Lux Pain is a text adventure game set in a city that has had a rash of bizarre occurrences where people have become irrational and violent. A parasite known as Silent has been infecting people's Shinen (sort of like Chi) and it has been spreading rapidly.
As the protagonist, you are employed by an organization that has been tasked with destroying the Silent. You wear the Lux-Pain ring, which allows you to see infected Shinen and restore them to normal. Eventually, you enroll into the local highschool because it is believed Silent originates there. The characters are definitely one of the game's stronger points. It takes time, but eventually you feel a connection to these people. When Silent starts to infect your friends, you do care and you start rushing around at breakneck speed in order to keep your friends from hurting themselves and others.
Most of the game is text based, as these types of games usually are. To remove Silent, you activate Lux-Pain and then use your stylus to "erase" the person (and the background) in order to attack the Silent. There is a meter up top that goes down as you scribble off pieces and if this hits zero, the person dies and it's game over. Removing infected Shinen is typically not very hard even with the meter and it usually boils down to scribbling a bunch. It is recommended you read the manual, however. The game just throws you into the thick of it without giving much explanation. You will probably find yourself at a loss at first, but it doesn't take too long to catch on.
Unfortunately, Lux Pain suffers from a fairly weak localization. The translator (or translators) seemed to know what they were doing, but it seems nobody bothered to read the text after inserting it into the game. Tense and gender pronouns get mixed up frequently, which is common when first translating a game, but these things should be fixed after.
This lack of QA leads to a lot of stilted dialogue, women being referred to as "he" and other annoyances. Since this is a text based game, this is somewhat of a major issue. Thankfully, it's still (mostly) intelligible, some parts are even written perfectly. Plus there are no serious screwups, such as the line "Check this line, it doesn't make sense" being left in Astonishia story.
The art in the game is well done and feels reminiscent of many of the MegaTen games. There are some generic characters, such as NPCs, but many of the main characters stand out. You're meant to like the main characters, so it's good that they are memorable. The menus and Map screen are the weaker areas here, they aren't very creative and often somewhat ugly.
The music in the game sounds fine, however it's never very memorable. This is somewhat of a disappointment compared to other text adventure games such as Phoenix Wright. The game is dubbed in English, but it frequently doesn't match up to the text, which can be annoying. The voice acting is written better than the text, so it's probably a good idea to keep the sound on. The acting is not horrible, but it's not amazing either.
Overall, Lux Pain suffers from a weak translation and not having terribly memorable sound. But, if you can stick with it for at least a few hours, you'll be rewarded with an engrossing and dark storyline, with some likable and memorable characters. It's a shame that this didn't receive a localization on the level of Phoenix Wright or even Time Hollow, but this game is still worth checking out.
