It's been a long while since Atlus release a real rpg for the Playstation 2. Atlus much like Working Designs is known for releasing rpg games that most mainstream gaming companies tend to over look or pass over. Still when Atlus does release an rpg over here to North America, it's an rpg game that's definetly worth looking into simply cause you know that the rpg is something different from the usual stuff. Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is definetly different from other strategy rpg games.
STORY
Like Father, Like Son
The Adventures of Flonne!
How the story is looked upon overall depends on the ending you get. Since there are a possibility of 8 different endings, what kind of ending you get will give you a better impression of whether or not you enjoy the overall storyline. So there's a big difference between getting a good ending as oppose to getting a bad ending. But what we can tell you is what the main plot to the story is about and the overtone of the story. The story is about the different contrast between demons, angels, and human. Three separate races, each with their own unique way of life and thinking. Since the story takes place in the Netherworld where the demons live and center around the prince of the Netherworld, Laharl, you can bet the view point of the story will be told from the demon side. At the beginning of the story, you see Etna, a loyal servant of the King, waking up Prince Laharl in his sleep. Etna inform the young Prince that his father had died three years ago. Since then the Netherworld has been thrown into a civil war with individuals wanting to fill the vacuum of becoming the next Overlord. Prince Laharl response was, "What? Why didn't you wake me up sooner? I've been sleeping for the last 3 years?" As you can tell... the overtone of the story isn't going to be a serious one. It's a lighthearted fun story. Being a demon, Prince Laharl feels no sadness for the lost of his father as demons can't love. But being the Prince, he is next in line to succeed as the new Overlord of the Netherworld. With Etna by his side, Prince Laharl began his campaign to take out any one that would challenge him for the throne of the Overlord. At the same time, Flonne, an angel from Celestia was sent to the Netherworld to assassinate Laharl's father. But when Flonne arrive to the Netherworld, she met Prince Laharl and discover that the King had already died three years ago choking on a pretzel that he had ate. Since the King is already dead, Flonne mission is moot. Instead of returning to Celestia, Flonne decided to accompany Prince Laharl so she can teach him the meaning of love. The three form a bond of friendship and together they help Prince Laharl defeat those that would oppose him as the new Overlord. Now the story is presented in different chapters. At the beginning of each chapter, there are narration from each character, mostly from Etna. But the narration really have nothing to do with the actual chapter that is coming up next. It's just more cheesy goofball comedy skit. In fact from the beginning to the end, the entire dialogue and story have more goofball moments and cheesy dialogue than any serious moments. It's pretty much a kiddie rpg comedy story. There are some funny moments in the story that you just can't help but laugh. If you're an older gamer looking for a serious rpg story then you will have to look elsewhere. But if you are looking for an rpg story that will give you some good laughs with some cheesy moments then go ahead and pick this one up. You might just enjoy it just to see how corny the story can be. The endings are the only parts where things take a more serious overtone to the storyline. Of course that depends on what ending you get though.
Score 7/10
CHARACTERS
We are the Defenders of Earth!
There are a total of 7 story characters. The main focus or the big three of the story characters are Laharl, Etna, and Flonne. The other characters aren't develope as much. The focus of the story is between the differences between demons and angels. Here the slow developement of Laharl's character shows us the nature of demons and the ways of the demons and how they are so different from those of angels. As the story develope so do the characters, it's nice to see how Flonne became more and more influence by the demons while Etna and Laharl slowly develope feelings of love and compassion that are traits of angels. Character developement is a part of the progression in the story as a sub-plot in the overall story. The bad part is that it doesn't really focus too much on the other characters outside of the big three. Each of these characters also have voices from the voice actors to help bring realism to them. Unfortunately depending on the characters, their personality can either be cool or annoying. Still for a light hearted rpg story, the characters are pretty decent.
Score: 6/10
GRAPHICS
I shall heal you.
Okay let's be honest here. Even though this is consider a Playstation 2 game, the graphics look like a Playstation game from the era of the Playstation. Heck, there are Playstation games that have better graphics than this. Now does that mean the graphics are bad? No. But it is outdated for the Playstation 2. What you have is a 3-D/2-D world in hand drawn sprite with anime artworks. The story scenes are made of 2-D anime artwork. There are no anime or CG cutscenes. Just anime artwork of your story characters followed by text. Not exactly innovative graphics here. Background battle map are 3-D polygons consisting of hand drawn sprite characters. Similar to FF Tactics and Vandal Hearts series from the Playstation. When compare to other Playstation 2 graphics, it's not very impressive. The question then becomes, does graphic matter to you?
Score: 5/10
MUSIC
We're under attack!
Musically speaking, it's not the best and most important part of this game. Sure there are some good music tunes in this game but for the most part, they are all light hearted fun musical tunes. The musical theme matches the overall presentation of the game, but the drawback is that you don't really take the music as seriously as the way other rpgs use their music. And that's the problem. I don't have any really one musical theme that I can recall from this game. Or even one musical tune that I can connect with a character in the game or a story moment in the game. The style of the music is that of Japanese Pop culture tune I suppose. Some people will think it's cute while others will probably be annoy with it. In terms of sound effects, there's not a lot of them other than the sound that the characters make when unleashing a special attack. There is however voice acting throughout the game. Now the quality of the voice acting is up for debate. It borderline between good and bad. The problem here is that you can't tell whether it's bad because of the cheesy dialogue that the voice actors have to play out or it's because of the actual voice acting. Maybe a combination of both. Then there are moments too where the voices are actually quite good. I guess it depends on the moment of the script in the storyline. The music and voice acting is all a reflection of the game and the story. And since the story isn't presented to us as a serious rpg story but as a light hearted comedy story, then we're not going to take the music and voice acting seriously.
Score: 6/10
GAMEPLAY
Democracy at work.
Team Combo Attack!
Game Information
Genre: Strategy
Rpg
Publisher: Atlus
Disc:1 DVD Disc
Memory:377 KB
Players: 1 Player
Mode
Vibration:Yes
Dual Analog:Yes
Digital Control:Yes
Rating: Teen
Release:August 2003
The strongest aspect in this game is the strategy gameplay. While on the surface, the gameplay looks like any other strategy battle map rpg game but there's a lot to do here. Most of it requires a lot of leveling up. This is a very difficult rpg game. It may be easy at first but it will get harder by mid way point. The gameplay is broken into two section, Castle set up and Battle Maps. The Castle set up is where you can travel around your castle to heal, shop for items and weapons, and of course to address the Dark Assembly and enter the Item World. We will take a look at the Castle set up first.
The Dark Assemby: This is the meat of the gameplay and the place where
everything begins and ends. This is the place where you can create new characters,
promote characters to different higher classes, and pass proposals to have access
to certain things. Once you enter the Dark Assemby, you have various option menu
to choose from. Each option available in the Dark Assembly will require a certain
amount of Mana. You will need to select the character that will be addressing
the Dark Assembly. From there you just pick which option you want to use. Let's
look at the various menus within the Dark Assembly. Create/Delete Characters: What else but a place to create new fighters for your party or to delete old and useless ones. Transmigration: This is the place where you can transmigrate your character
into a higher class. But by doing so, you will start at level 1 again. But the
bonus is that with a higher class, you will have better stats in the end. Promotion Exams: This is a place where you can increase your Ranking in
the Dark Assembly. As your rank goes higher, more proposals are available for
you to try and pass through the senate. Also the higher your rank is, the better
chance you have on getting a proposal pass. Each exam will have the person taking
the exam fighting against varioius enemies by themselves. Pass it and your Rank
will go up. Senate Proposals: As your Rank goes up from Promotion Exams, various Senate
Proposals will show up. These proposal range from extra battle map stages to increase
a characters movement, to making more expensive items show up in shops. The objective
of course is to try and get a proposal to pass in the Senate. A lot harder then
it sound. You can just try your luck and hope a proposal pass by having the Senate
vote on the proposal or you can try and bribe Senators that aren't in favor of
you with various items to increase your chance of getting a proposal to pass.
A last resort if you still can't get enough Senators to vote in favor of you is
to use force to change those that are against you. Mind you that if you do decide
to use force, some of these senators have levels in the high range of 300+ levels.
Who knew Senators can be so tough? Specialists: Each item and equipment has at least one specialist inside
of it. What is a specialist? A specialist is a resident that live inside an item
that boosts the stat of the item base on it's level. The number of specialists
varies from different items. And what specialists appear in what items also varies.
There are over 25 different specialists, each with it's own unique items stats
boosting abilities. The two biggest and most important specialists are Armsmaster
(speeds up weapon mastery) and Statisticians (raises EXP gained by killing enemies).
The key in creating the best weapons is by going inside the weapon and subduing
the specialists that are there. Once the specialists are subdued, you can then
transfer those specialists to the latest weapons for use. To have an even greater
impact, you can combine the same type of specialists to level them up even more.
Learning how to best use your specialists is the key to winning the game. Item World: One of the most interesting and unique thing about this gameplay
is the introduction of the Item World. In this game you have the ability to enter
each item. Whether it's a weapon, armor, or item recovery makes no different.
What is the point of entering an item? The point is to level the item up, use
the Item World as a leveling tool for your members, and to find rare hard to get
items, and lastly subduing any specialists inside the Item. The number of floors
inside an items depends on it's rarity. The rarer the item, the more floors there
are. The highest number of floors inside an item will be at 100 floors. Each time
you move onto the next floor, you level the item up by one level. It doesn't matter
whether you just go to the portal that takes you to the next floor or that you
clear the floor of all enemies. Any advancement to the next floor will increase
the item level. The difficulty in terms of the enemies inside the item depends
on the rank of the item. A higher rank item will have higher level enemies. Of
course as you progress through the floors, higher level enemies will make their
appearance. On the really rare items with floors of 100, you will be facing enemies
that are on average at level 3000+. So be very afraid. Once you go inside an item,
there are only two ways out. Every tenth floor, you will have the option to leave
and go back to your castle. Heal and save. You can then re-enter the item again
at the floor that you left off. Another option to leave the Item World is with
a Mr. Gency's Exit item. Getting familiar with the Item World is a must for core
rpg gamers that want to level up and find really good items in this game.
Now let's look at the battle maps. Battle maps look just like any other maps
on the surface but there are quite a few changes made to make it unique from other
strategy rpg game. Here are some of the interesting features:
Bonus Gauage: You have a Bonus gauge on the battle map. The bonus gauge start at 0 but can move up to a maximum of 9. The Bonus Gauge correspond to the Bonus items available at the end of battle. During the battle you can find out what items are available as a bonus at the end of each battle. There are 9 items in general and each items will correspond with the Bonus Gauge level number. At the end of the battle, if your Bonus Gauge is at 6 then you will get all the items in the Bonus menu from 0 to 6. So the objective is to try and get your Bonus Gauge as high as possible. Combos: Combos is done when you attack the same enemy consecutively with your fighters. By attacking one particular enemy in a consecutive turn, you are stringing a combo attack together. Two benefits for this. One, is that by doing a string of combos, you get more damage to the enemy. Second is that by doing combo attacks, you have a much easier and better way of raising your Bonus Gauge higher. Mana & Exp: The interesting thing about this game is that only the person that does the deathblow to an enemy is awarded with Mana and Experience. You need Mana for the Dark Assembly and of course you need Experience for leveling up. However there is a way to go around the Experience part by doing team attacks. But for Mana, it's only the person that does the killing that get the Mana. Team Attacks: While combo attacks are mainly used to get the Bonus Gauge
up, Team Attacks however are used to spread the experience that the fighter that
does the deathblow to other characters that are included in the Team Attack. Team
Attacks occurs when a character attacks an enemy and if there are allies next
to him/her, they may take part in the attack as well. Team Attacks only works
on normal attacks. Team Attacks however is done base on a random of percentage.
Team Attacks is best used to try and spread the experience around to different
party members. Lifting: One of the most unique feature of the battle system is the ability
to life your party members and to throw them. Depending on how good you are, you
can form a totem with all your party member and to throw them to a location. This
is very useful in getting to those hard to reach places where your normal movement
can't get you there. If you can't get there then just throw your members over
there. Weapon Mastery: For special skills or moves, the game uses the weapon
mastery system. Every single character can equip whatever weapon. But each character
has a different range of efficiency to a particular weapons. So when you look
at a character stats, you will find out what their efficiency level is for using
a particular type of weapon and equiping that weapon to the character. The reason
why it's best to equip the weapon that a character is most efficient with is that
they can level the weapon a lot faster than with a weapon that they aren't as
efficient with. And once a weapon has reach a certain number of levels, they will
unlock the special attack of that weapon.
Outside of the key features in the game, you have your basic strategy rpg
gameplay where you are required to clear the map and then move on to the next
map followed by a small story cut scenes. If you look at the overall gameplay,
it's just immense. Especially knowing the fact that you can level your character up
to level 9999. A requirement if you want to tackle those extra battlemaps. Add
in the total amount of gameplay hours spent in this game would be well over 100+.
And that's just the minimum amount of time spent on the game.
Score: 10/10
EXTRAS/REPLAY
Good or bad ending?
On the surface, the extras and replay value don't look like much. But once you get a closer look, you notice that there are lot of things to do with the stuff that are available to you. This game doesn't have any mini games for you to play. So the secret extra stuff mainly comes from hidden classes for your fighters and secret extra maps. Hidden job classes, you have to unlock if you know how. Secret extra maps need to be unlock through proposals from the Senate. Now these extra maps are huge. They contains extra bosses and enemies in levels that are unseen of in the regular gameplay. We are talking about bosses with levels above 2000 here. You'll going to need to spend hours and hours of leveling up just to try and take on these secret maps. It doesn't seem like much but the numbers of hours spend of the secret maps are huge. Well worth the time and effort into getting the best equipments and hidden bosses. Replay comes from the sheer fact that there are 8 different endings to achieve. Once you get one ending, you can replay the game again to get another ending with a New Game+ feature. This will allow you to convert all your equipment and characters that you have over to your new game. Making the replay easier to deal with since all of your fighters have leveled up with good equipment. While the presentation doesn't seem much, the value of the replay and extras is worth a lot.
Score: 10/10
In terms of sheer strategy rpg gameplay, this game is it. Unfortunately the story and the rest of the package don't seem to compliment the outstanding gameplay. If you can overlook those other aspect and just want a strategy rpg game that has an outstanding gameplay then Disgaea is it. Unfortunately for me, I can't over look the story to really get into the outstanding gameplay. The story and the characters really annoy me to the point where I didn't look forward to playing this game at times. Maybe it's a sign of my old age or that I'm just too serious of a strategy rpg gamer to be playing a lighthearted story rpg game.
