Disgaea: Hour of Darkness

Forget Metal Gear Solid 2. Disgaea started asking the hard-hitting questions, like if a 12,000 year old demon with the body of a 9 year old can consent.

Nippon Ichi's Disgaea: Hour of Darkness combines the cheeky attitude of Marl's Kingdom with concepts from Tactics Ogre and maybe even Shin Megami Tensei - but supercharged with an impish acumen and a charming artstyle that had few equals, forming a hyper-eclectic, hyper-irreverent amalgam. Each chapter is conducted in episodes, each one indulging in comical, sometimes narratively pointless ventures that beat Working Designs at their own game - if only in terms of sheer amusement. However, there's a surprising maturity in its writing that leaves enough room for more serious avenues within the plot. Silly sketches, sarcastic wit, and raunchy humor may dominate the show, but in reality are just preludes to the brief flashes of genius contained in its character-building. Despite all the hilarious excesses going on - occasionally the party (and player) gets blindsided by quite poignant, powerfully tragic scenes, thus betraying a soul beneath its sophomoric guise. Moments like these help graduate characters like Laharl, Flonne and Etna (easily the standout) to some of the most memorable in the genre.

Disgaea's tactical RPG combat counterfeits and somewhat updates Tactics Ogre's mission design, class progression, and grinding-as-a-metagame attitude. However - plenty of unique, thematically appropriate features surrounding that format, such as the Dark Assembly, the Item World, etc. Plus inside the format (Geo Panels, Throwing) separate it from its peers. In some ways, it even surpasses Tactics Ogre's training mechanic by placing the emphasis on player-controlled efficiency instead of party balance, boosted in large part by its use-based EXP system and a gradual rollout of skill/spell upgrades. Grinding here is no longer about repeating the same attacks, but around making microscopic adjustments to strategies as characters gain levels and unlock miniature yet meaningful changes. On the downside, a few features like the Item World fall flat in their execution, and the repetition can get a little excessive.

The result is a formidable synthesis of the most amusing, intricate and heartbreaking extremes in JRPGs, that can be as complex as it is flippant, mischievous, and touching.

I suppose this game has some obvious flaws, but I had a lot of fun with it so let's try to talk about it.

First let me mention why I think the PSP version is superior. First, there's a variety of "nice" things that are cool to have but aren't really a huge deal. Mainly these are the item library thing (tracks all items you've found and some other stats, for autists such as myself who like that kind of thing), the option to play any song you want in the item world (this game has one of my favorite soundtracks of all time but the default item world song is one of the lesser ones), and some extra areas/levels. The one thing, however, that makes the PSP version a thousand times more playable than the original is the option to disable combat animations. The main storyline is bearable enough with animations enabled, but if you want to do the post game areas it becomes an absolute nightmare. A turn that takes a few seconds with animations off can take minutes with animations on. For me, that's enough to make the post game not even worth playing on PS2. The only problem in the PSP version is some items being strangely glitched. This glitch can be exploited to become drastically overpowered, but one can of course simply choose not to use those items at minimal inconvenience.

As for the game itself, it presents as a tactical RPG but in actuality is more a game of character building (think like pokemon or something). The battles are pretty simple and decided more by your character's stats than any strategy on your part. As you might expect grinding is a big part of the game. Some people like that kind of thing of course, and the game is actually very well done when you look at it from this perspective. There's a lot of freedom and depth in the ways you can build your characters and a massive post game in which to take them to ridiculous levels. Play if you like that kind of thing.