Dissecting Disgaea
This is what happy days are made of. Hands-on time with a late build of the portable SRPG's Etna side story.
Published: August 25, 2007
There are few announcements that have made us as antsy with anticipation as the one that Disgaea: Hour of Darkness was coming to the PSP, and in turn to US shores. See, the good folks at NIS America were good enough to tell us that they were eager to try to release the game here in the States, but they were having issues getting approval from Sony on the matter. After reaching out to the fans to drum up support, Sony finally gave the go-ahead with the usual caveat that there be some new content since it is technically a port of Hour of Darkness.
The formal title is Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness, a play on the original's title, and clearly an explanation is needed. See, originally there was going to be a bonus dungeon and some extras added to the PSP version as part of the Sony-mandated 30-some percent new content guideline they have for ports, but that was quickly expanded into a complete side store. We actually thought this was going to be a sort of prequel featuring Etna, the devious, impish lass out for the demon throne. The prequel would lead up to the events of the original game and voila, a whole bunch of new content.
Instead, there's an entire unlockable side mode that plays a game of "What if?" What if, at the beginning of the game, Etna actually did kill Larharl, the demon prince that originally was the hero of the first game. From the opening scene of Etna's mode, the story skews off as she actually manages to cap him, and from there the game proceeds as if he never existed. Rather cool, no?
We took the new adventure for a couple-hour spin, and though the gameplay isn't technically any different (we wouldn't have it any other way), the dialogue and voice work that was done for the new side story are awesome. Characters respond completely differently, the story skews in interesting directions, and Etna is finally given the chance to shine as we always knew she wanted.
Still, the core of the game is what's important, and we're happy to report that Disgaea runs beautifully on the PSP. In fact, it runs so damned smoothly that we were a little shocked at first. It really is a 1:1 conversion of the original PS2 game, right down to framerate. Though it's possible some Disgaea fans have finally burnt out on the game after pouring hundreds of hours into it (yes, seriously, the game has almost unlimited replay value), the fact that there even is a PSP game that has more than a hundred hours of potential gameplay hurts out brains a little.
That gameplay, blissfully speedy with absolutely zero in the way of load times (yes, even on the PSP), is the key to what makes Disgaea to power-leveler's paradise that it is. Though the core isn't much different from other strategy RPGs -- you run around a gridded battle field and all attacks, spells, and special moves are bound by those little squares -- the sheer amount of stuff you can do it ridiculous. Want to level up an item? Okay, visit it's Item World (yes, every single weapon, potion, bit of armor, everything has a randomly generated dungeon), fight the bad guys inside and level it up to ridonkulous levels. Want to fight the very council that allows you to create characters from scratch or gives you more money? Sure, go for it. Disgaea was the first game to really break the rules of the genre, and it's still every bit as good as it was on the PS2.
Except now it's portable, meaning at any time you can just whip out your PSP and kill five minutes or five hours (provided you've got a full battery, mind). That alone should have any SRPGs nuts juuuust about as excited as we were when we first found out that the game was indeed coming. Now, you only need wait until the end of October (fitting, no?).
The formal title is Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness, a play on the original's title, and clearly an explanation is needed. See, originally there was going to be a bonus dungeon and some extras added to the PSP version as part of the Sony-mandated 30-some percent new content guideline they have for ports, but that was quickly expanded into a complete side store. We actually thought this was going to be a sort of prequel featuring Etna, the devious, impish lass out for the demon throne. The prequel would lead up to the events of the original game and voila, a whole bunch of new content.
Instead, there's an entire unlockable side mode that plays a game of "What if?" What if, at the beginning of the game, Etna actually did kill Larharl, the demon prince that originally was the hero of the first game. From the opening scene of Etna's mode, the story skews off as she actually manages to cap him, and from there the game proceeds as if he never existed. Rather cool, no?
We took the new adventure for a couple-hour spin, and though the gameplay isn't technically any different (we wouldn't have it any other way), the dialogue and voice work that was done for the new side story are awesome. Characters respond completely differently, the story skews in interesting directions, and Etna is finally given the chance to shine as we always knew she wanted.
Still, the core of the game is what's important, and we're happy to report that Disgaea runs beautifully on the PSP. In fact, it runs so damned smoothly that we were a little shocked at first. It really is a 1:1 conversion of the original PS2 game, right down to framerate. Though it's possible some Disgaea fans have finally burnt out on the game after pouring hundreds of hours into it (yes, seriously, the game has almost unlimited replay value), the fact that there even is a PSP game that has more than a hundred hours of potential gameplay hurts out brains a little.
That gameplay, blissfully speedy with absolutely zero in the way of load times (yes, even on the PSP), is the key to what makes Disgaea to power-leveler's paradise that it is. Though the core isn't much different from other strategy RPGs -- you run around a gridded battle field and all attacks, spells, and special moves are bound by those little squares -- the sheer amount of stuff you can do it ridiculous. Want to level up an item? Okay, visit it's Item World (yes, every single weapon, potion, bit of armor, everything has a randomly generated dungeon), fight the bad guys inside and level it up to ridonkulous levels. Want to fight the very council that allows you to create characters from scratch or gives you more money? Sure, go for it. Disgaea was the first game to really break the rules of the genre, and it's still every bit as good as it was on the PS2.
Except now it's portable, meaning at any time you can just whip out your PSP and kill five minutes or five hours (provided you've got a full battery, mind). That alone should have any SRPGs nuts juuuust about as excited as we were when we first found out that the game was indeed coming. Now, you only need wait until the end of October (fitting, no?).
