They finally made a game about wasting time.
Disgaea PC is a port of Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness which itself is an enhanced port of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness on PS2, So Disgaea PC kept all of the quality of life changes from the PSP version and also fixed some of its glitches like the infamous foresight item.
Disgaea PC is usually most people's first Disgaea title and seeing that only 7,5% of the people who own it actually finished it is somewhat sad yet makes sense. Disgaea 1 is a very unique and novel take on the tactical JRPG formula and tried a unique way to be somewhat of a parody of other JRPG while building a personality on its own, on the contrary of something like the Neptunia franchise where it's all about fourth wall breaking joke and bad references. This game is beautifully crafted in terms of scenario, characters, art style, and soundtrack. But what about the gameplay? I'll get to that in an instant as the gameplay cannot be resumed in a few lines if you actually bothered to play the post-game.
So what's so great about the whole personality of Disgaea 1? I personally think that it's a perfect story that focuses on the character interacting with each other rather than focusing on an interesting plot, the game gives the same sense of coziness as Final Fantasy 10 where it's all about the characters and the journey rather than the destination.
The art style itself is really cute, the 3D background may have aged like milk but the wonderful sprite art which used to be NIS's signature style is as good as always, same for the character's talking sprite which was drawn by the amazing Takehito Harada.
And we can't forget to mention the soundtrack by Tenpei Sato which is just wonderfully unique.
Now that the praises are out of the way, it's time to talk about the meat of the game, the gameplay.
Disgaea 1 gameplay is an upgrade to the somewhat terribly easy and boring gameplay of Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure where they pretty much took the core gameplay and decided to make it crazy. The original main gimmick of Disgaea was the fact that it has crazy combat animations, crazy stat building like rising to level 9999 which was a first for JRPGs, and overall an endless amount of content to tackle with the item world, and y'know what? All of these things are true! Disgaea 1 is a crazy JRPG with hours of content to it, but unfortunately, it lacks a crazy amount of quality of life which made the game suffer for the longest time until Disgaea 1 Complete actually released and fixed most issues with the game.
Now what's wrong with the gameplay and what makes everyone drop the game? The main culprit would be the healer not gaining EXP while healing, this is probably Disgaea 1's biggest issue as it makes leveling healers terribly slow and frustrating during the story part of the game. Another issue is the lack of explanation of some parts of the game like the weapon innocent system, I honestly had no idea what these were for until I looked it up on a forum to know what to do with them, and most importantly the item world which itself is fine but when the post-game mostly just ends up doing 1000+ item world floors it gets really, really tedious.
The main story mode of Disgaea 1 is actually quite easy to beat until you reach near chapter 10 where the game somewhat gets a difficulty spike, though it's really easy to get back on track, but the game doesn't hold your hand at all so for most people who expect a somewhat casual experience will get their asses blasted. It always comes down to the issue of not having an actually competent healer since most people won't bother leveling it.
Here's a tip for all Disgaea 1 players who still haven't finished the game, grind Laharl, he can solo the single player pretty easily if you grind enough, and don't forget to use the item world.
Now what about the post-game? Disgaea's post-game is one of its biggest highlights, in this game the post-game is mostly just clearing some extra bosses, at first it doesn't sound all that bad but the amount of grinding required is HUGE, it's mostly due to the fact that the grinding in this game is extremely primitive, it just comes down to grinding EXP boost stages and farm the item world for innocent to boost the EXP progression and weapon mastery.
But once you get strong enough and start kicking their asses it's when the game really feels rewarding, and the extra bosses being references to old and present NIS games makes it even better, and obviously the first appearance of the legendary Baal.
Overall, this game is a wonderfully unique experience that everyone should give a try, and the post-game itself is skippable for this entry as it's really primitive and I don't think most people would find it fun, wait till you get to Disgaea 5 though...
Disgaea PC is a port of Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness which itself is an enhanced port of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness on PS2, So Disgaea PC kept all of the quality of life changes from the PSP version and also fixed some of its glitches like the infamous foresight item.
Disgaea PC is usually most people's first Disgaea title and seeing that only 7,5% of the people who own it actually finished it is somewhat sad yet makes sense. Disgaea 1 is a very unique and novel take on the tactical JRPG formula and tried a unique way to be somewhat of a parody of other JRPG while building a personality on its own, on the contrary of something like the Neptunia franchise where it's all about fourth wall breaking joke and bad references. This game is beautifully crafted in terms of scenario, characters, art style, and soundtrack. But what about the gameplay? I'll get to that in an instant as the gameplay cannot be resumed in a few lines if you actually bothered to play the post-game.
So what's so great about the whole personality of Disgaea 1? I personally think that it's a perfect story that focuses on the character interacting with each other rather than focusing on an interesting plot, the game gives the same sense of coziness as Final Fantasy 10 where it's all about the characters and the journey rather than the destination.
The art style itself is really cute, the 3D background may have aged like milk but the wonderful sprite art which used to be NIS's signature style is as good as always, same for the character's talking sprite which was drawn by the amazing Takehito Harada.
And we can't forget to mention the soundtrack by Tenpei Sato which is just wonderfully unique.
Now that the praises are out of the way, it's time to talk about the meat of the game, the gameplay.
Disgaea 1 gameplay is an upgrade to the somewhat terribly easy and boring gameplay of Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure where they pretty much took the core gameplay and decided to make it crazy. The original main gimmick of Disgaea was the fact that it has crazy combat animations, crazy stat building like rising to level 9999 which was a first for JRPGs, and overall an endless amount of content to tackle with the item world, and y'know what? All of these things are true! Disgaea 1 is a crazy JRPG with hours of content to it, but unfortunately, it lacks a crazy amount of quality of life which made the game suffer for the longest time until Disgaea 1 Complete actually released and fixed most issues with the game.
Now what's wrong with the gameplay and what makes everyone drop the game? The main culprit would be the healer not gaining EXP while healing, this is probably Disgaea 1's biggest issue as it makes leveling healers terribly slow and frustrating during the story part of the game. Another issue is the lack of explanation of some parts of the game like the weapon innocent system, I honestly had no idea what these were for until I looked it up on a forum to know what to do with them, and most importantly the item world which itself is fine but when the post-game mostly just ends up doing 1000+ item world floors it gets really, really tedious.
The main story mode of Disgaea 1 is actually quite easy to beat until you reach near chapter 10 where the game somewhat gets a difficulty spike, though it's really easy to get back on track, but the game doesn't hold your hand at all so for most people who expect a somewhat casual experience will get their asses blasted. It always comes down to the issue of not having an actually competent healer since most people won't bother leveling it.
Here's a tip for all Disgaea 1 players who still haven't finished the game, grind Laharl, he can solo the single player pretty easily if you grind enough, and don't forget to use the item world.
Now what about the post-game? Disgaea's post-game is one of its biggest highlights, in this game the post-game is mostly just clearing some extra bosses, at first it doesn't sound all that bad but the amount of grinding required is HUGE, it's mostly due to the fact that the grinding in this game is extremely primitive, it just comes down to grinding EXP boost stages and farm the item world for innocent to boost the EXP progression and weapon mastery.
But once you get strong enough and start kicking their asses it's when the game really feels rewarding, and the extra bosses being references to old and present NIS games makes it even better, and obviously the first appearance of the legendary Baal.
Overall, this game is a wonderfully unique experience that everyone should give a try, and the post-game itself is skippable for this entry as it's really primitive and I don't think most people would find it fun, wait till you get to Disgaea 5 though...