Title: Lux-Pain
Price: $29.99
System(s): DS
Release Date: March 24, 2009
Publisher (Developer): Ignition Entertainment (Killaware and Marvelous Entertainment)
ESRB Rating: “Teen” for Drug Reference, Mild Language, Suggestive Themes and Violent References
Pros: Gorgeous visuals, lots of voice acting, engaging story, multiple endings, interesting way to investigate suspects, comes with an art book and will keep you busy for hours.
Cons: Voice acting script doesn’t match the on-screen text.
Overall Score: One thumb up, one sideways; 85/100; B; * * * 1/2 out of 5
Visual novels haven’t really caught on in North America and other regions like they have in Japan. The genre, which is a bit like playing a video game choose-your-own-adventure novel, is quite popular overseas, but the so far the Phoenix Wright games are the only ones to find success outside Japan.
Hopefully, that will change with Ignition’s decision to bring Marvelous and Killaware’s Lux-Pain to the US. The company has been taking quite a few chances on niche games lately, and Lux-Pain is quite possibly the perfect title to help introduce US gamers to visual novels. With a dark, deep storyline with multiple endings, different means to progress the adventure and gorgeous anime-style visuals, Lux-Pain will provide a very different game experience and hopefully find a place for itself.
Stopping the Silent by scanning your surroundings.
There are beings known as Silent in the world. Silent infects individuals, wrecking havoc with their emotions, personality and memories and causing them to do horrendous, unspeakable things.
Atsuki Saijo is a young man whose life was destroyed by the effects of Silent and willingly underwent a procedure which gave him the ability to use Sigma and wear Lux-Pain. He now works with FORT, an organization devoted to finding and eradicating Silent whenever it is detected.
Following an occurance known as the Shanghai Incident, where Silent infected 10,000 people and caused mass suicides, FORT has traced the root of the infection to Kisaragi City. Atsuki is dispatched there, under the guise of a high school transfer student, to investigate the city, find and eliminate Silent. Atsuki must use the Sigma System to pick up Worms from both people and the environment, extract them so they become Terms and then imprint them or synthesis them to obtain new information from targets in a strange form of telepathy.
Lux-Pain should be either seen, or heard. Pick one.
Lux-Pain does so many things right. It has a fantastic story, with lots of options, twists and turns. The presentation is perfect, with the worm extraction being conducted in a manner similar to Trauma Center and term synthesis being similar to The World Ends With You‘s imprinting. The characters are believable. The storyline doesn’t drag. There’s lots of voice acting and quite a few animated sequences. It’s, in theory, the perfect visual novel.
Except for the voice acting. It isn’t that the voice actors are bad. Quite the opposite, the casting is practically perfect. It’s more what they’re saying. The voice acting script doesn’t match the in-game text. It feels like you’re having two conversations at the same time about a similar idea.
Sometimes it’s like having two different conversations about entirely different topics. In the very beginning, the character Natsuki is lamenting being stuck at FORT headquarters while Atsuki is sent to Kisaragi City. The voice actor is talking about how she wants to visit America, but the on-screen text is talking about her desire to visit Japan.
Since dialogue is so important in a game like this, it would have been best to pick one script and stick to it. Or, keep the Japanese voice acting and go with subtitles throughout the game.
The best thing to do is consciously decide to follow either the text or voices. If you choose text, mute the game and read. If you choose voices, put on some head phones and try to focus on images during scenes with voice acting.
Journey through Lux-Pain and experience all its secrets.
Aside from some rather unfortunate dissonance when it comes to the voice acting and text, Lux-Pain is a memorable and mature game that fans of horror games and thriller movies should experience. It’s a practically seamless production and a wonderful way to introduce North American gamers to visual novels. The subject matter and presentation may not bring Lux-Pain mainstream success, but I can easily see it becoming a DS cult classic.
While the idea of a game centering solely on text may be daunting, Lux-Pain is worth taking a chance on. Those with the patience to read and explore the game will definitely be rewarded.
Site [Lux-Pain]
I'm still undecided as to whether it would be worth it to plunk down another $30 or simply continue to struggle through the remainder of my Japanese import copy…the only consolation for that being that no one can match the greatness that is Mamoru's voice acting skills :B
The translation is pretty good… just the voice acting/text mishaps get so annoying.
I'm pretty far into the game (I think). It has a lot of potential, and fun, but there are some flaws. I got confused at times with the story, but it's still pretty good. The voice acting is on par with Persona 3 and Persona 4. The text, well, typos and errors…are they in US or Nihon?! is what kept running through my mind. I wish they would bring more games like this into the US.
I think the voice acting is good, I just wish there was more of it… some parts have no voice overs when I really want them there… I actually don't mind that it doesn't match up with the text, I personally think it gets the same idea across, but I definitely think the text translation needs a lot more work. I've only gotten up to chapter three or four, but I'm feeling overwhelmed with typos and just… really weird grammatical errors. The kind I usually poke fun at in SNK games, but I'm trying my hardest not to because I really like the game despite all that.
It's not stopping me from playing the game, I'm very engaged in the story, I just wish Nola didn't have to call me every five minutes to give me an update on what's going on, I just want to explore and talk to more people.
Overall, though, the game is great in my opinion – as someone who plays a lot of jrpg's and visual novel games. I hope this leads to more visual novel games being brought to North America.
The voice acting is very good. They really did a good job with casting. Just the typos, text translation and mismatch between the two really gets annoying.
I totally agree about Nola! I mean, I'm reading and experiencing everything – she doesn't have to nag.
It'd be great if Lux-Pain succeeds and finds an audience, leading to more translated/localized visual novels.