Disclaimer: I am about 1/3 of the way through the game at the time of writing this preview.

What happens when you put Danganronpa, Fire Emblem, and Shin Megami Tensei Soul Hackers into a blender and sprinkle Lego City Undercover’s load times? You get Lost Dimension.

Lost Dimension is for PS Vita/PS3

At first, Lost Dimension seems like your stereotypical JRPG. You have a group of teens who all have special abilities and have to climb to the top of a tower to stop an enemy from destroying the world. In a sense, it is.

But then comes the twist: In your climb up the tower you find out there are traitors in your group. Each time you reach a new floor in the tower you uncover a new traitor. Now, you want to know what the kicker is? The traitor for each floor is different on each play through. Remember that character you grew close to in Danganronpa, only to be crushed when they were murdered, or murdered someone? Well in this game, it’s worse. This game borrows elements from Persona where you need to build bonds with your party members in between battles. Meaning at any time your best friend can betray you. There were times where I got extremely close to a certain character only to have them revealed as the traitor, and the fact that it’s different every play through means that no matter who you get close to, they could be the one to stab you in the back, so there is no way to brace yourself for impact. To determine the traitor, you actually have to go based on evidence and visions your main character has throughout the course of the floor. You see a new vision after each quest you complete, so doing side quests are important to get as many clues as possible that point to the real culprit.

The worst part is, you have to kill the traitor. Not only that, but it’s entirely possible to kill the wrong person if you can’t get your team to agree with you or if you have the wrong culprit in mind. And this is a choice you have to carry with you through the rest of the game. It’s a very cool mechanic and it keeps the game interesting.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s go on to the other part of the games gameplay. You are currently traversing a tower filled with several monsters and enemies. In order to make your way through missions, you must fight your way through said monsters and complete objectives. The game uses turned based combat similar to what you’d find in Fire Emblem or Valkyria Chronicles, and it feels like Code Name STEAM done right in regards to how you attack enemies and how the enemy moves.

This game also focuses heavily on fighting in groups, as your fellow party members will perform follow up attacks on enemies if they are within range of you and the enemy, so you are constantly trying to find the best way to surround more powerful enemies to take them down a lot quicker. On the flip side, enemies can also group together and perform follow up attacks on your party members.

The enemy AI is no pushover, either. From my experience, they will target party members of higher priority first. However, that could have just been my luck that they happened to target my medic every time when my party was within range. Besides that, I found the combat segments to be very enjoyable. The game’s atmosphere kind of reminds me of SMT: Soul Hackers. Which is a vibe that I absolutely love.

Overall, I am enjoying the game so far. I still have a bit to go before I can give a full review on this game, but this is basically my first impression after putting in about 10 hours into it. So be on the lookout for my full review and gameplay preview of the game in the coming weeks!