Saving the world is no easy task, but it gets harder when you add the fact that members of your world-saving party will turn against you. Well, I guess nothing motivates like a little pressure, right? Lost Dimension is a new strategy RPG, published by the awesome people at Atlus, which has you and a merry band of ten compatriots out to save the world from an agent of the Apocalypse. There’s just one slight problem: some of your group are traitors who seek to undermine your attempts to save the world. What jerks!
Uncovering the identity of the traitors can be a tricky ordeal, and undiscovered traitors can even turn on you in battle. But fret not! With this handy-dandy guide, you will have the identities of the traitors brought to light in no time. Now let’s find out who your Benedict Arnolds are!
Don’t Worry About Floor One
On your first playthrough, the traitor for the first floor will be pre-determined. It is always the same character (on initial playthroughs only – this does NOT apply to New Game Plus). It is not until the second floor that you will have to gather the gang and hop into the Mystery Machine to solve this mystery!
Once you get to the second floor, the training wheels will come off. From the second floor onward, the traitors are randomized for each playthrough. For instance, while you may encounter a traitorous Agito during your playtime, your friend may have Himeno turn against them. This ensures a fresh and nerve-wracking experience each time!
Sleuthing Time
Lost Dimension has a few systems in place to help you apprehend the guilty parties, most of them stemming from the powers of the main character, Sho. There are three main systems in place to help your amateur sleuthing, which we will delve into here.
The Red Text
After every mission, each person you took with you on the mission will flash by you, accompanied by a short text snippet. Some of the text will be white in color, and some will be red. The red text alerts you to the presence of a traitor.
You can try to match the voices up to the alarming text. The traitor’s dialogue will be garbled and disguised though. You can attempt to match the voices you heard clearly to the characters who accompanied you, but this method is not very reliable and can be confusing. I recommend the next method, but seeing the red text is a valid tool you have at your disposal.
Hearing Voices
So you’ve finished a mission and saw everyone’s thoughts. Now what? By accessing the “Vision” tab from the main hub, you can find more detailed information and keep up with what you have learned so far. To stay on the trail of a traitor, you’ll need the information found in the “Vision History” tab on the far right. Here you will be able to see who you took on your recent excursions, and how many voices you heard after a mission.
Now here is where things can be slightly confusing. When I was playing, I thought the number of voices you heard dictated how many traitors were in your group. However, this is not the case. The number of voices indicates the presence of the traitor, not the number. There is only one traitor per floor (unless you miss one, but we’ll get to that later). So instead of babbling, let me show you what I mean.
This is the “Vision History”. As you can see, the number of voices heard has fluctuated until now we have three. In my experience, three voices indicates the definite prescence of a turncoat. Now the fluctuation between one or two voices is not a red flag. However, the three voices at the top is a definite red flag which requires our attention.
Now let’s use some elimination to determine who is our likely guilty party.
Bow before my Paint skills mortal!
In-game you can actually color each character’s portrait with either purple, yellow, or red. I took the liberty of using my amazing Paint skills to make sure the colors stand out. All of the characters who were in my squad with zero voices heard are all safe; so they can be eliminated from the suspect pool.
On the following mission two voices were heard, so Nagi and Marco, who did not accompany me on the first mission, are suspiscious characters marked in yellow. They look rather shifty don’t they?
However, on my last mission, three voices were heard. Not only that, one of the people who went out on the mission had not accompained us for any other mission, immediately flagging Yoko as the prime suspect! Jeepers!
We hardly knew ye Yoko.
Once you have someone pegged as the possible defector, I recommend taking the suspicious party out with people you have cleared. By doing this, you can either confirm your suspicions and move one to Deep Vision or decide you had an incorrect hypothesis and find a new suspicious person.
Using Deep Vision
So we have discerned the identity of our traitor; now what? Well once you have a solid idea of who the traitor is, I recommend using Deep Vision. Deep Vision allows you to get to the heart of the subject to discern their true intentions. Sounds great right? Easy mystery solving! It comes with some caveats though.
When you arrive to the second floor, you will be given three Vision Points and each trip down the rabbit hole of Deep Vision costs a Vision Point. While you start with three, you can earn more Vision Points by completing some missions. Once you arrive at the person’s heart, you will know if they are either working for or against you. Deep Vision is great because it allows you to definitely know who is on your side, and who is plotting against you.
That scoundrel!
Convincing the Team
So you’ve used Deep Vision and you now know the traitor is Mana. Easy sailing from here on out right? After looking at the voting forecast, it turns out your entire team believes Zenji is the traitor and is voting against him in the next Judgment.
Poor cuddly Zenji!
So now you just need to convince everyone on your team who the correct traitor is. How do you go about doing this, though? Simply take the person whose trust levels you want increased on missions with you. By taking them on missions, they will interact with the rest of your team, gaining the team’s trust so they won’t be chosen to die.
Or not…
If you don’t raise the innocent person’s trust level with the party, you could find yourself down not only a blameless person but also a useful party member. Keep this in mind before heading off to the Judgment room.
Choose Wisely!
Voting on the traitor’s identity does more than just make you endlessly worry. Choosing incorrectly means you will have a second traitor to deal with on the next floor. The second traitor will also turn on you in combat during the next floor, dropping your numbers during combat. As if saving the world wasn’t hard enough.
In summary…
- Try to get a group of people who cause you to hear zero or one voice.
- Use this group as your main group to compare suspicious parties to.
- Don’t use Deep Vision points flippantly. Be somewhat certain of the traitor’s identity before using Deep Vision.
- If you find an innocent will receive the top vote in Judgment, take them on missions to increase their rapport level with the rest of your party.
- Do your best to make sure the correct traitor gets voted in Judgment, or else you’ll face difficulties in future combat.
- Save the world!
Published: Jul 31, 2015 08:29 pm