The Lost Child Review

Developer: Kadokawa Games

Publisher: NIS America

Genre: JRPG

Format: Playstation 4, Playstation Vita, Nintendo Switch

Released: June 22nd 2018

Pre Order Here: http://nisamerica.com/games/the-lost-child/product/purchase.php

This game is right up my alley. Bizarre demon designs, customisable character (the stats anyway), dialogue choices and capturing of said demons. The question is, does The Lost Child do this well or is it a bit lackluster. To help answer this, let me just say that when I have woken up the last few days, 1 of my first thoughts is I need to play The Lost Child before I do anything else.

Ok let’s start off with one of the weaker points to The Lost Child. The story starts off pretty cliche with you being the chosen one and an Angel offers help and comes to the spa with you…… wait a minute!!! Yes you do get dialogue choices but during some key moments when you may want to disagree with the angel you have to follow want she wants to happen. This could be upsetting for those of you who like to show off your evil intentions. While this isn’t a deal breaker, I would have liked to have an option to go rogue. Another thing which irks me a little is that you get the usual items after battle which have the sole purpose of being sold. This is good because we all want money. The downside those is you have to sell them 1 stack at a time instead of all.

Junk items in one go. It’s not frustrating as it groups them in stacks of 20 but it’s just something that speeds up the process by a lot. The last annoyance for me is the good old if the MC dies it’s game over. I can understand if the Angel dies as well but not just you. I know other games do it as well, including my favourite game series but I still don’t like it in them either.

Ok I’ve got rid of all the negatives, now get ready for a bunch of positives. Firstly all the characters are likeable and have a lot of development. The voice acting isn’t bad either. The dialogue choices you make give you different types of karma which is used on your demons. There are 3 types of karma and each type benefits a specfic type of demon. Good, Evil and Dual. In battle you have a hostility meter which shows you who is most likely to be attacked. A great feature which allows you to plan your strategy based on who is aggro-ed the most. Why haven’t more RPGs done this? As mentioned you can capture demons, you do this by using your Astral Burst. It has a gauge which does more damage the closer to 100% it is. It’s super easy to capture demons which is a huge plus.

The more unique demons and even bosses can be captured however they need a key item to purify them as well as a lot more karma. Karma is pretty much experience points for demons, You can use it to purify captured demons, making them part of your team or you can level them up by pumping them for of Karma. Steroids are a thing of the past. When roaming the map there are demons that chase you which adds a bit of tension when they are super strong. I just wish there were more that chased you. Finally you can transfer skills from 1 demon to another. This is kept balanced by offering up other skills which are destroyed to make room for the transferred skill. A great way to stop demons from being overpowered.

Now before I move onto the score there are 2 things that I hope improve if a sequel is made… please make a sequel. First is the chest mechanic, chests have a danger level and unlock level. If the danger level fills you get hit by a trap and if the unlock level fills it well it unlocks. I like the element of danger.

The downside is it’s super easy to unlock chest by clicking unlock. I hope that the next games up the danger and makes it more of a puzzle to unlock. Lastly the way skills are learned. The Lost Child has a Fruits of Wisdom mechanic which gives out skills randomly, the more skills a demon has the less likely it is to learn one. Personally I don’t mind this mechanic as I like the surprise factor when the screen flashes mid battle a new skill pops up. The problem is, there is clear indicator when it’s going to happen and what demon it’s going to happen to. The when I like the way it is, a surprise. The what demon is what I would change. A little meter in the status screen would be nice. Keep it a surprise, just let people know who it could happen.

Enough of my nonsense, on to the score. I give The Lost Child a 9/10. This is one of the best RPGs I’ve played this console generation. While I would love to give it a higher scores, there are some tweaks that need to be made in order to make it a classic. Seriously though go get this game. You can thank me in the comments.

One of the best RPGs of this Console Generation - Mamushi