Jeremy Gallen's Game Reviews

Dood, Where's My Netherworld?

Japanese videogame developer Nippon Ichi Software first dove into the roleplaying game genre with the Marl Kingdom titles, the first of which Atlus localized as Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure. Given the rather polarized reception for that title, N1 would not reemerge in North American markets until the English release of Makai Senki Disgaea, known initially outside Japan as Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, which would receive several ports to systems such as the PlayStation Portable and Nintendo Switch, the latest of which came to the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and iOS devices as Disgaea 1 Complete, perhaps the definitive version of the game.

From the start, one can play as Laharl, Prince of the Netherworld, or one of his servants, Etna. The former wakes from a years-long slumber to discover that his father, King Krichevskoy, has died, and the Netherworld has plunged into chaos. Etna has tried for a long time to wake the prince, and he seeks to secure his throne from other contenders. In Etna Mode, she accidentally kills Laharl while trying to wake him, after which she seeks to affirm her succession as Queen of the Netherworld. Both stories are generally enjoyable, humorous, and well-developed, with multiple endings and the potential for variant events. However, clichés such as amnesia abound, and a few characters get no more scenes after they join your party. Regardless, the narrative is a high point.

Lamentably, the localization effort feels rushed, given things such as misspelled words during and after the ending credits, vocal tracks with English versions regressing to their Japanese iterations, and so forth. However, most of the dialogue is good and ably translated, aside from lines indicative of Japanese origin like Flonne’s “Nin, nin, nin!” Still, the story is more than coherent, and the localizers luckily didn’t censor some of the game’s more mature humor. Regardless, the translation team could have put more thought into the English text.

Fortunately, solid gameplay backs the narrative experience, with among its many positive aspects being the total absence of random encounters and tactical battles only occurring at the player’s will. Party maintenance occurs in Laharl’s palace, where he can walk around, talk to NPCs, check Etna’s secret room to view her diary entries, shop for consumable items and equipment, and engage in one of many story or side-battles. Various battlegrounds unlock as players advance through the central storyline, with skippable cutscenes usually before and after fights. The same rules apply in Etna Mode.

Battles occur on 3-D grid-based maps, with the player able to withdraw up to ten characters from a base panel and move them. When close to enemies, they can attack with their equipped weapon, which, except in the case of monster-based classes, will cause the character’s proficiency with the armament type to increase and level to unlock SP-consuming skills. Important story characters usually have special skills obtained with experience levels, with the termination of enemies resulting in the highest point gain. However, an improvement over prior versions of the first Disgaea is that magic-based classes now obtain experience using healing and stat-boosting spells.

Also helpful for leveling weaker characters is that the player can have them stand on any of the three open sides of an attacker, with a certain chance the adjacent allies will perform a combo, where they share in experience gain, should the combination succeed. Characters also gain Mana that the player can use at the Netherworld Senate to create new characters (with the ally-creators able to learn abilities from their “pupils” in battle when standing alongside them, and this can be particularly useful for allowing classes such as healers to learn offensive spells from attack-magic-based characters for easier leveling).

Different humanoid classes have base forms and four or five advanced versions with higher stats and proficiency with certain weapons. Leveling low-level classes unlocks higher incarnations, and when the player wants to upgrade, they can “transmigrate” a character to the higher-level vocation. In this case, their experience levels revert to zero, and the player gets a certain number of points depending upon how much Mana they have, which they can distribute among initial stats. Monster classes also exist and have different higher-level reskins, with the player unlocking them through killing the specific monster type in battle, with more than one of a type killed lowering base Mana cost.

For characters to transmigrate, the player needs to get them up to three ranks, which involves the characters solo fighting an enemy party. Doing so can also unlock higher-Mana-costing proposals that the player can bring before the Netherworld Senate, with the player, before a vote, able to bribe Senators with items in their battle inventory. After a vote, the Senate either approves or denies a request; in the latter instance, the player can either go back to Laharl’s castle, with the Mana used lost (and the player will likely want to reload a prior save before the vote) or attempt to force the proposal through by fighting the dissident Senators, difficult at lower levels.

Purchasing items from the two castle shops earns players points that sometimes make higher-level consumables and equipment available. Laharl’s castle also has a hospital where the player can pay to fully restore characters dead or damaged from battle, which, in turn, occasionally provides players rewards such as powerful equipment. In combat, the player and the enemy have separate turn sessions, so there’s usually no question of who takes their turns when. Another bright spot, which the game’s sequels would implement, is a turbo mode to significantly reduce attack and ability animations, which can shave hundreds of hours of gameplay for those seeking all PlayStation Trophies.

If a character loses all HP, they disappear from the battlefield, with no chance to revive them except back in Laharl’s castle in between battles; thus, the number of units the player can have on the battleground decreases by one. A Game Over and a trip back to Laharl’s castle happens after losing ten allies, no experience in the battle preserved, an issue prevalent in most Japanese strategy RPGs. Thus, grinding is necessary to keep up with the enemy; luckily, plenty of stages abound that make for decent leveling grounds, namely those with Geo Panel tiles offering multiplied experience points.

On that point, many maps have colored Geo Panels with Geo Crystals providing various effects such as increased experience for enemies killed on the tiles, heightened offensive or defensive power for either the player’s characters and the enemy, or just the latter in some cases, adding a certain degree of strategy at times. The player’s units can also lift allies or enemies and toss them across the battlefield; throwing one enemy onto another creates a new enemy with heightened levels and stats. The player can further destroy Geo Crystals of a color different from that on the tiles they’re sitting upon, which can potentially start a chain reaction with damaging color changes that increase the bonus gauge level, further unlocking post-battle bonuses.

One class can alter the Geo Panel and Crystal makeup on the battlefield once per map; this can help if the player falls short in increasing a bonus level a certain amount and requires an extra boost. Sparking chain reactions is especially useful in acquiring rare items in the Item World, where the player delves into a consumable item or piece of equipment; higher floor numbers mean higher-level enemies and rewards. Players can skip levels entirely via the portal to the next level or kill all enemies to acquire a floor’s prizes. The Item World can aid grinding since the consumable Mr. Gency’s Exit safeguards against wasted playtime there.

Ultimately, the game mechanics serve the game well and are sure to please strategy RPG enthusiasts. However, there abound a few issues aside from the grinding, which include the pickiness of elevation restrictions when executing skills, the lack of a forecast of how effective an attack will be before using it, the all-or-nothing reward mechanics of standard battle maps outside the Item World, and the potential difficulty of getting low-level characters up to speed with more powerful allies (in which case post-battle experience bonuses often don’t help). Regardless, I can say that despite not caring much for tactical RPGs, I found the original Disgaea a joy to experience.

Perhaps the best aspect of the original Disgaea is its aurals, mainly Nippon Ichi composer Tenpei Sato’s soundtrack, with the central series theme recalling John Williams’ score to the Harry Potter film franchise, alongside plenty of other catchy tunes such as the different castle themes for Laharl and Etna Mode. Other tracks that include Captain Gordon’s motif evoke his disposition as a beloved superhero, and various vocal pieces abound throughout the game. The player also has a choice between English and Japanese voices, the former sounding good and fitting the comical nature of the game, although there are occasional weak performances. Regardless, the first game is an aural delight.

Although the developers “touched up” the graphics to be more artistically in line with the game’s successors, the results are mixed. The visual designers replaced most character sprites, and while in Hour and Afternoon of Darkness, the main ones, like Laharl, faced eight directions, in Complete, they only face diagonally. Some inconsistencies include most winged characters not having visible wings on their sprites. Furthermore, many environments have blurry, sometimes pixilated texturing. The game is far from an eyesore, but the touchups could have been better.

Finally, given the turbo mode, playing through both storylines of the rerelease takes significantly shorter, over forty-eight hours, with a surprisingly high amount of lasting appeal due to things such as being able to grind thousands of experience levels, the Item World, side content such as extra maps, in-game compendia with percentage-complete indicators, storyline variations, PlayStation Trophies, and alternate endings, though not all will appreciate the grinding.

Overall, Disgaea 1 Complete is undoubtedly the definitive version, given the touchups to the game mechanics like the turbo mode and different means of acquiring experience for certain character classes, the well-developed storyline, the excellent aurals, and infinite lasting appeal. Granted, it does have issues regarding the potential for its admittedly dense mechanics to off-put some, the rushed translation, and the lackluster graphics. Furthermore, while I most recently played the PlayStation 4 version, interested parties may prefer the iOS or Android versions since they have supplemental features such as Cheat Mode and autobattle. Despite its issues, those who enjoy strategy RPGs will likely appreciate the deep mechanics of the original Disgaea, with Nippon Ichi becoming a prime producer of tactics games.

This review is based on a playthrough of the PlayStation 4 version of Laharl Mode.