Lost Dimension Review (PS3)

Do you want save world?  Yes?  Okay.  Do you want to kill your friends?  No?  Well that's too bad.  Everybody knows you can't save the world without killing your friends.  People who have played Lost Dimension know this.

In this game, you take the role of Sho Kasugai, an ordinary teenager with the power to hear thoughts.  As Sho, it's your job to climb a tower to find and kill a man simply called The End, who has declared war on the entire world.  Sho has thirteen days to save the world or fail and watch it burn.

Sho, our protagonist.

Sho isn't alone, however.  He is joined by ten other teenagers with superpowers.  These eleven kids are the only people in the world who have a chance against The End.  The only problem is that not all of these kids will make it to the top because, according to The End, there are traitors in your little group and you must find out who they are and kill them before they get in the way.

How do you find out who the traitor is?  Simple.  Just take them into combat and fight robot, hear weird voices after the battle, talk to people until they become your friend, and read their minds.  Then everyone votes for who they think the traitor, resulting in them being killed and turned into a crystal by a machine.

As for the characters, some of them are cool, while other boring as piss.  Some say cool things while others say bland crap.  Basically, it's the same mix of cool people, wimps, and yes, cute girls that you should be accustomed to in most RPGs.  Each has their own powers called "gifts" to make them stand out from each other.  These powers can be upgraded using points earned from battle.

Characters include the powerhouse Mana Kawai, pictured here.

Gifts can be powerful, especially in the case of characters like Himeno and Marco, who light up the screen with cool effects.  Gifts work kind of like magic, requiring gift points or GP to use.  You will, however, want to avoid overusing them, though.  On top of draining GP, gifts also drain a character's sanity or SAN.  When a character loses all their sanity, they go berserk, doling out beatings and rape to enemies and allies alike.  This also causes the character's allies to become scared and less effective in combat.  Once the character stops going crazy, they become dazed and weak.  So watch your SAN, which runs out much faster than GP.

The main hub where everything beside combat and judgment are taken care of.

On to the battles.  They're short, turn-based skirmishes against mostly-lame enemies.  There is a level of strategy to these battles, though.  Individual characters will NOT win the day.  It's all about teamwork, here.  Anyone you send out to be a star will be gang-raped by robots.  The key to victory is to position your characters so the more than one can attack the hapless foe you're targeting.  The enemies are a little less strategic, opting to bum rush the closest person they can get to, keying in on one person if they can.  The combat can be challenging when it's boss time.

Survey the battlefield and formulate a strategy before charging in.

Teamwork is the only way to take guys like this down.

As mentioned before, you must root out the traitors.  Things will only be that much tougher later on if you don't.  In simpler terms, you'll have to fight them later if you don't find and kill them now.  This is the crappy if a character you like is weeded out and killed.  Don't worry, though.  Killed traitors live on as materia, crystals imbued with their powers.  In other words, the characters may be gone, but you'll still have access to their abilities by equipping these crystals on a character whose still alive.  You can equip two materia on a character to create a badass with all the answers.

The Judgment System works like this.  You get a Vote Forecast after each battle to tell you who your party members think the traitor is, and hence, who should die.  The person being nominated isn't necessarily always the traitor, so it's up to you to dig deep to make sure you're not going to kill an innocence person.  This is important, because once you go to the Judgment Room, you can't leave until the votes are cast and someone, traitor or not, is killed.  Characters usually approach you to tell you who they think the traitor is or ask you who you think it is.  Others can be convinced to chance their vote, so do everything in your power to save the innocent and kill the guilty.

You can use Deep Vision to find out whether or not someone is the traitor.  This only tells you who is or isn't the traitor and doesn't affect how the other characters vote.  Also, you can only use Deep Vision so many times, so don't waste it on someone who isn't saying suspicious things.

The Judgment System does have a flaw, that being that allies can turn into enemies at the drop of a hat.  Put another way, just because someone isn't a traitor now, doesn't mean they won't turn into one later.  As someone who can read minds, Sho should be able to root out any traitor there will ever be any time he can find them.  It's not a bad thing, but it does seem stupid from a logic standpoint.

The Vote Forecast screen tells you who's most likely to die.  This person is not always the traitor, so be careful.

The graphics are decent enough.  Everything is clear and easy to identify.  That's all you can really ask from a game.  There are times when the graphics have some flash.  For example, when Himeno uses magic, she lights up the screen (and enemies) pretty good.  Sometimes the game stops for a second or two during an attack while the graphics load, almost as if it's is too awesome for the PS3.  I just pretend it's dramatic pause to enhance the effect (which seems to actually be the case for Mana).

The music is pretty good.  From the head-rocking boss theme to the relaxed theme of the second floor, the music is mostly good.  There are some crappy songs, but only one or two.  Put the hardcore ones on your I-pod or mp3 player for a workout or something.

As for the other stuff, the are extra missions and costumes, but they are DLC.  They're good, but you'll survive without them (unless you absolutely have to see Mana half-naked).  There's some miscellaneous DLC, but it's mostly bullshit.

All-in-all, Lost Dimensions is a good game.  It's not what you think and more than you expect.  If you like strategy RPGs and are looking for something different, you'll want to try it.  Play it.