La Pucelle: Ragnarok

An incredible SRPG. A hidden gem that is an absolute treat for RPG fans and stat nerds. This is my first Nippon Ichi game and I can't wait to check out the rest of their catalogue. Play it, you won't regret it!

[h1][b] TLDR: This has not aged well. Full of primitive and overly complex systems that make the gameplay unfun. The narrative was not good enough to distract me from the poor mechanics. [/b] [/h1] [h1]PROS: [/h1] ➕Can easily exit maps vs Disgaea that requires a exit to start screen ➕Characters here that appear in later Nippon Ichi games [h1]CONS: [/h1] ➖Confusing world map structure ➖Systems like Item Fusion are confusing and not explained well, requiring guides ➖Low quality sprites ➖”Best” chapter endings locked behind additional (sometimes tough) requirements [h1] [b] Content (Game world/Narrative) – [3/10] [/b] [/h1] The game world is tough to stomach versus newer (yet still old) Nippon Ichi titles like Disgaea 1. I found the map selection screen to be confusing when traversing through multiple maps. The world map is bland, boring, huge and empty, just a collection of dots randomly placed with no real purpose to their location. The main hub world seems to be the best representation of the world - it has lots of NPCs to talk to, an item shop, and the dark world/item fusion NPC. I found the narrative to be boring, but I only made it to chapter 5. The mechanics were enough to make me not want to continue along with an uninteresting story. [h1][b] Gameplay (Mechanics/Difficulty) – [2/10] [/b] [/h1] The mechanics are not great at all. There are two main mechanics that you must master to complete endgame activities: mass miracles and item fusion. Both are a PITA. Miracles consist of using the battle maps to strategically directed portals to create a square so that the portal lines (based on direction of a character) loops back upon itself. To further expand on miracles and just portals in general, the entire game is based on this. Think of it as a system similar to geo symbols in Disgaea 1. Now imagine if in Disgaea 1 that you can only get more powerful by killing the geo symbols in a very specific fashion and you get the gist. Item fusion is just a mess of a concept. This is coming from someone that plays Path of Exile and constantly has to deal with the ~20 different gameplay systems that game has. I’ve read guides, I’ve watched example videos, I cannot get this dumb thing to work. The idea is you take a captured monster, equip it with an item (that you leveled up from purifying and/or miracles), add other gear to sacrifice, then sacrifice the monster to make the gear stronger. In practice it sounds simple, but when you factor in things like the item is limited by its level for the number of stats that it carries over going vertically starting from the top downwards or else it skips things, but you can add in stat modifiers IF its enough level to consume based on whatever slot you put those modifiers on the monster sacrificed aaaaaaand I’m lost. I’ve tried playing with this dumb system and it never works out for me. The kicker? NONE OF THIS IS EXPLAINED WORTH A DAMN IN GAME. There are other things too - like excessive battle animations, excessive EXP/leveling screens, the map design is just awful, and unclear chapter objectives. This is very rough mechanically. Difficulty seems to eb and flow. Because the item fusion is such a piss-poor mechanic to utilize, it's harder to get stronger thus, making the game harder. Also you are expected to constantly be using purification, which grants extra turns. If you ignore you’re missing out on potential area damage while continuously spawning enemies from the portals. However, utilizing purification is a crapshoot because as far as I can tell it's randomized in every map and you have to use it in a very specific way with straight lines to get the most out of it. [h1] [b] Graphics (Quality/Technical) – [3/10] [/b] [/h1] Very poor. The fonts and UI look well enough, but everything else - characters, enemies, sprites, and backgrounds, all look terrible and heavily pixelated. Technical issues, none. Bugs, none. This seems like a good port. i9-13900KF | RTX 4090 | 64GB RAM | 1440p @ 240hz | Windows 11 installed on SSD [h1] [b] Audio – [3/10] [/b] [/h1] Music tends to be very repetitive. Nothing really stands out like Disgaea 1. There is some voice acting, not fully though. Voices seem fine. [h1] [b] Replay Factor (Longevity) – [3/10] [/b] [/h1] There doesn’t seem to be as much replay value as Disgaea, not as much endgame content. There is NG+ and achievements alongside a hefty grind typical of Nippon Ichi, but even the achievements require you to get heavily into the endgame to unlock most of them. [h1] [b] Final Verdict – [3/10] [/b] [/h1] Disgaea 1 was my first Nippon Ichi game. So wanting to experience their full library from the beginning, I decided to try La Pucelle: Ragnarok (LPR) out knowing that it's an earlier game and there is most likely going to be some rough edges. While I can appreciate the beginnings of some good SRPG ideas taking fruition, I found LPR a pain to play. My biggest negative is without a doubt the mechanics, and is the reason I decided to end my play early. I felt that LPR offered entirely worse versions of everything that other SPRGs do better. The purity system is a worse version of the Geo system from Disgaea 1, and the item fusion is a terribly convoluted system where too much power is gated behind. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Disgaea 1’s item world, but the item fusion system is just leagues worse. I’m happy that Nippon Ichi continued to iterate on its design. As for the positives…. Not much. I would say it's nice to see the characters - Prier and Culotte in their home game as I’ve seen them in future Nippon Ichi games and always wondered about their origins. It’s also nice to be able to exit a map you’re in by moving to the edge, literally the only quality of life upgrade over Disgaea 1. Overall, I absolutely cannot recommend La Pucelle: Ragnarok. Perhaps only if you have nostalgia surrounding the title, but I felt like almost everything was so many steps back from Disgaea 1, that it’s painful to play this. Even games that came before this, like Final Fantasy Tactics, have excellent aspects which makes me think the issues I have could just be a product of development. This is an example of why it can be challenging to play a more recent game from the same developer then going backwards to their previous titles. It can be very hard to stomach poorly designed systems and less quality of life. Instead of LPR, I do recommend you check out Disgaea 1. Review here: https://steamcommunity.com/id/Synikx/recommended/405900?snr=1_5_9__402 [h1] [b] Recommend? [Y/N] [/b] [/h1] [h1]No[/h1] You can find my curator page here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Synik_GR

Прикольная штука, этакая допотопная дисгая впринципе ахуй, еще и Приер здесь есть это икс3 ахуй

I first played this game as La Pucelle: Tactics, back when George W. Bush was president of the United States and the PS3 hadn't even come out yet. A friend lent it to me, and I enjoyed it so much that after I returned it, I stayed on the lookout for it at my local game stores to finally buy it for my own. I still have it, along with the PS2 I played it on. But I bought it again here on Steam because these days it's easier for me to play on the computer, and because I was curious about the changes with Ragnarok. The changes and the extra story are minor, but I think the most mechanically useful in this day and age are the ones made for people who want to skip the constant battle animations and have the option to skip past a cut scene already watched. Gaming time is more precious than before, and the padding for extending a game as a desired effect has now become more about streamlining to maximize the fun parts, and not need a game to hit a minimum of 60 hours to be worthwhile. The additional story of Prier as a Demon-Lord was, however, a miss for me. I was under an impression that it'd be something that happens *after* the story, and instead it is actually something that supposedly takes place within the original narrative, in a disjointed 'this happens back in that chapter you just played where it didn't,' rather than having been added in throughout the narrative. It also causes in places a few retcon issues, which is especially noticeable if you play the original narrative very recently or have a good memory. Also annoying is that you don't have your full team that you did at the end of the original story, or what you equipped them with; those items vanish into the aether. With the changes to the way the purification works of creation multiple chains of 're-action,' the game's puzzle of purification became both more challenging and also easier. I like doing the purification puzzles, and so it was more fun, although at times it did make some maps that are meant to be challenging battles into a breeze of combo-purification miracles. For me, this game is something fun for what it is. I remember the story a bit more fleshed out and surprising in its minor story twist, but then again, I first played it when I myself was only a little older than Prier, and now that I'm on the cusp of 40, the story and characters read differently with that distance of time. It resonates more with nostalgia and a story that shaped my own concepts of how to write something that seems like an inevitable showdown between good and evil and instead strives to speak of how to break cycles through love and hope. If I played it for the first time now, I doubt I'd have made it past Chapter 1. People who enjoy turn based games, think-four-moves-ahead tactic challenges, shoujo Japanese stories, and the Nippon Ichi 'you can stay here forever grinding through the Dark World' games will like this one. You will have to be forgiving of the graphics, which were pixel art made for CRT TVs that would have softened all the edges to blend better, and without that display the pixels are harsh and unlovely.

Before I got this I didn't realize it was a side-scroller RPG, unlike Nippon Ichi's other works that I adoree, like Rhapsody or Disgaea, where you can roam around wherever you'd like in the overworld without the movement constraintss, which wasn't something for mee, but I could get behind itt (bonus 'cause the text font is simply awfull, dunno why they changed itt, but I could get used to it with timee) Howeverr, what I can't get behind is that the character portraits have clearly been ran through an AI upscalerr, which is a huge shamee, and now once I've seen it in gamee, I can't unsee itt. The lines/colors on the portraits are very muddiedd, the kind of muddied that only AI upscalers can dooo. Strangelyy, this was dishonestly never disclosed on the game's Steam store pagee, and having it only be slightly mentioned in one Steam review is rather jarringg. Aaand since nobody's seemed to have modded this version of the game yett, this can't be fixedd. Just play La Pucelle: Tactics or emulate the original Ragnarok with the English patch insteadd, not this AI upscaled re-releasee Thankfullyy, I was able to gather a few screenshots to show some examples of the AI upscaling in the character portraitss. Be careful guyss, hope my refund can go throughh: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3728099751 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3728101221 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3728101727

Came expecting to find out how the Disgaea boss got her horns Stayed for the feels

This didn't age as great as I expected but it's still a solid tactical RPG. Be prepared for a pretty brutal difficulty curve; power leveling is both not as easy or as intuitive as the Disgaea series. Great music, solid voice acting and a decent story round out the package. I am still very happy NIS is releasing a big chunk of their back catalogue on steam :)

Prier delivers on the hype after seeing her in every Disgaea for over a decade.