After an entire year of trying my hand at this fucking game, grinding through Item World, trying and failing to break the Dark Assembly, and completely ignoring post-game content after realizing I'd already dumped 200 odd hours into this game, I cannot say I'm mad. Disgaea's been with me through a lot of shit, and while it's pissed me off plenty of times, I feel like 3 distinct phases of my life have passed before I got around to finishing it if I'm being honest. I started seeing a therapist on the regular, I played and wrapped up an RPG campaign that I was finally happy with, and I got to making actual progress on writing a book.
It's not that it's a special game that came at a special time, just that it's the game I was constantly playing in that time. Helps it's a pretty fun game, too. A unique take on the SRPG/TRPG setup already, complete with an absurdly cute take on it's contextualizations. For a 200 hour game, though, I'd have expected a bit more....content to it's storyline? It all wraps up assuredly, and goes a lot of places in it's last 30 hours, but I wish it was more than a cartoon episodic thing with how it's made and all after all that. Knowing that a lot of these characters won't receive further development in it's sequels, too, is a tad disappointing.
That's all to say, Disgaea: Hour of Darkness isn't a game I could ever recommend in good faith. There's too many annoying aspects I don't mind a bit, and I know all my friends hate their grinding in their RPGs and shit. Disgaea is all about grinding, grinding, grinding all day all nite. And I don't think any of the generally unfunny jokes are gonna save that for the average player.
It's not that it's a special game that came at a special time, just that it's the game I was constantly playing in that time. Helps it's a pretty fun game, too. A unique take on the SRPG/TRPG setup already, complete with an absurdly cute take on it's contextualizations. For a 200 hour game, though, I'd have expected a bit more....content to it's storyline? It all wraps up assuredly, and goes a lot of places in it's last 30 hours, but I wish it was more than a cartoon episodic thing with how it's made and all after all that. Knowing that a lot of these characters won't receive further development in it's sequels, too, is a tad disappointing.
That's all to say, Disgaea: Hour of Darkness isn't a game I could ever recommend in good faith. There's too many annoying aspects I don't mind a bit, and I know all my friends hate their grinding in their RPGs and shit. Disgaea is all about grinding, grinding, grinding all day all nite. And I don't think any of the generally unfunny jokes are gonna save that for the average player.