This game will make you laugh, it will make you think, and it might even make you cry.
Gameplay: 9
This is what Nippon Ichi is famous for, and Disgaea is with out a doubt their best accomplishment. Disgaea is unique in that you can play through levels in the story as you see fit, or spend hours doing a variety of optional things to make your team stronger. This game is not linear at all in that respect. Your characters gotten through story mode are very limited near the beginning of the game, so you have to make characters. You can make characters from a variety of classes, and this itself is deep enough to take hours and hours. There is also the ability to go into a separate world in items in order to make yourself and the item stronger, the stronger the item the harder the fights. The real reason the gameplay shines is the battle system though.
In Disgaea these are attacks, skills, magic, and items. Some skills and magic unique to story specific characters while the rest are learnt by using a weapon or magic. That is pretty much standard though for strategy rpgs, what makes Nippon Ichi and Disgaea unique is combos and the ability to throw other characters. Since all your characters take there turn at the same time you can surround a enemy and unleash a devasting combo attack with up to 4 people. This attack would only use up the turn of whoever initiated the attack, so you could still use the other characters to do something else. Using throws it is possible to move across the screen in one turn. Throws are very useful in getting places your characters usually could not. Then there are also geo panels in this game that provide an unparralled level of stategy. They will cause different statis affects to afflict characters standing on them, and they are governed by geo symbols. I personally didn't mess around with these if I didn't have to, but they can make some battles much harder or easier than they should be. For example they could make people on certain panels invincible. In fact, this is the only reason I docked gameplay. Some levels can be very annoying do to geo panels and enemy arrangements you wouldn't see in other games. That aside, the combination of gameplay elements Disgaea offers makes for a level of fun and strategy only Disgaea can offer.
Graphics: 8
Disgaea's graphics are anime and they arguable could have been pulled off on the playstation. That's not true though, it may look like that at first, but the special effects in this game are actually quite impressive. And though they might not be revolutionary the character models and backgrounds are charming and easy on the eyes. They fit the bill perfectly.
Sound: 10
I can not think of any reason to mark down this game in the sound category. I absolutely love the music, and it changes frequently throughout the story and for bosses. The sound effects are also fantastic and the voice acting is some of the best I have ever heard. I would replay certain levels in this game just to here the music playing in the background.
Value: 10
This game may have more value than any other offline game made to date. The max level is 9999, and you can finish the story mode with a level well under 100. I have heard of people putting upwards of 300 hours on this game, no joke. To go with all those levels there are lots of bosses to defeat of beyond godly power. The story mode can be done in very reasonable time though, around 30-50 hours, for people like me that don't want to go through all that extra hundreds of hours. There is also a very useful New Game+ option if you want to play through the game again, or just restart to do side quests. This is especially nice since there are multiple endings, and using the New Game+ you can run through multiple play throughs.
Tilt: 9
I absolute love the story in this game. It is one of the funniest games I have ever played. It is also very original and charming. If you go through this game and are not moved in some way you must have a heart made of stone. The angels love ranting can get annoying, but still. On that note, the characters are all just as original, charming, and funny as the story itself. This game may not be "epic," but there is a reason there are so many people who play through the game multiple times.
The only reason I knocked the tilt a point is because of some of the more annoying things you have to go through before finishing this game. The primary on being the council of extremely powerful judges you have to bribe in order to pass things such as new character classes and power ups. You can fight them, but as I said they are very powerful, and that is not usually a good idea. There are cheap tactics to get by this, but even those can be tedious and annoying.
Conclusion
Disgaea is a great and unique game for casual and extreme strategy rpg players alike. The story and characters are funny, original, and charming and it can be done in a reasonable amount of time. On the flip side, you could put as much time as you wanted to into this extremely unique and fun game. If you can find this game in your price range, get it, play it, love it.