La Pucelle: Tactics

"Nippon Ichi is to Playstation 2 as Square was to SNES"

Back in the day, I never liked tactical RPGs. While I tried, Ogre Battle just didn't appeal to me. Neither did Final Fantasy Tactics, Kartia, or any other tactical RPG. They moved slowly and infuriated me whenever the computer would take its turn. Because you know the computer took its sweet time. Then I played Angel Present, which was called Rhapsody here in the states. Its cute storyline, beautiful art, and fun gameplay drew me in. Before I knew it, I had become another victim in Nippon Ichi's lineup of games that use feminine charm and wonderful characters to suck players in.

So I decided to give the tactical rpg another shot. This time, it was from Nippon Ichi's game Disgaea. The game was crack in disguise. Insanely cool storyline, graphics, gameplay, music, sound, and everything else made me a helpless drone to this awesome game. To me, Disgaea was not only the best tactical RPG, but the greatest game of 2003.

And you would have thought Disgaea would be the crown achievement. But no. Nippon Ichi decided to release La Pucelle Tactics. And I'll be damned if this isn't the best thing to come out on PS2 or any 128-bit system for that matter.

GRAPHICS- Wonderful. Characters and scenery are beautifully done. Sprites are very reminiscent of Rhapsody. (OK. Prier's sprite looks a bit like Cornet.) And that is good with me. Towns are absolutely gorgeous. The layout of the battle field and menu screens are borrowed from Disgaea. But you just can't argue with that.

SOUND- Normally, whenever I play Rhapsody or Disgaea, I keep it to Japanese with English subtitles. But when playing this game, I can't help but use the English voices. Why? Because they are so damn good! I mean. These actors aren't the building janitors or anything like that. They are real actors, including people from Seinfeld and Frasier. And honestly, its all just really, really good. Sound effects are taken from Disgaea. And its still all good with me. As for music, its pretty good. Though the town music seems like its missing something. But to repent for that is the Rosenqueen shop music. Disgaea fans will immediately appreciate the remix of the Rosenqueen shop music.

GAMEPLAY- For the most part, gameplay is very much like Disgaea. But there are some twists. For starters, instead of creating a party member like on Disgaea, you get new allies by convincing enemies to join your party. And once you get monsters to join, you can actually train them by a system where you have to balance how nice you are and how hard you are. Being nice will keep them happy but they don't gain any skills. Being mean helps boost stats and finds hidden abilities. But if you're too mean, your ally will run away. That is too cool!

The only thing keeping me from giving this game a ten is the fact that they changed the way battles occur. In Disgaea, battles are shown in an ultra cool fashion that is just sooooo badass. Unfortunately, battles are changed to sideview confrontations (ala Dark Wizard) which look rather plain and lack the excitement of Disgaea's battles. Bleh! Also, many of the cool features from Disgaea are absent like the ability to go into an item world to level up your items. Sorry but after witnessing a feature as cool as that, I can't help but be a brat about it. The ability to unlock bonus items for completing each stage is missing, which is also a major drag. But all in all, these qualms are so minor that they are severely outweighed by the good points of this game.

REPLAY- I haven't finished the game yet, but I imagine that there are plenty of cool secrets to unlock. Already, I have discovered that there is probably more than one ending. And anyone who would take their time to make a game as vast and kickass as this game has got to put tons of secrets.

OVERALL- Just buy this game! I can't put it any simpler than that.

OTHER NOTES- If you enjoy Nippon Ichi's games as much as I do, then you will probably be pleased to hear that Nippon Ichi is going to open up a United States division. This means that you won't have to wait for Atlus or any other translation company to bring Nippon Ichi's cool games to America. Yay!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/09/04