Disgaea: Hour of Darkness

"Better Than Final Fantasy Tactics"

Okay, before all of you FFT players decide to have me tarred and feathered, let me start by saying that I put over 300 hours into FFT. I love that game. It was amazing, in every way, but this game provides a much more cogent story, as well as a fresh, and alive new tactical system.

Gameplay 10/10

Disgaea is not an easy game, granted it's not too terribly difficult once you can use the tactical system, but the gameplay provides a completely revitalized tactical game. The game is still based on a grid system, which means that you'll have to move a given number of squares, and that means that you cannot move diagonally. However this is not new news to anyone who has ever played a tactical RPG. What this game does is provide a very unique combination attack system stacked with decent enemy AI to provide a new experience. By lining characters up next to, and behind an attacking character you can form a combination attack of up to 4 characters. This will provide massive amounts of additional damage to your basic attack, and not count as an attack for anyone except the character who initiated the attack. In addition to this rule you will be able to move characters into a combination, and then ‘recall' them without using any movement points or an attack. This alone would be a welcome breath of fresh air to the TRPG genre, but Nippon Ichi has added a great reward system after each battle, not to mention a spectacular character creation system.

Let's be honest, one of the meat and potatoes of FFT was the Job system. This provided the gamer with the ability to add useful talents to their character if enough time and energy was poured into the game. I still remember the level 99 Calculator who could decimate an entire board with one *free* summon. Well Nippon Ichi takes this idea and runs with it. Not only can you have ridiculously high leveled characters (9999), but you can also transmigrate these characters back to level one, and retain most of their accrued stats. Think of the fun that you can have with that one…additionally you will be able to have any character who has killed an enemy create a pupil. The master can learn any of the special abilities that the pupil has learned. I can't tell you how nice it is to have an Uber army all capable of healing anyone else on the field. Or having a nice innocent thief be able to cast Terra Fire.

If the above were all that I could compliment this game on, it would still be one of the best TRPGs ever made. But the fact is that there's just too much to put into this review, from the delightful item descriptions, to item world, to the hospital reward system. The list could go on, and on, and I haven't even begun talking about the Dark Assembly yet.

Story 10/10

Simply put: The story is superb. The voice acting doesn't seem like it was delivered by your local janitor (no offence to you janitors out there, it's just that most of you aren't voice actors) so I could actually enjoy listening to the dialogue. The story is wickedly dark, but also very funny. This game could easily have wandered into the realm of trite crap, but it didn't. Whoever translated this game did a wonderful job of allowing genuine character into the game, while embracing an odd story. This is what sets this game apart from the others in the genre. Does anyone actually remember the story of FFT? We all remember the story of FFT: Advance because it's “The Neverending Story,” and certainly no one remembers the story of Dynasty Tactics 1 and 2. But I can still remember, and love the story of Disgaea; and to me that is the mark of a good RPG.

Graphics 7/10

This game will not set any bar in terms of graphical achievement. The sprites are exceptionally well done, but this could easily have been a PSone game. The hand drawn anime style characters that appear during the cut scenes are exceptional, and should be recommended to anyone who is a fan of that style. The game is obviously not going for the sort of graphical polish that Kingdom Hearts, or FFX provided, but a bit more would have been appreciated. Perhaps hand drawn background screens…I don't know. This said the graphics do not, under any circumstances, get in the way of the enjoyment of this game. It is actually quite refreshing to not see 8 hours of cut scenes, I really appreciated the simplicity of this game's graphics engine. Ultimately I know that this game's graphics are well below the next-generation standard—It's even at the bottom end of the PSone generation graphics. But I can't help myself. I love this title.

Replay 10/10

In case you missed the above portions of this review, this game will have many hours of replayability. I have put about 260 hours in my first play though on this game. And I'm looking to do that again real soon. Playing Disgaea is like the first time that you discover the budding hormones that rage in your system. At first you don't know what to do, you sit and stare at that beautiful person across the room…but soon enough you figure out how everything works, and it consumes your life. Disgaea is the same way. I started off playing this game, and was dazzled by the gameplay, and story. Then I felt like every other game that I played was a let down compared Disgaea. This game has rocketed to pretty darn near the top of my favorite game list. Second only to Chrono Trigger…and that's saying something! It has toppled games like FFT, KOTOR, Diablo II, and Secret of Mana. Disgaea restored my faith in the PS2, and the TRPG genre, and for that I commend Nippon Ichi.

Overall 9/10

I personally would give this game a 10. I know that the graphics will hold most people back from providing that illustrious perfect score, so I held back. Basically if you consider yourself a RPG, or TRPG fan, you need to go out and buy this game. Now. Quit reading this review, and go play this game. You will not regret any of it.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/14/04