As I start some of my reviews, I would like to first say thank you to NIS America for tossing me a review copy of Disgaea. Always a pleasure to work with them. However this isn’t why you all are here, you want to know the ins and outs and to know if this is worth your hard-earned cash or if maybe this one is better off in the Netherworld.
Well for starters you play as Laharl, son of the late king. His goal? Become the Overlord of the Netherworld naturally. This isn’t your typical game, for starters you aren’t really the good guy really. Laharl is a demon, joined by Etna, also a demon. Together they make a pretty good, if not semi dysfunctional team.
The story itself is solid, if not a bit dated at times but not in a bad way. It has a nice nostalgia feel to it. Many of the twist and turns you will see coming a mile away but you will enjoy them. I won’t spoil them for you obviously but the reason some clichés exist is because they work and people enjoy them.
The graphics have been updated to HD quality for the first time ever and as you would expect the game has never looked better. The graphics are crisp and clean and far more detailed than I expected when I heard we would get an HD remaster. They really did a top notch job on this one.
The sound also is well done with the voice acting fitting the characters well, right down to the robot. Yes there is a robot that joins your team, and he looks and sounds like a cross between a 70’s horror movie and something Doctor Who might end up fighting.
With all that out-of-the-way we now get to actual playing of the game. This is after all the most important part. The game can look and sound as great as possible but if the game play sucks or there isn’t some real content whats the point? Well if you like tactical RPG’s you are already in the right place. Content? You have plenty. For starters you will get the main story which depending on your skill and how much time you want to take can easily run you 40 hours. This isn’t counting the item world which has nearly infinite levels you can fight through as you power up item to use in your battles.
If that weren’t enough there is the Dark Assembly, which is essentially the Netherworld Congress or Parliament. You can go there and spend mana ( which is earned by killing enemies) to do a number of things from adding new or stronger items or even powering up or weakening enemies. Unlike most games that have a level cap and such this game will let you take your characters to insane levels. You don’t have to by the way. Feel free to play it like you would a normal game. Or raise their levels so it is more challenging or simply raise your levels to godlike proportions the drop the enemies back to nothing and just march through the story. The possibilities are pretty wide open.
All of this isn’t to make the game sound perfect. While I enjoyed the chapter making jokes about the power rangers and many other aspects some of the battles were artificially hard. For example a couple had very few enemies they simply put them on tiles that made them damn near invincible that would also practically one hit kill your characters. The way to turn the tiles off? Well on the other side of the enemies. This isn’t a deal breaker by any means Bu I would be lying if I said it didn’t annoy me greatly at times. The battles can also get pretty repetitive, but that is pretty expected for any game of this genre.
Now the short and skinny, is this game worth buying? Rent it? Skip it entirely? Truth be told if you are a Disgaea fan, this is a must buy. In fact anyone that enjoys role-playing games would do well to pick this one up. It’s easy to learn, has a fun story and will introduce you to a series that many people including myself missed out on the early years for. This for me is an 8/10. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
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