Customer Reviews

Lux Pain

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I wouldn't give this game 5 stars simply because the translation of the dialogue is so poorly done. Gender pronouns get mixed up frequently. Sentence structure is awkward and choppy. The voice over clearly does not sync with the text. Considering this game is driven by the text, it's more than a minor issue. Art style is reminiscent of Persona. Storyline has similarities as well. It needs to force the player to make more choices, though. The mystery of the game largely solves itself as the game goes on.

STORY-

You begin the game as Atsuki Saijo, a young member of the group named FORT and the person in charge of rooting out an infection called Silent. He's traveled to the town of Kisaragi in order to track down the perpetrator of several crimes as well as a notorious Silent infectee. While investigating, Atsuki has to pose as a normal high school student and glean information from his peers. The story, while sounding simple enough at first, becomes more confusing and difficult to wade through as time goes on. It doesn't help that the game comes with multiple endings; meaning if you want the full picture you're going to have to play through it multiple times. The plot isn't what I would call 'bad', but it certainly tries to mash too many themes together. The tone of the story seemed to be a horror story/mystery at the start, but it quickly changed to one of high school fluff and drama. The mixture didn't sit very well with me, especially since you could find yourself looking at a suicide one minute and then discussing cakes the next.


GAMEPLAY-

As it's known as a 'visual novel', the gameplay in Lux-Pain mainly consists of sifting through mountains of text while running around town, talking to different people. The game tries to give you the illusion that you're free to go where you want after school, but that's really all it is: an illusion. There are always certain places where you won't be able to go. And really, there's almost no strategy involved in searching the town. All you have to do is check the available areas. before hitting the hay at Atsuki's house. Lux-Pain really holds your hand throughout the entire course of the game, and rarely lets you have control of your own actions. It's certainly possible to choose which order you want to do things in, but it almost never makes a difference. At school and around town, you'll often find people to talk to, and they'll just rattle off strings of dialogue while you stand around saying nothing. There are a few times here and there when you'll get to navigate a bland and uninteresting dialogue tree, but other than that, Atsuki is completely quiet. It's nice that there were so many people around town to talk to, but I often got the feeling that they were talking at me, not with me. A little more freedom of choice would have helped the game a whole lot. You can never really choose anything to say or do: in fact, the mystery basically solves itself for you.

Occasionally, when talking with people, Atsuki will notice a worm inside someone and begin using Sigma to detect it. It's a bit like a simple minigame; all you have to do is scratch away at the screen and then hold the stylus over the worm until it's gone. There's really not much skill involved with it. Once that's done, a term will appear. The term is generally just a few words which will appear to have almost no meaning at first. Sometimes the terms are relevant to the mystery, but sometimes they're completely inane. At the start of the game, I was impressed with the way the thoughts of the killer and his victims presented themselves: there was a sense of disjointedness, and above all, tension and fear. But the majority of other people's thoughts are a good deal less impressive. I remember that near the start of the game, I had to scan Rui Yamase and tap on a worm. The term showed up, and her thoughts were about...how much she liked her school? It was, quite simply, useless information. Rui's love of school was never vital information, and it didn't provide me with any real insight into anything either. That wasn't the only time it happened. There were several other occasions where the thoughts of the person had nothing to do with the investigation at all. Sometimes, phrases are mentioned and then never brought up again. Every now and again, you'll encounter a larger Silent inside of someone, and then you have to go through Lux-Pain's equivalent of a boss battle. These sequences are rarely anything more challenging than simply tapping on the touch screen, though. There's almost no other interactivity with the touch screen, except for the moments when you have to scribble madly at the screen in order to uncover a worm. Most of the time, due to the enormous amounts of text, you'll simply be mashing the 'a' button like your life depends on it.

One of the many things that rubbed me the wrong way about Lux-Pain was the fact that I constantly had to refer back to the manual to remind myself what was going on. At the beginning of the story, the game simply dumps you into the overworld map without so much as a vague explanation of the menu system. This lack of a tutorial can actually severely affect gameplay. Case in point: certain events are limited-time-only and expire if you don't see to them right away. Natsuki, one of Atsuki's allies from FORT, has a very useful scanning ability which lets you know how much time you have to witness the event before it's lost forever. Unfortunately, the game neglects to inform you of this. In fact, I didn't even realize that events had time limits until I missed one or two of them. Missing important cutscenes means that you will most likely not get the 'best' ending on your first playthrough. There's an incredible amount of information that the game simply doesn't tell you. Instead, you'll have to pick up your manual (assuming you still own it) and read through it just to figure out what in the blue blazes you're supposed to be doing.

That's the majority of Lux-Pain's gameplay, in a nutshell. Visit places at school and around town, talk to people, listen to their inane pschyobabble, repeat. It's not 'bad', it's just boring. Half the time you'll have no idea what your peers or fellow townsfolk are talking or thinking about, and trying to shovel through massive clots of pointless dialogue only makes the problem worse.


VISUALS, CHARACTERS, AUDIO AND WRITING-

Lux-Pain is a visual novel, and as such, usually consists of simple static images on an unmoving background. Character sprites usually have a few different emotions, all of which look decent and get the point across. It's a slick-looking game, and will most likely appeal to an audience who enjoys anime and manga (it closely resembles some of the more recent Persona games, in case a frame of reference is needed). There are quite a few different characters and animations packed into the game, which is something I'll praise Lux-Pain for. The music was decent, but nothing struck me as being particularly memorable. It was standard fare and served mainly as background noise to whatever else was going on.

As mentioned before, there are tons of characters in Lux-Pain. Really, there are. You'll encounter a variety of people from day to day, some of which may end up being key parts of your investigation. The game manages to flesh out most of your schoolmates fairly well. But there's one glaringly obvious problem that rubbed me the wrong way: I didn't connect at all with Atsuki. Let's sum things up--Atsuki an orphan whose parents and sister were killed. He's supposedly quite attractive, but he broods a lot and rarely says anything throughout the course of the game. He shows little emotion or reaction to anything his friends do or say. How many of these heroes have I seen before? His type is a dime-a-dozen. It's not as though I like or disliked him, it's as though he just never bothered to show up on the day when they were handing out personalities.

My final, and possibly most infuriating problem with Lux-Pain is the translation and localization issues. To put it frankly, the game is absolutely filled with grammar, punctuation and spelling errors. This is a text-based game, in which virtually all you do is read. They have no excuse for screwing it up. Sometimes, I found myself getting lost in the midst of conversations because the way the characters talked was so obtuse and irregular. The dialogue is by no means unintelligible, but it's very distracting to try and pay attention to a serious scene when my eye keeps getting stuck on missing punctuation marks. Sometimes, usually during more important scenes, a voiceover will begin. The voice acting is quite good; I have no complaints with it. So what's the matter? The text and the voice sometimes don't match. It's confusing, frustrating, and above all, it makes you wonder who proof-read this game. It really should have been cleaned up more before being released to the consumers. If you are a stickler for proper grammar and spelling, beware.

CONCLUSION-

Lux-Pain could have been a great game. The concept of exploring a town, hunting down a supernatural mental virus and uncovering a sinister plot sounds awesome. Unfortunately, it didn't live up to my expectations. The lack of tutorials, repetitive nature of gameplay, convoluted story and flawed dialogue will drive many gamers into either a state of severe boredom or a one of teeth-gnashing insanity. Although I had a decent time with it, I can't really recommend it.The whole thing left a rather bad taste in my mouth, because it could have been great: only it wasn't.

I've been waiting quite awhile for a US localization of Lux-Pain and I am very pleased with the result. Basically an adventure/digital comic title like Phoenix Wright except with a sort of morbid Persona style edge (Even the art reminds me of Persona). The story, as well as the characters, are very cool while the game moves at a very good pace and keeps you interested in the characters and plot. From what I can tell the translation has come out pretty good too. To top it off the game came in great packaging (Reflective oversized slip cover), a full color manual and included a free mini-artbook. Fans of Phoenix Wright type games, Persona or just anime fans in general should definitely give this sleeper a look.

Lux Pain (LP) is really a great game,however it got severely panned by critics (IMHO it didn't deserve all the abuse!) and you will find out why in more of my review.

Lux Pain starts off when an undercover FORT member named Atsuki Saijo (pronounced At-ski,not At-su-ki) is sent to investigate strange out brakes of Silent (Parasites within the human body that make people think irrationally)within Kisaragi city. To do an accurate investigation your assigned to be a transfer student from overseas and attend Kisaragi school. Along the way Atsuki makes a lot of memorable friends,but out of the 10 or so people you bond with,only 4 or 5 of them actually hold any importance/meaning to the story,a few little characters in the story do die,they play little roles,but when they die it makes you feel bad,like you should have talked to them more.

One problem with LP is that it can't decide if the story takes place in America or Japan,one example is:

(Voice Over) "I want to go to America!,See New York,San Frisco! I want to eat Pizza and Lasagna!"

(On Screen Text) "I Want to go to Japan,See Tokyo,Kyoto! I want to eat Sushi and Ramen!"

Seems odd no? You will see this in 2 or 3 instances,its not very bothersome but it does make you scratch your head since your CLEARLY in Japan,I mean c'mon,Kisaragi school in America? And with names like Mika,Akira,Ryo,Shinji etc..that is as Japanese as you can get. My guess is that there were two different translation teams,one for the Voice actors,and the other for the on screen text. A little more communication between the 2 teams could have solved this problem.

One more odd thing about LP is that there is a few spelling errors/gender misrepresentation throughout the game,most of the time its unnoticeable,but sometimes you will catch it,also the voice acting is different from the on screen text,a little annoying but forgivable.

While the voice acting is top notch,sometimes the background music will drown it out,and the game is very quite,even having my DSi's sound on full with headphones I couldn't hear the voices. I felt a little disappointed because the voices were so good and fitting. There is actually a lot of voice acting in the game,I'd say a good 3/4's of the game is voiced over. Although to accomplish this,there is no Anime cut scenes,only in the opening. I'd rather have VA of that anyway (Time Hollow had almost no voice acting and only had about 8 min of Anime in the whole game)

These few reasons here is why LP got such low scores,and because it was a graphic novel with not enough action,its not meant to be and action game. Time Hollow also got the same bad reviews for not having enough action/Voice acting.

Lux Pain is mostly played in the point and click style,you will get boss battles here and there that will require you to be good with the stylus,but after the first few boss battles you will get the hang of it and shouldn't be having any trouble. Lux Pains environments consist of static backgrounds that do look really nice,the characters and BG's are all done is Anime style,my favorite!

Length wise,Lux Pain is really long,taking me over 25 hours to beat,it also has 21 chapters (less if you get a bad ending) with 3 different endings to get,if you get the 'Best' ending,you've also watched the 'Normal' ending in the latter chapter. To get the bad ending you have to royally screw the game up. Once you beat the game and watch the tear jerking ending,your greeted with a gallery,sound studio,and Archive in the extras. To get all the Archive scenes and one last picture in the gallery you will have to play the game a second time on your New game+ save file.

Overall Lux Pain is an excellent game,if you like Time Hollow,you will love this game WAY more!

While the game is interesting both from a visual standpoint and a plot standpoint, the horrible translation ends up killing the enjoyment. Randomly misspelled words, a voice dialogue that doesn't even remotely follow the text dialogue, and some completely inappropriate syntax make it extremely annoying to play. Wait a year or two and hopefully they'll release a version of the game that actually went through a quality control department first.

I bought this game because I wanted to play something creepy but not too scary. It starts off well, but there isn't a lot of choice in what you do and where you go, and it takes so long to go through all the places and talk to all the characters that I really lost interest quickly. The music is good, but I wish there had been an option to turn off the voices and just read the text of the dialogue. The dialogue text and the spoken dialogue don't match up; I only noticed it occasionally, because I wanted to read the dialogue and get on with the story, but that is annoying.
I really wish this game had moved faster; I don't think I am going to finish it. It's incredibly boring. The story really gets lost in the translation and in the random conversations. The storytelling should be tighter and keep you engaged. As another reviewer stated, there are not a lot of choices involved in where you go and who you talk to. However, you are still taken to a map screen where you can only choose one place to go - I would rather the game just moved me along to the new location and skipped the extra nonsense.
Great game concept, just a terrible execution!

This game is relatively short - not one of those super long RPGs. The story was a little hard to follow, although the characters and scenic backgrounds were drawn very prettily. The game play with the Shinen wasn't anything much either, and was overall, simplistic. But it can get a little frustrating during some battles with the Silent as some people may need to practice a couple times before they can beat them. Not a lot of action. A LOT of narrative though.

Endings. I believe there are two you can get - the good one or the bad one. The bad ending will only take you up to episode 19, and the good ending will take you to episode 21. There are some extra scenes with the good ending, etc. However, even after getting the good ending, I didn't feel like I really accomplished anything. Note of warning - if you're looking for a super happy ending, it doesn't exist. The good ending is as good as it gets, and it's just bittersweet. And there are a few loose ends, though I don't know if the rumors of a sequel are true or just wishful thinking.

An annoying thing about the game is that the text doesn't match up with what the voice actors are saying. They have the same context, but just don't use the same words. If that bothers you, just turn the volume down or ignore the text and just listen.

The opening song was good. There aren't a lot of tracks, so it was easy to remember certain tunes. Nothing super memorable though.

If you have some spare time and half a brain to kill, play this game.

Lux Pain is a uniquely dark and gothic text based adventure with minimal repetitive mini games (two to be exact). That being said it has issues. Lots of issues!

The two minigames can be fun, but are a bit simplistic for a game this dark. Either your scratching through people to find and eliminate worms, or you're playing "pop the bubbles before they burst". It's hard to mess them up even intentionally, and I was hoping for more plot/thought driven puzzles to be mixed in.

There is no thought involved in getting through this game. Areas you need to go to are always highlighted, helping to avoid needless wandering but also any bit of thought on where to go. There can be several highlighted areas at once but after one you can just go to the next with little to no penalty.

Text is very very long, and when you combine that with localization issues what you end up with is long sprawls of people talking about events you get the gist of but not a lot of details. After a while it will start to put you to sleep. To make things worse your response options to the average bit of dialog go like this:

1. Caring answer
2. Snarky answer

Sometimes there's a third option but it doesn't really add anything. A saving grace at least is that somehow the vocal track always makes more sense then the text, so if you're lost try to stop reading and just listen to the dialog. Unfortunately not all parts are voiced. Odd as it is the game is still kind of fun which is why I gave it a 3 but on a 1-10 scale it's probably a 5. I would definitely give this a try before you buy it. Best for people that have played other import games and text-based adventures, most likely NOT for young kids.

This game at the beginning is very confusing to play. The game manual was even more confusing to read than trial and error. It does have good picture but the spoken and written dialogue does not match up.

Well I was exited to see a Japanese game in English.

The game play was fun, a little repetitive but fun.

What is keeping me from giving it a full 5 stars is the voices matching the subtitle...I could not stand that...also they mixed up a lot of pronouns and had some ridiculous typing errors..that is what mainly angered me because if you are going to release a piece of work...well fix stuff that is really noticeable like that first!

Other than that, I would recommend the game I like the story line and it is fun.