(played the Sega CD version of the game through Heart of the Alien, though it's not a listed platform for some reason.)

While Prince of Persia created the "cinematic platformer" subgenre of sidescrollers with an emphasis on realistic, weighty movement alongside some kind of grand central narrative, this is the game to define it.

In the "cinematic" half of our genre here, this game is insanely impressive. The games artstyle is wonderfully crafted, using the limited color palletes of the host consoles and computers to literally create Another World that feels well Out of this World. It feels alienating exploring large caves and hostile facilities as you try to bumble around as both the player and your main character aren't entirely sure what's exactly going on. The game doesn't feel isolating though, given the fact that you have your own partner character to help you out with your escape from the bad place you both happened to get stuck in, and there's a very real bond that gets formed between the two. The game has a very strong central narrative with each section of the game usually having some cool moment, all told with zero dialogue which makes everything all the more impressive, transcending any language or cultural barriers. Cutscenes are mostly done in-engine pretty much as you are playing with large full-screen animations only playing for things like deaths or large story beats. I know I say this a lot in older titles I review, but this definitely goes on the list of "games that probably caused a lot of people to think of games in a fundamentally different way after playing". This game is pretty much a foundational pillar for the modern AAA cinematic titles that have been dominating modern video games for like over the past 20 years in some form or another. Whether you like those types of games or not, it's certainly something to absolutely be respected, and I think this game deserves every ounce of praise it gets artistically.

When it comes to the "platformer" half of this genre though... Things aren't so great. The movement has that same level of realism and momentum that Prince of Persia had, done to mostly the same degree, though the level design is much less platforming-focused to instead lean towards gunplay combat and puzzle solving. Most of the level layouts are full to the brim with trial-and-error gotcha traps at every corner that can and will kill you on your first run until you've basically memorized the entire game, and the game doesn't make its progressing solutions very apparent which made it really easy for me to get stuck as the game never really led me to change my way of thinking and approaching different problems, but rather gave me plenty of "why the fuck do I keep dying here literally what is the game wanting me to do" moments. Definitely keep a guide on-hand for the handful of nonsense moments that lay throughout the game. The game does have infinite lives and reasonably generous checkpoints, but the sheer frequency of how often I died combined with the slow weighty movement did slowly get on my nerves the more I played. To put things into perspective the game is roughly 20-30 minutes when played effectively by someone that knows what they are doing, and it took me about 5 hours to get through it on my first go and that's even with reasonable guide usage to help me know what the fuck the game occasionally wanted from me. The gunplay also can be a bit annoying. Maybe the sega CD version has hella aggro enemies or something but I found the AI enemies to be unreasonably reflexive when it comes to firefights. You have a gun that can shoot quick pulverizing laser beams at a tap of a button with a short hold allowing you to make a shield and a longer hold allowing you to make a charge shot that can blow up shields and walls, all with limited ammo. The enemies can charge shields and power shots way faster than you can, and getting in the line of sight for most enemies usually gets you dead before you can even pull out your gun because apparently these guys all took quickshot sharpshooting lessons from Mad Dog Mcree. I found that its significantly easier to just memorize when and where the enemies will occasionally spawn and just continuously blast there so you can kill them the instant they spawn because if they live long enough to pop a shield up, your odds of winning that firefight just went down significantly.

Overall the game is really influential but also kinda frustrating to actually play all the way through. Maybe the difficulty was done in a way to pad out a short game to fill in a longer runtime, maybe the difficulty is thematic in how it emphasizes the unknown alien nature of the world by making you trial-and-error through mildly obtuse scenarios, or how the harsh firefights further the oppressive vibes of the alien civilization you are messing with, who knows. The cool thing about art is it's all interpretive at the end of the day, and this game is no exception. It's really cool how this game was able to influence and inspire so much both inside and Out of this World of gaming, but I probably won't see myself really playing it too much again (though i might check out the 3DO port sometime down the line to see the redrawn backgrounds, who knows). If you like video games, you owe it to yourself to at least give it a try and see how you feel about it!

this that shit travis touchdown plays

Decent enough shmup, it's interesting how it plays a bit more like ikari warriors or commando or whatever where you as the player are in control of the levels scrolling instead of being stuck on a potentially-long-winded auto scroll of your typical shooter. The game being more of a twin-stick shooter def helps perpetuate that kinda vibe, and the whole curse system is pretty neat. Instead of having your typical bomb or alt shot, you get to shoot out a curse which can cause some effect to happen on an enemy like slowing it down or changing its bullet patterns or what have you. You can also curse yourself for a major attack buff and frankly I pretty much relied on the self-buffs more than anything else to get through the game. There's your typical mission and arcade modes for the challenge-seeking shmupper as well as a story mode with voiced cutscenes and a few unique gameplay gimmicks. For the story mode lives are done by character which means you can only have a maximum of 5 lives and the game saves which characters are alive when you continue so it can be very easy to accidentally screw yourself by barely beating a boss with your last guy only to be stuck on an even harder level with only one life. The story mode also loops over and over until you fulfill two requirements per level, usually defeating all of a certain enemy and defeating the level boss as a specific character, but the game doesn't tell you any of that whatsoever so good fucking luck figuring out that shit especially when levels have branching paths that you can't backtrack down where your objective might actually be. Luckily the game is still pretty benign when it comes to difficulty with only the Karakuri Castle being a sudden kick in the balls, so it's honestly not too bad of a beginner shmup on the standard medium difficulty if you just wanna try and do a story mode run. If you are a danmaku junkie then there's still plenty to enjoy with the challenge setlists (which for some reason are in a horizontal aspect ratio despite the arcade and story modes being in the typical vertical shmup aspect ratio which is strange.) The OST also bangs (when you can hear it over the constant shooting, explosions, and anime noises), so that's pretty cool too. Overall a solid enjoyable time.

MINOR SPOILERS: Mentions what determines endings (its not anything story related and really arbitrary so not really a spoiler)

Way less grind than I remember. I beat it in around 30 hours with minimal road blocks. You'll most likely get stuck on a boss and then overlevel and breeze through half the game before you lose again.

The gameplay isn't exactly deep, if you want a game that makes you use your brain there are way better tactics games for that out there. It's mostly level based but you can win even if you're underleveled if you use basic strats like lifting your damage dealer between turns so they can't die. I view the basic gameplay as a means to tell one of the best stories you will ever experience. The writing in this game is superb, it's crazy how easily it sways your emotions with the hillarious comedic moments and the heart wrenching sad moments. Every character is perfect and serves their purpose and the plot is constantly shifting. The way you get the endings is kind of dumb. The good and normal ending methods are perfect, you act aggresively during your playthrough and let your allies get killed in your own AOE attacks and you get get an ending you deserve. Having to kill 100 allies for the worst endings was overkill though, no one is accidentally doing that. And the option to kill bosses should 100% be unlocked from the start and not locked behind 100 ally kills. Let people choose that first time if they want to, they can just reload and spare them afterwards.

The graphics hold up perfectly for a game so old. Everything looks great, from the sprite art to character portraits to the stylish special moves. The way you view the maps in item world can be very annoying and trick you with perspective. The handcrafted levels are fine but the randomly generated item world is a mess of super tall towers that block your vision and floating islands that look like they're connected until you rotate the camera. The map from Disgaea DS fixed this and I wish it was implemented into the other versions.

The music is just as perfect as everything else, Battle of the Eight Beat and Planet X are always on my rotation, and Angel of Sorrow makes the emotional scenes even more sad. The voice acting is amazing, every voice fits the character perfectly and the actors did a great job with improvising parts to make it even better. Vulcanus is my personal favourite, you can tell he's loving every line he says. The only voice I'm not a fan of is General Carter's but he's barely in the game anyway, no disrespect to the voice actor, I just found Carter's voice a bit bland. I can definitely see people finding Flonne's voice annoying but it didn't bother me.

In conclusion, Disgaea is 10/10 story told through passable but not perfect gameplay. I would ignore the post game, too much grind and too little payoff storywise. I know loads of people only play Disgaea for the grind though, so maybe you'll be one of those people.

Gameplay 7/10
Writing 10/10
Art 10/10
Sound 10/10