La Pucelle: Tactics

"Playing as an overdeveloped demon slayer is not as fun as it sounds!"

Admit it. The only reason why you got La Pucelle is because you loved Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, that other strategy game from strategy RPG extraordinaire Nippon Ichi. You were hoping to get the same quirky characters and hardcore gameplay Disgaea offered, along with its fun methods of character customization. If we were to take La Pucelle and compare it to Disgaea though, Disgaea would be the obvious winner. Apart from the same, dated graphics, Disgaea and La Pucelle are two totally different entities, and not to mention two different games.

Though we got Disgaea before La Pucelle (and by “we” I mean North American shores), La Pucelle was actually released before Disgaea in Japan. Being one of the first game in Nippon Ichi's lineup of Strategy game, it was probably the most likely to screw up in terms of being fun to play. This is really the only way to describe how La Pucelle pales in comparison to its later-developed brother.

Whereas Disgaea featured a dark, depressing, quirky, and above all, Gothic feel, La Pucelle takes us to what looks like 17-century France. Rather than a dank, rusty old Overlord Castle, your main base of operations will center around a colorful World Map of Paprica and the peaceful Pot Au Feu City. It is within this city where the Holy Church of La Pucelle lies. A holy group whose soul purpose is to vanquish all demonic evil which threatens the land, La Pucelle is made up of the game's three main character: Prier, Culotte, and Alouette.

Pronounced “Pree-yay,” Prier is a “loud and self-centered” teenage brat who dreams of becoming the Maiden of Light, who is basically the mother of all holy goddesses in Paprica. Unfortunately, her guide and mentor Alouette stands in her way, possessing the same dreams as Prier, plus she's got her annoying younger brother who she must protect since her parents are dead. As Prier, you'll have to battle scores of adorable demons in order to complete the basic grid-based battlefields we've seen in every Japanese Strategy RPG to date.

Honestly, I could not stand the story and characters in La Pucelle. Rather than being captivated by a riveting story of “deception and betrayal,” which is stated on the game's back cover, I was treated to what felt like a painful, drawn out episode of Lizzie Maguire. If you can name me one hardcore Strategy RPG player who enjoys watching Lizzie Maguire on a regular basis, then maybe I'll give La Pucelle's story some credit.

And boy, is Prier annoying. The only thing bigger than her ego is her enormous breasts. I mean, for a sixteen year old, she could easily grace the cover of Playboy Magazine (if men were interested in sixteen year old anime girls). To me, it feels as though Nippon Ichi was trying to add some humor to the game by making Prier some voluptuous bimbo who had more sex appeal than personality. But in reality, I didn't appreciate Mr. Ichi doing this at all. If I wanted to get turned on, I'd resort to other measures. Not this. Please, let's stick to the Demon Princes struggling to become Overlord.

The game's story is not funny. Disgaea had me laughing a lot thanks to Laharl and Etna's strange and humorous relationship. Jennifer was hilarious, even though she was a bimbo herself. Thursday, despite being an emotionless hunk of junk robot, cracked off a few one-liners during the game as well. And Flonne, being a love-freak, was a hoot as well. La Pucelle's characters could have been cardboard cut-outs glued onto my TV screen, and I wouldn't seen the difference from the actual thing. We've got Prier, who I've already bashed. Culotte (AKA Matt Maguire) is some whiny, perverted brat who can't seem to control his sexual cravings toward his fellow La Pucelle members (despite the fact that he hasn't even hit puberty.....have you heard how high his voice is?). Alouette reminds me of a robot with her “preach” level set to HI. All she does is say things like, “We must respect the Holy Goddess,” and, “Prier, I don't think that's such a good idea.” And don't even get me started on Croix. I swear, the next time I see an RPG character who plays the clichéd “person who forgets their deep, dark past” role, I will bash my TV non-stop with the nearest hard object I can find. Oh, I almost forgot Alouette has forgotten her past as well.

While playing La Pucelle, you'll spend about 90% of your time fighting long battles while the other 10% is spend toward customization. La Pucelle has some noticeable flaws in both categories.

Let's start with character customization.

One of the greatest aspects of RPGs involves seeing your characters start as puny, conquerable weaklings grow into battle-hardened brutes capable of taking on the toughest of foes. Character customization has come a long way since the dawn of RPGs, ranging from easy to learn customizing (Final Fantasy IX) to the really hard to learn customizing (Unlimited Saga's Growth Panel, Final Fantasy X's Sphere Grid). La Pucelle lies somewhere in between. Like 99.99% of the RPGs found on today's market, the higher your character's numbers....er, stats....okay, “attributes,” the more powerful that character is. La Pucelle uses this same borrowed method. How it's done is a tad bit flawed, however. By equipping items, you'll gain attribute boosts. These items will increase certain base stats when your character levels up, by, as usual, gaining EXP. This is really, really standard, and really, really simple. However, La Pucelle's customization carries this one huge flaw that really sticks out like a sore thumb. And this flaw, well.....let's say it's not something that you'd expect.

The flaw is that your weapons are merely stat boosters. Want to equip that really powerful sword? It will simply be equipped as “Attack +10.” What I'm saying is that you don't actually see your weapon when you equip them. Instead of weapons, each character has their own method of attacking. Prier will kick and punch an enemy, Croix will deliver a shot from his pistol, while Culotte....will throw apples at his enemies. Read: APPLES.

What happened to the excitement you got from see your character slay his enemies with that new, big ass flaming sword of doom? My battleaxe? My dragon spear? My bow and arrows of ice? My apocalyptic blood-stained super sharp-edged sword of mass massacre? Gone. It's simply terrible not being able to see those damn fun weapons. What's insulting is the fact that weapons actually have NAMES. Hey, don't tell me I'm equipping a pair of “Long Scissors.” Just tell me I'm equipping Prier with Attack+20. I know it's true that pretty much all RPGs use this same method of not having to actually display the items equipped to a character once they're actually equipped (with KOTOR and Morrowind being the exception), but at least you get to see the weapons you equip with these games. With La Pucelle, this is not the case.

Battles are standard strat-RPG ground: you move on grids that are neatly decorated with 3D backgrounds, while inputting attacks into your characters. Instead of Disgaea's 10 character out on the area map at a time the max number is now 8 (which, depending on how you look at it, can be a good or bad thing). Battles are a lot slower than before, due to the fact that every time you attack an enemy the game switches to a small “fight scene” which zooms in the characters attacking and the enemies who take the beating. The same thing goes for enemies.

One thing that bothered me about the battle system was the fact that we're still using grids, where each character/enemy takes up 1 panel on the area map. How many games used this same grid-like approach? Let me name them: Tactics Ogre, Tactics Ogre, the Knights of Lodis, Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced, Vandal Hearts 1 and 2, Saiyuki, Hoshigami, and the list could go on. Not to mention Disgaea. I didn't mind the grid, but how about a little innovation? Let's hope Phantom Brave can cure this problem.

What adds some zest to the almost-boring-as-hell battles are the monster recruiting and dark portal cleansing sidequests.

Basically, each character in La Pucelle comes with a purify command. When you purify a monster, it will slowly but surely think about converting over to your side. When you finally are able to purify the monster, you must kill it and it will join your side. You must then train that monster using idiotic commands like “Hug” and “Preach” and “Pushups.” Each of these commands will either raise a monster's Happiness, or other battle-related stats. When a monster reaches a happiness level of 10, it will be able to purify other monsters as well. The worst part of this training system is that the max happiness level is 10, meaning you'll finally make this monster able to purify other monsters. You'll then decide to have that monster do Pushups since now you want to make that monster stronger. However, since these pathetic monsters can't take any pain whatsoever, telling them to do some Pushups will immediately cause the happiness level of that monster to drop down to 9. Guess what? You just lost that monster's Purify command.

The dark portal system is even worst. I'll make explaining this simple. About every map has these glowing diamond portals which spawn enemies every now and then and produce energy which flows in one direction. Place a character or enemy in that flow, and they can redirect the energy by facing different directions. Now, if you purify the dark portal that energy is flowing from, all enemies standing in the flow will become damaged. It sounds good on the surface, but Miracle attacks are what really mess up this otherwise ingenious system. Miracle attacks occur when you form a stream of connecting dark energy. When you purify that stream, all enemies within the stream are seriously damaged by some powerful Deity that will level up your equipment. Once again, sounds good on the surface, but it's seriously flawed. Here's why.

Setting up a Miracle attack is extremely, extremely hard without “cheating” (more on that later), because not only do you have to set up this perfect ring of energy that flows in one direction, but you also have to make sure it's at least 15 panels long, and there are enemies within that stream. Not only that, but you have to make sure that an enemy is facing in the proper direction so it makes the dark energy its controlling connect with another stream of energy. Imagine taking an entire turn, trying to set up this awesome Miracle attack. Everything is in place: you have some enemies in a circuit of dark energy. All you have to do is purify it! Unfortunately, you'll have to wait till next turn. So, now it's the enemies turn, AND THEY ALL MOVE OUT OF PLACE, TOTALLY RUINING YOUR MASTER PLAN! This happens 95% of the time, and unless you cheat, the chances of setting up a Miracle attack are very, very, very, very LOW. And for those of you who are able to string those awesome Miracle attacks without cheating: get a life, because you must be spending A LOT of time simply strategizing your every battle. Either that, or you guys are gaming Gods.

So what is this cheating I'm talking about? La Pucelle is such a sad game that in order to get anywhere you need to actually utilize its glitches. One of these glitches involves actually changing an enemy's direction by choosing an item, then canceling that item when the cursor is over the enemy. The cursor will remain on the enemy, and you can change its direction like you would change any character's direction, which greatly affects the outcome of battle. Another glitch allows you to do the same thing, but with dark energy streams. These two glitches allow you to exploit the game in ways that are just. Dirt. Cheap. Where's the fun in beating an uber-hard boss or stage just to know you cheated?

In terms of music and graphics, La Pucelle is dated, but not downright terrible. This game could easily have been pulled off on the Game Boy Advanced. ‘Nuff said.

Do I recommend you buy this game? No! Disgaea is far, far better. Plus....you actually get to see the weapons you equip on your characters!

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/23/04