La Pucelle Tactics sucks

Who designed this crap?

Last night I got stopped by a horde of soldiers. If I killed them, I'd get the bad ending. To properly advance, you need to get a character to the other side. I brought in two bats from the Dark Shrine to put soldiers asleep. It worked great for the first two screens.

But the third fight is utter garbage. We're trapped around the spawn and can't get out unless we kill at least one of the soldiers. And even if you do get past that first blockage, there's a second one just behind it. And you cannot get past them! They don't let you by and constantly try their damndest to make sure we're stuck there. Just when you think you've got a path, one of the guys in the back will come up. He won't attack you, but he'll try to paralyze you. Even if you're already paralyzed! Even if you treat that, he's still on your way.

I could, and should, just kill one, but I don't want to play this crap anymore.

The characters are boring and entirely based on bland tropes. Prier is a tomboy teenaged girl who abuses people for the fun of it. But it's totally playful, guys, so lighten up! Colette is an easily bullied mage. Croix is a knockoff Wolfwood from Trigun, and Homard and Salade are creepy pedophiles. That last point is reason enough to stop playing this.

The battle system is as basic as you can get. I had hoped it would be similar to Disgaea, but it's really not. It has attacks, special moves, and team combos, but that's the only similarities. You can't throw, which would have made chapter ten manageable. The characters end up being far too similar because there are no classes, and monsters are either hit or miss.
And the item system doesn't help it. Weapons don't mean anything at all. Croix can use a fist, the predominant weapon in the game, and he still uses his gun in combat. You can even equip four weapons in all the slots. Items incr3ease a stat when you kill something, but I'm not really sure what those stats mean. You sometimes unlock new passive skills that randomly appear to give you more attack power, defense, and auto-hit, but what do they really mean? And the fact they're RNG based is terrible.
And the most frustrating part of the game is when your enemies get their passive skills. Far too often does "Guard Skill" appear on screen. This means that you're either tickling them or missing altogether. And this happens all the time. There's no way to know when it's going to happen, and I wasted too many teamwide attacks just for six people to miss everything. And it even happens with special attacks. Cool!
What staff teaches what spell?
How does monster training work? Does increasing that bar make them better? But why even both if you're going to just get a stronger version when you meet one?
But La Pucelle has its own unique mechanic called the Purify/Miracle attack. The problem with that is you need to go out of your way to actuate them. Most of the portals are out of the way, and it might actually weaken your character if you split them up to cleanse them. It's hard to properly connect all the portals, even if they're not on the edge of the map, and attacking your enemies is more efficient anyway. And you don't get EXP for deaths by Miracle.
 
WTF even is the Dark World? I don't know what to say about that since I don't understand it well. Is it just me, or did the game just describe it poorly? I know you're supposed to get more powerful items out of fit, but the stronger items still suck. And grinding levels for the items is tedious.

The music is repetitive. I'm pretty sure there are only about eight songs in the whole game. Most of them are decent, but when you hear them as often as you do, they start to grate.


It's a bit of a shame it all sucks. I liked the artwork that we saw. It was rare, but I enjoyed looking over the cities in the background. It made me want to wander around and see more. I thought the faces in the text box were, usually, well done. Croix seemed amateurish, but Prier and Alouette shined. I didn't like the sprite work at first, but it grew on me.

I found nothing terrible with the voice work, but I've said that Prier's VA did an excellent job several times. I think this is the first time I've brought up voice work in these memorandums, so good job, Jennifer Hale.

I'm not gonna poo-poo on the story since I didn't finish it, but I wasn't thrilled with it. I went through 78% of the game, and I felt like nothing really changed. All of the characters are exactly where they are in chapter one. The only difference is Prier is in love with a much older man. But is he creepy back towards her? I hope not. Has Collette or Alouette moved any? It's been ten chapters, man, do something! And for the story as a whole, the good guys know who Noir is, but they don't know his story? From what I've experienced, does it even matter? It's got a hole in it...

I can't muddle through this anymore, and I'm not going to. I want to move on, so I will. Even before I quit, I had an odd sense of dread linger over me before I booted up my PS2. It carried over to the updates, and I hated editing these just because I didn't want to relive them. It took me five days to edit this final one, for example. I just want to be done. The game isn't as bad as I'm making it out to be,m but there's just something about it that I hate. I'm sorry if you're interested in La Pucelle Tactics, but I'm totally over it. Unlike Grandia, I'm not gonna give a short write up of the rest. I just don't think it's worth it.

I don't know what's next or when I'll get to it.