The Lost Child

It took me a while to realize that Crim’s The Lost Child was a follow-up to the Underrated PS3/Xbox 360 action adventure El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, as both games are completely different in play style. One is a dungeon crawling JRPG where you battle and capture lovecraftian creatures, while the other was an action adventure brawler about finding fallen angels.

There is some good that comes from this, the first of which is that The Lost Child stands on its own merits and delivers a strong JRPG that is hard to put down.

The Lost Child tells the story of Hayato Ibuki, a journalist for an occult magazine. After investigating a rumour about a supernatural occurrence in the subway tunnels, he is saved from being hit by a train by a mysterious woman who hands him an equally mysterious case.

Hayato is then visited by Lua who claims she’s an Angel sent from Heaven to guide The Chosen One in order to defeat the demons infecting the world. Equipped with a gun-like relic called the Gangour, Lua teaches Hayato how to capture and control demons. Lua and Hayato go on a quest to find Lua’s missing sister and solve some of the supernatural phenomenons happening around Tokyo.
 
Out of the gate, The Lost Child has a very similar feeling to the Shin Megami Tensei series as you go through dungeons, fight demons, and eventually collect them like Pokemon and have them fight for you. This is all done though the Gangour, which is powered up in battle and then used to unleash a capture stream that will add the Astral – the game’s term for demons, fallen angels and other creatures – to your party.

Overall, The Lost Child is a classic Dungeon Crawling adventure. Players explore Layers, the game’s term for dungeons, in first person view and must solve puzzles and battle monsters. The Layers are generally well laided out and it never feels annoying to deal with, while battles and monsters hits the perfect difficulty curve.

Battles usually consists of Lua and Hayato along with three controlled Astrals as they attempt to defeat or capture other astrals. In battle, players can charge up the Gangour to increase the chance of capturing the Astral and upon using it on Hayato’s turn, uses the extra power of the Astrals in the attack. While Hayato and Lua are the only ones can level up by collecting EXP from battles, Hayato is able to assign karma to Astrals to level them up manually.

If there is one thing that I adore about games like The Lost Child, it is the art style, and the monster design for this game is top-notch. All the Astrals feel like they’ve been given a lovecraftian design (which makes sense when you play the game further) and really gives a horrific look to them.

One complaint that I do have about the game is its investigation gameplay in which Hayato navigates Tokyo looking for hints and clues to the supernatural events around him. This out of Dungeon Crawling gameplay is a bit of a bore it doesn’t do much to progress the game.

Players gain a memo from the office of their magazine, talk to witnesses which usually give no helpful information and then Lua chimes up with a Layer in the area. In a time where JRPG’s give you a lot to work with outside of dungeons, it was kind of let down that the investigation portion of the game had nothing to it.

While it may be a follow-up to El Shaddai, new comers to the series shouldn’t be afraid of missing anything directly as The Lost Child holds its own without adding any confusion of missing elements from the previous game. If you’re looking for a dungeon crawler to enjoy on The Switch or add to your collection on PSVita, The Lost Child is definitely one I recommend to check out.