Malik (6/3/04)

La Pucelle Tactics (PS2)

Mastiff/Nippon Ichi Software

I was a little late jumping into the wonderful world of Disgaea. When it first came out, I was a little frightened of SRPGs thanks to the imagination-deficient developers at SquareEnix and their monstrous FFTA. However, I eventually tried Disgaea on a whim...actually I was about to explode if I didn't lay my hands on a new (to me, at least) RPG and Disgaea was the only one out there. Well, after only a few days of playing Disgaea, two things came upon me. One being how much the game rocked. The second one being that La Pucelle Tactics, another game from the same developers and of the same style was soon to hit the American shores. So, naturally, I made sure to get a copy in my most deserving of hands. 

It took me some time to finish Disgaea due to how immersive and large the game is. So, naturally, it took me a little extra time to start really playing LPT (I hate to tarnish the game playing experience of an RPG by playing more than one good one at a time...I tried it with Suikoden 3 and Wild ARMs 3, not to mention other such pairings, and it only leads to one game losing out and being left on the shelf to collect dust...not a good thing for a classic like LPT), but the wait was well worth it in terms of both my enjoyment of Disgaea and how bad-ass LPT is. 

For those who are unfamiliar with LPT; this game was actually released in Japan in January of 2002. It took the breakout success of Disgaea for this title to become worthy of an American publisher's, in this case Mastiff's, real attention. Also, in a related note, the game Phantom Brave, which continues the wonderful tradition of LPT and Disgaea will be released later this year (in the fall) by Altus (the publisher of Disgaea). Ok, enough background...let's get to the meat of things. 

Actually, we'll get to things after I make one little point...LPT focuses on a world with a very French influence (and unlike how FF12 is looking, LPT actually makes it interesting), and thus has a lot of very funky and hard to pronounce or spell names. So, if I mess up on a name every once-in-a-while, forgive me. 


La Pucelle Tactics centers around the adventures of a pair of orphans, who are brother and sister, named Prier and Culotte and their supervisor Alouette. Also, as one can guess from these names, the world they live in is modeled somewhat after medieval France. These three adventurers work for the Church of the Divine Maiden in the La Pucelle division of demon hunters. Basically, they work to eliminate the threat of demons from the daily lives of the common people. 

At the same time, they are also facing some competition for the religious ideals of the people by the Church of the Holy Mother. Pretty much the Church of the Divine Maiden is a bit of a recent startup church that was founded by Prier's ultimate boss, Father Salade. 

However, when the player is driven deeper into the story, they will also learn that before the start of the Church of the Divine Maiden, a battle of holy and epic proportions took place between the goddess Pointre and the Dark Prince. The Dark Price is a servant of a fallen angel who decided to make an effort to conquer the world, and the Goddess, being a goddess and all that, decided to save the common people. In turn, when the Goddess beat out the Dark Prince (as would be required if this is a back story to the main game...otherwise I doubt good forces would exist to destroy the forces of in most games, it seems like if the Dark Prince won, all life would be screwed, but the forces of good were too nice to evil people and let them continue on...when will the forces of good learn to grow some balls?), the Church of the Divine Maiden was formed by Father Salade to worship her and to serve as a tool of sorts to maintain order and peace in the world. Lastly, there are prophecies saying that the next time evil returns to the world, a "Maiden of Light" will arise and take down the forces of evil. 

So, back to Prier; when she and Culotte were young, their parents died in a carriage accident and they were left in an orphanage ran by Father Salade's wife, who goes nameless throughout the game. As they grew older, they joined the church as cadets and were soon allowed to join the demon hunter squad of La Pucelle, where they were teamed with the amnesiac Alouette. As Prier worked her way up the ranks, she started to become brash and bossy in what she would hope would serve to get her her ultimate dream; being the Maiden of Light. Meanwhile, Alouette is always there to keep her in check with a healthy dose of discipline (usually being in the form of a sharp blow to the head), and Culotte is there to serve as Prier's family and target for Prier's affection. 

Basically, this is the story you are given for the first few chapters of LPT. Very little actually evolves in the story until it is realized that the forces of evil are starting to grow in numbers...what happens next? Play the game. 

Overall, the story is presented with the perfect blending of almost all elements. The level of drama is enough to emphasize how import of a nature Prier's mission is (the whole saving the world thing), but with enough humor to keep the player from being brought down. For example, in LPT, Prier's brash attitude serves nicely as both a dramatic engine to show her motivation and determination and as a source of comedy as she interacts with other characters in the bluntest ways possible. Also, the details are balanced enough where you are always able to understand the actions and reactions of key players, but the details are light enough to keep the player from entering a state of total confusion (ever play Suikoden 3? Near the beginning, the player is told of about 5 different kingdoms, 40 or so key characters, two or three major wars, a few prophecies, and enough confusing town names to make your head spin...that is what I mean by too many details at once). Overall, the story is clear, to the point, and still filled with enough intrigue and plot twists to keep the player constantly striving to learn more. Considering how the plot is key to a good RPG experience, LPT is definitely off to a nice start... 

Game Play 

I will keep this section pretty brief in comparison to my review of the game play of Disgaea. Why would I do that? Simple, I will do the lazy thing and refer all of you back to the Disgaea review (not just since the game play is so very similar, but also because it's a good game and definitely deserves some consideration...). So, to start things out, here is what's not found in La Pucelle Tactics, that was found in Disgaea; 

Lifting: There is no ability to lift or throw characters such as team-mates, enemies, or geo symbols...speaking of which; 

Geo Symbols and geo tiles are not present 

Class changes, creating custom characters from scratch, and transmigration to reset your level and possible change classes. You are now given a single set of base scores per character with some other means of determining the final "class" of said character (read on). 

The dark senate is now gone. Most of the initiatives you could try to pass, such as opening new sets of items for sale, increasing the experience you get from the next battle, and raising the overall level of monsters can now be found in the shop. After you purchase an item, you can now (if you want) fill out a customer survey that includes questions of what types of items you want more of (weapons, armor, and other items), what price you want to pay (want more expensive, less expensive, or the same price of items...this will affect their quality), and occasionally you may be asked a bonus question of something along the lines of, "What is your dream?". To this you can say something along the lines of what bonus you'd like for the next combat (extra money, experience, etc). There's also the question of if you'd like to fight stronger monsters. That one is pretty self-explanatory...ok, for the slow witted, stronger monsters equal more challenge and more experience. 

In LPT, all people who fought an enemy in the action that killed it (in other words, if two or more people attack an enemy and both attacks are pulled off in one action and one of those attacks slays the monster) get experience. Not just the single person (and all support attackers) who dealt the actual death blow. This is one of my personal favorite features of LPT when compared to Disgaea. As you can tell from what I just wrote, support attacks are back. 

Last of all, there are no item dungeons. You can still level up items, but not by fighting through 100 levels of a dungeon inside the item (known as the Item World). I'll explain more on this later. 

So, with all these things now missing from LPT that were in Disgaea, let's look at what is new to LPT; 

First off, there are, most noticeably of all, set characters. In Disgaea you had certain set characters, such as Laharl and Etna, who automatically joined your crusade (well...Laharl didn't join...he led the battle). All human characters fit into this group. The class they are given in no way affects their abilities (Culotte and Prier are both "La Pucelle" for class, but Prier is more melee and Culotte is more or less a mage). Instead they have base stats and certain stats that are more likely to increase at a level-up (more on this to come...). Also, there are recruit able characters. These are all monsters and are the actual monsters you fight. If your characters use a "purify" command on a monster a few times, it will become more friendly towards your cause, and if it is purified enough, when you slay it, it will be a new playable character. However, unless you meet some secret hidden requirements, these monsters must be normal monsters (not bosses). 

As for the stat increases and level-ups, there are three simple facts. Firstly, if you level-up, you will gain certain stats that are character based (Prier likes to gain strength, a fire monster will usually gain intelligence as they like magic, a bear will gain a lot of strength, etc). Secondly, any monsters you gain will have the chance to "train" after each battle. By training, you can increase the rate that they gain points in one of three (or two or even all three if you like to train and spend a lot of time on this) stat sub-sets (broken down to have HP, defense, and strength in one set, SP...aka MP..., magic resistance, and Intelligence in the second, and speed and hit rate in the third subset). The only thing is that monsters have a happiness meter that can range from 1 to 10. If it is at 10, they love you and can even use the purify command (more to come on that). However, if it falls to one, they may leave your party, to never return. Also, when you train, you can either boost one of those stat sub-sets, or you can do something nice to the monster (that will not gain the stat sub-sets at all). Simply put, training pisses off a monster (not to mention if the monster gets bitched in battle, it will get pissed off), while nice things raise the happiness meter. One needs to keep these two facts in check in order to help their monster grow but not to force it to run away. 

The third stat boosting factor is your equipment. Besides the obvious fact that armor will boost defense, weapons will boost attack, etc, there is a set of stat growth abilities in most equipment. To put it simply, if an equipped item has a growth factor for defense and you kill a monster (to gain experience), some experience will go into your defense stat. Once your defense levels up, you gain an additional point of defense. This applies to all stats (including HP, but not movement). Also, each equipped item grants a different growth rate for the stat(s) it affects and these do stack. In other words, if you have an item that has a defense growth factor of 1, another of 2, and a third item of 1 all equipped, you will gain defense four times quicker than if you only had the first item equipped. Not only can this be used to develop a characters abilities in a different direction than their default settings, but it also opens skills; 

So, what is a skill? When your stats reach certain levels (the levels gained through item growth factors, not the natural levels that a stat can reach via character leveling-up), skills may be unlocked. These skills fall into two sets; passive and active. An active skill is one that is always in affect and can include such bonuses and increases to your characters movement and jumping ranges. On the other hand, passive skills only take affect in battles and only a certain percentage of the time. These skills can include the chance to bring an enemy to your side after slaying it (even without purifying it prior to combat), a one shot boost in attack power or defense, an increase in experience if the monster is killed in that attack, and critical hits (which are not possible without a critical hit skill). The number of skills available are not limited to the number of stats, since certain skills are only unlocked by leveling a combination of stats to certain levels. Also, for passive skills, more than one can take affect in a single combat round. Lastly, these skills can level up as the stats associated with them continue to level ("Tiny Break" increases your attack power, but as your attack stat increases you will earn "Break" and then "Power Break", and possibly more, which will all in turn be more effective than the previous version). 

Also, while monsters can train and human characters cannot, it doesn't mean monsters wont gain stat levels or skills. They can do all the same things as human characters and more (like training). 

On the same note, how one gains magic or special attacks is blending into two different methods. All human characters (and most monsters) have pre-set special abilities and magic spells that they will gain at a certain character level. However, both monsters and humans can gain spells not normally in their ability by equipping certain equipment. Some equipible items have an elemental score. In LPT, there are about a half dozen elements (ok, a little more than a half dozen), such as fire, wind, lightning, holy, etc. These elemental alignments don't affect how well they utilize that element to attack or how well they defend against an element, but rather they affect what spells you can learn. If you have a certain character level and a certain amount of elemental points in one element from your equipment, then a new spell will be unlocked on your character's spells/special attacks menu (for example, to reach the second version of fire magic, "Mega Fire" need a character level of 10 for any "Mega" spell, and an elemental score of 4 for any "Mega" spell; thus you need at least a 10th level character with four fire elemental points on it's equipment). This new spell, however, will be at a zero level (yes, your special attacks and spells have levels too that go up as you use each ability) and you must use it enough to get to the first level before your remove the equipment that is giving you access to the spell. If you fail to reach level 1 with the spell and you remove all the elemental points (from equipment), you will no longer have access to the spell until you change your equipment back. Unlike the stat growth factors on equipment (which are set according to the equipment type), elemental points are randomly assigned to each item when it is generated. Typically, all items of a certain type will only have so many elemental points, but the element itself can be any of the more than 6 elemental types. So, a low level armor will usually have only one elemental point, at the most, but each time you visit the shop you will see randomly assignment elemental alignments for each one. Once you find higher level equipment, especially staffs (which being attuned to magic will usually be more magical and thus more elementally aligned), the actual number of elemental points will typically increase (but the alignment will usually be random). 

Ok, if that was confusing, I'm sorry...La Pucelle is a very deep game with many twists and innovative features that can, for the most part, only be explained by actually playing the game. Ok, back to the review. 

Purifying...ok, if you thought that last part was confusing, this will knock you on your ass. Purifying is an ability not just needed to tame monsters, but to level up your equipment and gain massive money by closing dark portals. A heads up; if any of this sounds confusing, just check out and look up any La Pucelle Tactics info in the FAQs or message boards on Dark Portals and you'll see that I'm giving the easy to understand version... 

So, on almost every battle map, when the battle first begins, there will be two red squares, two blue ones, and two green ones. These special squares are known as dark portals. Also, each one of these can be aimed in one of the four basic directions to project a beam of "dark energy". They are aimed in whatever direction the last character (enemy or friendly) to step on them was facing. The dark energy, then, will continue in a path until it hits a character. At this point, the energy will either turn in the direction of the character, or if the character is facing directly into the energy, it will stop. It will also stop if it ever hits a wall. If someone uses a purify command on the portal, the portal will lose some of it's HP based on the strength of the purify command of said character. If the portal runs out of HP, then the portal will close and all enemies on the path of the dark energy will take damage associated with the alignment of the dark energy (red is for fire, blue is for ice, etc). Also, if the dark energy streams of two different colored portal merge, the energies will travel together in a new color (red+blue will make purple, green+blue will make cyan, green+red will form yellow). Now if three colors join, then the energy will become white/silver. Each color makes a new elemental attack (when the portal is destroyed) to any enemies on the energy stream. The only exception is cyan, which will, instead of hurting enemies on the energy when the portal is stopped, heal all friendly units on the energy stream. So, if two portals are needed to form a cyan, then what do I mean by "the portal" being purified? Well, if either the blue or the green portal is destroyed, then the cyan portion of the energy (the point when green and blue energy is merged) will do the healing. So, if three portals merge at different points, then a total of between three and five energy stream colors can be found (like if blue is first, then green, then red there will be a blue stream, then a cyan stream, then a silver stream with possible minor streams of green and red prior to those portals joining the main stream). Also, when a portal is purified, then you will gain money (after the battle ends) for each tiles that had energy that was purified (each square of dark energy affected). Also, if all portals are purified on the map, then the total money earned will be doubled (as a bonus). You will also, in real time (as it's done, not at the end of the battle), gain experience for all equipped items when a player purifies a portal for each square of dark energy that was purified. This is how you can gain levels for items, which in turn grant bonuses to the stats increased by the item (purify a portal while wearing a shield, the shied gains experience, and if it levels, the total defense bonus of the shield increases). However, it gets a little more confusing when you throw in miracle attacks... 

So the meat of the Dark Portals and all that comes into play with the Miracle attacks. When you are able to loop a dark energy path so that it forms a circle covering a certain amount of space and then purify one of the portals causing the loop of energy, then a miracle attack is formed. If the energy is of any color other than cyan that forms the loop, then all enemies inside the loop are attacked with a damaging miracle (area of effect) attack (if the loop is cyan, then all allies in the area of the loop get healed). Plus, any portals on the inside of the loop are also damaged, and if they run out of HP, then that counts as that portal being purified. This in turn can lead to another miracle, and in turn possible another all the way through all of the portals. This means you can decimate the enemy forces, and also gain some massive money and item experience (each miracle gives a bonus to the money and item experience you gain from the purification, plus the amount gained from each square of dark energy purified). The only issue with this is that you gain no character experience for the enemies killed in this fashion. This whole mechanism of gaining equipment experience and money leads to a puzzle element to the strategic RPG experience. 

On the note of dark portals; if some portals are left unpurified, or if you do an evil deed (such as killing a team mate), you will raise the dark energy index for that map. When the dark energy index reaches a certain limit, a new element enters the world of LPT. This element is a portal to the netherworld. Exploration of the netherworld is not needed to beat the game, but it will give some new features (such as unlocking the ability to convert boss monsters to your side). 

Also, on this note; when you choose, you can go to town and send one of your servant monsters to the netherworld (to never return). The reason for this is that all the items being held by the monster are devoured and turned into a new fused item with many of the abilities of the originals (such as the stat level-up factors and elemental points). The level of the items and monster sent to hell affect the overall strength of the new item. 

So, that is pretty much the game play of La Pucelle Tactics in a nut-shell. Overall, while learning the mechanisms is quite confusing, it is not too difficult to learn. The overall learning curve of all this is only an hour, tops. Also, like with Disgaea, most of the more confusing parts of LPT are not really required to play the game; they are only needed to master the game. Like with Disgaea, you can beat the game while at a low level, like around 50-60 (if not lower), but by checking out the netherworld, you can reach levels in the hundreds or thousands. So, like with Disgaea, you are given full control of whether you want this game to last for about 60 hours or for 600 hours. This is a definite plus in my eyes. Also, unlike Disgaea, if you chose to stick to the normal path of progression (skip the bonus side-quests and all that) with about 60 hours to beat the game, you will not miss out on any secret endings. 


Well, I think I can keep this part really short. Basically, the visuals are done exactly like they were in Disgaea with the sole exception being how cut scenes are handled. Instead of using the large still portraits of the character talking that Disgaea used, LPT uses a more old fashioned cut-scene mechanism. The dialogue box at the bottom of the screen simply shows a mini-portrait of the person talking and this will also show that character's emotion. Also, the on screen sprite for the character will show the same effect of emotion that the mini-portrait in the dialogue box is showing. 

That part aside, the visuals are just like those used in Disgaea, but instead of being based around life in the Netherworld, the visuals show the style of life found more in a fantasized medieval France. I would say more, but I think I already said it in my Disgaea review. 


This will feel like I'm repeating myself, but I already said this part in my Disgaea review, also. The only major differences in sound between LPT and Disgaea is that the music in Disgaea was a little higher quality. This is not to say that LPT has bad music, but some of the songs will definitely get on one's nerves if they plan to play the full extent of the game; remember how I said before this game could be 60 or 600 hours long? Well, if you go for the 600 hour route, the music will drive you insane a lot quicker than Disgaea's music ever did. 

While this is also true of Disgaea, I just want to give mad props to the voice talent of LPT. So far Disgaea and LPT are the only games I can think of where over 90% of the voice acting is not just tolerably, but it can actually be called great. The voice acters used in LPT have a good blending of professional voice actors (like the woman who does the voice of Bubbles on the Powerpuff Girls and Rikku on FFX) and professional actors (some of which were on such shows as Fraiser and Seinfeld). I know that usually professional voice actors in America tend to be of the lowest caliber, but in cases like this, the best were used and the directing for the voice acting was brilliant. 

So, to put it simply, the sound is so similar in quality (but not feel...the French-ness of LPT is definitely shown in the music and audio) to that of Disgaea that all I can say is this; it's great quality, and check out my Disgaea review for more details. 


After pouring far too much of my life into LPT after throwing even more of it into Disgaea, I think it's safe to say that this group of games (it's not a series, but it's two similar games from the same brilliant developers) is easily on it's way to becoming some of my favorite games. The story in La Pucelle Tactics, while it is way too slow to start, is definitely original and a breath of fresh air on the currently stale crop of stories being crammed into the average RPG experience. The game play uses enough of the classic style found in Shining Force games and FFT that it feels familiar, but offers enough innovation with a purpose (not the teh gay innovation without a purpose that led to FFXIII and the "Junction" system) to keep it definitely fresh and intriguing. Lastly, the more physical of elements, the visuals and audio, are not in any way new, but they don't need to be. They keep the feel of the story in the right place; a humorous yet very serious experience that will constantly keep the player trapped within this video game addiction. So, in conclusion, I would have to give La Pucelle Tactics a 9.75/10; like they said in Kill Bill Volume 2 about Hitori Hanzo can't compare an Nippon Ichi Software tactical RPG with another Nippon Ichi Software tactical RPG; you can only compare it to another developers tactical RPG. The Nippon Ichi Software one will always win since it's just a grade above the rest.