Strategy role-playing games. Those three (or is it four?) words used to be enough to send me running for the hills. Vanilla role-playing games, with their repetitive battles, levelling up of your characters to make them more powerful and swapping of clothes and equipment periodically for better bits I could handle - but stick a grid over the top of the battlefield and my brain went into meltdown. Or at least that's what I always thought it might do, seeing as I'd never actually manage to pluck up the courage to attempt one. Drawn in by the bright colours, abundance of penguins (dood) and crazy over the top attacks, that all changed at German games show Gamescom this year, as I plucked up the courage to give Disgaea a whirl - and was pleasantly surprised by what I found.
Although things certainly looked intimidating at first, the basic concept's easy enough to get the hang of. Each level has it's own terrain design, sometimes with higher and lower ground, sometimes with buildings, lakes, and other obstacles for you to fight around, but each is essentially a giant grid, divided up into oodles of squares with enemies scattered around the place. From your glowing blue portal at the one end you can summon up to ten of your characters per level, before moving them a set number of spaces each turn, kind of like a game of chess, but with arguably even more to think about. Stroll up next to an enemy, and you'll be able to attack them, as you take it in turns to move, attack and outmanoeuvre your foes, being careful to not leave your weaker characters open to attack, whilst taking every chance you get to take advantage of theirs.
So many stats.
This being the Netherworld, every man and his dog is a demon, and they're not exactly known for playing fair - so you'll need to think about your moves carefully. The best way to take out any enemy, arguably, is to crowd as many of your folks around theirs as possible, to take advantage of the crazy chain attacks which can occur, where your folks team up to do huge amounts of damage with one of millions of insanely overpowered moves - including a giant, rotating hamster wheel. With different character classes, each with strengths and weaknesses to think about, and different moves having different areas of effect, there's certainly a lot to keep in mind as you weigh up your options - but the turn based nature means you can take as long as you need to.
The series itself, which now comprises four console games, four handheld versions and six different spin-offs, started around a decade ago when the original Disgaea: Hour of Darkness hit the Playstation 2. The story centred around the rather lazy Laharl, prince of the Netherworld, his snarky assistant Etna and the innocent angel-in-training Flonne. When Laharl hears of his father's death, the spoilt son takes off to reclaim the throne by force and convince the demons he has what it takes to rule over them. Since the original game, the trio of Laharl, Etna and Flonne have become firm fan favourites, with cameos in many of the later games, as well as fairly major role in an obscure PSP point and click style adventure involving time-travelling penguins, an assassination attempt and an exploding pudding. But much to Laharl's annoyance, he hasn't starred in a game for a long, long time - he is the Netherworld Overlord after all - so what better way to celebrate the quirkiest of quirky games' tenth birthday than with a return to the series' roots?
Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness, a PS3 exclusive, is set some ten years after the original game, albeit in a slightly different dimension to the one we remember. Laharl may have finished up by becoming the Overlord of the Netherworld, but that doesn't mean his denizens are going to listen to him - in fact, some of them are even planning to usurp him and place a more suitable leader in his place. And so, taking control of Laharl, Etna and Flonne, it's up to you to help the glorious leader prove his worth and show those revolutionaries who's boss - by beating them up across a series of missions. After all, what better way to put people in their place than exploding them with meteors, slam-dunking them through a twelve mile high basketball hoop or blasting them with a gun made out of a penguin? Oh and for some reason Laharl turns into a busty female for a few missions, just because.
Flonnezilla. Genius.
Of course, besides the huge amounts of story and levels to get down, Disgaea games have always been packed full of things to do, and D2 is no different - whether it's maxing your characters out at level 9999 (that's not a typo), creating new characters to add to your team, or even, somewhat bizarrely, heading inside your favourite weapons to do battle with the demons the lurk inside in a sort of mini-mission, powering up your sword as you go. But in Disgaea D2, it's not just your favourite hammer you can improve, either - thanks to the new Demon Dojo feature, you can even force your minions and monsters to work out for you while they're not in your party, resulting in increased health, faster movement or speedier level gains, depending on the programme you choose. Another new and seriously awesome addition lets your characters ride on one of their monstrous companions and perform powered-up attacks together, while the monster absorbs any damage inflicted while they're paired up. And while we're on the subject of your army, you now have a choice of different colour schemes for each of your created characters - yay!
Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness Prinny-bombs it's way into stores on the 27th September, and is looking as silly as ever - if you like a healthy dose of insanity with your strategy, it's well worth checking out, dood. Until then, we have a suitably crazy trailer to help whet our appetites:
