LISA: The Painful

LISA: The Painful is a side-scrolling RPG for people who like bleak humor, harsh attrition, and combat that keeps taking things away. By our assessment, its strongest point is the way it mixes party management with a world that is funny in the ugliest possible way, so every new area feels both risky and absurd. The downside is the same one that makes it memorable: it is punishing, emotionally nasty, and not built to comfort anyone. In practice it plays like a grim trek with limited resources, awkward choices, and a lot of damage that lingers beyond the fight itself. Compared with cleaner indie RPGs, it is messier and meaner, but also harder to forget. LISA: The Painful leaves little room for casual drifting, because the whole experience is built around pressure and loss.