Disgaea (DS)

Name: Disgaea: Hour Of Darkness
Creators: Nippon Ichi Software (NIS)
Genre: Turn-based RPG
Platform: PS2, PSP and NDS
My rating 8/10

Disgaea DS, Disgaea Hour of Darkness or whatever name you prefer, is a great turn-based RPG game, with an awesome story and is incredibly cute with its evilness.

The game starts out with Etna, a young demon vassal, trying to wake Prince Laharl from his 2 year slumber. As Laharl awakens, Etna tells him that his father is dead since 2 years back (he apparently choke on a black pretzel). Now, Laharl has to set out for an adventure to become the Overlord (aka king) of the Netherworld (aka hell), as being the heir to the throne just doesn't cut it. On his way, he needs to beat his rival The Dark Adonis, renamed to Mid-Boss by Laharl, fight horrible demons and monsters, and eventually unveil the conspiracy that is grooming in the background of his quest.

Apart from just playing the story, you can do much much more. You can finish the story with a few lvl 100 characters, but you can get every character up to lvl 9999 if you just want to waste some time. Everything in this game has levels. Level up levels that is. The max level of characters and skills is 9999, and the max level of items (yes, you can level items up) is 99. Other than just spending time grinding, you can also try and get the alternate endings. In total, there 8 endings in this game. You can also have fun with passing every bill there is in the dark assembly, beat all the alternate worlds (like the Human World, the Alternate Netherworld or the Beauty Castle), or you can just farm for specialists to make your equipment even stronger.

An important thing in this game is, as mentioned above, the dark assembly. Here, you use "mana" to start a vote of different bills. You choose what character you want to enter the dark assembly, and continues on to choose what you want to do in there. You can try to promote your character in order to unlock more bills, or you can just try to pass the bills themselves. In promotion exam, your character will take on a number of enemies alone, and if he prevails he will be promoted.
When you try and pass a bill, you will have to face a specific amount of "senators". All of these senators will have to vote either "nay" or "yea", and can be persuaded to your side by either giving them items before you start the voting, or kill them after they have said nay. I won't mention, nor explain, all the bills, but they are needed to unlock alternate worlds and to level up properly after you've reached 100.

The item world is also a very important, and time consuming, part of the game. Every item in the game, and I mean EVERY item, has an item world. You enter these worlds by having the item in your inventory, and then talk to the Item World NPC. Once inside the item, you will have to try and descent its many floors. You can do this by either defeating all of the enemies (which can sometimes be literally impossible) or make your way to the portal to descend that way. After ten floors, you will meet an Item General, until the endfloor of the item, where you will meet an Item King, unless it's a high-grade item, which in case you will meet an Item God instead. After beeting floor 10, 20, 30 et c you will be promptet to choose to leave the item or to continue on. Every item also contain specialists, which can be "tamed" by defeating on the various floors where they appear. Every specialist gives your item boosted stats, and can be moved to other items when tamed, and can also be combined with a specialist of the same type.

There are also secret characters to unlock in the game, which is what I am doing in it right now, by either meeting specific conditions or defeating them in battle. For example, after you've beaten the game once and starts over, you can recruit "Pleinair" (the NPC that lets you in to the Dark Assembly) by choosing the empty space when taking to her. Some other characters you can unlock are Priere (who's unlocked by beating Alternate Netherworld), Marjoly (which is unlocked by beating Beauty Castle), Adell and Rozalin (who both gets unlocked when you beat Demonhall Mirror).

I myself have unlocked three of the different endings, have beaten Alternate Netherworld, Beauty Castle, Cave of ordeals and Human World. I have unlocked Priere and Marjoly, and am right now trying to get Adell and Rozalin, going on to Zetta after that. I use mainly three characters, except for Priere and Marjoly of course, and those characters are Laharl and two of my created characters: a ninja named Lemon and a samurai named Cranberry.
Cranberry is lvl 2009, with the best buyable (not best obtainable) equipments fully leveled up (lvl 30 for buyable items).
Lemon is lvl 2003 with the same equipment as Cranberry.
Laharl is lvl 2093 with the same equipment as Lemon and Cranberry.
Priere is lvl 2001 with the equipments she comes with, all on lvl 20 (her equipment can reach lvl 50 I think).
Marjoly is lvl 2500 with the equipment she comes with, still not leveled up.
I've finished the game thrice, as mentioned above, and played for over 109 hours.

The reason I didn't give this game a 9 or 10 is because it's so time consuming to do anything but the story. Of course, that is normally a good thing! I love long games! But the problem is that what is so time-consuming about the game is the constant grinding. Don't expect to reach even lvl 200 by just playing. 200 Doesn't take long, but you will have to grind your way there.

Now then... have you played the game? What do you think about it? What is/are your favorite character(s)? How far into the game are you? What are you trying to accomplish in it right now? What lvl are your main characters? Everything about Disgaea: Hour of Darkness and Disgaea DS is welcome here! Discuss away! Try to avoid spoiling stuff though, okay?

the ds version sucks

Lots of people say that the PSP Version is the better version..

I've recently tried to buy this game... most stores don't have it or its fucking Pre-Owned.
I don't want anybodies Sloppy Seconds, only Virgin UMD's For me.

If you can spare the Memory Size you can buy the game on PSN for 15 bucks.

Are you only here to bash on all my posts? Or is it everyone's posts?

I poured over 300 hours into the ds version back then with the enemies' levels/strength boosted as high as possible. I sorta gave up later on though when enemies were at lvl 9999 and my laharl was only at 6000 ish

I could very well have weakened the enemies, but I enjoyed the difficulty =P

it depends.

if theres a thread thats already there we can use i will complain
but overall i come off as a jerk. it just so happens that you created posts that i have negative say for.
you know you're not the first one i complained about for creating needless post

Haha, oh man... that's alot of time you spent there! And I thouhgt I've been playing much ^^