Disgaea: Hour of Darkness

"The Life of an Underworld Prince"

Did you know that if you commit petty sins in your life, that when you die you end up becoming a cute penguin that does grunt work and says ‘dood' a lot? Don't believe me? Well its time you picked up a copy of Disgaea and leaned how things work in the underworld. Disgaea is a tactical RPG from the guys over at Nippon Ichi games, and this was the game that put them at the forefront of tactical RPG's.

Disgaea is a very interesting tale of what happens in the netherworld. You play as Laharl, the only son of the current overlord of the netherworld. He awakes from his nap to find that his father, the powerful and feared overlord, died choking on some snacks, and also learns that he has been asleep for the past two years, resulting in plenty of time for the overlord's castle to fall into shambles and most of the vassals to either leave or try to claim the title of overlord for themselves. This leaves Laharl to try and claim his rightful title as the new Overlord by fighting his way through the competition. With the ever scheming and egomaniacal demon girl Etna as his last remaining vassal and her squad of Prinnies (Penguin-shaped dolls infused with the souls of petty criminals) acting as his only soldiers, the prince has a lot of catching up to do. The world of Disgaea is interesting, as it takes place in an underworld setting where good is bad and evil is good. Everything is run by a brutal economy and you have to pay HEL (the currency of the place) to get anything done. Laharl even becomes violently ill and upset when people mention such things as ‘love and peace' in his presence.

The game set up is typical tactical RPG style. You move your characters from a starting position (a glowing square on the ground that acts as a spawn point for your allies) and attempt to move through the map and kill off all your enemies without suffering too many losses yourself. When your characters die, you have to revive them in the netherworld hospital, which costs money depending on how much damage you need to fix. At first you only have Laharl, Etna, and her Prinny squad to fight with, so you have to make more soldiers to fight for you afterwards. You start with a few basic character classes to choose from, such as fighter, brawler, healer, red (fire) mage, and so forth, but other classes open up after defeating certain characters/reaching certain levels with certain classes/advancing far enough in the game/grabbing certain items. Besides character classes, there are also a slew of monsters you can also make fight for you by either capturing them (a difficult task of throwing them into your spawn point and hoping they don't destroy it) or beating enough of a monster that it becomes available to be created at the dark assembly. Whenever you kill an enemy, you gain money and also mana. Mana is a second kind of currency, and while money is used for buying items, equipment, and healing, mana is used for making new characters, making new stronger characters (including more mana at character creation allows for characters to start with better stats), and getting things done in the dark assembly. The Dark Assembly is like a senate populated by monsters. There you can post bills you want to pass, such as getting better items at the item shop, increasing your movement speed, or unlocking special areas to explore, but doing so requires a certain amount of mana to propose, and the approval of the dark senators. They are a finicky bunch as they require bribes to increase their loyalty towards you, and even if they support you, their general view of you always degrades over time, and even if they like you they might still sometimes vote against you. You can always pick a fight with them to force your idea through, but that makes them hate you and since some are high level, you probably won't win. If your high enough level and have enough mana, you can transmutate yourself. This allows you to restart your character from level 1 with some of the stats and skills you had from your last class (how much depends on how much mana you spend) which means that you can not only become a different class or more powerful class, you can also start your level 1 character with much higher stats. Transmutating your character enough times means that they can be at level 1 with the stats and skills of a character at level 100.

What sets Disgaea apart, aside from the dark assembly and mana, is also a few other important factors. There is no real level cap in Disgaea. You can level your characters up to level 100 or level 1000, and even if you get that high, you can transmutate yourself back to level 1 and level up again to get even stronger, making truly super powered characters. There are also a slew of items to get, all kinds of armor and weapons. Weapons are generally based into categories like swords, guns, axes, spears, and so forth, but differ in power from each one. For example, an iron sword will generally be stronger then a bronze one, but sometimes a bronze sword will offer you more speed then an iron sword, or less speed but more attack. The higher the rarity of an item, the better the stats on it, allowing for super rare low level items to be higher in stats then low rarity high level items. This can be further altered by the item world. Besides doing the story missions (which can be replayed as often as you like), you can also go into the item world. This is a series of randomly generated levels you can jump into in order to get lots of loot, money, experience, and mana. Higher level items and items with higher rarity will offer stronger enemies to fight and bigger pay offs. Each level gets harder to clear, but offers more rewards, with an ‘item boss' every 10 levels. After beating 10 levels, you are given the option to leave the item world, which increases the item level (different from an overall level) up by 1 for each level of the item world cleared, which increase the stats by each level gained. You can advance through floors by killing all the enemies on a level or by jumping into the room gate. There are never repeat levels as the levels are always random. All areas usually have Geo-Panels, which are colored tiles on the floor. They can offer positive effects, such as healing, increased experience or defense or even invulnerability, or cause problems, such as taking constant damage, making enemy clones, or offering buffs only to your enemies. Each zone is powered by a Geo marker which can be picked up and moved, or destroyed. Destroying a marker on a panel causes it to remove the effect, and if the color differs from that of the panels on the floor, it will change the color to that of the marker, and cause damage to everyone on the panels of that color. Combing these panels to form a chain can not only kill all the enemies on a map if they are on geo-panels, but also can make big combo-chains that increase the bonus gage for a level. The higher the bonus, the more money you get at the end of the level, and with each level of the bonus gage, you unlock a gift, such as items, extra money, or experience points. The game also sports a very funny and well written story, character dialog, and general descriptions for things. Going through the chapters is entertaining and the character interaction is a laugh and a half. Even descriptions for items are rather entertaining to read.

The game is generally good but still sports a few flaws. For one, some enemies are very powerful, which requires you to go and level up some more, or power up your items. This is fun if you enjoy leveling up and increasing your strength but some might find this boring and tedious. This is also a major problem with making new characters. Making a slew of characters at the beginning is generally a better idea, because if you make a new character later in the game, they start at square one, which means that you have to level them up, transmutate them, level them up some more, and so forth to get them at the same level as your other characters, which can take hundreds of hours to do. The item world is a great way to have fun with random dungeons, but the dungeons are just that, random, which means that sometimes your exit will be too far away to reach, or that you will have one last enemy that is so far away due to a gap in the map that you cannot kill him because none of your attacks or spells reach that far, requiring you to either go to the gate exit, or if that is also beyond reach, use an item to escape the dungeon.

This game combines extremely expansive and time filling gameplay with good story and funny writing. It's a shame that most people overlooked this game but thankfully others are coming back and rediscovering it. If you want a game that is great for filling time and offering you plenty of game for your money, this is definitely it, but if you are looking for instant gratification, this is not the game for you as it requires a lot of leveling up and item strengthening. A definite buy for all RPG and strategy RPG fans.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/01/09

Game Release: Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (US, 08/27/03)