Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness

"Disgaea: Hour....Err, Afternoon....Err, week....Year..s?.....of Darkness."

About five years ago, if you asked the average gamer (or even most people who claim to be RPG enthusiasts) if they knew what "Nippon Ichi" was, very few of them would probably have any idea what you were talking about. At that point in time, the only real Nippon Ichi (Henceforth referred to as "N1") game that had been really released outside of Asian region was Rhapsody, a cutesy little musical RPG for the Playstation. The game was localized by Atlus, a name that actually IS fairly known to the RPG world. Though it had its following, Rhapsody was overall met with a resounding "meh" stateside, and it would be years before another N1 game would ever see the light of day outside of Japan.

N1 continued to pour numerous games out in japan, none of them ever leaving the country (ok, technically if you imported them they did) and it wasn't until 2003 and the release of Makai Senkai Disgaea that another chance was taken to bring an N1 game over. Like Rhapsody, Disgaea was localized by Atlus, under the guise of; Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. Perhaps due to the fact that Atlus is notorious for very small print-runs, the game sold out within a month or two, and became one of the biggest "sleeper hits" in recent years. Disgaea launched N1 into the RPG (or specifically, SRPG) limelight, and discussions about them changed from "Nippon Ichi? What's that?" to "Nippon Ichi? When does their NEXT game come out??"

After becoming a hit, Disgaea spawned a direct sequel, a manga adaptation, an anime adaptation, artbooks, a collectable figure line, and three of the main characters have been main-stay cameos in virtually every SRPG that's been released since. This game, Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness is something of an "enhanced port," much like the recently released Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, also recently released for the PSP. The original Disgaea was a humorous (if not somewhat childish at times) game about a rag-tag group of absurd demons. Actually, EVERYTHING about the game was absurd, from the characters, to the gameplay mechanics, to the battles themselves. So how much of the original has been retained in this port? Are the extras worth the buy if you've already played the original? Is the game worth picking up if you passed on the PS2 version? Well, read on...

Graphics - 8/10:

I'll be fair here. It isn't that I don't like the graphics in the game, but they're not without flaw. The first thing you might say to yourself if you've never played the PS2 game is....well...."This was a PS2 game?" The character models, while in all honesty designed pretty nicely, and fairly detailed, are really not that impressive, all things considered. I guess if nothing else, there was very little problem in that department in transitioning it over to the PSP. The sprite models are generally considered to be rather sub-par, and mid-Playstation (1) caliber at best. In fact, there is a cameo character from Rhapsody in this game, and they use her exact same sprite.

Of course, this actually matters less on the PSP, which is generally touted as being a "Playstation 1.5" even though it can handle some PS2-quality games fairly easily. Personally, I've been a big fan of Disgaea since I picked it up on its release for the PS2, and the sprites never bugged me. In a way, I mostly prefer them over 3-D models, although there are many other sprite based games with much, much better looking graphics. Even Disgaea 2, while not being much more of a graphic achievement, it at least had sharper, higher-resolution sprites. You'd think that the PSP port of Disgaea might have a slightly more crisp look to it.

The special attacks are all very nice looking. One of the big things about N's games, is that many of the attacks and effects are ridiculously over-the-top. The animations are usually satisfyingly devastating, cool looking in general, and leave you with warm feeling once you watch all those numbers fly as the enemies fall. The maps and things all 3-D fields, and while the story maps generally look pretty nice and unique, the item world (more on that later) basically comes in two different flavors; Normal levels, and "boss" levels, which you'll see every 10th floor. Although the appearance and layouts are generally random, the sad part is, the variety just wasn't in it here, since all the random parts the levels draw from are virtually identical.

Overall, I personally like the graphics. They are dated, and have been since even the original version of this game hit the shelves halfway through the PS2's lifecycle, it certainly doesn't hurt the game at all. Much of the over the top appearance and feel of the game just wouldn't be there, had it been done any other way.

Story - 8/10:

The first time through this game, I, and many others who have played it, thought this game was absolutely hilarious. And it is, for the most part. However, subsequent times through have left a somewhat empty feeling, and I just rush through to get back to the endgame material. If you haven't played through it, it is certainly funny, and much of the absurdity is still quite present in latter playthroughs. Don't get me wrong, I'll still chuckle here and there at various lines and scenes. Maybe it's just that the impact has been lost after the first time, or maybe its just that the humor style doesn't appeal to me quite like it used to. There are still plenty of laughs to be had, and some lines will have you almost in tears, if you're not aware of them beforehand.

As the game opens, there's a brief synopsis of the state of the Netherworld. Apparently, the Overlord has recently died, and demons are vying for power, and everything is in turmoil. Etna, a sassy vassal of the late Overlord, has decided to wake up the Overlord's rambunctious and snotty brat of a son. This is Prince Laharl, and after learning of his father's death, decides that all these demons have another thing coming to them, if they think they're going to be Overlord over him. The two fight like cats and dogs, with Laharl swearing that he'll just kill anyone who gets in his way, pisses him off, or just generally looks at him wrong, and Etna being just about the most disobedient "vassal" in existence, and only follows Laharl to further her own ambitions, and basically openly states that she'll stab Laharl in the back, if given the chance.

From there, you'll meet countless other characters, including Vyers, a mysterious narcissistic demon, who Laharl quickly writes off as being just another obstacle in his way. You'll meet Flonne, a clumsy Angel trainee, sent to assassinate the late Overlord, but decides to stick around in the netherworld once she discovers the sad state of things there. The plot plays out rather episodically (almost like an anime), with you meeting these and more characters along the way. That being said, many of the events, particularly in the early chapters, seem very loosely related--almost entirely detached from one another. There is an overarching plot holding everything together, having to do with the Seraph of Celestia, and a second strange person who wish to unify the worlds of Celestia, the Netherworld, and the Human world, with the intent of teaching the inhabitants that Angels, Demons, and Humans really aren't so different. Basically, it's a fairly typical message of "people only judge eachother on race, while not actually knowing anything about those people." Of course, there are others out there who would rather mold these worlds into their own liking, and take them over.

All that being said, the game's story is kind of all over the board. The game plays out in 14 chapters and as mentioned, many of the early chapters seem almost completely detached from one another. However, the last third or so of the game pulls most of everything together, and things make a bit more sense. The game also features multiple endings, which serve up some interesting alternate scenarios and takes on what would happen if you lose to a certain boss, or what would happen if you kill too many of your own allies, among other things. Disgaea is actually considered to be one of N1's strongest games, story-wise, bested only by possibly the later Phantom Brave (at least in terms of solidity). Regardless, each of the characters have their quirks, and there are a number of situations that actually are pretty funny. Briefly, some of these situations include the exchange between Laharl and Vyers, wherein he says Vyers isn't worth the time, and appropriately (to him, anyway) renames him "Mid-Boss." There's some very thinly veiled (ok, downright obvious) sexual jokes, such as Laharl's weakness to busty women. There's Flonne running around the castle pretending to be a ninja, and yelling out "Whoosh!" and "Nin Nin!" And who could forget the demonic penguin-esque prinnies, and their internet-lingo speech. "We're Prinnies, Dood!" (Get it? "Dude? Dood?" Har har.) And plenty of breaking the fourth wall.

The PSP version actually has a slight advantage over the PS2 version, at least story-wise, simply because of the added "Etna Mode," which is basically a "What if" scenario where Etna becomes the main character, although this is fairly short, and tries to condense a fair deal of the main game down into just a few short chapters. There were also a few new extra bosses and things that were added to this version that weren't present in the original, so those extra tidbits are nice.

Obviously, this is the type of the iceberg, so to speak, both in terms of the humor and story that the game has to offer. Some of the humor in the story can kind of lose its punch after you go through it a few times, but that first time through it's a blast. Similarly, the story might seem a bit disjointed and random, but by the end a good portion of it will make sense.

Control - 9/10:

Being an SRPG, you should get used to seeing plenty of menus, which may be a good or bad thing, depending. On one hand, you have pages and pages and pages of things to go through sometimes; Shops. The item world. Character screens. The Dark Assembly. Skill lists. Etc. It can all be very confusing to someone at first, and many people feel a bit discouraged by the sheer amount of what's going on. If you can tough it out for a little while, though, you'll find that things become pretty familiar, pretty quickly, and many of those menus are reduced to simply clicks of a button; Confirm/Cancel? It's pretty much as simple as that. Navigating is done similarly to other games SRPGs, as you don't manually control anything, but rather just confirm attacks, movements, etc. through menus at the click of a button.

Battles - 8/10:

Like many SRPGs, battles take place on a gridded map. You start off battle inside the "base" panel. By deploying characters from the base panel and placing them onto the field, you can move them around and have them attack enemy units, commanding up to 10 allied units at once. Like many SPRGs, the game features a "Job-class" system, in which you level certain classes up, and new, more powerful or more specialized ones will unlock. There are seven types of weapons you can choose from, and characters will gain new skills by using those weapons. Of course, this all sounds very simple in theory, but it can get rather complex, rather fast.

There are two types of characters you can use; Humanoid, and monsters. Sadly, while monsters have unique attacks, and decent stats, they're generally throw-aways, since they cannot use weapons or skills, nor can they gain weapon levels, etc. This basically means that humanoids are your better choice, since monsters have so little customization, in general. Although any human can use any weapon, they each have a certain affinity toward certain weapon types. For example, a Mage would be best when equipped with a staff. An archer would be best when equipped with a bow. A Warrior would be best with a Sword, and so on. Sure, you can mix this up by having, say, a sword-using mage, or a staff using warrior, but it's kind of pointless, since their stats, weapon growths, and aptitudes usually don't support this. In turn, this is kind of a downside, since each character sort of has a pre-made "This is how you are supposed to use this character," feel, rather than being able to explore your options. You can, but because of those poor weapon proficiencies, your sword-wielding mage, and staff-wielding warrior will suffer greatly.

Proficiency is a letter assigned to each weapon, for each character. For example, a class may have an "S" rank for swords, but a "D" rank for staffs. This means that their weapons levels (independent of character levels, mind you) will level up quite quickly for swords, but ridiculously slow for staffs. Weapon proficiency goes hand-in-hand with weapon levels. Whereas proficiency decides how quickly you level up, weapon levels determine when you learn new skills, and how much power you actually receive from weapon. So even if you only have a sword that has an Attack rating of 100, you may gain 1000 attack, due to your weapon levels being high. By learning new skills, you'll increase your options and methods of attacking the enemy. Each weapon has six skills associated with it, and by gaining weapon levels, you'll unlock these new skills. The earlier skills are fairly basic, usually allowing you to deal slightly more damage to enemies than you would with, say, a normal physical attack. Later attacks are devastating, and generally do huge amounts of damage, or hit several enemies at once. A huge issue with these skills in the original game was the length of their animations. Taking a cue from Disgaea 2 the PSP port of Disgaea has the option to turn off the skill and spell animations, as well as new maps designed for leveling, making powering the skills and characters up much less of a chore than it was before.

There are a good number of things that go into character-building as well. Once you create a character, they will have set "base stats" and "aptitudes." Aptitudes work in a similar way to how weapon levels work (although, not exactly, of course.) Aptitudes are static percentages given to each character and class, and cannot be changed (unless you transmigrate to another class--more on that later). For example, say you have the same sword from above with 100 attack. You equip it to a character that has a 120% ATK aptitude. The result is that you'll gain 120 attack, from a sword that only had 100 ATK power. Unlike weapon mastery levels, aptitudes actually affect all equipment on a character, not just the weapon.

Transmigration is a somewhat unique feature that allows you to gain levels, and then return to level 1 thereby "storing" the previous levels you had gained. So if you transmigrate at level 100, you'll have those levels stored, although you'll be back on level 1. Why would you do this? Two reasons: One, storing levels will earn you bonus points, which you can "spend" on any stat you wish. And two, every time you transmigrate at a higher level than you did the previous time, your base stats will be higher. So if you transmigrated at level 100 once, by the time you get to level 100 again, they should be somewhat higher. The increases are cumulative, and stats and levels can get astronomical in Disgaea, so you can be vastly more powerful, if you wish to continually do this. In case you haven't guessed yet, all of these multipliers and numbers work in conjunction with one another, and the effects will keep building allowing you to gain what can only be described as absurd amounts to your stats.

On nearly all maps, there are also colored squares called "Geopanels." In a sense, these are sort of terrain effects. They come in in various colors; red, green, blue, purple, etc, and are usually accompanied by Geo Stones. Geo stones are small, pyramid shaped objects that can be found on maps. By placing them on the Geo symbols you will create effects that can either be positive or negative in nature. Some of the effects include invincibility, Attack+50%, HP Restore 20%, Enemy Boost x3, Damage 20%, Clone, and several others. As you can see, there is quite a range to their effects, and you can use them to your advantage. Pay attention to them, though, because the negative ones can be quite dangerous, and you may find yourself dying if you just ignore them, or let enemies take advantage of them....You can also destroy a geo stone on a geo panel. In most situations, you will create a "Geo Chain" which does a number of things, including damage any units standing on those specific panels, and it fills a bonus gauge, which can result in you winning some items.

There is also the Dark assembly, which is almost literally a senate room, in which you can propose bills and see if they get passed. There are a number of bills that exist, which include things like increasing the shop's inventory, making enemies stronger, and unlocking secret areas. This can be....difficult, though, as the assembly generally doesn't seem to like you, and they'll spend a good deal of time turning your proposed bills down. No matter, though, because if you really want the bill to pass, you can just opt to beat the hell out of all of the senators, and the bill will pass. Isn't that fun?

Probably one of the most infamous features of Disgaea is the Item world. Inside of every item lies a multi-layered dungeon, riddled with enemies, bosses, and treasure. Items come in three varieties (regular, rare, and legendary) and the dungeon will have more floors depending on what type of item you go through. Why would you want to go thorough these items? Several reasons, actually. For one, the further down into an item you go, the more powerful it becomes. Clearing floor after floor, and beating up the Item-themed bosses along the way (Item general, King, and God) with net you huge increases to the item's stats. You can also steal or win excellent items, some of which can only be obtained in the item worlds of other high-ranking items. You'll also run into "Specialists" occasionally. By subduing these neutral monsters in an item you are allowed to move them to other items, and you want them around because they can further increase your stats, increase your experience gain rates, or boost your defenses against elements and status effects.

That's a lot for battles, isn't it? Obviously, there's plenty more, but half the fun is in discovering things yourself, and it's all the more reason to get this game. The sheer variety and amount of stuff to do is almost overwhelming. There's plenty of content, and getting bored with a game such as this is something that doesn't happen often. With the geopanel/stone system, battles can function almost like puzzles, and you also have a pretty good deal of variety with characters and weapons. Unfortunately, there could be a bit MORE variety, really, as many classes are overshadowed by later classes and characters, and about 95% of the characters and weapons are rendered useless, unless you want to get really fancy, or otherwise limit yourself. N1's games are also notorious for having rather incompetent AI. One of the easiest things to do is send out weak, low-leveled units as "decoys" while you position your powerful characters to strike, and the enemies will usually chase down and kill those decoys, totally ignoring the only dangerous units you have. This is even possible of the times when they could actually kill your dangerous units.

Music - 8/10:

Disgaea's music, in my opinion, was really nothing stellar. Some of the BGMs were kind of cool and catchy, but I didn't find it to be a memorable soundtrack. In the PS2 version, there was only ONE song you heard throughout all of the item world, and since in the end game you'll be spending a lot of time there, this got old, fast. Thankfully, the PSP version allows you to buy music, and you can change BGMs and such in the item world, and listen to your favorite songs from the game any time you want. All in all, certainly not bad music, and some of them are somewhat fun to listen to.

Replay - 9/10:

Multiple endings, Etna mode, building and adapting your armies, extra maps, secret bosses, the collection books...what more reason could you possibly want? Sure, you can do many of these things on one playthrough, but I usually count extras in this section, and time and time again, N1 has proved that they'll jam-pack the extra and replay content in. In fact, many boast that N1's games don't even start until after the story is over with. Honestly, that's not far from the truth...

Overall - 8/10:

Disgaea is a fairly polished--if not somewhat graphically iffy--game. It has it's bad points; A somewhat hit-or-miss story, that comes off as being hilarious to some, and absolutely infantile to others. There's also a great deal of character customization, yet at the same time, once you get used to that customization, the game can feel almost a bit limiting. The story can be fun, and it's characters memorable though, and it's definitely a solid game with lots of depth and content. If you passed this game on the PS2, definitely pick it up for the PSP, especially if you find SRPGs in general to be enjoyable. If you got the PS2 version, and have been unsure about getting this one, I would say do it, just to enjoy it all over again. Plus there's always the new mode, new special battles, multiplayer, etc. Despite being "graphically inferior" to many games out there, it stands as being a very fun game, worthy to add to your PSP library, whether you're a new Disgaea fan, or an old vet.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/30/07, Updated 12/03/07

Game Release: Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness (US, 10/30/07)