	La Pucelle: Tactics
	Developer: Nippon Ichi Publisher: Koei Release Date: Out Now Players: 1	Words By:
It’s funny how things turn out sometimes. We were very lucky to get Disgaea: Hour of Darkness released over here, even if the Japanese voice-acting was cut. We saw Phantom Brave released earlier this year, and now we’ve got La Pucelle: Tactics. Here’s the funny part though: this game is about 40 months old, and saw a release in Japan a year before Disgaea. Why are they even bothering to release it here, you might ask? Well, I’m sure I wasn’t the only person that loved Disgaea, and while it had a lot of replayability, I wanted more. This is it. Although La Pucelle: Tactics may be quite old, it’s still a lot of fun to play, and you can see how Disgaea’s battle system evolved from it. Yes, it’s not quite as refined, but the system in general is still excellent, and a lot better than most of the Strategy RPGs that have been released since. While Disgaea had you playing as Laharl, the Prince of Darkness, La Pucelle’s lead character is Prier, a demon hunter (who you may recognise if you played Disgaea). While the basics of the battle system remain the same, the game has a whole different feel to it, and is a bit more focused on the story than Disgaea was. It’s not quite as long as Disgaea, and it doesn’t have anything on the scale of the item world, but the main story is still a nice length. I’m not going to say any more about the story in the review though; it’s better than Disgaea’s in my opinion, and I don’t want to spoil anything. The battle system has a few twists of its own that help distinguish it from other SRPGs. For example, there are Dark portals in most battles which play an important role, and how you deal with them can turn the tide of the battle. You can purify these portals, which will remove them from the map, but also damage any enemies on the path coming out of it in a similar fashion to Disgaea’s Geostones. There are other incentives to do this as well - every so often, they’ll spawn a new enemy into the battle, so purifying these portals in time can be very important, but they’re often close to enemies, so you have to get your priorities right, and many portals will take several purifications before they disappear. Something that helps differentiate La Pucelle from Disgaea is that you can convert enemies, which I think is a great idea. If you purify an enemy enough, it will start that enemy thinking about converting to your side, if you do this enough, you can make it 100% certain they will convert. What this means is that once you defeat them, there’s a chance that they will join your party, and if they do, you can get them to rejoin the battle immediately to fight on your side. Again, like the dark portals you need to prioritise here - it’s no use using all your turns purifying an enemy if it’s going to kill you before you can defeat it. There’s yet another interesting twist in the game; you can give a creature and item to the “Agent of the Dark World,” usually found in town, and combine them to make powerful weapons. It takes a lot of effort to get really good items in the game this way, as you have to level up the creature enough to make it worth it, and use the item enough to allow it to be combined. While not as polished and refined as Disgaea, La Pucelle: Tactics is a must buy for Strategy RPG fans, regardless of whether you played Disgaea or not. If you have played Disgaea, it’s nice to be able to play something that’s similar enough to almost feel like an extension to the game, but different enough to keep things fun. Did I mention the game is similar to Disgaea? You might want to check that out too...

Best Bits
- It’s even more Disgaea-style gameplay from Nippon Ichi.
- Just like Disgaea, there are some genuine “laugh out loud” moments.
- You’re getting a lot of gameplay for your money.
- Great combat system that stays fun even after the amount of hours you’ll be putting into the game.

Worst Bits
- It was released after Disgaea here, but was made before it, and you can tell.
- PSone style graphics again.
- Will only appeal to the hardcore strategy RPG’ers


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