YMMV / LISA: The Pointless

• Best Boss Ever: The fight with Arnold Shpitz is an awesome way to end the Downtown Olathe chapter.
• Creepy Awesome: The Infinity Franchise themselves, due to the mysterious Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane nature of the Jerseys themselves, and the Blood Lake scene with Daniel Grind. Some of the Franchisers themselves are also cool, such as Arnold Shpitz, Chriss Bellucci, and Anaconda Virtue. The "Infinite Shadows" (the dark figures who appear in Downtown Olathe over time) also manage to add a lot to the Franchise's ominous atmosphere.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Arnold Shpitz's wiki page on one of the wikis describes him as having been plagued by violent urges he struggled to keep control of throughout his life.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Anaconda Virtue, for his memorable design and (somewhat frustrating) boss fights.
  • Lester is loved for being the Only Sane Man in Downtown Olathe, acting as a shopkeeper and giving Alex free food for helping him out.
  • Tibby Dobbs, a member of the Bad Angels (the gang that Fringe Boy leads), was briefly a popular meme within the game's fandom, due to a joke mod that starred him.
  • Arnold Shpitz, who has a noticeable amount of "Perspective Mods", putting him in the player's control against many of Olathe's most fearsome warriors, most notably against Hart from LISA: The Hopeful.
• Fan Nickname: Not for a character, but for a move. Arnold's trump card, The Punch, is often called "Denier's Fist" or "Denier Punch" because of the flavor text that reads: "Arnold Shpitz will deny you!"
• Genius Bonus: The Infinity Franchise was meant to be a metaphor for fascism according to the devs, with obvious details like the 88 logo^note  while also similar to the infinity logo turned upwards, 88 is also part of 14/88, a notorious Neo-Nazi slogan and Arnold’s mustache lending credence to the interpretation. Less obvious, however, are Anaconda’s two theme songs being named after Julius Evola books.
  • Similarly, the inscription on the wall of the Infinity Cave is based off of the infamous "Seven Kill Stele" that was allegedly created by Zhang Xianzhong, a 17th century revolt leader from China infamous for the massacres he committed.
• Goddamned Boss: Chaz is a terribly annoying fight for three reasons. First, he will occasionally take a turn to 'open his mouth wide', meaning on his next turn he uses Head Chomp, which instakills whoever it hits and inflicts Brain Damage, a crippling debuff that can't be removed for a long time. Second, he can inflict Pissed. If he goes for Head Chomp when someone is Pissed, you can't use a dodge move to avoid the attack. Finally, he has a ton of health. To a competent player, there's no real threat here since you can run if he sets up the Pissed + Head Chomp combo, but doing so resets his health, and you'll want to kill him for the EXP he drops.
• Good Bad Bugs: Chaz (see above) is supposed to use damaging attacks besides Head Chomp, but he will only use them on the second turn of the fight due to a programming bug.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: One of the things that would turn off players is the difficulty of the game. It's clearly intended for those who have finished Pain Mode in the original game, and thus, has limited items, save points, and party members.
• Memetic Badass: Joel's pistol. By Joel's own admission, stories of his grandfather's hunts were outright lies that existed to just elevate the man, and thus the cutaway gag of seeing the gun obliterating even orca whales never happened. Fan-mods nevertheless depict Joel's bolt-action pistol as an Infinity Plus One Gun, with single shots from it being far more devastating than any other gun-user, be they found in fangames or the original Painful.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The save points trigger automatically. While you can usually see the crow before it triggers, there's several instances where you don't get any warning before being thrust into the save screen - and since save points only work once, this can lead to wasted saves. The only way to manually save is to use a one-use Baby Crow, which you only get four of.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: The game is made in mind for players that have played Pain Mode in the original game. Pain Mode's Save-Game Limits are active (though you can occasionally find rare items that act as a save), resources are more scarce and aside from Guest-Star Party Member Georgy, you're stuck with only two party members.
• Squick: Hoo boy, where to begin?
  • The inhabitants of Garbage Island live off of rotten fruit (80% mold!), seagull jerky, and whatever else vaguely edible they find in the piles of trash.
  • Larry Davis and the trash humpers. Even worse, the bag Larry Davis is using has the corpse of his mother-in-law inside.
  • Anaconda Virtue's first appearance, where he talks about disemboweling a live rat to use it as a sex toy.
  • Lester's food. There's the Stew in a Bag (which squirms, according to the description) and cups of bile, which are used to revive fallen party members.
  • Downtown Olathe is covered in piles of meat, which are heavily implied to be the remnants of the Infinity Franchise's victims. Most of the Franchisers eat it, and Luca Bariga will feed it to you for four mags a pop.
• That One Attack: An unusual example. When you meet Chriss Bellucci, he starts the fight by jumping off a car, doing an elbow drop on Alex and Joel for 200 damage each. If you're a bit beaten up, this can very easily get you a quick game over. Amusingly, you can dodge it if you know it's coming and move out of the way, which embarrasses Chriss and lowers his stats slightly.
• That One Boss: Remember how broken the Gasoline Spit + Fireball combo was in Painful? Anaconda Virtue sure does! Like in Painful, Gasoline Spit inflicts Oiled, which gives a huge boost to fire damage. Anaconda's fireballs hit hard even without the Oiled boost, and they tend to inflict Burning as well. Just to add to the threat, Gasoline Spit can also inflict Blind, which will completely gimp Alex's damage output if it sticks to him. To top all this off, in the third fight with Anaconda, Gasoline Spit becomes Gasoline Spew, which hits both Joel and Alex.
  • Dex Muldoon, the Rando mook near the beginning that blows himself up, unintentionally becomes this if you try to kill him before he explodes. Although it's extremely difficult, it can be pulled off (plus you get a ton of experience for doing so). There's a specific strategy where even if everything goes right, it still comes down to luck.^note  Prior to approaching Dex, you need to have not used any of your bottles in killing Pedro and Shawn (this means you should have four). Dex spends three turns stalling before immediately exploding on the fourth, overriding the player's attacks. That's your window of time to whittle down his 1850 health points. The only way is for Joel to throw a bottle every turn and for Alex to open with an axe kick, then mash dial combo attacks, and then use a bottle himself. If the kick doesn't inflict bleed or any of Joel's bottles hit below 400 damage, you may as well restart.
  • The fight with Jessie Mack and his lackeys, Babbage and Keister (nicknamed the Cherry Village Rumble). Keister is a heavy-hitting melee user, Babbage can fire beams that inflict 350+ damage and ignore Dodge, and Jessie is the support unit. Jessie can remove most of the debuffs Alex and Joel can inflict, give his team Rage to crank up Keister's already high melee damage, or inflict Alex and Joel with Weird and Wary.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: One of the warlords during the dinner scene, Office Ottoman, is set up as being a possible companion only for him to get anticlimactically killed after the lights flash off. He's given a little more depth than the rest of the warlords, so it's a downer when it's revealed that he won't be accompanying Alex and Joel.
• The Woobie: While Alex hasn't gone through the level of abuse like the canon protagonists, watching him get invested in martial arts and ruin his future, dooming himself to be a garbage man, is still very depressing.