Lost Dimension

Lost Dimension is an interesting game. It’s the end result of what you would get from mixing the gameplay of Valkyria Chronicles, with the level design of a dungeon crawler, and bits and pieces of the trial systems from games like Phoenix Wright or Dangan Ronpa. On paper it sounds like a bit of a hodgepodge mess (and it kind of is), but oddly enough it creates a unique experience that helps to set the game apart from other dungeon crawlers on the Vita.

The plot of Lost Dimension is fairly simple at first glance. In a futuristic world the apocalypse is upon humanity. A man calling himself “The End,” issues a challenge to the leaders of the world, “Kill me and the end of the world will be prevented.” A group of ragtag psychic soldiers is sent into the pillar-like fortress The End has holed himself up in. Not everything is as easy as it seems though, for there is a traitor within the group’s ranks, and it’s up to Sho Kasugai, who can see into the thoughts of others, to determine who the traitor is so the group can continue on with their mission.

Missions are played in a mix of real-time and turn-based strategy. During your turn you can move units freely within a circle around them based on a movement stat, the higher the movement the farther you go. After this you can take shots at enemies, heal allies, or use a skill called “differ” which refreshes an allies movement at the cost of the other character’s turn. Combat is really interesting and fun. There’s a support mechanic where if you attack an enemy while another ally is also within shooting distance of them they’ll help you to deal additional damage before the enemy then retaliates. Knowing how to approach a cluster of enemies is the game’s biggest challenge, as some moves can be countered while others cannot, some moves hit both enemies and allies, and others are single target. The enemy AI can make use of all the same tactics you can, and it can lead to you getting overrun if you’re not careful. If I had to give a selling point for Lost Dimension it would be its combat.

The End forces the team to vote off a traitor at the end of every floor in the pillar. The traitor is randomized, which makes for really interesting gameplay as it means you have to adjust your tactics on the fly depending on who ends up being your traitor for that floor. Did one of the beefier characters end up being your traitor? Well now you’ll need to abuse ranged attacks more. Was the healer your traitor? Now you’ll have to play more carefully and factor in needing more healing items. From a gameplay perspective this is one of the most interesting ways I’ve seen to create replayability in an RPG. Outing a traitor forces them to be “erased,” and they drop materia, which is an equip item that holds what skills that character had unlocked. You can then equip that materia to a different character to give them the skills the traitor had before their erasure, but those skills can no longer be leveled up.

Unfortunately, the traitor system doesn’t translate as well into the story as does into the gameplay. Most of the dialogue in the game is generic, and outside of two cutscenes before the traitor system is revealed no one ever interacts with anyone else on a personal level, outside of with the main character. Lines are kept as far away from personal as possible to prevent mess ups if someone is a traitor. You wouldn’t want your mage responding to a question asked by support if the support was a traitor in the previous levels, I guess. There are all kinds of checks and balances that could have been done to get around this, but the solution the developer came up with, makes the cast seem uncaring and distant with one another. The concept of the traitor is never revealed either, at least not on your first play through. The question of “who’s the traitor?” is constantly on the casts’ minds but when you actually out somebody there’s never an explanation or backlash from the accused. “Oh whoops, you found me out. Good luck, guys,” is the response of just about everyone. The act of voting on someone’s death is supposed to be a heavy choice for the team of psychics, but if they can’t take it seriously then why should the player?

There’s also no dialogue that will ever point to someone being a traitor. The way you find your traitor is by spotting them in a post-level mini-game where all your party members will flash across the screen while their thoughts are displayed to you. If you spot a red line of text that means you might have your traitor. Might, being the keyword. You’ll have to replay levels several times just to find party members that consistently show red lines of dialogue. After that you have to use Sho’s ability to dive into the minds of others to see how they truly feel. You have a limited number of dives, which are tracked by points you accumulate after certain missions. Diving is uneventful and uninteresting. You see lines of text that are supposed to represent that party member’s thoughts, but they do not change regardless of what level of the tower you are on, or for whether or not that party member is the traitor. It was a little odd having a party member’s thoughts reflect how they wanted their teammates to stop dying because of the traitor system, and how they wanted to save the world, only to find out that they were they traitor the whole time.

In order to access the true ending of the game you have to reach a maximum level of friendship with each party member. You do this by taking them into missions and having dialogue exchanges with them between stages. You’re limited to two per-stage, which forces at least one extra new game+. I was aiming to reach whatever the true end was before doing this review, but it turned out one of the 3 people I still needed to max out was the new traitor on the very first level of my second game. A play through from start to finish is around 15-20 hours, which doesn’t sound too bad for an RPG that's meant to be replayed over and over, except for the fact that Lost Dimension hits a level of boring repetitiveness up there with folding laundry.

Stages get reused a lot, with invisible walls taken down or put up to change their shape. Graphically, enemies begin to all look the same by the halfway point. It’s a shame, really, because visually the game looks very nice with mixes of cool colors contrasted with neon reds, blues, and yellows that gives the game the science-fiction feel it’s aiming for. The repetitiveness doesn’t end at visuals though, every level will always have a few melee and sniper enemies scattered about with a big metal gear-like machine as the boss. With such an interesting team building system and skill system, it’s disappointing that once you find one working tactic that you will never have to change your approach up because of repetitive enemy layouts. I talked about having to change tactics on the fly depending who the traitor is earlier but, since skills can carry over through materia, all you have to do is slap their move set on the next best character and nothing has really changed. Outside of your healer there’s at least two people who can fit one role and, unless you have some downright awful luck, at least one of them will probably not end up betraying you.

Lost Dimension falls into that iffy category of whether you should play it or not. If you’re a fan of games like Valkyria Chronicles you might get some enjoyment out of it, and if the title ever goes on sale in the future it is worth a purchase. There’s a somewhat interesting story in this game, but being at the mercy of RNG to determine if you get to enjoy it is a bit of buzzkill when the narrative already feels weak from the lack of character interaction. While maybe a more dedicated RPG player could get through it, Lost Dimension lost my interest after my first play through.