Gunpowder, treason and… not a great plot
Too many JRPGs run through a very familiar story set up (some hybrid of ‘kids team up to save the world’ and ‘kids join forces to attend Japanese high school'), but this unique title from the under-celebrated studio behind Etrian Odyssey has a refreshing arrangement. You start off with a large party of characters, but this number dwindles as traitors in the group are exposed and… disposed of.
You are Sho Kasugai, an initially mildly amnesiac (ok, so some story aspects do dip into predictable JRPG waters like a walrus rolling with a mighty sploosh through a crack in an iceflow) chap with mysterious psychic abilities. He’s thrown into a tower, which ascends upwards through steadily tougher battles against the minions of a villainous terrorist called The End and his army of robots, turrets, and cyber ninjas. Alongside a team of 11 other gifted people, known as SEALED, you’re tasked with assassinating him at the tower’s top, thereby preventing a nuclear winter-inducing terror attack.
The rub is that for each floor you climb, a party member turns out to be batting for The End’s team. You’ll have to pick them out via the medium of colour-coded guesswork, not too dissimilar to the peg-based board game Mastermind. When party members do die, you’ll get their abilities to dish out to other characters, which is handy considering how much tinkering you’ll do with each of them.
If you’ve spent time playing through the excellent Valkyria Chronicles, you’ll have more than a good idea of how combat in Lost Dimension works. Your team and the enemy’s take it in turns to fire lead into one another. Within the small window of movement you’re assigned each turn you look to work with fellow soldiers in order to open up assisted attacks. Scraps get particularly tactical when you’re forced to consider your foes’ movements and ability to team up, too. Especially enticing is the depth on offer when it comes to upgrading team skills and loadouts. Individual special abilities, called Gifts, unlock over a pleasantly intertwining skill tree system begging to be pored over between affrays.
Yet for all the gunfire pew-pew-ing about the place, combat is by no means bulletproof. The camera can be unreliable, often hiding behind nearby buildings rather than focusing on the action. Also, the cold, hard sci-fi edge to proceedings saps personality away from the combatants and their surroundings.
Not that they had too much warmth to them to start with. Whether it’s the fault of the original script or the localisation work done upon it, the dialogue is functional at best, turgid at worst. Despite characterful Japanese dramas and wide-ranging ensemble casts now being a dime a dozen on Vita (Danganronpa, Zero Escape, and Persona 5, anyone?), the gaggle of teens under your tactical tutelage here interact with all the enticing humanity of a bag of concrete.
With a little more spark behind the characters, this could have been up there with the very best of the handheld’s already billowing array of Japanese titles. As it stands, it’s a deep and intriguing RPG betrayed by a honking script and the dull individuals that populate it.