Disgaea: Hour of Darkness

Story- Finally, an original strategy RPG story that doesn't suck! Do you save the world? No. Do you find true love? No. Do you try and claim your rightful place in the Netherworld as king after you slept for 2 years? Yes. You, Laharl, wake up to find you father dead. In confusion, you seek out the demons that don't deserve to become king and beat them up. Whats better than that? Add the fact that the games dialouge is funny, and has voice acting and you have something special. But seriously, the story is very well done, while at the same time stupid

9/10

Characters- The colorful cast of characters for D:HOD are great. Most of them are demon people from the Netherworld, while others are from Celestia, heaven. Each character is great, and their personalities change very fast in this game. Not much more to say but they are great and funny, even the NPC's. My favorite characters are the Pengies, little penguins that hen they attack, they go "DOOOOOOOOOOD!" Its great.

10/10

Graphics- Despite other reviews, I found the graphics to be very pleasant. Yes they seem to PS1 graphics, little 2d sprites, but once you start playing the game, it truly feels like the good old days. You can trust me that the graphics are beautiful, full of color and depth. The battle field and other walking areas are in full 3d, and are very detailed as well, each carrying many seperate details, whether it is a small weapon, or noticable specks of dirt. Great graphics, just not something this game truly shines in.

8/10

Gameplay-.............................oh my gosh. You will absolutely love the gameplay. First off, the strategy battles are the best I have ever played. you dispatch the characters you would like to use (up to 10) in battle, then select where to move them and what commands to take.Basically its simple you know how it is, attack defense item magic. You can do combos with nearby allies also. But then, there is LIFT. If you are standing next to another character or enemy, you can pick them up, and throw them to other places. This adds huge strategy. For instance, say you want to throw a character over a gap onto another platform not reachable by walking, but still want them to move and attack on the other side. Run to them, lift them up, throw, and select where they will land. Then carry out other movements! Its fantastic. In terms of monsters, if you are surrounded by four monsters and you can't move, chuck one and get the heck away!
Another area the games depth increases is the "Geo system." Its incredibly confusing and I don't fully understand it yet, but here goes. Colored platforms below your feet flash in certain areas. Red yellow blue green purple, blah blah. These can add stats to your characters and enemies, as well as posibly grant invincibility when you STAND on them. But say they add stats to only monsters, this is a problem. Solution: Destroy the Geo Sphere, a triangular thing in a certain color. Say you want to destroy the red areas on the map and turn them to blue. You should throw a blue Geo Sphere onto any single red area and destroy it. It will turn all of the red platforms to blue, and add the blue Geo Spheres effect, as well as hurt anyone who was standing on the original red surface. Confused? Theres more. If the (color) platforms blow up on another Geo sphere on that color, the same effect will happen, possibly hurting or killing you party immensly. A couple good things come out of this: You can hurt your enemies, and the more chain reactions you do, the ore your bonus gauge goes up and after battle, you will get numorous gifts, depending on teh bonus level!
The battle system is very well done, surpasing a lot of systems in the past, including FFTactics.

20/10 lol

Sound/Music- There is nothing like some good tunes. These tunes are good, not great. Its not worth buying the sound track fo, but its very catchy.

9/10

Replay/Toughness- Replay value is to the extreme on this game! One thing that completely blew my mind, is that you can grow to level 10,000!!!!! AHHH! And theres more.
Item World is the best idea any game has come up with. You go inside your items in your inventory, and go through a series of levels defeating monsters. You can escape the item every 10 levels, so you best have a good 2 hours to go through. The purpose of Item World, is that the further down you go in your item, the higher the items stats will increase! So going inside weapons and armor is essential to survival. Every level you go down, the selected item will increase 1 level.
Dark Assembly is another fun thing to do. You can present cases to the Netherlands council of senetors, like allowing you to access certain "class" types, or supply the shops with more powerful weapons. The councils descision basically depends on your persuasion points, which you can gain after passing "Promotion Tests." In addition, completing "Promotion Tests," (which are battles) will enable you to present more topics to the council. Its very fun, and adds tons of replay value.
You can also create characters, name them, select class types, and stats too. Creating players with a certain person means the created pupil is a "Pupil" and the creator is the "Master." The master will gain additional EXP whenever the pupil kills an enemy. Yet another thing that adds to the replay value.
Lastly the toughness level. Disgaea is extremely difficult, and requires a lot of patience if you want to win. The battles are fast paced and slow, and can be confusing. But heck, battling is the fun part right? D:HOD boasts over 40+ hours of gameply, add to that if you want level 10,000 characters, fully level up all the items, and get all the character classes. That can have you playing for a good long while.

10/10

Believe me guys, Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is more than a good strategy RPG. It is one of the most awsome games out there, and would be a real shame to miss. The greatest battle system, awsome replay value, and to top off this sundae, hillarios dialouge, Disgaea is pure brilliance. It definately falls in my #2 spot of favorite games, replacing Wild Arms 3. Definately worth you $50 bucks!


A Good Time Filler   November 6, 2003
J. Miller (Pana, Illinois United States)
21 out of 25 found this review helpful

Lately I haven really been the type to buy games until they've been marked down at least twice. However for some insane reason I picked this game up very soon after it came out based on one person's recommendation. Sounds like a mix for disappointment personally but in the end it was a good idea.

For the most part I really hate these grid based Tactical RPGs. Final Fantasy Tactics was frustratingly boring/difficult/lame after like 4 battles. This game is ten times the game FFT was. The battles are much quicker for one thing, especially if you're replaying old matches for experience. Also you can move all your characters on one turn, something I really hated in FFT. Though I must admit after a few days of regular playing it gets a little old. I find eventually become a bit tired of this game and become distracted by other games or other things going on.

However, the game is easy to come back to, and the charm picks back up almost immediately. This game is a very good game. That is to say, its something good to pick up and play when you have nothing else to play.

Anyway, how about some information on the game itself. You are Laharl, son of the late Lord of the Underworld, your mission is to defeat everyone else and become the new Overlord. Its about time someone made a game where you play as the villain, or at least the less than heroic character. As you battle through various locations eliminating other contenders for the throne. You'll gain several of the characters you encounter to your party to assist you in combat.

You'll need more than just the story characters though if you want to make quick work of things. Any of the characters in your party can recruit followers from a large list of characters. New classes and upgrades of classes become available as your existing characters gain experience. One minor complaint, It would have been nice if the class upgrades would have gotten new sprite (graphics) instead of just recolors, but I suppose that would have made things a little too confusing.

You can also recruit any monster you've battled before, but the cost of doing so is generally excessive for as weak as they are. If you want monsters, the real way to do it is to capture them. If you've weekend a monster in battle you can pick it up and toss it into your home base panel. If the monster is weak enough and the party members in the panel are strong enough, you'll capture the monster.

It doesn't take an eternity to gain levels either. I once made a new level 1 character and had her kill a very strong (weakened) monster and she gained 19 levels in one fight. She was ready to battle along side my stronger characters in no time. Which is really nice since otherwise I$B!G(Bd have had an essentially useless character that late in the game. Also this is the only RPG I can think of where levels go into the hundreds and thousands.

Speaking of levels, you can level up a lot of things. All your characters have regular experience levels of course. Each character can also level up their special abilities, magic spells, and weapon skills for each weapon type. These levels are dependent on how much you use the skill or weapon. Weapons and items themselves can be leveled up as well. You enter the Item World and fight through maps repeatedly. Each map cleared is a level up for the item/weapon. Along your trip through the item world you collect Residents. The Residents are special monsters that give bonus status effects to weapons and items. Once you've collected a Resident you can also move it to another more useful or more powerful item.

There is also the Underworld Senate. You can bring bills to the Senate for things like "Better items for Sale" or "Stronger Monsters". The probability that they will pass depends on your favor with the senators. By bribing the senators with items you can gain more favor. Also if you're strong enough you can challenge the senators that vote against you to a battle. You can also take tests to increase your level in the senate.

Back to the core of the game, battles. Like I mentioned, they are fairly quick and generally easy. They do get more difficult in the later worlds, but there are some easy tricks you can use to gain levels quickly. One of the main gimmicks in battle are the colored Geo Panels. Random squares on the map will be colored one of several colors. There are also colored Geo Stones lying around the maps (Note: Not every map has Geo Panels). The stones add affects to the colored panels. For example, a stone may have the effect "Recover 20%" and it's sitting on a red panel. This will cause every red panel to recover 20% of the HP of any character on that space. The Geo panels also affect monsters, so some strategy has to be used sometimes. There are a ton of different effects from "Enemy Boost" to "Warp" to "Invincibility". Also you can initiate massive chain reactions by destroying Geo Stones on the Geo Panels. These chain reactions are often the only way to gain bonuses on some maps.

Also, in battle characters will often initiate combination attacks with nearby characters. If done correctly it$B!G(Bs possible to do many more hits of damage than you would have done with single attacks. Also you can toss monsters or heroes around to help cover more ground. Monsters can be combined into stronger monsters for more experience as well.

Unfortunately, I am out of space, bottom line is that this is a really fun RPG. There are a few points I didn't even get to touch such as the quirky plot or other battle features.


What is there not to like?   September 25, 2003
Ryan Yamada (San Diego, CA)
19 out of 19 found this review helpful

This is the best strategy RPG game I remember since FF Tactics.

The gameplay is pretty much standard fare for strategy games. There is a bit of a kink thrown in as all of your characters move first and then all the enemy characters move etc. which allows you more agression but also forces you to be careful as all the enemies will be rushing back at you.

The Geo Panel system is simply wonderful and can make an otherwise easy battle very difficult with various area effects that can include damaging your characters or creating evil clones of them that come after you! Attempting to destroy all the Geo Panels then becomes a sub goal in each level which helps to keep the variety fresh.

Innovation is abound in this title, the most notable being the Item World. This is basically your "random battle" area. You are transported within an item of your chosing where you fight through different levels. You pass one level and you progress to the next etc. Every ten levels you can leave and when you do leave the item levels up based on how far down you went. So it's not just random battles and levelling up, it's also improving your items on the side.

Also added in to Disgaea is a Dark Assembly - basically a Senate in which you pitch ideas such as Improved Countrattack, More Expensive Items in Shops, Raising Military Funds. Each senator can be bribed if necessary allowing you to use your extra items to get some of the sweet bonuses offered via the Assembly.

You also have character creation which is a solid addition. You can create just about anything you kill, bosses excepted. You create them using mana (obtained by killing enemies) and based on how much mana you want to spend are able to raise their base stats. Spending mana to create also affords you infinite character creation so long as you keep on killing.

The graphics are certainly very nice art, although as far as *graphics* go I don't think they are that fancy. But they don't need to be, the cutscenes work to tell the story and the story is still entertaining. A nice break from all the same old "epic quests".

Disgaea brings a lot of innovation to the table for Strategy RPGs, but more importantly it's just a fun game. A good purchase for any RPGers or anyone interested in RPGs, definately a good one to break into the genre with as well!


Amazing, simply amazing.   January 24, 2004
Torin Johansen (Iowa)
18 out of 19 found this review helpful

To be honest, I bought this game because I liked the box art. Little did I know I was getting so much more. However reminesent of a bad comedy skit, the story somehow holds together and is not only humorous, it is compelling. You are the Prince of Darkness, who has been sleeping in a coffin for 2 years. You awake to find your dad, the king of the netherworld, has died choking on a 'black' pretzel. The netherworld has gone to hell, there are uprisings, battles for power, and anarchy. You then set off on a quest to plunder, loot, and take back the title of king of the netherworld.

Though the gameplay graphics are on the ps1 level, its not bad. Story screens are done in still anime pictures with voice acting to fill dialouge. This would be boring if the dialouge wasnt funny, and if the pictures looked bad. Luckily it has a high level of quality for each of those categories. Spells and other fancy attacks have spectacular effects, and are a joy to watch.

The gameplay itself is innovative and resourceful. You can throw teammates and enemies to attack, or just for strategic movement. Geo panels set up brilliant combo attacks for devasating damage, assuming you can plan them out correctly. Weapons can also level up just as your characters do. You give the item to someone and you go inside the weapon where a dungeon-like situation arises. Defeat it and your weapon gains power and attributes. A very nice feature. If you want better equipment at the shop or more money and the like, you have to take it up with a congress-like group of demons who vote in favor or against you, depending onhow much you bribe them. That right there is hours of enjoyment (or frustration, depending on your patience).

Music is good, it can get repedative and annoying if you listen to the same song for too long, but it doesnt hurt the game. Some of the music is fantastic. Sound effects are excellent, and the voice acting, though a little overdone is of good quality and moves the story along well.

In short, this is a great game worthy of any strategy RPG fans time. Actually, its not just worthy, it demands to be played. The game is fantastic and I recommend it to anyone.