Long ago I read about Lux-Pain in Nintendo Power. The premise seemed pretty inteersting. People are being infected by some sort of negative parasitic emotion named "Silent". My character (your average quiet, kinda broody, dreamy looking grey haired guy) Saijo Atsuki is part of an anit-Silent group named FORT and has the power to see people's emotions and purge them of evil ones. Awesomesauce I thought. So as soon as the game came out I got it... I could barely stay awake through the first 2 chapters it seemed likea total snooze fest and I quickly set it aside to play everything and anything except it. However Everytime I went to get another game I'd see it there and much like the little emotional wormy-things that infect people in the game, it kept trying to worm its way back into my DS.

So I finally gave in and started playing it again. This time I stuck through the dull parts and I was rewarded. Twenty Two and a half hours later (I take my time when I play games, I don't like rushing) The credits were rolling and I was spent.

The game is divided into Episodes and up til about episode 5 or 6 its not that great but stick through it and it picks up and sucks you in.

Now I'm not going to lie, in order to get through this game you have to have a few qualifications.

First, the ability to sit through massively long and pointless exchanges between high school students and their angst and/or love of food.

Two, The ability to look at a nonsense sentence and turn it into sense (previous experience with bad subtitles prefferred)

and there you go point 2 is the greatest downfall of this game.

The game is mostly text, an interacticve novel along the lines of Phoenix Wright (withtout the spiky hair the "OBJECTION"s and Edgeworth's awesome cravat) and Time Hollow (another underappreciated game, more on that later).

There is quite a bit of voice acting throught the game and its well done, VERY well done. I think only one character didn't speak quite like I thought he would based on looks but aside from the that, the voices suited the characters, the emotions were well done, no over acting or "phoning it in". However, The volume is really low even with it up all the way and what the characters say does NOT match what is written at all...like 99% of the time.

the Localisation of this game is what kills it. The text goes from being misspelled to being ridiculous and undecipherable. Its pretty bad. example a female cop is consistantly reffered to as "he". either they screwed up or she's a trap! lol

If you can get past this HUGE blemish in the game its got a good story with a few surprises and twists. I don't want to give spoilers or anything so I'll just say that just when you think you've figured something or someone out, the game throws you for a crazy loop (crazy in a good way)

The story is full of a wide range of emotions, sad moments, funny moments, touching moments and the characters are pretty well fleshed out personality-wise.

Once I picked it up the second time I couldn't put it down and played it straight trough to the end over 2 days and since I did miss a few things here and there I've actually restarted it again.

My biggest problem (aside from the localisation which I got used to after a while) is a problem I've had with quite a few games lately...the ending. (don't worry I'm not going into spoilerific detail) I'll just say that this game suffers from the "I spun this story and now have no idea how to wrap it up" syndrome.

And that's why I call it a rollercoaster.

Starts out bad, picks up, localisation drags it down, story brings it up, ending drags it down again.

Could it have been better? Yes.

Does it deserve the awful reviews it got? yes and no

Would I recommend this game to others? Most definitely, if you get past the rough spots its really great.

Would I buy a remake of it with good localisation? Day one purchase.