Parents' Guide to

The Lost Child

By Marc Saltzman, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 14+

Mature supernatural tale suffers from repetitive gameplay.

Game Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita 2018
The Lost Child Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this game.

  • The Lost Child Screen #1
  • The Lost Child Screen #2
  • The Lost Child Screen #3

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What’s It About?

THE LOST CHILD is a role-playing game (RPG) that combines dungeon crawling with turn-based battles, creature collection and training, and visual novel graphics. Players take on the role of an intrepid reporter in modern-day Japan on assignment to investigate a series of suicides at a local train station. Your editor believes there's something supernatural at play here, so you begin a journey that unravels a demonic world full of malevolent creatures you must find, battle, and put an end to their evil acts. Played mostly from a first-person perspective, you'll explore massive dungeons, exchange blows with enemies using swords, pistols, and magic, and enlist help from the captured Astrals you've collected throughout the single-player game.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: Not yet rated
Kids say: Not yet rated

This turn-based role-playing game merges monster collecting and training with graphic novel visuals, but its repetitive play limits its appeal to hardcore fans only. The story of The Lost Child is decent, as is the pacing, but you really do need to be into Japanese dungeon crawlers to appreciate the story's twists and turns. There's a hefty focus on combat, and the game tries to distinguish itself from other role-playing games by offering a number of offensive and defensive moves, as well as collected supernatural allies (called Astrals), that can be used against a large horde of monsters. In fact, the Pokemon-like way that you acquire allies from previously defeated foes can keep you engaged as you deploy them against other creatures, "training" them in battle to develop new abilities.

But despite the variety in moves and enemies, the gameplay quickly gets repetitive. In fact, you'll find that the gameplay in each story chapter works like this: watch a cutscene, move slowly through a dungeon, find an Astral, enter a fight, and then repeat. Occasionally you'll open some chests that you come across for items or collect karma to level up your party, but the cyclical pattern of this gameplay quickly stops being interesting after a short while and becomes dull. In fact, unless you're a fan of dungeon crawlers where you have to grind your way through each step for progress or collecting monsters to do your fighting for you, The Lost Child might not be an adventure you want to undertake.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about female objectification in the game. Women are frequently objectified and sexualized in this game, but do you think that players want young girls and women to look and act like this? Would this game receive a lighter rating if it didn't have the sexual content?

  • Is the impact of violence in The Lost Child lessened because you're fighting monsters and creatures that are clearly unrealistic? is the impact of violence heightened because of the focus on combat?

Game Details

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