I stand atop a hill, nay a mountain of my fallen enemies. Monsters, demons, and corrupt soldiers all fear me. Cute little muchroom-people run in terror at my presence, for I have defeated La Pucelle Tactics. I picked it up a couple weeks ago and have been putting in a couple hours a night ever since. Ok, so I put in over fifty hours. It’s a fun game. Having gone through the plotline, rescued those who needed rescuing, smited those in need of smiting, and brought my wrath and fury down upon those who dared to stand against me, I have the following bits of advice for any who care to listen:

1. Pay no mind to the character descriptions on the official website. They’re wrong. They’re worse than wrong, they’re misleading.
2. Your physical combat abilites are really really really easy to develop. You don’t have to focus on them when improving your characters.
3. Your magical abilities are really not easy to develop. It may seem easier to use a physical attack and do a lot of damage now, but if you want to be able to use AoE elemental magic later in the game, you need to work on it and build up your skills.
4. You will want those AoE elemental magic skills later in the game.
5. Don’t count on having one or two powerful characters. There are plot points that remove some characters from play for several fights at a time. Diversify and be comfortable with your whole squad.
6. If you have purified a monster into joining your team, then spend some quality time levelling it up, don’t get too attached. Eventually that Zombie you recruited on the first map just isn’t going to be able to keep up anymore.
7. Make sure you have two people that can cast healing magic.
8. Learn how to merge equipment at the Rosenqueen shop. It’s a good way to reduce the number of accidentally-recruited monsters on your list and get cool stuff.
9. You don’t need to get more than two or three levels into the Cave of Trials before you’re perfectly capable of defeating the final boss.
10. You also don’t need to go to the Dark World.
11. Eclair is better than Prier.
12. Yes, Prier is in Disgaea too. This story takes place before Disgaea in the same setting.

That’s about all there is to it that doesn’t give anything away. I see a lot of potential in this subgenre of strategy game. Final Fantasy Tactics was one of my all-time favorite games, and this one was greatly enjoyable as well. As soon as I can justify to myself spending more money on another PS2 game I’m going to have to go pick up Disgaea, the sequel to La Pucelle Tactics. Yes, Disgaea was released in the US first, but that’s just the way things go sometimes. Go pick up a copy of yourself. You should get at least 50 hours of fun out of it, which is under a dollar per hour of entertainment. I suspect it’s pretty re-playable too, but the only way to know is to pick it up again. I’ll give it a whack after I’m prepped up for Friday’s D&D game.