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I am a big fan of videogames. Have been ever since I sat in my big brother's room and watched him play Tecmo Bowl. My parents had a suburban with a TV mounted in the back of the center console, and my dad was clever enough to rig up a VCR under one of the back seats and a Nintendo Entertainment System under the other, so for long car rides we played a lot of Baseball All Stars and RC Pro AM and the occasional Legend of Zelda, though I was worthless at that one. I've gotten better and would wager that, in my prime, there was no finer Biggoron swordsman in all the world when it came to Ocarina of Time. When my childhood best friend moved in next door and we got to know each other, I discovered that he and his older brother had a whole closetful of games at their disposal, and I was hardly seen in my own home again until my parents, who missed me dearly, were distraught enough to buy a Super Nintendo for my "first grade graduation". They'd gotten it from a friend, so it came with about fifteen games, among them F-Zero and Star Fox, which quickly became two of my favorites. It's sad to see that neither franchise has transitioned onto the newest consoles, but oh well. Not everyone's so lucky as Mario.
In many ways, games have come a long way since then. Near-photorealism is upon us (just look at the racing games out there nowadays). Gone are the days of text-based dialog. Everyone's voice-acted nowadays, for better or worse (better = Kingdom Hearts; worse = Just Cause 2, or any of the Dynasty Warriors games). Soundtracks have become so well-composed that you can buy them in stores (though just last night I encountered a band dedicated to making electric-guitar versions of 8-bit game themes from the late 80's and early 90's, so the classics live on!).
In many other ways, though, games have perhaps NOT come very far. As mentioned before, sometimes the voice acting is so bad that you wish you just turn it off completely (but you can't. Ever.) Storylines have become much more complex thanks to dramatic increases in memory to allow for longer games (see: any Bioware game, like Mass Effect, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, or Jade Empire), yet oftentimes the storylines, simply put, are utterly worthless. Depending on the game, you may end up "playing a movie", where you find that overly-long cinematic cut scenes take up more of your time than gameplay (see: Xenosaga), or you may find yourself playing through a game whose story is so convoluted that you don't have the slightest idea why you're doing things in the first place (see: Too Human, which I shall be discussing further in a later post). Many games nowadays have become so shallow in their stories that it's embarrassing to me as a writer.
And don't even get me started on game-movie tie-ins. Just don't.
One of my favorite genres is strategy, specifically grid-based Strategy-RPGs first made famous (as far as I know) by Final Fantasy: Tactics. This basically involves having about 8 characters spread out over a map separated into a grid a bit like chess. The characters move one at a time, depending on their speed stat, and you go around taking out the enemy until there's none left on the board. You win, you move on to the next map after some story, and you repeat, with character customization going on in-between battles. If it sounds simple, it isn't. Final Fantasy: Tactics featured 20 different classes for your non-storyline characters, and each one offers a completely different way of playing: warriors, archers, black mages, white mages, or the oddball calculator, just to name a few. These games in this genre are deep, time-consuming, and have a reputation (to me, anyway) as having some of the best storylines around.
Enter Disgaea: Hour of Darkness.
From what I understand, Disgaea first arrived in Japan for the PlayStation 2 in 2001, then in the US two years later, while I was in high school. I don't know how exactly I became aware of it, but somehow or another I picked it up. What followed was possibly the closest experience to taking drugs that I've ever experienced. My grades slipped because I had to keep playing. I didn't see my friends. I definitely didn't see my parents. My cat started spending more time in the gameroom with me, leaving me to suspect that my parents hired him to make sure I didn't die of exhaustion from playing too much, like that Korean guy did with World of Warcraft a few years ago.
My total playtime for Disgaea? 142 hours, 35 minutes and 35 seconds. That's not including the combined 148 hours, 55 minutes and 7 seconds I've spent on the two sequels, or the 111 hours, 44 minutes and 43 seconds on Makai Kingdom, the spiritual spin-off made by the same company.
Total time spent on Nippon Ichi's Strategy-RPG drugs? 403 hours, 15 minutes and 25 seconds.
That's almost 17 straight days. I kept waiting for my friends to stage an intervention. Had they done so, I may have reclaimed two weeks of my life.
And I would have been worse off for it.
Disgaea: Hour of Darkness stars Laharl, the son of the Overlord of the Netherworld. He awakens to find that his father has died (from choking on a pretzel, as you later find out), and that Laharl has been asleep in his coffin for two years. His vassal, Etna, has woken him because other overlords have begun to fight for his father's throne, and it's up to him to claim it for himself. What follows is a multi-chapter story about your typical anti-hero as he tries, in vain, to act like a big tough demon. He meets an "angel assassin" in the form of Flonne, your typical Japanese young girl who is all innocence, to the point where she doesn't even know what an assassin really is. Their relationship provides the majority of the character development, as Flonne strives to teach Larharl what love and goodness are and he tries to ignore her and continue his masculine, hilarious path towards domination.
Aside from the surprisingly poignant moments concerning love and its ability to turn demons and angels into friends, it's the humor that really pushes the story along. This is one of those games that knows it's a game, kind of like how Deadpool of the X-men universe knows that he's in a comic and often comments on it. One of the "overlords" you fight is this super-effeminate man who's so overconfident yet so impotent that Laharl renames him "Mid-boss", since there's no way that he could be the boss of the whole chapter and must therefore be a mid-chapter miniboss. Also, Etna has a horde of slaves at her disposal: an army of demonic penguins called Prinnies.
I love these guys. They speak in high-pitched voices and call everyone "Dood!" as they pull bombs and knives from their goofy little fannypacks. They are human souls sent to the Netherworld for their sins. They are lazy, overworked, and utterly expendable.
Other sources of humor come from a cameo by overacting Power Rangers (one of whom speaks as though reading deadpan from cue cards) and a zombie who wields the ultimate power-up: a horse wiener. Seriously. When Laharl finds out that this zombie wields a horse wiener, he almost runs for it because he's so scared. Disgaea's sense of humor is kooky and wacky in the way that only a Japanese game can be. Just check out the item list I provided at the end of this post if you still aren't convinced.
That's all well and good, but what's the gameplay like? This is a videogame, after all.
Simply put, it plays similarly to what I described up top about Final Fantasy: Tactics. You use about 6 or 8 characters on a grid-style map, only this time you choose all of your characters' actions at once, let them fly, then let the computer take a turn. This allows you to set up combos between your characters, and chains where several of your guys attack the same enemy in a row. This makes your attacks do more and more damage as the chain increases, forcing you to strategize which of your characters will attack in what order so as to unload the most damage.
To make this even more complex, strewn about the maps are geo panels, which are colored squares with different effects like "experience + 50%", or "attack - 50%", or "invulnerability". This throws a huge monkey wrench into the mix, for you may come across a map where multiple enemies are lounging behind a solid line of geo panels that say "no crossing" or something like that, meaning that you have to find some way to circumnavigate the panels in order to get to them, even if it means throwing your team to the right side of the map where a bunch of badguys lie in wait, perched on "attack +100%" panels for the sole purpose of making your life a living hell. The game becomes one huge puzzle where you not only have to pit your spatial skills against the computer but also your mathematical skills. Despite the sometimes juvenile humor, this is a thinking man's game, and I'm not even going to go into what it takes to set off a "color chain". Just believe me when I say that I've spent thirty minutes at a time without moving a single character or taking a single action. This is chess on the most bizarre of steroids.
I saw a poster recently. It was one of those "inspirational" posters that have become so immensely popular on lolcats-style websites like Failblog or, of course, VeryDemotivational.com. It said "Disgaea: Like getting your degree in statistics, but with anime characters and demon penguins", and I think that pretty much sums things up. This game, and its sequels and spin-offs, is all about numbers. Where most Strategy-RPGs have a level-cap of, say, 100, Disgaea allows you to level up all the way to 9999.
That's right. Level 9999.
None of this sissy level 100 crap. By the time your character has attained level 9999, he's probably doing so much damage that the game can't even show the numbers in the bottom-left-hand corner like it usually does, but must resort to something like "2113923k" or more, depending on how insane you are.
Your character classes have better versions of themselves to unlock, and your characters can "reincarnate", which means that they start over at level 1, but their base stats will be higher depending on how many levels they have stored up from reincarnating multiple times. This means that your goal is not to just get your guys up to level 9999. Your goal is to level him up as much as you can, reincarnate him, and repeat until you've built up thousands of levels so that your base stats rock (for instance, if your base attack stat is 40, say, instead of 20, this means that as your guy levels up, his attack power will be twice as high).
Then, to top it all off, there's the Item World. Items are every bit as complex as your own characters. Weapons, armor, and accessories like the above-mentioned horse wiener often contain "specialists", which are little inhabitants who increase the capabilities of your items in various ways (raising its attack, defense, poison resistance, etc.). If you wish for a more powerful version of your sword, say, you can go inside it, where you can find its specialists and "subdue" them, which makes them twice as powerful AND allows you to move them from one item to another. Every item is its own dungeon.
Now you see where those 17 days went.
The further down into your items you go, the stronger they get. Regular items have a level cap of 40 or 60 (I can't remember), while rare items have a higher cap, and "legendary" items have a cap of 100. If you can make it all the way to the 100th floor inside that item, you will face a boss who wields the item of the next-highest rank over your own (so if you are inside the 2nd-best sword, for instance, the boss on the 100th floor will be using the 1st-best sword, which is in fact the only way to obtain the very, very best weapons). With each level that you descend, the enemies get tougher, and leaving prematurely requires that you use a Mr. Gency Exit, of which you don't get a terribly large amount. Thankfully, you can leave after every 10th floor without a penalty, and you can always go back inside after having left. You just have to be able to survive ten floors in a row, ending with a boss battle. Good luck with that when you're down in the furthest reaches and the enemies are perhaps dozens of levels higher than your allies.
This game is a strategy-RPG-lover's dream. There is so much to do that you're never left with an empty checklist. You're always leveling up, or finding better items, so you are always telling yourself "just one more" until you find that it's 1:30 in the morning and you have a paper due tomorrow that you haven't even started. The story and characters are irreverent, but they have soul and I promise you will care for them by journey's end. The 2D sprites don't look so good on today's TVs, but you don't play Strategy-RPGs for their graphics. Maybe that's why, in today's world of so much flash and so little substance (here's lookin' at you, Avatar), Strategy-RPGs seem to have so little market.
I will leave you with a brief list of some of my favorite weapons and their hilarious one-line descriptions. Please note that these are actually from Disgaea 2, as I have misplaced my Disgaea 1 strategy guide and don't want to bother scouring the internet for the information.
GLOVE WEAPONS
Double Slap - Sorry baby! Why you make me do that?
Playful Punch - Ow ow ow OUCH! It's not funny anymore!
Father's Fist - I'm not angry. I'm just upset. Now come here.
Slap Back - Cook your own dinner from now on!
7 Year Kill - Not bad, but I wish it worked faster.
Star Shatter - Finally, a way to punch the sun.
SWORDS
Lazy Sword - Buy a better sword later.
Broadsword - It's broad! It's a sword! It's a Broadsword!
Bastard Sword - A real jerk at times, but gets the job done.
Katzbalger - Cool, but don't use this on your cat.
SPEARS
Ashigaru - Your standard, stabby spear.
Beckdoraban - Whatever it means, the name sounds strong.
Trident - Basically an oversized fork.
Bone Spear - Good, but it could gain a few pounds.
Benkei's Glaive - Useful when guarding bridges.
Halberd - Cuts, jabs, spins, and makes julienne fries!
Elder Spear - Complains to younger spears.
Singularity - You'll never find another quite like it.
Gungnir - Like a small dog, returns when thrown.
Holy Longinus - The Godkiller. How is that holy?
BOWS
Toy Bow - You've gotta be kidding.
Elven Bow - A famous elf used it to return a lost ring.
Assassin Bow - Best if shot from a grassy knoll.
Demon Bow - Made in Hell by underpaid, overworked imps.
Angel Bow - Made in Heaven by underworked wimps.
Forest Bow - Ironic, because it's made of dead trees.
Platinum Bow - Has sold over 1,000,000 copies.
Soul Eater - Beware its strange foot fetish.
Evil Hunter - When evil's afoot, shoot it in the leg.
Lovely Cupid - Girly love energize! Maximum limit reached!
[NOTE: That's the best bow in the game...]
GUNS
Trumpet - Make sure to put your lips on the right end.
Godfather - It'll make you an offer you can't refuse.
Spray Gun - Works best on oversized insects.
Intoccabile - It means Untouchable, so hands off!
AXES
Gang Axe - Come here and let me axe you a question!
Primitive Axe - Inspired by a giant monolith.
Dwarven Axe - They're fun to toss, but you'll get in trouble.
Kill All - No, really. It kills all.
Serial Axe - Snap, crackle, pop! You're dead.
Master Axe - This is for you, the master of axing.
Emperor's Axe - Used by Czars to keep the proletariat in line.
Diabolic Axe - Overlords and axes - like chicken and waffles!
STAVES
Magician Wand - Will not help pull rabbits out of hats.
Cardinal Staff - Hit 70 home runs with this.
Druid Staff - *Stonehenge not included.
Force Staff - You won't need a target computer anymore.
Chief's Staff - Great for slap shots.
Crimson Wand - Can it... BE any more red?
Omniscient Rod - Sees you when you're sleeping. How creepy.
oh, Laharl, how i miss thee. but i have my own life, and you, yours. the days when i would get to the first Item Boss, exit the dungeon, and persist to level up the next amazing raw stats accessory are over. the endless loop. 17 days sounds about right...
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