E3 2015 – Lost Dimension Preview: Kill Your Friends

Lost Dimension is a tactical RPG developed by Lancrose for the Playstation 3 and PlayStation Vita. Yes, I know a lot of people want these RPGs on the PS4, and might be thinking of closing preview about now. But stay with me, it will be worth it.

In Lost Dimension, players take on the role of 18-year old Sho Kasugai. Sho and the 10 other members of a group named S.E.A.L.E.D. have been tasked with ascending a tower and defeating the terrorist who calls himself “The End.” Your group is comprised of individuals with special gifts similar to the X-Men. So you have a character with the power of telekinesis and then another with super human strength, and so on.

Visions of a Traitor

The kicker in all of this is your main character, Sho, who has the gift of visions, giving him the ability to see into the future. This comes in handy because at the end of each chapter, you will have a vote between your party to select the traitor in the group and kill them. It’s a really interesting mechanic that has you fighting on a team and then just offing someone in the group. I was told that because of this, the game will, of course, have multiple endings that you can achieve.

Enough about that story, it’s on to the combat. Lost Dimension gives you a six-person party, and in battle, your entire party is allowed to act once before it’s turned over to the enemies to act. Now each unit in your party has one action per team turn, though the game does give you a really cool option of deferring a character’s turn to another. So for example, if you had nothing to do with your healer, you could defer your turn to a DPS class, giving them an extra action during your team’s turn.

You will want to watch out in battle whenever you use defer or when you attack and take damage because it will reduce your Sanity meter. Once this hits 0 %, you character will go completely insane, attacking their own member and becoming uncontrollable.  This isn’t the only thing to watch out for, as things like Friendly Fire are on all the time and both the computer will counter attack you after every single attack should you be in range of them.

Assistance Needed

Characters in your party will also perform assist attacks whenever they’re in range of the person attacking, but only if they have a good relationship built up with them. This can take place with every person in your party, so you will have strategic decisions on how to build up relationships but more so, where to move your party members during battle.

If your mind wasn’t already blown by all of the really quirky features and ideas of this game, whenever you kill off a character at the end of each chapter, they will drop a Materia. If you use this Materia on one of your characters, you will no longer be able to learn anymore skills in your current skill tree, but will instead have the skills of the dead characters. So, if you, for some reason, kill off your healer, you might want to pick someone to learn his gifts.

I went into the Atlus booth having absolutely no idea what to expect from Lost Dimension and came out pleasantly surprised. The game isn’t going to win any graphics awards and some of the levels are rather bland, but the combat mechanics and concepts of the story are really unique and well done.

Lost Dimension will be releasing on the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita this July the 28th in North America and August 28th in Europe.