Disgaea: Hour of Darkness

PS2

Nippon Ichi/Atlus - 2003

Disgaea has been my number one game for the past three months. So I'm a bit biased on this review. I apologize. I have spent the last three weeks not playing it, in hopes that I would come into this review with less of a biased. We shall see.

First off, let's talk about the plot. Forget the fantasy world of FFT, FFTA, Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre, Hoshigami, Kartia, etc... Disgaea is unique. You play as the son of the Devil. His father died two years ago, by choking on a black pretzel, and you have just awoken from a two year nap to find his empire in ruins. You have to go and claim your rightful kingship from those with lofty ambitions. Later it takes an even sharper turn, with something about angels and people not being what or who they seem.

The gameplay is one of the best I have seen in a long time. Nippon Ichi really knows how to make their games. With a past gaming repitoire of La Pucelle, Rhapsody, and Phantom Brave coming soon, they have really created both a world and a videogame style all of their own. The quirky dialogue, the deep battle system, the, well, everything, has made this company top of the charts.

The gameplay takes place like this. There are the standard squares, enemies and you. You take turns, you get 11 of your characters at a time on the field, but you can interchange characters whenever you want! This, plus the fact you can have 110 characters, leads to lots of leveling. While this may seem tiresome, I never found it to be. The way the characters work is you get five or so choices, brawler, fighter, color mages, and healers. As they level, it opens up both stronger versions of them, and other choices, like Ninja, Samuri, Thief, Gunner, and other cooler, secret characters. Each of these has 6 levels of strength that you can only open by raising one of the characters up to certain levels. The max level in the game is 9999, yes Ari, 9999. So you get a lot of playing time in there. There are dungeons you can't even go into until you are at least 2000.

So leveling. What I do, and is quite fun, is create a character, work it up in a nice area for a few hours, then I have opened up a stronger form of it. I create one of them, work it up, which happens faster, and continue the same thing over and over. Yet I can not stress how fun it is to do so. It sounds dumb on paper, or screen if you will, but the gameplay is second to none. You never get tired. Add to that all the enemies in the game are playable characters as well, and that the game has NEW GAME + feature, you have perfection in a bag.

Next. I must mention 3 things that are new to the genre. First is the item world. Each item in the game is one of a kind. Wow. Each item also has "masters" living in them, which boost certain stats. You go into the item world, inside each item, and there are 99 floors of monsters you can beat. IN EACH ITEM. As you progress, every ten floors makes the item stronger. So you can have the normal first weapon stronger than the final weapon if you want. Lots of customizing here. Secondly. The Dark Assembly. Here you do many many things. You rasie characters stats. You create characters, and you pass laws, like more money, stronger weapons and items, stronger enemies, and new levels. You have to pass them by the Dark Assembly, a section made up of a bunch of enemies, ranging from level 1 to level 9999. The stronger the enemy, the more sway he has over the floor. So you must bribe the enemies with items to have them vote in your favor. If your vote doesn't pass, you can always choose to fight with the enemies. If you win, your motion passes. If you lose, you die. Sounds like the Senate to me. Lastly, is the geo panels. These are colored panels that affect the playing field. I've seen up to 7 different ones in effect at one time. They range from heal 20%, invincibility, ally damage 20%, enemy boost 60%, and so on. They are controled by little pyramids on squares. Each pyramid has some effect, and when they are on a colored square, they affect all squares of that color. Now you can either pick them up (yeah, you can pick up anything, from characters to enemies) and throw it somewhere else, or even destroy it. If you destroy it, it creates a chain where all the colored tiles change to it's color, and hurt things standing on the color, including you, enemies, and other pyramids. This can lead to crazy chains!!!! Chains rock, almost as much as in Puzzle Fighter. Yeah. You have to see it to believe it.

What liked: The original plot. The gameplay. The... everything.

What disliked: Only 14 stages, although it has new game +.

What to expect: FFT and fun. Humor. Evil. Great Fun.

What not to expect: Saving the world at the end.

What's so different from this and other games of it's genre: Geo panels, throwing, dark assembly, item world. Plot. Everything.

Ratings on:

Control: 8 - You have to change the controls at first to fix the weird angles. Trust me.

Graphics: 10 - I love sprites. These are really good sprites. Sure the PS2 can do better, but why when it is this good?

Sound: 10 - Voice Acting is superb. You can even turn off the sound except voice acting, which allows you to play normal music at the same time. Awesome.

Style: 10 - See everything above. Oozing with style.

1st hour: 8 - I bought this game for Sundu. I guess I will try it out before I give it to him...

5th hour: 10 - He's gonna have to get his own copy. I've never giving this up. Sole reason to own a PS2 right here.

1st week: 10 - Ditto.

5th week: 10 - I will never stop playing this game. Ever.

#1 reason why I hate this game: Gaining levels between 120 to 9000 is probably the most repetitive thing I have ever done.

by Hawke