La Pucelle: Ragnarok

I have a soft spot for games that got lost in the shuffle of history, and La Pucelle: Ragnarok is exactly that kind of rescue operation. The original La Pucelle: Tactics landed in the West in 2004, right as Disgaea was exploding in popularity, and it quietly sank into cult obscurity. The expanded Ragnarok version, with its new scenarios, bonus characters, and quality-of-life additions, had been Japan-exclusive on PSP since 2009. Getting it on PC in 2022, finally uncensored and complete, felt like finding a chapter torn out of an old favourite book. The setup is deceptively charming: siblings Prier and Culotte are freshly certified demon hunters working out of a small church in the French-named kingdom of Paprica, and they stumble into a conspiracy involving a rival religious order with very dark intentions. The tone starts light - Prier is a hot-headed teenager with a baton and a serious attitude problem, and the game leans into that energy with wit. But the writing earns genuine emotional weight as chapters unfold. Each chapter carries its own theme and, crucially, its own branching endings. Exploring towns, talking to NPCs, and checking cracked doors on previous maps can all shift how a chapter resolves - bad endings prompt the characters to reflect on what they missed, which is a clever way of rewarding curiosity without punishing players too harshly. The Overlord Prier bonus scenario, new to Ragnarok, takes that same heroine in a noticeably darker direction and offers four distinct endings on its own. It is not as long as the main story, but it is one of the more interesting "what if" detours in the NIS back catalogue. On the combat side, the system looks approachable and then reveals surprising depth. Battles play out on isometric grids where positioning is everything: stack Prier, Alouette, and Culotte adjacent to a target and all three join the attack, but that same adjacency logic applies to enemies ganging up on your weakest unit. Dark Portals scattered across maps pulse out streams of dark energy that can be sealed using the Purification mechanic, and sealing them in chains builds momentum that rewards tactical patience rather than just rushing forward. Monsters can be converted to your side through repeated purification and then recruited as cannon fodder or genuine party contributors, depending on how you build them. The stat growth system ties character abilities to both level and equipment multipliers - equip a character with staves to grow their intelligence, bludgeon them through battles to raise strength - which means build variety is real and mismanaging it early can produce genuinely underpowered characters by midgame. A new Re-Action mechanic was added in Ragnarok, and Disgaea crossover recruits including Laharl, Etna, Flonne, and Prinny round out the roster for fans of the wider NIS universe. The honest warnings: the enemy AI is predictable, almost aggressively so. Enemies beeline for your weakest unit every single time, which is exploitable but also means mid-tier maps rarely feel threatening unless you are significantly under-leveled. The grind is present, as it always is with Nippon Ichi titles, though it skews more toward optional power-fantasy territory than mandatory slog for the main story. Portrait upscaling is rough compared to the pixel sprites, and some of the newly recorded voice lines received a mixed reception at launch. The PC port itself runs cleanly on modern hardware, though dual-monitor setups on older laptops reportedly introduced some input lag. For anyone who missed this in 2004, or who simply wants to trace the DNA of Disgaea back to its roots, this is the definitive way to experience a game that deserved far more attention than it received the first time around. Monika, Scout Team