The Lost Child: A smorgasbord of goodness

 

I'm so engrossed in my run of The Lost Child that I somehow cannot find the time to write about it. I have to, though — if only to let my fellow FPDC aficionados know that this game is dope, and very much worth a purchase and a playthrough indeed. Without further ado, here's a (non-exhaustive) list of the things TLC nailed perfectly. 

 

The fighting system: Granted, there's not a shred of originality to be found in TLC's fighting system — bar maybe the fact that skill acquisition is random, which could actually be seen as a bit of a flaw. This is typical turn-based fare, with your usual element complementaries, skillsets, classes and the like; yet what that system lacks in originality, it makes up for in sheer depth. To put it simply, TLC totally lets you fight it your way. Want to bulldoze your way through by focusing on a few monsters and molding them into war horses? You can! Want to fine-tune your strategies to the fullest by swapping monsters on the fly and cherry-picking the perfect ones for the fight du jour? You can too! Want to do a bit of both? Why, you can as well! TLC comes with all the necessary tools to humour every fighting style, from the most mindlessly brutal to the most subtly strategic. 

 

The dungeon crawling: Let's face it, TLC's dungeons are not exactly pretty. However, they are incredibly well-designed: they boast just the right length to be engrossing without wearing you out, their layouts are stimulating without being over-complicated, and they offer genuinely clever puzzles that still remain fair and solvable without running to an FAQ. Add to this a perfectly balanced encounter rate, neither annoyingly high nor boringly low, and you get some pure dungeon-crawly goodness. As a matter of fact, TLC's small yet wholesome roster of dungeons delivers one of the best first-person crawling experience I've had since I started indulging in the genre. 

 

The sidequests: Dungeon crawlers usually don't lend themselves well to sidequests of the breather type, and that's kinda understandable: indeed, what could a dungeon crawler offer in the way of diversion, apart from even more crawling? TLC acknowledges that hurdle and tries its hardest to work around it, by streamlining its sidequests and offering great incentives for clearing them — and holy cow, does it succeed indeed. Not only are TLC's sidequests short and sweet, consisting often solely in beating a boss that kindly stands a couple of rooms away from the dungeon's entrance, but they deliver genuinely useful rewards for a change. Those rewards are none other than powerful special attacks to be used in battles, as well as complimentary gameplay features that can make your life as a TLC player genuinely better. The beauty of it all is that whilst none of these perks are truly necessary to play the game, they still make enough of a difference to justify hunting for them.

 

The overall balance: TLC manages to create a flawless and wholesome loop between its resources and gameplay features. Fighting trash mobs grants you loot and so-called Karma; the former can be sold for money, whilst the latter can be used to level up captured monsters. Money can then be used to strengthen your weapons, buff yourself up before entering dungeons or transforming useless monsters into Karma, which can then be reinvested in better monsters — all this to make your party stronger and allow you to fight more efficiently, get more loot and Karma, and so on. Nothing's wasted in this gorgeous display of self-sufficiency, and the game delivers just the pitch-perfect amount of loot and Karma: you probably won't ever have to farm if you manage those resources cleverly, but neither will you be swimming in them.

I just passed the 30-hour mark, and I can feel I'm heading towards the end. I'm certainly not done at all with writing about TLC, though; and I'll see you later with more posts about that game's sheer awesomeness. Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!