Sunday 31 January 2010

REVIEW: Disgaea DS


Disgaea DS
[DS] [Nippon Ichi Software] [12+] [SRPG]
A while back a very strange game came out for the ps2 which was called disgaea: hour of darkness. Not many people had heard of the game or bought it and it was made by a very shady developer called Nippon ichi software who before making the first disgaea game were very unpopular.

Anyway, Disgaea is now a more popular series with titles such as afternoon of darkness, disgaea 2 and disgaea 3: absence of justice, oh and um... Prinny: can i really be the hero. The recent uk release of disgaea ds is a remake of the original game, hour of darkness. It's basically looks and feels the same, but there are a lot more features in the ds version. First of all, This is the first Disgaea game released in the UK to not include the original Japanese audio. In addition, much of the English audio has been removed. Almost any English audio that was accompanied by English text containing the same lines was removed, which means that most of the cut-scenes contain the soundtrack, sound effects, and the text for the characters lines, but not the audio for the lines themselves, apart from at the start of the game.

Another great new feature is the use of the top screen of the ds, where you have a map of the area (during battle) which really helps when you are looking for geo panels, item world portals and enemies, more on that later. This map can be resized in the many options of the game, and you can also change the style of the map as well. Finally, there is a new game+ mode which can be accessed if you beat the game on any ending. Yes that's right, there are multiple endings to the game giving it tons of replay value and it never seems repetitive for decades. On ng+, you can add a new playable character to your party (I'm not letting off any spoilers here so you don't need to worry about that) and can have an optional commentary from the awesome Prinny. If you have it i recommend you have this feature on as it can be hilarious most of the time and the fact that you can see what prinny says behind your back is awesome.

Next I'm going to talk more about the story of disgaea ds. The game is set in the universe known as the neverworld, where greedy, evil demons are enslaved by the demon overlord, ruler of the Netherworld. One day the overlord's son Laharl decides to take a short nap, and two years later he is woken up by a vassal named Etna who explains to him his father choked on a black pretzel and died. Laharl is shocked by this and realizes he is now the overlord himself. Or is he? nope, it turns out nobody is the overlord, and vicious demons are trying to steal the throne, so Etna and Laharl journey on to steal the ultimate position. Meanwhile, in the angel world of Celestia (the complete opposite of the netherworld) the angel seraph commands an angel in training named Flonne to assassinate the demon overlord. After some "awesome" ninja skills Flonne finds laharl and asks him where the overlord is and Laharl explains to her he is dead. Flonne runs away back to celestia while Laharl and Etna chase after her. They finally catch up to the pesky angel and defeat her in battle. Flonne sees this as a sign to join Laharl on his quest to become the ultimate ruler of the netherworld, so she accompanies him. And that's only the first two chapters. The game offers a long and deep story line which will keep you playing for months, and since there is so much other stuff to do in the game, it would keep you stuck to your two screens for even longer.

Let's get started!

As of this moment my blog has officially started. After lots of layout changes and deleted posts it's finally time for me to start! You probably already know this, but here's what to expect!

Daily Daze
Nope, no more of these! Sorry ^_^

Reviews
I'll mostly be reviewing games and consoles, but also other stuff in the media such as mangamusic and random stuff!


Features
There will be several features as well as some random ones!

  • Forbidden Fruit - Things I think will improve a game and what should be done to make a series more interesting.
  • What I'm Playing - Because there may be spoilers! I will be saying what games I've been playing in some random posts though.
  • Top Tens/any other number! - This one's pretty self explanatory, a countdown of my favourite *insert something here*
  • Random Stuff! - Retrospectives, special posts ETC!
And of course, Contributions! ONM forum members SteveTheDuck and Sheikah-link have agreed to contribute to my blog with reviews and features. Look forward to their posts!