Disgaea: Hour of Darkness Preview

Strategy RPGs have carved a good niche for themselves among fans of traditional console role-playing games. Rather than bog you down with tedious random encounters like many other RPGS, these games put the emphasis on tactical battles between your forces and your enemies. So ideally, you'll be looking forward to each progressively more-challenging battle rather than groaning in frustration as your progress is impeded by yet another tediously slow-paced combat sequence. Well, maybe that's a little harsh. But then again, so is Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, a game that puts you in the role of the young, rebellious heir to the Netherworld, Prince Laharl. Laharl awakens from a long slumber to find that his father, the king, is dead and that many other demons are vying to become the rulers of hell. So the embittered prince and his coquettish vassal, Etna, set off to restore rule in Laharl's name by any means necessary. Or, rather, by engaging in a series of tactical battles reminiscent of games like Final Fantasy Tactics.

The similarities between Disgaea and previous strategy RPGs are obvious, but they're mostly superficial. Just from a visual standpoint, the game uses a graphical style and perspective that's nearly identical to that of Final Fantasy Tactics. However, the anime-influenced character designs are rather more lighthearted in this game's case, and in fact, Disgaea is filled with charm and quirky humor. At one point fairly early on, Laharl has a run-in with a foppish demon calling himself "The Dark Adonis," whose flowery speech clearly gets on Laharl's nerves. Just before he commences his attack, Laharl tells his foe that he'll simply refer to him as "Mid-Boss" from that point on. There are a lot of other amusing gags in the game, many of which can be directly attributed to Prinnies, penguinlike demons of the underworld that are basically Laharl's whipping boys. These guys pack knives and explosives and refer to themselves and others as "dood." Weird. But a good kind of weird.

The turn-based combat in Disgaea resembles that of previous strategy RPGs, but it seems as though the developers went out of their way to change up the usual formula, just to give fans of other such games some new systems to learn. One nice thing about the gameplay is that it's pretty fast. During enemy turns, all enemy forces move simultaneously, so you won't need to watch one bad guy after another take baby steps toward your squad. You also have the option of either executing a character's actions right away, or having all your characters' actions resolve in order at the end of a turn--this makes for some unusual strategic twists and also helps the pacing.

Then again, this faster pacing is necessary, because the battles in Disgaea can be much bigger than those of similar games. You can have up to 10 characters on your side in a given battle, and it feels like a lot--especially since each character can join with any adjacent allies to initiate combo attacks, which are one of the unique aspects of Disgaea's gameplay. The combo attacks not only look cool, but they can also help inflict a lot of damage on your foes, and they have the added benefit of allowing lower-level characters to ride the coattails of their more-experienced friends, effectively letting you quickly level up your relatively inexperienced comrades.

Another unusual aspect of the gameplay is that characters can pick up and throw either their allies or their enemies. This looks comical but has many tactical uses. You can pick up and throw a character in danger of running out of hit points out of an enemy's range. You can quickly gain ground on your opponents by throwing one of your more-powerful companions right at them. You can throw allies across chasms. You can pick up and throw enemies away from you--or into each other, in some cases. What happens in those cases isn't what you'd expect, though. Say you took a level-five Prinny and a level-10 Prinny and threw one into the other. You'd end up with one level-15 Prinny. Weird. But what did you expect from the Netherworld?

Politics in the Netherworld

As if picking up and throwing demon penguins weren't enough, the battlefields in Disgaea are often scattered with a couple of small pyramids that confer particular properties upon like-colored floor tiles. For instance, a red pyramid might increase by 50 percent the attack power of all characters, allied or enemy, standing on red-colored tiles. A blue pyramid might cause characters to lose 20 percent of their health if they end their turn standing on a blue tile. You can destroy the pyramids, pick them up, or move them around. Destroying them in some cases causes all tiles of a particular color to change colors, damaging any characters standing there. This effect can be used to create massive chain reactions. These pyramids add an interesting puzzlelike element to the tactical battles.

Disgaea has a strange structure to it. The story unfolds as a series of story-driven episodes, and the story cutscenes use well-drawn still images and a combination of text and voice-over. Each episode consists of a linear series of missions in a certain type of environment, but you don't need to go through each of those missions straightaway. Instead, you can always consult with the Netherworld senate or perhaps take a jaunt into Item World. You can also replay any of the main story missions you've already beaten.

The main purpose of consulting the senate is to get more characters to join your squad. You unlock new character types by leveling up existing character types. For example, if a character reaches the third level of proficiency using bows, then the archer character class becomes available. There are tons of different character classes, each with its own specialties, though in theory any character can equip any weapon--just don't expect a magic user to wield a sword better than a fighter, for instance. At the senate, you essentially "buy" new characters by spending the mana points you earn in combat. The character you create will then be affiliated with whichever character spent the mana, which allows the new character to have a better chance of executing combo attacks with his or her liege, among other things.

The senate can also be petitioned to make more items available at the store, and some other things. Some senators may be in favor of or opposed to your proposal, and if you want to get the naysayers to see things your way, you can try to beat them into submission. Watch out, though, because these guys apparently didn't get a seat in the senate by being nice.

Item World is another weird feature. According to the game, each and every item contains its own huge, confusing universe that is filled with bad guys. You can jump into any item, which sends you through a series of randomly generated, progressively tougher battles. Each floor you pass through increases the potency of the item, so in theory, you can create some seriously powerful weapons, armor, and other equipment just by spending some quality time in Item World.

Disgaea is a nuanced game that seems like it would be ideal for RPG fans who really like to dig in and uncover every last secret. The game definitely rewards patience and persistence, and it invites you to keep on fighting and gaining power, experience, and better loot. Some of Disgaea's features, like the senate and Item World, are decidedly bizarre, but according to one of the game's characters, they're not really essential--you can finish the game without dabbling in them too much. Still, this is the kind of game where you wouldn't want to overlook the finer points, from the unusual features to the nicely done character art and smoothly animated 2D sprites. Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is one of those games that is clearly intended for a particular type of gamer, and if you fall into that category, then you should certainly keep an eye out for it. We'll have a full review of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness early next week.