Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness Review

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(More customer reviews)A fairly direct port of the popular PS2 game "Disgaea: Hour of Darkness", "Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness" mostly keeps things the same, though a few new features are added.

The game should be familiar to anyone who has played the original Disgaea, but as a refresher for those who haven't: Disgaea is a turn-based tactical role playing game. Using a grid system, characters move, attack, and use special abilities. The RPG element comes in as characters improve through battling, compared to the disposable soldiers of many RTS games. There are, furthermore, many classes to choose from, including warriors, mages, and thieves. This is a system seen in games like Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics, and many others.

For its part, Disgaea brings a lot of elements that are unique to it and its sequel. For example, the RPG system includes not only the effects on the character's leveling up, but also a teacher/student system that grants abilities to other characters. Geo Symbols, another feature of Disgaea's combat, are colored pyramids that, when put on certain location types, can give off various effects to connected areas. The ability to lift and throw characters, either as an offensive attack or to give allies a boost in a certain direction, is also present. Units with similar types can use team-up attacks that boost their power when they're near each other.

In Disgaea, you take the role of Laharl, the Prince of the Underworld. After being awoken from a 2-year nap, Laharl finds that his father, the King, has passed away, and in his absence the underworld has been rife with conflict over who the next overlord will be. With his faithful vassal Etna in tow, Laharl seeks to regain control of his empire. The story and dialogue are rife with comedy - unusually clumsy assassins, parodies of the Power Rangers and Flash Gordon, and the general apathy that Laharl's underlings display toward him. The writing is excellent, and the PSP edition allows you to use both the English and Japanese voice acting.

The graphics have been well maintained in the transition to the small screen. They actually seem to fit better on the PSP, without as many obvious pixels and edges. Both the graphics and the sound are unchanged from the PS2 version, the only new features being the aforementioned dual language audio choice and a new music changing option.

As a whole, Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness is a good port of a solid game. It doesn't change much, but there wasn't much that needed to be changed. If you've played the game before, though, it's not exactly worth buying again.

8/10.

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Product Description:
A deep strategy RPG experience with an exceptional story, a fantastic script, and a host of loveable characters and settings. Upgraded graphics and art for the high resolution widescreen PSP Display. Geo Cubes add special effects in the battlefield, completely shifting the balance in the blink of an eye. The first time for multiplayer in the Disgaea series.

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Disgaea: Hour of Darkness Review

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(More customer reviews)Most rpg games that I have played always have had a serious tone to them. This is understandable since most rpg games, especially those of the fantasy genre, involved defeating a Dark Lord of some sort and saving the world from destruction. This is not the case with ATLUS' Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. Disgaea is one of the funniest and most irreverent game I have ever played.

For starters, the main character in the game is a teenage demon by the name of Laharl whose sidekick Edna is a young demoness who seems to be constantly ridiculing Laharl and maybe even plotting behind his back. Laharl is clueless and behaves the way he thinks demon lords should behave, Edna and the rest of his courtiers barely give him his due respect and yet they still follow him for some reason. Weird and unusual cast of characters for an rpg.

With Disgaea being an rpg in the same vein as Final Fantasy Tactics and Ogre Battle Tactics, there will be an inordinate amount of jobs you as a player can recruit to join your team. Jobs that can be recruited from can range from stereotypical fantasy fare like wizard, mage, cleric to more out there jobs like being a gunslinger of some type. There is even a a unit character one can recruit that is nothing but demonic servants in the shape of penguins that are called Prinnies and who always say "dood!'.

The levelling system in Disgaea is very extensive. If one had the time and inclination to do so, they can level up every character in their team into the 10000+ level. The same goes for the levels of their items. The good thing about Disgaea is that there are certain levels --- I will leave it up to the new players to figure out which --- that helps immensely in powerleveling a team member in the tens of thousands.

The story for Disgaea is funny and doesn't make sense at times, but I think that may have been a plan of the developers from the beginning. But in the end, the story and its many subplots meld well together and everything starts to make sense. The dialogue ranges from downright funny, some sexual innuendoes thats either very mature or juvenile, and to very poignant and sad. I enjoy the option of keeping the voice-over in its original Japanese voices and using English subtitles. Or one can just go straigh to English voice-overs. More rpg games should make good use of this option. It'll save alot of gamers from having to listen to very bad English dubbing.

The graphics is very simple and some may say dated for a PS2 game. It uses anime-style 2d animations unlike most rpgs that have gone the 3D-animation route. The animation looks very colorful and nice even if it's not 3D. The music ranges from operatic to J-pop in styles. Disgaea is really very simple when it comes to its visuals and audio. It could've been done better, but its a minor quibble when taken in context to the rest of the game.

Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is a fun time of a game and one that doesn't ever get old or boring. For gamers who enjoy powerleveling their characters and who like to micromanage every detail of their gears and abilities, then this is a game for you. I hope ATLUS will continue with the success they had with this game and make an even better follow-up. I highly recommend.

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Product Description:
Disgaea: Hour of Darkness takes you into the challenge of a lifetime -- the right to rulethe Netherworld!More than 40 hours of intense gameplay, with multiple endings

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Disgaea Infinite Review

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(More customer reviews)This arrived yesterday and I haven't gotten a chance to play through all of it yet but I did manage to sink some time into. If you're expecting gameplay like the previous Disgaea games, you'll be disappointed. In terms of gameplay, this is closer to the Phoenix Wright games than the past Disgaea games, but that's fine by me.

You play a Prinny trying to solve the mystery of an assassination attempt on Laharl. You can possess characters and travel back and forth across the timeline to and see what happened prior to the assassination attempt. It's got the same humor as all the previous games which makes it an enjoyable ride. It's like playing the a Disgaea version of those old "choose your adventure" books.

It's hard to rate something like this though. The game at times has more in common with a short book than the previous games. Personally, I choose to give it a 5 star rating because I find it very entertaining for what it is. The characters from the first Disgaea were always my favorites and I always get a kick out the Prinnies. There is some repetition as you travel back and forth reliving the scenes over again. At the $20 price point, I still feel that I'm getting my money's worth.

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Product Description:
Disgaea Infinite is a single player game set in the Digaea universe in which players must travel through time to catch a suspect in a potentially heinous crime. Unlike earlier Digaea games, Disgaea Infinite is not a strategic RPG, instead it is created as a "visual novel," in which players have full control of the story, taking full control of characters, choosing how they will act in order to get to the bottom of the mystery at hand.

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Disgaea 3 Absence of Justice Review

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(More customer reviews)Pros:

+A lot of good gameplay
+An overall charming story
+Lots of things to do off the beaten path
+A Huge emphasis on strategy
+Well done anime inspired art

Cons:

-Still a few problems with the camera
-By now the graphics need an improvement to better bring the story to life.The anime inspired art is really nice, but how about an anime scene or two to really convey a character's feelings or actions?Beyond that, the battlefield and character sprites look exactly like they did in the first two games.A graphical update would've been really nice.

In 2003, Disgaea came out and breathe some new life into the Tactical Strategy RPG.It quickly became a cult classic.Disgaea 2 came around and stayed true to the first by changing very little.In that sense, Disgaea 3 can be summed up as being a continuation of the things that worked in the first two games.If you enjoyed the first two Disgaea games, then you'll like Disgaea 3.

Disgaea 3 focuses on Mao as he tries to overthrow is Overlord of a father for destroying his game console.It's a joke of a story but it's meant to be such.In all honesty it isn't much of a bad story at all once it gets going.The story is told through still shots of the characters facing one another as the dialog pops up on screen.There's voice acting, although some of it is quite forgettable.But there's also a good sense of humor, mainly because the story doens't take itself so seriously.Disgaea 3 knows what it is and doesn't try to be anything more.It makes the overall experience of it fun and satisfying.But as the story progresses it actually becomes about so much more than a mere broken Slaystation Portable.

The story is charming overall, but the presentation of it isn't so much.Certainly character portraits carrying the story out isn't so bad, but by now Disgaea should be willing to take its production values to new levels with the Playstation 3.An anime cutscene or something to help bring some of the more dramatic moments to life would've been really nice.

Battling in Disgaea 3 is no different than it was in the previous two games.You move characters around the battlefield executing attacks.Disgaea has always had a huge emphasis on strategy mainly because of the Geo Panels.Depending on the placement of Geo Panels and the placement of Geo Blocks, characters can be granted certain bonuses ranging from an attack boost to even some that aren't going to help you at all such a hindrance to your defense.Disgaea 3 also brings back the bonus gauge where after a battle you can get certain bonuses depending on how much damage you've done or how many panels you've destroyed.Even by the third installment, the Geo Panels system manages to be unique.The Geo Panels also help to make a difference in your strategy.You'll find your level doesn't mean much if the enemy you're facing has a huge boost by the Geo Panel he's standing on.

Disgaea 3 also keeps the level cap incredibly high.You can go all the way up to level 9999.It might seem like the game puts more emphasis on level and brute force, but chances are you'll find there's still a lot of strategy involved in the game, and that's mainly because there's so much outside of the story to do, and the Geo Panels provide a neat puzzle element to the game.

The biggest problem, however, is that it doesn't look any different from the first two games.You're basically getting a Playstation 2 game on a Playstation 3 console.Tactical Strategy RPGs have never been the best looking games, but Disgaea 3, despite being on the Playstation 3, looks almost exactly the same as the first two games.There isn't a real noticeable improvement in the game's artistic or graphical design.The anime inspired character portraits are very nice and detailed, but the overall look of the game isn't much.It also still suffers from the camera angles.While you can rotate the camera you'll find that there's not much else you can do with it.Pillars and other environmental objects will still be in the way.

Disgaea 3 is a good game.Excellent for Disgaea fans.It may play the same way, but that isn't a bad thing at all.What may not settle well with some gamers, however, is that it's a Playstation 3 game that would've been better suited for the Playstation 2.

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Product Description:
The Famed Disgaea series goes next gen on PS3! With high-definition graphics, including beautiful high-res 2D sprite art and stunning spell effects, one of the most highly-acclaimed and beloved strategy RPG series is making the jump to the next generation of gaming with Disgaea 3 Absence of Justice for PLAYSTATION 3. Re-enter the world of Disgaea and experience all of the humor, zany characters, thrilling action, and unmatched excitement in this all-new over 100 hour adventure!

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