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La Pucelle: Tactics is one of those games that comes out of no where at you and gives you an honest to goodness surprise. Upon receiving my copy of La Pucelle to review, I have to say, I wasn’t all too excited. With games like Metal Gear Solid 3, Halo 2, and Prince of Persia: Warrior Within occupying my time the past little while, I found it hard to muster up any form of enthusiasm when placing the disc into my PS2. In all honesty, it’s been a while since I sat down and dedicated any significant time to an RPG, so I had a bit of dust to brush off as I started. Now, multiple hours later, and more than ready to write a competent review of the game, I know that my time with La Pucelle isn’t over yet.

Very few RPGs have the nerve to try what La Pucelle pulls off so effortlessly: make you laugh. A lot. Like Disgaea before it, La Pucelle mixes thick RPG gameplay with a quick wit and smart sense of humor to create a refreshing experience in a genre full of Final Fantasy’s that all take themselves so seriously. From the get-go, La Pucelle makes wise cracks about anything and everything. Prier, the games heroine and main character, is a sarcastic demon slayer with a chip on her shoulder, and a quick mouth. She, thankfully, is usually damn funny to listen to, instead of annoying, which I quickly assumed she may be after listening to her constant complaints.

It turns out that Prier and her brother Culotte are members of La Pucelle, a squad of demon slayers fighting for a Holy cause. Along for the ride with them is their teacher Alouette. Each of the games characters (controllable and otherwise) boast a great deal of personality, and while a lot of characters fall into stereotypical RPG stereotypes, the games sense of humor somehow offsets the predictability of each of the characters.

Now, before I get too much further into things here, I just want to point out to the few of you that may not know this: La Pucelle is the successor of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. The games share a lot in common with one another, including Prier, who made a brief appearance in HoD. It will come to no surprise then, to fans of HoD how familiar La Pucelle feels in its overall production and feel. Depending on who you are, this could be the games crowning appeal, or the #1 reason to stay far, far away.

Moving on, we get to the meat and potatoes of any RPG: combat. As the title implies, Pucelle is a tactical RPG, not a traditional fare in the vein of Final Fantasy or other ‘traditional’ RPGs. Again, going back to the games roots in HoD, the game offers a deep strategic element with a lot of choices for your techniques. Each character in your roster have multiple attributes that dictate their performance in combat. For the most part, the game dictates your main ‘melee fighter’, ‘spellcaster’, etc. by starting each character with a specific set of attributes that pretty much outline their purpose in the game. You can see this largely in the beginning of the game when Prier has the strongest melee attacks by a few folds over her team mates.

The game is fairly balanced, and includes a lot of elements from HoD that vets of that game will remember. One of the biggest and most obvious elements is the ability to capture enemies and add them to your party, a skill which becomes very important to your survival in some of the games more complex fights. Since it’s just plain silly to assume you can walk up to a monster and ask them the join the other team, the game gives you a spell known as ‘purification’ which you have to use (often numerous times) in order to cleanse the enemies body of badness…. Or something similar to that effect. Basically, what happens is you use the spell a couple times before killing it, and it joins your team and becomes fully controllable. There’s no guarantee that the purification will work, which leaves you open to attack from the enemy you’re trying to purify (and anyone nearby). In order to avoid what could become potential suicide for any character trying to purify, you’ll have to be sure to build some defensively strong characters that can afford to take a hit or two upside the head while waiting on the turn-coat.

Another element taken from HoD (kinda) is the Dark Portals ridden throughout the battlefields. They work mostly like Geo Panels did in HoD, but there’s a bit of spice mixed in to keep it interesting. Dark Portals serve as 2 things: a way for additional enemies to spawn onto the battlefield and make your life difficult, or a way for you to put a serious hurt on enemies (if you play your cards right). Once you get into the thick of things, Dark Portals become a huge part of your battle strategy, especially when you get into some of the later battles that can last you the better part of an hour if you don’t have a sound strategy on hand.

The definition of the Portals role in battle is a bit hard to explain, and short of replaying the opening battle and copying everything they tell you about it, I’m not sure how to get right down into it to make it make any sense. In lamens terms, there are a few different colored Dark Portals, and when you destroy them, they have different properties. For example, destroy a red one will cause fire damage to any enemies on the Portals ‘path’. There’s some very deep, dedicated strategies to be played out during the course of the game, and it’s pretty fulfilling to have a plan that will take you a good part of a dozen turns to complete come together and wipe out a whole board in one swift blow.

There is a lot of depth to La Pucelle’s gameplay, including the ability to learn how to haggle with merchants, train your captured monsters to become powerful machines in combat. Advanced players may even come to know the pride of purifying a boss monster, earn different endings, or find places they never knew you could get to.

All it really takes is one quick glance at La Pucelle for you to tell that it’s not heavy on 3d, visually astounding worlds. HoD took a simplistic 2d approach, and La Pucelle follows merrily in its footsteps. The game offers up 2d sprites moving around in a 2d world with strict left/right 2d movement. We aren’t talking about the next Halo 2 in terms of visual presentation here, folks. This is clean, simplistic, yet addicting. No need to flash here. What the game lacks in eye popping graphics, though, it makes up in imagination and implementation. All the games characters have a distinct feel and personality to them, and the areas are always bright and bold. The graphics may be simple, but they get the job done, and well, for that matter.

The game sounds great, from its dramatic soundtrack to its near perfect voice acting. All the voice actors took things very professionally, and you can tell simply by the way they deliver their lines. Each line is spoken with a great level of emotion, and helps convey exactly what’s going on at that given point in time. For curious parties and purists, there’s even an option to have the original Japanese dubbing instead of the English.

When compared to Disgaea, La Pucelle has a better story, better characters, awesome voice dubbing, and some deeper gameplay elements. Taken on its own as a tactical RPG, it’s easily going to find a fan base. The game offers hours of play, even if it is shorter than HoD. There’s some great tactical RPGing to be had for any genre fan, and shouldn’t be missed by anyone sitting around looking for a great way to spend some time. It may not be the prettiest one on the block, but it’s what’s inside that counts.