Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness (USA) PSP ISO

Review by Shinny:

Every now an then I keep returning to this epic game, since the day it came out on PS2, I couldn’t throw my controller and go out side like normal people do, you wonder why ? Ill tell you why I was obsessed by this game, so without further ado here’s my review!

Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (魔界戦記ディスガイア Makai Senki Disugaia, lit. “Hell Chronicles Disgaea”) is a tactical role-playing video game developed and published by Nippon Ichi Software for the Sony PlayStation 2 video game console, later for the Playstation Portable as an enhanced, expanded version of the original game.

Story:
Lets talk about the story first and go on to next cool stuff this game has to offer. A the very beginning of the game you see two characters, one female and one male, one of them is in a coffin and the other is standing, well the one standing is Etna, a female demon that tries to wake up the male one called Laharl. The way Etna is trying to wake Laharl is just insane, but hey since its Netherworld (basically Hell) its kinda normal to wake people by torturing them, yes the whole game is funny as hell, but that doesn’t mean the game is all about jokes, in fact the story here is deep and really interesting, it covers really important topics and you may learn a few things if you listen carefully. You play as Laharl, a young demon that just woke up after a 2 year “nap” and found that his dad King Krichevskoy died, without a second thought Laharl decides to take his place and rule the Netherworld as an Overlord, and this is where your journey begins, what awaits you later, ill tell you you just these words: Demons, Angels, Humans.

Gameplay:
As you might already know, Disgaea is a tactical RPG, and like all tactical RPGs, you control many characters on a map divided into a square grid. Battle mechanics are great here, you can do normal damage, magic damage and use special skills and lets not forget about combo, yes this is what makes the game great, your characters can pair and do massive damage together at a cost of one characters move. The game features an system of area effects, Geo Symbols they call them, and they all have different effects, from +EXP to even warping your enemy, and yeah the amount of them on stage is practically unlimited. The game also features an thing called Item World, its a world that every item hold in its self, its an randomly generated dungeon and the more you complete the more you upgrade the items stats, so yeah its some sort of blacksmith where you level up your items and yeah come to think of it, this adds an huge plus to replayability. Ohh forgot to mention, the game offers 9999 and reincarnation, so in total you have 168,000 level, yeah go get that red bull if you’re a completionist.

Graphics:
Visually the game isn’t something like Final Fantasy Type-0 or any other game, its more of an old-school sprite based game with 3D environments, but this is what makes the game special, the simplicity of it is so charming and yet beautiful, the way they designed the game is just brilliant, it will never get old, in fact for most its an classic already

Sound:
Ohh this one is a masterpiece of its kind, its so good that it should have an separated review. Composed by Tanpei Sato, a woman that cites Queen, Claude Debussy, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Kate Bush as major musical influences made a rich, deep, emotional soundtrack that never gets old. The only complaint I have about OST, it never had an official release.