DS #2401: Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (Japan)

[kitehimuro]

I have never seen the appeal of this game. There is no freaking strategy to this, you just power level like mad and have one over leveled character beat the living snot outta everything that lives. How is that strategic?

*Notice: The creator of said post is only going off what he has seen his freaking roommate and friend play nonstop over a period of two months at one point.

You do know you can actually do it in most, if not all RPGs, right? Disgaea just makes the process more streamlined. Also you can either use strategy to win the battles or spend hillarious amounts of time to actually overlevel and steamroll everything the game can throw at you.

Edit: Also, it won't convert to good ole' supercard SD ( produces 0 byte file ) , so I guess I'm stuck with the PSP version for the time being.

 

[engruzii]

awesome game!!

didn't finish it on PS2 but i'll finish this one for sure on DS tho i'm surprised that it's only 512Mbit

 

[AXYPB]

I saw the title in the RSS and just remembered the day of the US release. Oh well.

 

[Sonicandtails]

My R4 with the newest firmware is actually giving me some kind of Japanese error message that I cannot read. Any ideas?

 

[Shyvnal]

Mines loading it fine? Sure its the newest?

 

[Sonicandtails]

I'll get the newest one anyways and see what happens...

 

[Gaisuto]

The strategy is actually in the power leveling, if you do it wrong you get your ass kicked easily.

How can you level up wrong...?

 

[engruzii]

ok played the game for a while & i must say that they should've used more space i mean there is a noticeable slow down & that's reasonable cause the game is only 512Mbit tho it won't stop me from enjoying the game but it's still annoying

also, for a 512Mbit game the game couldn't been better

i give this game 8 out of 10 imo cause of the slow down

it's really a great game but imo it's one of the games that you should use "at least" 1Gbit if not 2Gbit to show it full potential & i really hope they tune it up a little when it comes out in english

 

[HellShade]

I played the PS2 version. IMO, Disgaea is like an MMORPG... but single player.

It's repetitive grinding, all the missions are basically GRIND THESE MONSTERS, to improve your items, you grind item world.

Honestly, it kills time very well, but I don't feel that it's suitable for handheld.

FFTA2 on the other hand, isn't all about grinding. There are collection missions, there's an actual storyline that actually changes what happens in the game, rather than moving you to a harder area with harder monsters.

Battle-wise, however, Disgaea is much more strategic than FFTA. There's the throwing ability which brings with it a plethora of tactics and whatnot.

In FFTA, You basically raise a team with a winning strategy that is near unbeatable. My old team in FFTA involved two gunners with concentration and sleepshot to put enemies to sleep. There were two assassins with the insta-KO move, one Magic damage + healer, and a ninja. All I had to do was sleep an enemy, then get an assassin to insta-KO the enemy with a 100% hit chance. Easy. While they were asleep, my Ninja would use its steal ability to take whatever nice gear they had. However, FFTA still managed to be fun.

My experience with Disgaea, however, involved getting taught how to play the game with a very tedious series of tutorial levels which only taught one combat aspect at a time. After this, I started the actual storyline. It involved selecting a level to go to, killing every last monster, then selecting the next level, killing every monster, select another level, kill every monster, then went to a boss fight. I realized that I was too weak to kill the boss who almost one-shot all my characters (whereas the other enemies would only deal 10% of my total hp per hit). I revisited the other stages, grinded two levels on all my characters, went back and killed the boss. After this, I was again introduced to a series of tedious battles.

Disgaea had the right idea, but the developers worked too hard to add hours upon hours of gameplay to it. As a result, it ends up feeling really tedious. Hell, the max level is 9999 >_____>

FFTA on the other hand, is a 30 hour game with a decently interesting combat system as well as a good drive to move through the game (quests, quest items, quest chains, different battle objectives, etc.)

I can't speak for FFTA2 yet, but it looks like it lives up to its predecessor.

 

[Vater Unser]

Whelp, this means FFTA2 stopped being the best SPRG on the DS.

Technically yes, but since this is just another port of Disgaea, no.

 

[suppachipmunk]

I am a little shocked at the 512mbit size as well. For the PSP, it is a fairly large game. And maintaining the voice acting on the DS, i was sure that this game would be 2gbit.

Hope they dont sacrifice quality to make this game fit on a DS card.

 

[kitehimuro]

Stuff about Disgaea

Disgaea might not have varied missions, but on the other hand, actually killing enemies without the amount of bullshit FFTA sometimes throws at players ( laws, anyone? sure they got better in the second game but still... ). Also it has a mature, typical japanese-crazy story which makes a fun padding to the "tedious battles". I can surely say most things in any of the FFT episodes feel tedious to the streamlined battle system of Disgaea.

 

[EmeraldEx]

and for some reason it's just crazy fun.

It shouldn't be but it is.

 

[Vater Unser]

My experience with Disgaea, however, involved getting taught how to play the game with a very tedious series of tutorial levels which only taught one combat aspect at a time. After this, I started the actual storyline. It involved selecting a level to go to, killing every last monster, then selecting the next level, killing every monster, select another level, kill every monster, then went to a boss fight. I realized that I was too weak to kill the boss who almost one-shot all my characters (whereas the other enemies would only deal 10% of my total hp per hit). I revisited the other stages, grinded two levels on all my characters, went back and killed the boss. After this, I was again introduced to a series of tedious battles.

Disgaea had the right idea, but the developers worked too hard to add hours upon hours of gameplay to it. As a result, it ends up feeling really tedious. Hell, the max level is 9999 >_____>

FFTA on the other hand, is a 30 hour game with a decently interesting combat system as well as a good drive to move through the game (quests, quest items, quest chains, different battle objectives, etc.)

If your only goal in Disgaea is to finish the game, you could easily do that in 30 hours, too...
Yes, you do meet bosses or stages that seem unbeatable at first, but in return the game allows you to power up your characters AND items at the same time ridiculously fast (at least when compared to other tactical RPGs, like *sigh* Tactics Ogre)

And yes, all you did was killing enemies, but that's just what you do in every other tactical RPG at 90% of the time, too...Isn't that what you'd expect from playing such a game?
At least the game has an almost endless selection of entirely different stages that REALLY required you to adapt to them, unlike FFTA where the stages are only slightly different and usually don't affect the combat at all.

 

[Heishiro]

How dare u compare disgaea to FFTA2? Disgaea is sooooooooooooo much better, the story in ffta2 is ridiculously childish, doesnt make u want to keep playing to find out what will happen next, and totally dull. While disgaea is one of the funiest games i've ever played, dood.

The gameplay i'm already sure that its amazing, but the only thing i'm worried about is the voice acting, which was great in the first one, flonne would never be so annoying without her annoying voice, i really hope that they dont remove the voices, change the voice acting, or lower too much the quality.

Cant wait for the american release and the next game on the ps3 as well dood.

 

[Maverick-jin8]

Oh god my ears, it's killing my ears. First the sound is extremely low, and second it sounds horrible. I mean REALLY bad, like it's struggling in some parts.

 

[Anakir]

Yess! It's outtttt. I've been waiting for this. Now to wait for an english version.

 

[Harpuia]

Yeah, if you're planning on playing this you've gotta play it with the story. I couldn't get past the dialogue without at least smiling.

 

[pakoito]

 

[moogle87]

How dare u compare disgaea to FFTA2? Disgaea is sooooooooooooo much better, the story in ffta2 is ridiculously childish, doesnt make u want to keep playing to find out what will happen next, and totally dull. While disgaea is one of the funiest games i've ever played, dood.

The gameplay i'm already sure that its amazing, but the only thing i'm worried about is the voice acting, which was great in the first one, flonne would never be so annoying without her annoying voice, i really hope that they dont remove the voices, change the voice acting, or lower too much the quality.

Cant wait for the american release and the next game on the ps3 as well dood.

DOOD!