Producer: NIS America
Graphics: 4 [see review]
Gameplay: 9
Storyline: 8
Audio/Sound: 4 [see review]
Suspense: 7
Overall: 8.5 (not an average)
Rated T; available for Nintendo DS (and PSP and PS2, but keep reading)
I know after seeing the scores, you're probably wondering how it netted such a good final score. Simple: Disgaea is a good game, and has been in three incarnations.
Disgaea is legendary for several things, one of which being its genre-defying, side-splittingly hilarious mashup of a plot. The game opens with Prince Laharl, the main character and son of the Overlord of the Netherworld, being woken up by one of his vassals, Etna, by any means whatsoever. He awakes to find everything from swords to a giant gatling gun lying behind her, and it’s only as the conversation proceeds that you find he just took a two-year nap. In the meantime, the Overlord died, and, to quote Etna, "the Netherworld has gone to hell while you were sleeping". Thus begins Laharl's absurd quest to take back the Netherworld, facing everything from ferocious demons to space invaders to sexy bodies. Joined along the way by demons, humans, a robot and even an angel, Laharl's story expands beyond just the Netherworld saga and becomes a tale affecting entire universes...remaining consistently wacky the entire way.
Disgaea is also legendary for its leveling system. Like many other strategy RPGs, you take turns moving all units available to you with the computer. Though you can recruit several unique storyline characters and create many more of your own, you can only bring 10 into each battle. Units all have different affinities and stats (based on class for the generics), and a few, like Rogues, have unique abilities. This lends to insane amounts of customizability, but not to worry - there's more than enough room in the game to do whatever you can dream up, such as a cleric using axes or Laharl punching people to death, with the games 9999 level cap. Individual stats cap in the millions, though it's unlikely you'll have anyone above level 100 if you just play the main storyline. However, you can refight almost any battle you want at any time, and can strengthen the enemies within to gain more experience and Hell (the currency of Disgaea).
Said strengthening of enemies can be done at the Dark Assembly. Any character can address the Assembly with a number of propositions, though which are available depend on the character's Rank, which can be raised by fighting promotion battles. The Assembly can make better items available at the shops, strengthen enemies, open up secret areas and even increase a character's movement or let them reincarnate. However...it's not quite so simple. The senators all have different attitudes towards each character, ranging from Love (in which case they will virtually always agree with a proposition) to Loathe (self-explanatory). Some of the higher-level propositions can be absolutely impossible to pass from the beginning. The solution? Bribery! Characters can bribe the senators with various items (each senator has a preferred rarity value of items that they want – more on rarity in a bit) to raise the level of approval. With a bit of judicious bribery, high-level propositions are passable (though by no means guaranteed). Failing that, you could always kill them. (Ye gods, I love Disgaea. How many other games let you kill the plot devices if you don’t like them?) If senators reject your bill, you can choose to fight them, in which case the ones who voted for it will be friendly (though they will not attack, and will turn hostile if attacked by either you or the enemies). Defeating them all passes your bill the same if you had won the vote.
Items! I mentioned rarity back there, so let’s turn to the next massive powerleveling topic. Items each have a rarity value ranging from 0 to 255. Items below 30 are rare, and below 8 are legendary. In addition to having higher stats, rare and legendary items also have larger Item Worlds and can hold more Specialists. Equipping multiple items with the exact same rarity value makes each of them give extra boosts to the stats they provide.
The Item Worlds are exactly as they sound – a unique world inside of each item. Item Worlds consist of randomly generated floors, one after the other, filled with random enemies and Geo Effects (boy, I’m dropping tantalizing buzzwords all over the place, huh?). Fighting your way through an item powers it up, and also allows you to unlock the Specialists (if any) in each one. Every 10 levels there’s you are offered the chance to leave; otherwise an item called “Gency’s Exit” is your only way out.
Specialists are randomly generated on items. They provide boosts to stats or other things (such as elemental resistances, status effects and even extra experience or Hell) on their item. Specialists appear on items but must be subdued in order to be moved around or combined. Subduing a specialist is done by finding and killing them in the Item World they reside in. Once subdued, they double in effectiveness and can be moved from item to item and combined with other ones of the same effect to give greater bonuses.
Geo Effects are another interestingly abusable feature of this game. They consist of different colored tiles on some levels that may have Geo Symbols on the to provide effects both helpful (such as bonus experience for killing enemies on that color tile) and hindering (such as boosting all enemy stats by three times). They can be turned to your advantage with beneficial Geo Symbols, or you can simply destroy them. Destroying a Geo Symbol will remove that effect, but it can dramatically alter the battlefield – if you destroy a blue Geo Symbol on a red tile, for example, it will turn all the red tiles on the field blue. If there were a yellow Geo Symbol on another one of the red tiles which changed to blue, it would be destroyed, chaining all the blue tiles – old and new – into yellow. Geo chains also boost the Bonus Gauge, which is randomly generated for each battle and can provide some nifty rewards if filled (which can also be done by chaining attacks together with your characters).
The gameplay is not without its flaws, though. Primary among them: if you’re going to play Disgaea, you’d better have a LOT of time on your hands; grind-tacular as it is, even just playing through the main plot can take quite a while. Unlocking some of the better classes can take a long time, and even the very beginning can really mess people over (especially first-time players trying to level a Cleric. Protip: Have the Cleric make a mage and stand next to them).
The graphics and sound…ouch. See, Disgaea DS is a port of the game originally released on the PS2, and later on the PSP as well. Both of those versions have far, far, FAR FAR FAR superior audio fidelity, MUCH better graphics, and full voice acting, which was cut to a minimum (around 1 scene or so, plus a few battle quotes pre character) here. The graphics are adequate, but the music really is unforgivable, especially as it is bizarrely quiet, even with the volume turned up all the way, and as it is an excellent soundtrack largely butchered by this rendition. Tracking down the originals is worth your time.
The plot is as whimsically and wonderfully insane as it gets, and is surprisingly mature as you approach the ending…but which one? The game provides quite a few endings, though several are merely slight variations of the normal ending. There’s a “good” ending, a “normal” ending, and then there are actually some endings that are completely different (though those tend be alternate endings reached by doing entirely different things that simply beating the final battle).
The character development is mostly good; while there are a couple characters that get old rather quickly, most of them are amazing the whole way through, and Laharl’s growth through the game is truly entertaining (and a bit endearing) to watch.
Overall: Disgaea is an amazingly fresh and utterly madcap SRPG that is eminently worth playing (and even with the DS’s flawed version, there are compensations. Such as Pleinair and the topscreen map). SRPG players who have yet to give this a shot should do so, and other people are more than welcome to try it.
