The best way I can start this off is by saying Lost Dimension is fantastically frustrating. This little gem of a game was developed by Lancarse and published by Atlus, so you can already expect to have a wonderful time playing the game. No, you’re not being taken to the Twilight Zone or anything like that, but you will be placed in a tower where you must fight to survive, so let’s get ready.

With the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One out, many gamers may forget about their old Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. When I started Lost Dimension, I was reminded of all the hours those old consoles provided me. The PlayStation 3 may be an oldie, but it definitely proves it’s still a goodie with this game. The graphics are beautiful, with lush environments in the tower where the game takes place. Battles feature full 3D renders of the characters and enemies, but when dialogue or certain story scenes take place, the characters are represented by a 2D render. Each floor has a different type of environment, ranging from a mechanized area to a ruined city, and while these areas sound nice, they really capture the distraught essence. You’ll feel on edge as you progress through the game and the areas reflect a sense of urgency as you scale the tower, quickly realizing that you have to see this mission to the end and finish it. The room where the main cast has made their base of operations is unchanging, but the different battlefield locations truly are a sight to behold. The graphics and art follow a manga style, but manage to capture an element of realism to add to the graphical quality and you’ll see that throughout the game.

Graphics are nice and all, but the sound adds a certain element that should mesh well with the graphics, and Lost Dimension strikes the right chords. Ok, that was a terrible joke and I am sorry. Moving along, the sound and music definitely fit the atmosphere this game wants you to feel and that is a sense of foreboding. You’re trapped in a tower and a soft, haunting melody plays as you make your way through, trying to figure who is or isn’t a traitor. Who can you really trust? This had such a profound effect of me, and I honestly had a difficult time progressing through this game because of that atmosphere. The music switches to a more upbeat tempo when you engage in battles, but there’s still that trace of foreboding lingering in the background. As you go through each floor, the style of music will change. For example, on the machine floor, the music sounds more electronic. The change in music really captures the environment on each floor, and you don’t really get a chance to get extremely comfortable with any one floor or style. I think it’s a nice change, personally.

Lost Dimension features a nice cast of voice actors for the characters and there are several scenes with full voice acting. Not every scene or dialogue features this, however. Most dialogue between characters will simply feature a one-liner from the respective character and you’ll have to read the text. There is an auto feature which can be turned on with the (Square) button, so fast reading players don’t have to sit there and press (X) over and over. In addition, weapons and attacks against enemies or the player characters reflect the weapon used. If someone shoots a gun, you’ll hear the sound of a gunshot, as expected. Same goes for a sword or someone who attacks with their fists. I think it’s nice to have more realistic sounds in a game like this rather than the cartoony effects that seem more prevalent.

In Lost Dimension, players are tasked with climbing a tower as Sho Kasugai, the main protagonist, and defeating the villain who awaits at the top. There are ten others who will join you and you must all work together in order to reach the top, but there’s a catch: There are traitors in the midst. Your job is to weed out the traitors and get them voted off at the end of each floor, but when you know there's a traitor in the midst, can you really trust each other?

Players start off in a single room known as the Lobby where all the characters gather to prepare for the next mission. This area acts as the main hub of the game, as after every mission or event, you will be brought to this room. In this room, players can either talk to their comrades, set up characters with equipment, generate items from the generator using energy, select a new mission to tackle at the Gate or use Sho’s vision gift. Players can also press Start and save their game, load a game, change settings, check available tips, listen to various BGM in the sound test and return to the title screen. Also, just so you're aware, you cannot make multiple save files as you progress through a playthrough. When you save, the game will save to a single file and load from that file as well. The game also autosaves to the file during key events. I'm the type of person who enjoys making 3 or 4 save files, so I can reload if I make a mistake, and not being able to do that threw me off. Just giving you all the heads up if you're like me.

The majority of your time will be spent fighting enemies in Lost Dimension. After all, you’ve gotta climb that tower. Players can choose five other characters to deploy with Sho into battle and your team of six has to clear the objective, which is shown in the details screen of the mission you selected. Players can also check how much experience and energy (game currency) they’ll get from the mission. The map shown will display where each character will spawn once you start the mission. Your characters won’t always spawn together, so you should keep in mind each of the spawn points and select characters who would be best in a certain spawn point. The battle prep is just as important as the battle, and a good strategy, along with good placements, can go a long way to helping you succeed.

In battle, the HUD provides players with a lot of the information they’ll need to prevail. To the top left, players can see the turn order, number of enemies left to kill, and who is acting currently. To the top right, players can see their characters' turn order, as well as the mini-map. You can switch to other characters by pressing the (L1) and (R1) buttons, so if you’d like to skip over someone’s turn for now and have someone else go, feel free to do so. You’ll probably end up doing that a lot to get the most out of everyone’s turn. The mini-map displays your characters in blue and the enemies in a pinkish color. To the bottom right, players can see the selected character’s stats. The stats shown are their level, name, Hitpoints (HP), Gift Points (GP), and Sanity (SAN). We all know what HP is: Once this hits 0, the character will go down and will need to be revived. Gift Points allow you to use your character’s Gifts and each use will drain this bar. Think of it as a Mana bar, basically. Sanity starts at 100% and decreases each time the player uses a Gift or takes damage. Once this hits 0, the character will go berserk and receive a massive stat boost, but will attack both enemies and comrades. Seems to me the berserk character prioritizes your comrades, but maybe I just have bad luck.

Berserk is a pretty big concern, but there’s other ailments you should be concerned about as well. Don’t look at me like that, this is an RPG after all. What RPG doesn’t have a plethora of status ailments to keep you down? Anyway, the enemies you encounter also have Sanity bars. When their Sanity is depleted to 0, they will become dazed. This renders them unable to act and their stats will be lowered for one turn. Keep in mind that the daze will wear off after one turn. Fear is a status condition that is applied to your teammates when one of them goes berserk. The condition only lasts 3 turns, but all Sanity costs will increase during this time. The seal condition renders the character from using Gifts and this status is also cured after 3 turns. Stun renders a unit unable to take any action and it cures after one turn. The poison condition causes the afflicted character to take damage after they perform an action and it dissipates after 3 turns. Make sure you go into battle with plenty of status-curing items to avoid falling into an unfavorable situation.

Once you’ve deployed, your characters and the enemy will take turns selecting actions. Players can check the status of everyone on the field by pressing the (Triangle) button. The player will move first, and during this time you will issue an order to each of the six characters. You can move around the battlefield with the Left Stick, and the area a specific character can move is signified by a golden circle. You can move anywhere within this circle and press the (Circle) button to move the character back to their starting position. After, or before, moving, players can select another action by pressing the (X) button. These actions include Attack, Gift, Item, Defer, and Wait. The Attack command should be self-explanatory: If your unit is within range, they will simply attack whatever you selected. Take note that attacks are not 100% accurate. Whenever you attack, you’ll see the percent accuracy of your attack landing. The same is true of enemy attacks. The Gift command allows your unit to use a special technique, but this costs Gift Points and Sanity. The Item command allows you to use an item from your inventory and the Defer command allows you to transfer a character’s turn to another character who has already acted at the cost of ten Sanity points. The Wait command lets you skip your turn without performing an action and also restores a small amount of Sanity. Choose your actions wisely, as poor choices can result in many a death.

Lost Dimension doesn’t place much emphasis on difficulty settings. In the options, players can change the difficulty from Easy to Normal and the default setting is Normal. Personally, I didn’t find the Normal setting so hard. The biggest issue for me was fighting efficiently and strategically. You do need to be cautious of your character placements and how you proceed to take down the enemy. Basically, the real difficulty lies in how well you can strategize and organize your team. You should also make sure you’re keeping your characters leveled properly and equipped with up to date gear. Stronger enemies hurt like hell for an under-leveled or poorly equipped team. If I saw an enemy several levels higher above my characters, I would go back and redo some previous missions to get leveled up and able to take them down. I got my characters killed several times before I started having them cooperate together as an actual team, then I started seeing success consistently. Well, that and I over-leveled a few times. I have no shame in admitting that!

Lost Dimension has a few unique surprises to give players a fresh experience and you’d better get used to them if you want to climb the tower safely. The biggest game-changing mechanic players want to keep note of at all times is the Trust and Vision system. Sho’s Gift is the ability to see Visions, and this is how players will weed out the traitors. After each mission, Sho will hear the inner voices of the comrades who participated in the mission. Normal voices will appear in white, but voices of a potential traitor will appear in red. There also may be multiple red voices present after a mission. Players can open the Vision Menu from the Lobby or by pressing (Triangle) during conversations or screens where the command prompt is available. This opens four new tabs with the Trust Levels tab, the Battle Rankings tab, the Vote Forecast for the next judgment and the Vision History. Trust levels will raise as players cooperate with team members in battle and also talk to them. Battle Rankings display how much a certain character has contributed to battles and characters with higher battle rankings have more pull in the votes. The Vote Forecast simply shows who will be voted for at the next judgment. Players will need to keep steady track of each of these tabs and use them to resolve who they think the traitor is. To this end, the most important tab will be the Vision History. The Vision History tab will show how many voices were heard at the end of the mission and also who accompanied you on a specific mission for the last ten missions. You should definitely try different team combinations in order to deduce the identity of the traitor!

Lost Dimension has quite a few surprises, but nothing like the judgment process. After clearing the main missions on a certain floor, players will have to enter a special room known as the Judgment Room. In this room, all characters will vote on a character to erase and wipe them from the team. You can vote for anyone you’d like, but your teammates will vote independently of you. Ideally, you want to influence them to vote for who you think the traitor is and the way you do this is by answering appropriately when they approach you after a mission. There’s a chance a character will come to you and ask who you think the traitor is or state who they believe the traitor is. Your answer will sway the votes to that person for the next judgment. The Vote Forecast screen will pop up each time, so you can always see your progress or what changes have occurred. Also, after the character you have voted for is erased, they will leave behind a Fate Materia. This is basically a crystallized version of their Gift abilities and it can be equipped by your remaining party members. The Fate Materia grants your character the Gift abilities of the erased character and each character can equip up to two Fate Materia. Don’t let your teammate’s death be in vain, even if they were a traitor.

When you join a team, trust between teammates is essential and this is even truer for a team on the battlefield. The same can be said for your team in Lost Dimension. As you work with your teammates, you will foster your relationship with them and this can be checked in the Trust Menu of the Vision Menu. When you hover over a character, the other character portraits will raise to a certain level to indicate the level of trust. These levels are from Hated, Bad, Normal, Good and Close. You raise your trust with each other by taking teammates into missions, healing them when they ask for it, and talking to them after a mission. Characters with trust between each other will also perform assist attacks when the other attacks an enemy and they are in range to do so. As you increase your relationship with your teammates, they will ask you to accompany them on a special mission known as a Character Quest. These missions are like sub quests and require that Sho and the specific character are deployed in the quest. Each character has one Character Quest they can invite you to and you can’t re-challenge a Character Quest that you have cleared previously. Sho and the character also cannot be killed in the mission or the mission will count as a fail and you will have to retry. If the character that invited you to the mission is erased, you can no longer do that quest. I personally liked the quests because they served to flesh out the character’s past. Oh, be careful when tackling Yoko Tachibana’s quest as well. I did the mission four times over and each time the game froze after the end mission dialogue. I tried it again after completing other missions and for some reason it worked. I'm not entirely sure what the cause of the freeze is and you may have different results, but I thought it may save you some frustration. I definitely wish someone told me beforehand I’d have an issue with it.

Maybe you’re still sticking tough with your last generation consoles or you’ve just run out of games to play on your current generation stuff. Either way, I definitely recommend you pick up Lost Dimension and give it a try. This game is a ton of fun and provides the rollercoaster of feels gamers love in their games. Even after you finish your playthrough, you can go through it all again with the New Game + Mode and see what character will stab you in the back there. I still feel frustrated by that mechanic, but in the good way. The traitor mechanic forces you to play detective and try to figure who is or isn’t on your side. I love all the characters though, so it was really hard for me to come to terms with who was a traitor. That feeling is even worse when it’s a character you’ve grown attached to. You’ll understand what I mean when you give it a try yourself. Now leave me alone. I need to find another box of tissues and cry over my precious Himeno. Why doesn’t she realize it didn’t have to be this way?!