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A lot of fun

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 15
Date: September 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The first time I saw the review from IGN I knew that I have to get a hold of this game... I did, and boy am I impressed :D well I understand it's way better than FFT since this was made a while back but the innovations Nippon Ichi (published by Atlus) added to the game is way more and fun compared to FFT.

First off you can replay the game all over again with all of your items/lvl/characters etc. intact concerning the game has different endings depending on your actions in the game. Talk about replay value (more info why below).

Second, you have control on how hard the enemies are later in the game so if the bosses are too easy you can go to the dark assembly and make a vote to make the enemies harder or vice versa, same goes with items, special skills, weapons, and locked levels.

Third, character development has never been so diversed as you can upgrade a characters skills through an action called "transmigration" where you can change a characters class ie. a Ronin to a Ranger while keeping some of the original skills max of 95%. Item/weapon upgrades can be done also by going inside them hence called "Item World" where the further down you go inside an item the higher its lvl gets. Can you get to the bottom :D with this you can create a character who knows mostly every skills a character can have, but that is for people who wants to spend a lot of time with it as a character can go all the way to Lvl 10000 no more lvl 100 but all the way to lvl 10000, so you can see how deep this game is even after you finished it.

Fourth, the story line is pretty good as it starts where you get to know each of the characters in the beginning in a funny way and once further down the episodes (14 I believe) you get to see some drama as you uncover certain truths about prince Laharl and his vassals and the changes in them as the story progresses, I was surprised on how they were able to blend comedy and drama without tripping (thank Flonne and Etna for that Laharl is pure evil :) those 2 are there to keep him in check).... a piece or work and pretty good voice acting too I'm impressed. Also the original Japanese audio are all included just for info.

Fifth, Geo Panels, almost forgot those brain burners heh heh. If you want a more (thinking) challenge you can go and work on the geo panels and symbols and create chain hits so your bonus gauge will go up and receive more items after a battle. It's better to learn it in-game as it's a long process to explain how to do it. And when it reads "Strategy RPG" It MEANS it. The further in the game you are, the more you really have to think it through each battle as its not just out hack/slash win type of deal, you have to utilize lifting characters to avoid damages, 4x combo attacks, and area damage management, etc. (you learn this early in the game so its easy to understand) way deeper than FFT. Battle special effects when casting high level spells or skills are just awesome also it also shows some "ahem" air DBZ combos depending on the class you're using.

Sixth, the BAD part about the game (here we go) is the camera angle once in a while as its hard to see some level board when theres tall hills or towers when youre trying to adjust where your character is going to stand, adding a birds eye view or camera tilting would have helped a lot. Also, a higher resolution character images would have made it much better as whenever the camera goes closer the character sprites just starts to get blurry (compliments to anti-aliasing), it would be nice if they are the same resolution as Guilty Gear XX.

There is still more but all of these I typed are all based on me playing the game. I still have 1.5 episodes to go the time I posted this. So far the game hasn't slowed down a bit. So if you're into FFT, Ogre Battle, Hoshigami, Kartia heck Strategy RPGs this is a no brainer.

The Real Final Fantasy Tactics Advance?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: October 13, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Fans of Final Fantasy Tactics or Dynasty Tactics will immediately recognize the basic game play of Disgaea. It strongly resembles Final Fantasy Tactics for Playstation, with slightly updated graphics.

At first, I had the feeling that this game could have been done on the Playstation One, but the average graphics soon became unnoticeable once the action started. This is where the genre has gotten a real facelift, allowing for many, many options during the fighting, which translate into much more strategy.

The options outside of battle are good, too, including the ability to create your own characters. Now that I can do this, I wonder how I've ever liked a strategy game without it. The game play is smooth, which helps differentiate it from a Playstation game, and everything works well to set the mood.

The music in Disgaea is great, catchy music with enough variation to avoid becoming stale. In fact, the whole game manages to keep from getting stale, even doing the same map multiple times for extra experience.

The story of Disgaea is good, and while it seems familiar much of the time, it's pretty original. The cut scenes are well done, and often hilarious, sometimes poking fun at the lack of actual strategy found in other games of this genre.

So if you liked Final Fantasy Tactics, you will like this game. If you didn't like it because it didn't actually have all that much strategy, you should like this game. If you never played Final Fantasy Tactics, but you are looking for a game that is a lot of fun and has a good story, this is a good game to get. Disgaea is a very solid purchase, combining all the important elements of what makes a great game and even sometimes managing to be original.

A tale of betrayal, lust, love, and exploding penguins!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: July 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Ahh, the Netherworld... A lovely place full of hellfire, brimstone, angry demons, and Penguins... All this can mean only one thing. You've just stepped into the realm of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness.

Here's the deal. It seams that King Krechevskoy, a god-like being and ruler of the Netherworld, died two years ago by choking on a pretzel. I kid you not. A pretzel. We'd try to figure that one out, but after all, we've watched Transformers. Anyway, the game begins with Laharl, the rightful heir to the throne, just now finding out that his dad's dead. Seems he's been sleeping the whole time... Talk about a heavy sleeper. Also, demons left and right have been vying for control of the Netherworld. Of course, he's not gonna let that happen, is he? So you go out on a quest to reestablish yourself and your family as the rightful rulers.

That said, let's get into the gameplay. Anyone who's played a tactics RPG will be familiar with some of the basic features. You move your people around a tactical map and command them to attack enemies. Damage bonuses result from hitting enemies from behind, above, or with attacks they're weak against.

That's where the similarities end. In Disgaea you can attack with up to FOUR characters simultaneously, or in waves with each following character getting an increasing bonus to damage. Some enemies can only be killed as such. Lining characters up will often trigger team attacks with up to 4 characters, which look really impressive when you pull them off. You can really pack on the damage if you do this often.

Another element in battle is the often overlooked Geo-Panels. Using them, you can eliminate an entire army by destroying one single panel if they're positioned right. In addition, you can really improve your battle bonus by doing this. That determines how much money you get at the end of the fight and also what items you get for winning. As a matter of fact, there are certain weapons that you can only get in this manner.

There are numerous other aspects that open up later in this game that can keep you hooked for years, if you're a dedicated RPG fan. There's the Item World, where you actually fight inside weapons and armor to make them stronger. Also there's a Dark Assembly, where you can propose bills ranging from upgrading the shops to the ever-coveted Prinny Day. That's not even mentioning that there's around 150 classes and monsters to create your characters from. Almost everything's custom here.

With the type of music score that only Nippon Ichi and Atlus could bring you, you know you're in for an interesting and entertaining experience.

However, there are a few downsides. The main game is a bit short, only lasting about 30 hours. And the enemies in the later areas, especially the sidequests get really powerful realy fast (we're talking the thousands for levels here). Also, the graphics might not appeal to the younger generation of video game fans - the type of people that look more at the game's eye candy rather than the quality of the game itself. However, those are minor in the long run.

All in all, this is a fun game that you can get, beat, and go back to every once in awhile. With an entertaining story, great music, and a unique twist on the Tactics Engine of today, Dosgaea should appeal to RPG fans nationwide. SBaby gives Disgaea: Hour of Darkness for the PS2 a
5 out of 5. Dooooooooooooooood!!!!!

You'll spend HOURS in the Hour of Darkness!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: September 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Never in my life have I seen such an original and fascinating game. This is not your traditional Strategy RPG. Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is by far one of the most original and most addictive games I've ever played before! EVERYTHING about Disgaea is different from any other Strategy RPG you've ever played and here's why!

The game begins when Loharl awakens from his sleep and discovers his father, king of the netherworld, dead. Now somebody else has to lead the netherworld and its obvious to Loharl who has to do it. So how does he do it? By force of course, and that's the first intriguing part about Disgaea, the story is so completely different than what you're used to. The story paces really well and this is perhaps the funniest game I've ever played before. You'll die of laughter at the dialouge and humor and the characters are to die for!

Disgaea is also different in how the flow of battle goes. You send up to 10 characters into combat. For any other Strategy RPG this seems like a lot but for Disgaea this is plenty. All your allies attack and then your enemies attack, its that simple.

But battling puts on a few twist of its own. If you spend enough time raising your characters (and believe me, you will!) you'll end up reaching the hundreds or even the THOUSANDS on your level. Leveling up seems infinite in this game.

That's not all, but your items and such level up to. You can go battling "in" an item in which you'll have to go down through floors either by defeating all the enemies on a certain floor or by reaching the exit.

That's not all about the originality of this game, at the same time there are pyramids that enable abilities in each battle. They activate panels that do things for you such as some panels make your characters invincible. Others won't benefit you in this way and instead may benefit the enemy. If you find the pyramid that coresponds to the panel color you can destroy it and cause a chain reaction.

Again, this isn't all. The game has its own glitch where in battle you can do a combo so long as you've got more than one character on an enemy. So if you put a level one enemy up against a level four hundred enemy and have him participate in the combo, you can raise levels quite easily.

The story paces along nicely and you can do any mission over again to level up your characters. If you love making super powerhouse characters like I do, then you won't pass up the oppertunity to rush into battle with a level one hundred character early on.

The game also lets you "create" your own characters. Yes, create your own character. Not "hire" them, not have a new clan member seek membership but create them.

This isn't even the peak of its wackiness. When you create a character you can also transfer abilities to help make a more super power character. Disgaea is ALWAYS ahead of you however. If you make a super powerful character the next mission will be sure to have one.

Disgaea is an immensely different game. It is by far one of the greatest strategy games ever made becasue it is so different. You'll spend hours playing it and you won't regret it... the only "real" problem with the game is that your friends and family will feel neglected.

Perhaps the Best Game I Have Ever Played

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: November 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I have played many games in my life, but this one is about as good as they get. I'm sure you can read any other posted review to realize that this game is special so I'll focus this review on people who wouldn't like this game.

If you don't like role-playing games, featuring turn-based combat, tons of stats, weapons, modifiers, spells and character classes, this is definately not for you.

If you don't like to do the same thing over and over again (Like fighting battles just to level up characters), this might not be the game for you.

If you don't like loosely knit storylines, you might want to consider twice. While Disgaea has a very good story, the game is not very tightly wound around the storyline, and many chapters in the game don't do much to advance the plot or character development.

If you like flashy games with up to date 3D graphics; Disgaea uses sprites layered on rendered landscapes, so while the graphic is crisp and clean, it looks more like a cartoon than Doom 3.

If it helps you make up your mind any more: I'm a very stingy buyer when it comes to single player games. I normally rent or borrow these kind of games as they tend to have no replay value once you have beaten it. For Disgaea, I've played about 120 hours of the game using someone else's disk, and now I'm going to buy myself a copy. Since I already have a copy to play with, I won't open this one, it'll just be my tribute to Atlus (Maker Disgaea).

Finally, A Strategy Game since FFT that doesn't fall short.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: September 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

An explosive evolution of Squaresoft's Final Fantasy Tactics. Does well to keep itself from falling into Same Ol' Strategy/RPG obscurity. I myself have had a hard time keeping my interest to games that I end up spending $50 for. This game has proven it's worth ten times over. A more relaxed dialoge riddled plot helps to ease the pain of trying to remember all those characters and sides in FFT. Disgaea is a game teetering into a new genre of strategy with the invention of an Item World and Dark Assembly. Both of these ideas work very well to boost the game's entertainment value. A fine collaboration of innovative ideas and good old strategy make for a game worth staying up for.

Excellent Game--Killer of Final Fantasy Tactics

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: November 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I rented this game thinking to test drive it before I got it for a friend who likes this Genre. Now I own it, you do the math.
This is an excellent game the graphics are excellent, the characters are amusing (explosive penguins rule) The possiblities are endless.

Story excellent
The story basically revolves around your character Laharl whose father was the ruler of the underworld after two years you wake up from a nap and realize Other Demons have the audacity to try to claim your throne. This of course can not be tolerated

Characters Excellent
Your character is well done, and the enemies and your teammates are all well done characters. Most are quite well rounded esp one of the angels and your second in command. (sorry trying not to give spoilers so no names)

Graphics/Cutscenes Excellent
Were beautifully done very pleasant backgrounds and the cutscenes are top notch often with your characters as a cartoon in front of a background of the battlefield you are about to stand on. Oddly though sometimes the characters spoke as well as being subtitled other times they didn't seemed kind odd to me but wasn't neccesarily a bad thing just strange, the real important stuff is usually said.

Music Very Good
This was quite nice I enjoyed it and it was usually appropriate to background and story.

Replay Perfect
You can level your characters to level 1000 and there are literally limitless levels I think that counts as pretty replayable.

Gameplay Excellent

After a quick read of the manual you will have a firm enough grasp to play easily, may take a while to master all the idiosynchracies but most of them are pretty optional if you want to deprive yourself of the fun.
(still a good thing though because I can't tell you how many times I have stopped playing a game before beating it because I got sick of it--FFX comes to mind)

Worth the money

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: April 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Personally, I didn't think was the best Nippon Ichi game. I liked Phantom Brave's story more, La Pucelle's character design is better, and Makai Kingdom's levelling system is better.

That said, it's an awesome game. Out of all the Nippon Ichi games, you can play this one the longest. Your characters will be challenged way up to about level 5000 (more if you count resurrections). I finished La Pucelle at lvl 800, Phantom Brave at lvl 2000ish, and Makai Kingdom at lvl 1700ish. You can literally play this game for hundreds of hours filled with obsessive enjoyment.

It made me laugh, and the anime parodies are awesome. Characters may be pretty lame (Gordon), but you can use all original chars if you want. The same music all the time in the Item Worlds drove me nuts for a while. Compared to the overall entertainment value, those complaints are small. You can turn the volume off and play your music, and you can skip story parts if you've already seen them. (Multiple endings.)

If you are looking for a video game to play for an hour each day for a year. This is it! Fifty dollars might seem like a lot, but you'll be getting more playtime per penny than most ten dollar games.

I can't give this one five stars because I've played other Nippon Ichi games where they do better in some areas. For play length though, Disgaea is the overlord. My recommendation is buy it! Buying is cheaper than renting it unless you have an insane amount of free time.

little known awesome game...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: May 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

this is one of those games that has to be played to be believed. sure no flashy graphics and absolutely no hype but this game really shines. if you are a fan of strategy games especially final fantasy tactics, this is the game to get. only problem is this game is a little hard to find as of now, but atlus is re-releasing it in late may due to the overwhelming response to the game.

all in all a great game that can easily suck up hours upon hours with more customization and features than you will know what to do with, and that is a good thing...

best freakin' tactical rpg game ever!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: December 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

disgaea: hour of darkness had me hooks for well over 100 hours my first time through the game. and i hadn't even completed everything there was to complete. sure, i had beaten the story part of the game, but after you do that, it gives you the option of starting the game over with the same characters and stuff you had at the end of the game (except for story characters, but they suck anyway). the whole point of the game is to level up and kick some serious ass. the story is quirky and funny for the most part, but nobody really plays these games for the story. this whole game is all about excellent gameplay. you start off with the main character, Laharl, the prince of darkness, who hates everything and just found out his father died while he was sleeping for the last two years. throughout your journey you meet up with some pretty interesting characters, from Etna, the girl who is not-so-secretly trying to murder you for most of the beginning of the game, to the prinnies. the prinnies are semi-annoying things dressed in penguin suits and say "dood" all the freakin' time. it's not so bad in the story mode, but when you unlock Prinny Land as a quest and have to fight tons of them at a time, it gets pretty annoying. but that does not hinder this games unbelievable depth. when i finally pulled myself from the game's grasp to get some sunlight and chat with my friends, i was on level 177 with my main character (laharl) and my top 10 sub-characters were well over lvl. 150. when i say my top 10 sub characters, what i mean is that you can create tons of sub characters, over a hundred to be semi-exact. in battle you can have 10 i think, it's been a while since i've played, so bare with me. you have over 100 spells and special moves to learn adn conquer and you can easily lose your friends and family in the item world. the item world is inside every single item in the game, crappy items have crappy and weak enemies inside it's endless levels, but as you progress through each level of that item (which causes the item to go up levels and get better), you begin to encounter tougher enemies, and if you're not careful, you will get your ass kicked, quickly. now if you jump into some super rare ultimately powerful weapon with your level 150 characters, expect to encounter enemies around the levels of 170 and 210, just on the first level. yeah, it can get a little hectic at times, but that's what keeps you coming back time and time again, to try and defeat the [...] that just don't seem to die. and there is another unique aspect to battle, the colored blocks on the grid of the fight. just like final fantasy tactics, disgaea takes place on a big grid. but in this games, most of the squares on the grid are different colors, and each color has a different attribute. some deny access to other areas, some render whoever stands on them invulnerability until they step off. others give defense and offensive boosts and some warp you to other areas of the map. so you might be asking how are you supposed to kill an enemy that's on an invulnerable square? well, young fighter, every set of colored squares has a corresponding triangle/small pyramid thing that, if destroyed, will take out whatever colored square they are on, well, all of that color. but in order to destroy an invulnerable pyramid, you must pick it up and throw it on a space which does not have any color. i think there is another way, but i can't remember. or just pick the enemy up and throw them off. this is also a good tactic, if your party can't reach a certain enemy, have one character (someone who can run really far) get to them, then throw them back to the rest of your gang for a good ol' beating. this tactic is also helpful for bridging gaps in the map. since the item world maps are randomly genereted, they can sometimes be impossible to traverse. most of the time, you can toss you characters over the small gaps onto the other "islands" and beat your enemy silly. while other times, some of these islands appear like 20 spaces away from where you are and you have no possible way of getting to them. even the most agile of characters can only toss people like 7 or 8 spaces. but that's not really too big a problem, unless your trying to kill off all the enemies on each floor for better spoils at the end of each ten floor section. at these points you have the option of leaving the item world or further venturing into harder levels. it's almost always wise to leave for more items and saving, but i can only warn you to do so. some people will just have to learn from their mistakes.
well, this is dragging on enough, so i'll just say that this game is amazing and any fan of strategy rpgs should not be without this. there is so much more to this game, but i'm beginning to develop a cramp in my fingers. so i can't tell you about the secret unlockable character classes or different ways to make new items and super charge regular ones. but i'm sure with time you can find all this out on your own. so take my advice and go pick of this game, it's one hell of a time killer. or is that social life killer? i'm leaning toward the latter.

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