of the game will require you to win 3 rounds of gambling away your party members, which you most likely don't have a lot of at the time, and usually it involves a lot of restarting back to your last save in case too many of your members die, which was actually rather annoying throughout all of my playthroughs, especially ones where I went for 100%. But even so, this game's hiccups I've mentioned are nothing in the face of everything else this game brings to the table. A fantastic story, great gameplay, and amazing music more than make up for the one or two bumps in the road I had with this game. If I could recommend this game to you, I would ask you to prepare yourself mentally first and foremost, and then let this game mesmerize you, as it has me. An overall score I'd give it is a high 9/10. It is absolutely one of the best games that I have ever played. I'm just shocked I haven't played it sooner, honestly!