I Will Not Be Locked Up Again - LISA The Joyful

Content Warning: The following contains discussions of child abuse, rape, and suicide.

Spoiler Warning: The following contains spoilers for LISA The Joyful.

Lastly, there is LISA The Joyful, a DLC epilogue chapter for LISA The Painful. Like the base game Joyful is a sidescrolling RPG. This time the game stars Buddy immediately after the events of LISA The Painful’s end. LISA The Joyful is much shorter than LISA The Painful and only has one party member who ultimately leaves Buddy halfway through the game.

Joyful is a much lesser game than Painful in a lot of ways. For instance Buddy’s moveset leaves for little to no variety making the game feel a lot more tedious. Joyful’s plot is also not quite as potent. The game is more of a closing of loose ends than a full narrative in itself. That said I did quite enjoy Joyful. I enjoyed blazing through it as fast as possible.

The story of LISA The Joyful starts with a flashback of Brad kidnapping a man and he brings him home to Buddy. Brad then commands Buddy to brutally murder the man so she can learn how to kill. Once again this is a prime example of Brad “protecting” Buddy, but also being a terrible abusive father. Immediately after, the game cuts back to the end of LISA The Painful where Buddy is defending herself from a mutated Brad, though you don’t quite get the catharsis of killing Brad (boo) as Buzzo interrupts you to save Brad so he can continue to make Brad suffer.

Buddy is alone in the wasteland, but turns out Rando still survived and shockingly enough he joins your party. Sadly, having the final boss as your party member is more tedious than fun. He has a similar moveset to Brad, but not nearly as strong. Also the number one issue of Rando is that he doesn’t sleep when you rest at a campfire, thankfully when he’s around there will be no random events, but gosh it’s annoying having to heal Rando with items.

Similar to the story of LISA The Painful, the goal is simple. Buddy having been freed from Brad’s oppression Buddy decides to make it impossible for anyone to lock her in a cage again. Though Buddy decides to do this in the only way she understands how, and that is by murdering all the remaining leaders of Olathe making herself Queen. It’s understandable why Buddy thinks this way. She’s been raised in a basement where all she knows is abuse and from the opening flashback, violence. However, it is really disappointing and probably a negative effect of the honest cruel outlook on the effects of abuse. Really, I feel it is a bit too cruel for the narrative to assume that Buddy can’t make it out of this system as a good person, but at the very least it is nice that playing as Buddy now with her own control over her destiny, feels very powerful which I think is probably more what this is going for.

There’s honestly not much more to talk about as killing all the bosses is mostly just going through the motions for the most part. While Rando is still in your party he reveals more of his backstory. Rando is an adopted son of Brad who Brad disowned, in the secret Pain Mode ending of LISA The Painful it is revealed that Buzzo is responsible for disfiguring his face as punishment to Brad for not saving Lisa. Rando protests Buddy constantly and asks her not to murder everyone and eventually leaves when he realizes he can’t change Buddy’s mind, as Buddy will not be controlled by another man.

The bosses are just pretty boring vaguely themed gang leaders. You make your way through each area murdering innocents and gang members alike. There is one area in particular that is pretty great. Mr. Beautiful and his village are well respected pacifists. Buddy is completely confused by the very concept of pacifism, but she goes on to murder Mr. Beautiful and optionally all the pacifist villagers.

                There is a mask system in LISA The Joyful where Buddy can use masks to change certain interactions with characters. If Buddy is unmasked almost every single NPC will attack Buddy immediately, including merchants and bartenders. Masked Buddy can avoid certain battles and even buy things from shops since they won’t immediately attack her. I do get that this system is a bit of a callback to a brief moment in the beginning of LISA The Painful where Brad disguises Buddy with a mask, but honestly I didn’t really find this system even worth messing with. I went with Maskless Buddy because killing NPCs give me more XP which is very important since Buddy is going it alone.

LISA The Joyful gives some backstory to Buzzo who is a character with a larger role in this game. Sadly Buzzo’s backstory seems really redundant. Basically, he loved Lisa and is emotionally scarred by her suicide. What I feel really pointless though is the whole story about how Lisa got Buzzo to cut her with a buzzsaw so she’ll look unattractive and Marty won’t want her anymore. Obviously it didn’t work so it just seems more edgy bullshit. Also having yet another character who abuses others due to what happened to Lisa seems really redundant anyway since Brad already fills that role.

Around halfway through the game Buddy meets with Rando once again. Rando is suspended over a cliff and you get to choose whether or not you wish to drop him to his death. Interestingly this is very similar to the scene where Brad kills Marty as your choice really doesn’t matter. If you try to save Rando he reveals to Buddy he’s been lying to her and that he staged the kidnapping earlier in the game to try and coerce her to safety, similar to Brad. Upon hearing this Buddy drops Rando anyway furious that even the heroic Rando tried to “protect” her against her consent. Interestingly, if you go to Rando’s corpse with the Joy mask on you see a hallucination of Brad next to Rando’s body, symbolizing Buddy’s hatred of the men who tried to control her.

After you kill all the leaders of Olathe you end up meeting Yado, the scientist responsible for Joy and the controller of the Joy mutants. He sits atop a throne of mutant flesh, which Buddy says she wants. While fighting Yado, the effects of Joy begin making Buddy hallucinate the faces of Rando and Brad on Yado which she attacks. In reality she’s attacking Yado. These hallucination boss fights are likely Buddy trying to solve her mental conflict of not being able to escape the effects of her abuse, similar to the more surreal psychological events in LISA The First. Eventually Yado reveals that he is the creator and god of the mutants and Buddy’s real father. Once again, another terrible father figure to take down. Buddy doesn’t get to kill him either as Buzzo comes and kills Yado. Buddy receives a Joy antidote from Yado which will save her from becoming a Joy Mutant. Buzzo offers some final words trying to redeem Brad in vain and feeling regret for making him suffer, and then he turns into a Joy Mutant, and the final boss.

Buddy kills Buzzo and shortly begins hallucinating due to Joy again. She sees Brad who is representative of Buddy not being able to escape her abuse in her mind, drawing more parallels between Buddy and Lisa. She also sees a hallucination of Rando who offers her the fantasy of being a queen if she chooses to refuse the antidote, thus becoming a Joy mutant. They player gets the choice whether or not Buddy takes the antidote. Taking the antidote is Buddy accepting her reality and living on in Olathe. Refusing the antidote allows Buddy to escape reality and ultimately dies due to the Joy mutation. The mutation ending is yet another reflection of Lisa in Buddy. She can only really escape her father’s abuse in death. It is up to Buddy whether she can accept this or not.

Roll credits. That is the end of LISA The Series. The series ends with Buddy finally being able to choose her fate for herself. Whether or not she is able to accept she will never truly escape Brad’s abuse is up to the player’s choice, and choice is what Buddy’s quest to rule Olathe was all about. LISA The Series has been quite an emotional experience for me the past week. From being scared to walk down the stairway to choosing whether or not to take the antidote I’ve felt fear, pain, and… well… Joy.