The Lost Child is a dungeon crawler JRPG, developed Kadokawa Games and publish and ported by NIS America. As a whole, the game does do a lot to make itself stand out. It's not bad, but it's not worth its upcoming almost AAA price.

The story is centered around your main character, a journalist for a paranormal magazine is told that he was chosen by God to fight on his behave. This happens after a brush with death and meeting an angel, dressed as a witch. And as the chosen one, You get a special looking gun that will allow you to capture and "cleanse" astrals(demons) and have them fight alongside you.

From there, the story goes with the flow of, start a paranormal case to investigate, find out the one that has a dungeon associated to it, go through it and find out a bit of the major story and conflict between Heaven and Hell.

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All in all the writing is fine. Nothing too special, but very passable. Now my problem with this is the fact that the game's text is alight to the left constantly. Like you have a text box that covers the screen edge to edge, but the text is only on the left part of the screen.

The music is fine, nothing much to say. It's energetic when it needs to be and pleasant when a scene needs some levity. Voice acting and sound design are also good. All and all in the sound department of the game is good.

The graphics of the game are a mix back. The 2D art of characters is original with a perfect balance of accessories. The creatures look very cool and wicked, some being a bit silly and other being eldrich monstrosities. Animation wise, there are some pretty ok animated cutscenes, but for the rest of the game, you will not see anything but static images floating back and forward. But the biggest flaw with the graphics on the Vita is that some dungeons(if not all) have the most blurry textures I have ever seen.

It could be said that the game has 2 type of gameplay: Investigations and Dungeon crawling. But there is a problem with that statement. Mainly the fact that I can't say "Investigation" is even worth calling a "gameplay type". All you do is talk to NPC's, sometimes respond to a question with one of 3 types of responses (nice, neutral or passive-aggressive). And that's about it. If you zone out for a second, you will miss the fact that you passed the investigation and only realizing that you did when you go back to the office.

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What about the dungeon crawling? Well, it has a first-person perspective, with a grid movement system, random battles, and some environmental puzzles. The combat system is classic turn-based, where you can use a special attack with the main character to capture an enemy, pokemon style. Also, you have a squad of 5(2 being constant) at all times with more in reserve where you can switch out, for a finite amount of times. And I guess the only other thing that sets this game apart from the rest is that there is 3 type of XP gained. Which you use to level up your demons, some need a specific type.

Honestly, as a whole, the gameplay is fine. It has its quirks and its pretty fine if you are a fan of the dungeon crawler genre.

As a whole the game is ok, it has some negatives, but they could be considered minor. However, I do find the price on release is too high! There is not much originality and fun factor to warrant a 50$ price tag.

If you really want this game, I suggest you wait for a sale.

Tubich