Disgaea is a highly unique stratagy RPG, with a lot of charm and depth, it is however, not without flaw.
pioneers of todays highly succesful format. It's unique combat system, highly colorful and interesting animations and humor are only slightly
marred by bad voice acting and repetitive gameplay.
The game follows a young demon named Laharl, prince of the Netherworld. Who is rudely awakened by his soon-to-be-sidekick, Etna, to discover his father, Overlord King Kruchevskoy had died, and that he had been asleep for two years. Thus begins Laharls crusade, to defeat the competition and claim his throne as Overlord. This is where the game begins, and it becomes abundantly clear very early on that the style and humor presented in the game are very enjoyable, the humor itself is definately there, but a lot of it becomes lost in translation, and bad voice acting and scripting.
Nevertheless, the game provides a good deal of humorous events and references throughout (Hyper speed training wearing 100 tonne boxers?) it's reasonably long single player campaign.
Gameplay through the single player campaign consists mainly of organising your force from your central hub, Laharls Castle, where you can buy and sell equipment, access the games unique features such as the Dark Assembly or the Item World, or be transported to storyline destinations via an NPC. The campaign consists of several chapters, each of which has it's missions take place in a different area, each chapter containing roughly 5 or 6 missions. Once a mission is selected, gameplay begins, usually after a short story cut scene.
Once a mission begins, the strategic gameplay begins, a map is set out on square grids, and you must move your characters around the map after summoning them from the portal. You and your enemies must take turns to move and attack, but in effort to help keep track of the large amount of characters in play (up to 10) the game allows you to select the actions of your characters, and then execute them in any order. Until you have executed your characters actions, you may cancel them at any time. This allows you to plan out your attacks carefully, while possibly keeping other moves until the end of the turn, to avoid having them get caught in the catchment area of a powerful attack.
Having this management ability also enables you to take advantage of the unique combo feature, whereby characters nearby will assist each others attacks, the usefull feature of this, as well as doing huge amounts of damage, can be used to quickly level up low level characters, as long as the enemy dies, you will gain the experience, even if the lower character did 0 damage.
Another unique feature that can serve to make battles more interesting is the Geo Panals. Some squares on the map will be dominated by a coloured glow, and when these triangular panals are placed inside a coloured panal, all panals of that colour inherit it's effect. Some, change the colour of panals after being destroyed, allowing for tactical strikes as each enemy inside a panal that changes colour takes a chunk of damage. These panals are used to good effect in the story mode, presenting additional challenges. Some additional challenges however, are more annoying than enjoyable, the games camera can be rotated with
the shoulder buttons, however, when maps become complicated, especially in random dungeons, it can be hard to make heads or tails of the battlefeild. Which can become frustrating, but, there is no time limit on your moves, so you should be able to check out the surrounding area adequately, if not as easily as you would hope at a glance.
The game presents a huge amount of customization options, in addition to having the main storyline characters, you earn Mana during battles, which can then be used to create new characters for your party from the Dark Assembly, a unique political simulator of sorts. The Dark Assembly allows one of your characters to lobby the Netherworlds powers for money, new items, new characters, or just recognition gained through your actions.
Creating characters is done through a simple menu, in which you choose from a multitude of human or monster character classes, and then an ability level. Ranging from incompetent to godlike, these ability levels cost different amounts of Mana, but reflect the new characters general ability level by giving you extra stat points to distribute to that character.
The other functionality of the Dark Assembly is more interesting, and allows you to attempt to lobby political demons in an attempt to gain support, they will vote either Yea or Nea for your proposals, but you can bribe them into changing their vote by gifting them items they like from your inventory. But different demons are swayed by different items, and some, just dont like you. If that doesnt work, and you lose the vote, you can always persuade them by force, at which point a battle begins, and you must defeat each senator who voted against you. Some of them are obscenely powerful, and if you do defeat them in this manner, they are highly unlikely to vote for you in the future.
Another feature that makes this game unique, is it's utterly, utterly insane level cap. Most games will cap you at 99, or 100. Not Disgaea, it reaches out to the obsessive compulsive gamers with it's insane maximum level of 9999. While you would think this would make reaching such a high level incredibly repetitive, another of the games unique features comes to it's rescue. The much lauded Item world.
The Item World is a highly unique feature, a lot of games feature the ability to upgrade weapons, or to enhance them in some way. But in Disgaea, each item contains a unique, randomly generated world, in which you must travel deeper and deeper, to level up your item. Item World however, can be in incredibly dangerous place, and you may only exit on each tenth level, after defeating the boss there. Or, you can obtain items called Mr Gency's Exit, which allows you to escape the random dungeon, and to again enter the same level at a later date.
Not only does this feature allow you to become more powerful, by leveling up your items, but it provides an almost limitless amount of dungeons to explore, all random, containing random enemies and bosses, as well as the games unique customization feature. Specialists, these neutral characters live inside of certain items, and once you defeat them, they grant that item powerful bonuses, but they can also be transferred to other items, allowing you to mix and match to create very powerful items.
Graphically, Disgaea is a pleasure to watch. It does not push the limits of your PS2, and indeed could probably have easily been right at home on the PS1, but it's 2d sprites are nicely animated, if a little blurry at times, and some of the games later attacks are a joy to watch the first time, but drag on each time after that.
Disgaea may not be the finest example of graphical prowess, or blockbuster voice work, it provides a good deal of challenge and tactical gameplay, as well as almost limitless room for character and group customisation and advancement designed to appeal to the obsessive gamers out there. Disgaea heavily anime themed style may not appeal to all, but it's geniunely unique features are worth the time of any strategy RPG fan.