La Pucelle: Tactics

by Mastiff

Product Features

• Fast leveling system - Character skills increase quickly. No more waiting around for those awesome combos & powers
• Plan out your strategy -- use your tactical knowledge to lead units into battle, achieving victory
• Carry up to 149 items at once -- and use your powers to strengthen items in real-time
• Use your powers to purify defiled ground and enemies -- defeating them in an all-new way
• Over 100 hours of gameplay with multiple endings

Product Details

• ASIN: B0001XAO4S
• Media: Video Game
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,578 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Game Informer Review

After the success of Disgaea last year, Nippon Ichi eagerly prepared another of its Japanese tactical jewels for stateside release. The result is an incredibly deep gaming experience that you could easily pour dozens and dozens of hours into. The real disappointment is the alarmingly ancient-looking graphics. Just because the game is set in the Middle Ages, it doesn't mean the game needs to look like it was made back then as well. Though the hand-drawn backgrounds that fill La Pucelle have their own unique beauty, you still find yourself wondering if you didn't play this on a console about three generations ago.

The game relates the tale of a young girl and her little brother (who you might confuse as a little sister for the first few hours of play), that have begun their careers as demon hunters for the local Goddess Church. They unwittingly become embroiled in a world-altering story of betrayal and redemption, while simultaneously coming to terms with the childhood death of their parents. Amid the slapstick jokes and anime innuendo, there is a moving portrayal of characters dealing with their own broken lives.

The majority of gameplay is spent on a rectangular grid of squares. Your success against the relentless enemies depends on myriad variables including elevation, character orientation, proximity of allies, and position on the field. The game is further deepened by the immensely sweet ability to make the enemies defect to your party. By purifying foes of their dark essence, they will reappear on your team once you defeat them. This means that you can slowly build up a party composed of all sorts of different little beasties to command. Perhaps the most complex strategy involves the purifying of dark portals, from whence enemies continuously emerge. By doing so, you send out a shockwave of elemental power that can damage enemies or heal allies. All of that combined makes for a game that is intensely difficult to survive, and nearly impossible to truly master.

Ultimaely, this title hits its big snag in the graphics department. What can I say? The animation is simplistic. Unmoving pictures thrown up on screen are somehow meant to pass for special effects. Detail is woefully lacking. The saving grace is the stylistic success of many of the hand-drawn images that permeate the landscape.

With that said, La Pucelle is an engrossing play that has the potential to kidnap you from family and friends for many a week. Its balanced strategic gameplay is only matched by its tremendous challenge. If you can look beyond its dated visuals, this little maiden might be just the girl for you.

Concept:
Mix a disillusioned young girl with deep, engaging, strategy. Throw in a touch of anime humor. Stir, and serve

Graphics:
Did someone just say PSone?

Sound:
Pretty standard RPG fare on the music. Surprisingly excellent voice acting

Playability:
Easy to pick up, a monster to master

Entertainment:
With a plethora of customization options, multiple endings, and endless recruitable party members, it's well worth your time.

Replay:
High

Rated: 8 out of 10
Editor: Matt Miller
Issue: June 2004

2nd Opinion:
Developer Nippon Ichi has a tall order to fill in trying to make a title as charming and strategically deep as its 2003 opus Disgaea. Good news for everybody, then, that La Pucelle brings as much innovation and polish as its predecessor. This title's crowning achievement, though, is the learning curve. While it's easy (as far as strategy games go) to grasp the basics and get up and running on your quest, you could easily put a hundred hours into this title and still have things left to discover. This is as good an introduction to the genre as any, and an absolute delight to any fan of tactical RPGs.

Rated: 8.75 out of 10
Editor: Adam Biessener


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Product Description

La Pucelle: Tactics is a strange tale of betrayal and double crosses. In this role-playing adventure, humans and monsters take each others forms and fight to control medieval Europe. An undisciplined but powerful young girl falls into this intrigue, working with La Pucelle -- a famous demon-hunting squad. Use her powers to unravel this web of deceit. Beautiful hand-drawn graphics immerse you in this new but strangely familiar world

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid RPG, but not quite as good as Disgaea, July 13, 2004

By 

Ryan Yamada "icono68" (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: La Pucelle: Tactics (Video Game)

It really pains me to give this game only 4 stars. I really wanted to give it 4 1/2, but since that wasn't an option and since Disgaea is noticably better ...

Regardless of Disgaea, La Pucelle still holds its own quite well. The artwork and graphics are great, the La Pucelle story is one of the better ones to come out RPGs lately, and the whole game in general is just pulled off very well.

However, while the pruification does add to the game, battles still get somewhat monotonous. The "Dark World", which was supposed to add a lot of depth to the game, is really too much of a hassle to get into (it took me about 30-40 minutes to open up one Dark World portal). Without that extra diversion, the game is basically fight a battle, move deeper into the dungeon, fight a battle, move deeper into the dungeon, fight a boss, see story, go to next chapter.

A few chapters have "events" that you can trigger mid-battle that reveal more of the story and allow you to do a better job and to get a better ending (and subsequetly a better reward!). However, a majority of the chapters don't have these extra events (actually the first chapter is the only one I can think of off the top of my head). Had more chapters had these bonus events to increase mission rankings, that definately would have helped La Pucelle out.

However, La Pucelle has a much better item system in place. Your stats have EXP meters of their own and can actually be levelled up. Stats don't start levelling up, however, unless you have an appropriate item equipped ... say something with an ATK bonus. When you defeat enemies, you not only get experience for your levelling up, your ATK would then get experience as well. Every time you level up ATK, your ATK stat is boosted. So while one item may have better base stats, perhaps another will help you develop ATK quicker or something like that. The item system definately adds a lot to La Pucelle.

The quick, low-down summary is this: while La Pucelle has the better story and item system, Disgaea overall is the better game. If you can absolutely only buy one, Disgaea would be the way to go. But, La Pucelle is an extremely close second and would be a worthy play for anyone even remotely interested in strategy RPGs.

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, a Tactical RPG I can get into., June 15, 2004

By 

Hunter Oates "scientist/fanboy" (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: La Pucelle: Tactics (Video Game)

La Pucelle: Tactics is fast becoming one of my new favorite games for the PS2. An underappreciated TRPG, one hopes that this will become something of a sleeper hit.

Here is a brief list of reasons for liking this game:

- The Artwork

La Pucelle features a rarity these days; hand-drawn sprites. The style is very fitting to the story, and the approach gives it an unique character, rather than a 3-D Final Fantasy clone.

- The Story/Characters

The game features several interesting characters. Prier, Culotte, Alouette, Croix, Homard and Eclair are very funny, but also get some touching moments of development as the story progresses.

- The Voice Acting

La Pucelle features top-notch voice acting. Prier and Alouette are both spot on.

- The Tactics Engine

Combat in La Pucelle is turn-based, and like Disgaea, individual characters can execute commands without ending your turn. You have no idea how much easier and smoother this can make battles go. The attacks and items are firmly tongue in cheek. I mean, your first special move is "Coup De Grace!: Kick them where it hurts..." Also, with the Purification power to convert your enemies to your side (essential for getting past Stage 1) and room for 8 members in your party, combat is wildly fun and doesn't get stale even after an extended playing session.

In conclusion, La Pucelle: Tactics is a very fun addition to anyone's PS2 collection. For a game with great replay value, fun characters, and a great storyline, this is one for you.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Tactical RPG, June 1, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: La Pucelle: Tactics (Video Game)

La Pucelle, like Disgaea Hour of Darkness, sadly is going to be missed by alot of gamers out there. Playing this game makes it incredibly difficult to understand why. Likely it has to do with graphics, which is probably the only aspect of the game that isn't all that great. (the nearly non existant advertising for this game is another likely culprit)

From a tactical perspective La Pucelle is an even better game then Final Fantasy tactics. While some aspects are a bit weaker ,such as party developement and story (Disgaea gives you alot more options with the addition of character classes - something La Pucelle lacks and FFT has a much more epic plot) La Pucelle more then makes up for it with the ability the "cleanse" nearly every enemy in the game and use that enemy in future battles, giving the player a ton of options when it comes to fighting battles later in the game. In addition to this the ability to "cleanse" portals and create combo attacks adds alot of additional options during battles (by effectively positioning your characters in support positions you can effectively make your party nearly impervious to all but the most difficult encounters)

Don't miss out on this game, plop down the money and get yourself a copy while you still can (the same goes for Disgaea Hour of Darkness which is even better) If your still woried about ploping down 50 bucks, take this into consideration 1.it is very unlikely that the price will EVER drop 2. If for some reason you don't like the game or you can bear to part with your copy in the future it's not going to be one of those titles that are worthless 6 months down the road - it's probably going to fall into the same catagory as underapreciated classics such as suikoden 2 and valkyrie profile (I.E. good luck finding a used copy for less then 50 bucks a couple years from now)

Enjoy the game, i sure am.