Lost Dimension Review (PS3)
I couldn’t help but be excited when I saw the first trailer for Lost Dimension. It looked like a sci-fi infused Valkryia Chronicles where you control a team of gun wielding espers taking down robots in a tower. But at the same time I was a bit cautious as TRPG frequently play it safe. Thankfully my fears were put to rest and we got a rather enjoyable title with a lot to offer.
The plot feels extremely cheesy at times. An evil villain called “The End” threatens to destroy the world in 13 days. Earth’s governments have supposedly tried everything to stop him and now have decided to send in SEALED, a team consisting of only the most talented people with gifts. After the team makes it to the tower they all suffer from amnesia. Add the fact that there is a Danganronpa-esqe traitor among your ranks and you should have a basic idea of what to expect.
The entire game has a very Atlus feel. From the stylish opening video and anime FMV, to the obsession for towers and relationship system, it’s not hard to see the influence that Persona had on this title. But all these things aside, Lost Dimension ends up being a very fresh game. Where many RPGs usually start out with a sound story and work out the gameplay from there, Lost Dimension does exactly the opposite – the gameplay is where this game shines.
Lost Dimensions is a tactical RPG. You can freely move all your characters a specific distance, similar to Valkyria Chronicles. Positioning is key as it allows nearby teammates to assist during attacks.
Aside from HP and MP you must also watch your sanity meter. Your sanity is depleted every time you cast a spell or get hit. Once your sanity meter reaches zero your character enters a berserk state, attacking everything in his wake, dealing massive amounts of damage in the process. While it’s risky, it sometimes pays off to let a character enter the berserk state to clear out a few high priority targets.
One unique aspect of Lost Dimension is its so called Defer option in battle. Instead of attacking or using an item you can opt to defer. By selecting defer that character will give up his current turn and allow a nearby ally to once again have a turn. This allows you to position your allies for a better team attack or lets you send a single character move further forward than he could on his own.
Leveling up gives you gift experience points which you can use to unlock or upgrade each of your characters’ skills in a system similar to Final Fantasy X’s sphere grid. You need a good dose of planning in order to unlock all the skills that suit your playstyle, since some skills require multiple upgrades of a previous skill in order to be unlocked. Skills are unlocked progressively, so you are almost guaranteed to try out all of them, which is not a thing I can say for a large number of RPGs out there.
Your team is a varied bunch, consisting of a total of 11 characters, each with a different gift. telekinesis, telepathy, psychokinesis, levitation, healing are just to name a few. This means every character has a specific role in combat. It’s up to you to pick which 6 you will bring with you on a mission. Thankfully, unlike the majority of other RPG titles, here even characters that didn’t participate in the battle receive experience.
However, at the end of each floor of the tower (chapter of the game), you will have to pick out one person that you suspect is a traitor in your team in order to proceed. The person with the most votes gets killed and the rest proceed forward. The amazing thing is that the traitor is always random so you never know how the game will play out.
The majority of characters will vote for the person that performed the worst in battles or for the person they have the worst relationship with. The trust between two players depends on if they went to the same missions together and if they helped one another.
You can only partially influence the votes. At the end of each mission random members of your team will ask you if you think a specific person is the traitor or ask you who you think the traitor is. This allows you to sway the vote however you like.
Helping you find the traitor is the fact that after each battle you will see random text and hear various voices. If you notice a red colored sentence that means that a traitor may be among the 6 selected team members you used in the previous mission. This will force you to switch up your characters, in order to pinpoint the traitor.
Once you finally cast your vote the person who is executed leaves behind only a stone cube materia. Many skills are locked behind specific materia only obtained from executed teammates. So for example if you want your healer to restore sanity with each heal you need to equip him with the materia from your fallen telepath.
The game also borrows Persona’s relationship system. In-between missions you can talk with your teammates. However only the first two teammates you talk to increase your relationship with. As you talk with them they will open up more and tell you about their past. Befriend them enough and you can even unlock character specific side missions.
Lost Dimension is available for both the PlayStation 3 and Vita. I played the Vita version and must say it looks amazing. It is rendered in Vita’s native resolution and on top of that has anti-aliasing, making it among the better looking games on the platform. It’s safe to say that it looks almost exactly like its PlayStation 3 counterpart. However, all this comes at a cost. The frame rate is rarely stable. However, considering that this is a turn based title, it doesn’t really hamper the experience.
Lost Dimension’s somewhat predictable plot is easily overlooked by its astonishingly good gameplay. Battling, picking out the traitor from your comrades and traversing the skill tree are all immensely satisfying. All the systems in this game work perfectly together and there wasn’t really a moment when I didn’t use everything the game had to offer. For all its faults Lost Dimension is one of the most innovative and well thought out RPGs of the year.
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