"Compares to Disgaea?"

LA PUCELLE TACTICS
La Pucellse Tactics is often compared to Disgaea. This is because in America, it came out after. However, I have heard that this game, in fact came out before Disgaea in Japan. And so technically everything evolved from this game. However, seeing as how I have played the game after playing Disgaea and Disgaea 2, I am going to judge it according.

STORY
The story in this game starts out very basic. Prier (The main character) her younger brother Culotte, and Sister Alouette are your initial party members. And they work as demon hunters for the church of the holy maiden under Father Salade. And as in Disgaea games the game is separated into different chapters. Basically in every chapter Father Salade gets contacted and apparently there are suspicious demons lurking about in so and so area, and you are to go and check it out. That's how it is through half the game anyway. But then, later an actual story develops, and it's quite interesting actually. Just the only problem is that the game doesn't get into anything until really halfway through.

BATTLE SYSTEM
Obviously this is a Strategy RPG, so you fight using the grid based battle system. You get quite a few characters to use in battle at your disposal throughout the game. But not only can you use the characters you are given throughout the storyline, but you can capture monsters by purifying them. Which brings us to our next subject, which is purifying. Any character that is for the church of the holy maiden can purify things. Purifying monsters will allow you to add them to your party. There are also portals in which enemies will come out after a set number of turns, unless you purify the portals. The portals work similarly to geo symbols in disgaea games. However, I really found them to just be a nuisance to the game, and could never quite understand them fully. I would usually try to purify the portal, but it would never do anything.

And as in Disgaea games you can have group attacks, and use special skills. Except in this game, when you attack, it goes into a separate screen for the characters to make their attack animations. I'm not really fond of this as it somewhat slows down the game, and the graphics don't improve or anything when it goes to the separate screen. And unlike in Disgaea games, you really rely a lot on your physical attacks more than your special skills because they don't really give you that much SP to do enough special attacks, and it's very hard to get items that restore your SP or HP in this game. To heal, you pretty much have to focus on using healing magic. Another thing that I was a little disappointed to see is that you can only use 8 characters in each battle. In Disgaea games you can use up to 10 characters per battle. It's not the biggest deal, but it would be nice sometimes to have those extra two characters.

EXTRA COMMENTS
all in all La Pucelle Tactics feels like any other NIS title, except just not quite as good as other games they have made. They still use 2D sprites for their characters. I don't know why, but it feels like every SRPG has to have bad graphics. I could never understand why they can't go into 3D and actually have fully animated cutscenes like every other game. But, if they continue to use 2D sprites, I will continue to complain. However, instead of using character portraits alone to show cutscenes, they actually use their 2D character sprites to tell the story. Also, another thing I'm not quite fond of in this game is that at the end of each chapter there are different endings. Getting the good a lot of times, requires you to do some pretty difficult tasks, and the thing is, you need to get the good endings, because that's how you get all of your money in this game. Fighting regular battles won't earn you enough money to buy equipment, you need to get the good endings to earn a lot of money. And on another note, there really isn't much replay value in this game. In other Disgaea games you have the option of starting a new game plus, and you can reach levels that are sky high like lv 1000. In La Pucelle Tactics there is no option for a new game plus, and I'm pretty positive you can't get past lv 99 in this game.

If you like SRPGs and you've played Disgaea, and thought it was a great game, you should play this game. If you're not really a fan of Disgaea you should probably avoid this game. If you don't like SRPGs then, you shouldn't buy this game. If you like SRPGs, you've played Disgaea, didn't think all that much of it, you probably should not invest in a copy of La Pucelle Tactics. It's really just an ok game.

If you're interested you can look at my thought process of how I rated La Pucelle Tactics
It starts off with a 10/10 then
-1 point for bad graphics
-.3 points for the game's beginning story being boring
-.3 points for the purifying portals being a nuisance
-.2 points for the separate battle scenes
-.2 points for not having a lot of use of special skills
-.2 points for only being able to use 8 characters
-.5 points for the rarity of using regular healing items
-.4 points for the chapter endings
-.6 points for hardly any replay value
that leaves us with a 6.3 for a rating, which is nearest a 6/10.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/04/07

Game Release: La Pucelle: Tactics (US, 05/04/04)