28th December 2003, 4:41 PM
The game I am talking about it Disgaea, as strategy-RPG released in November by Atlus. Apparently, Atlus decided that for someone reason people didn't want to play it so they only released about two copies. Anyway, on to the game!
The story thus far: You play as Laharl who is a demon prince. He awakens to find that his father, the king, has died...two years ago. Other demons are now fighting for the position of king. Laharl decides that he won't sit around while they take his rightful position so he sets out to make sure everyone knows who the next king is. Mild insanity insues.
Graphics: Well...it HAS graphics. For a PS2 game the graphics aren't that advanced, not to say that they are bad, but they're fairly simple. The 3D graphics are clean, however, which should be enough. The 2D models are about what you'd expect, nothing fancy, but they look good none-the-less. Overall it looks like a game that was originally meant for the PS1, but for some reason or another was delayed till now.
Gameplay: Like most strategy-RPGs the battlefield is set up like a grid. However, Disgaea offers some unique aspects to stir things up a bit. You can "Lift" characters and objects and "Throw" them to other parts of the playing field. This option allows you to move your characters to areas that would otherwise be unnacessible. Also you can lift enemies and throw them onto other enemies, this elimates one of the enemies, but the remaining enemy games several levels making it harder to beat.
Another unique aspect is Geo Crystals, which are different colored crystals which grant bonuses or penalties to characters who are standing on spaces whose color correlates to the crystals. The crystals can be destroyed however, and if you destroy the crystal on a colored space different from the color of the crystal it will change the color of all those spaces to the color of the crystal, and will do damage to all characters [friend or foe] who happen to be standing on those spaces.
What more unique stuff?! Yes, there are in fact two more things left to discuss. From time to time you must lobby the Dark Assembly for various things that will help you on your quest, such as funding, better items, and so on. Sometimes the senators don't feel like helping out so you can either bribe them or fight them to the death for their vote. That's demon world politics for you. Next, is the Item World, which I think is one of the coolest things about this game. You can enter inside of your items and fight hordes of various monsters. Not only does this allow you to level up you characters, but you can also level up the item and recieve money and goods along the way.
The battles: The battles are about what you'd expect from an SRPG. If your characters are in the right places you can pull off combos which deal out more damage than regular attacks. Other than that I can't really find anything special about it. Standard fare, though not in a negative way.
In-between battles: The story is told mostly through conversations between characters. High quality images of the characters are displayed on the screen as they talk with each other. It sounds kind of boring, but there's enough humor in this game to keep things moving.
Great Rumbler gives Disgeae a 9.5/10
The story thus far: You play as Laharl who is a demon prince. He awakens to find that his father, the king, has died...two years ago. Other demons are now fighting for the position of king. Laharl decides that he won't sit around while they take his rightful position so he sets out to make sure everyone knows who the next king is. Mild insanity insues.
Graphics: Well...it HAS graphics. For a PS2 game the graphics aren't that advanced, not to say that they are bad, but they're fairly simple. The 3D graphics are clean, however, which should be enough. The 2D models are about what you'd expect, nothing fancy, but they look good none-the-less. Overall it looks like a game that was originally meant for the PS1, but for some reason or another was delayed till now.
Gameplay: Like most strategy-RPGs the battlefield is set up like a grid. However, Disgaea offers some unique aspects to stir things up a bit. You can "Lift" characters and objects and "Throw" them to other parts of the playing field. This option allows you to move your characters to areas that would otherwise be unnacessible. Also you can lift enemies and throw them onto other enemies, this elimates one of the enemies, but the remaining enemy games several levels making it harder to beat.
Another unique aspect is Geo Crystals, which are different colored crystals which grant bonuses or penalties to characters who are standing on spaces whose color correlates to the crystals. The crystals can be destroyed however, and if you destroy the crystal on a colored space different from the color of the crystal it will change the color of all those spaces to the color of the crystal, and will do damage to all characters [friend or foe] who happen to be standing on those spaces.
What more unique stuff?! Yes, there are in fact two more things left to discuss. From time to time you must lobby the Dark Assembly for various things that will help you on your quest, such as funding, better items, and so on. Sometimes the senators don't feel like helping out so you can either bribe them or fight them to the death for their vote. That's demon world politics for you. Next, is the Item World, which I think is one of the coolest things about this game. You can enter inside of your items and fight hordes of various monsters. Not only does this allow you to level up you characters, but you can also level up the item and recieve money and goods along the way.
The battles: The battles are about what you'd expect from an SRPG. If your characters are in the right places you can pull off combos which deal out more damage than regular attacks. Other than that I can't really find anything special about it. Standard fare, though not in a negative way.
In-between battles: The story is told mostly through conversations between characters. High quality images of the characters are displayed on the screen as they talk with each other. It sounds kind of boring, but there's enough humor in this game to keep things moving.
Great Rumbler gives Disgeae a 9.5/10
Sometimes you get the scorpion.