Disgaea Hour of Darkness

SCORE: 51

Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is a fun and challenging game, both to play and, in this writer’s opinion, to review. Disgaea is a strategy role-playing game, much in the tradition of classics like Final Fantasy Tactics, but places the player in the role of the anti-hero Laharl. A bratty demon prince, Laharl awakes from a long slumber to find his father the Overlord perished and himself in line for succession to the throne of the Netherworld. Immediately, the occult/demonic setting to the game makes it a potentially very poor choice for a Christian gamer. In the game’s defense, Disgaea almost never takes itself seriously and is very comical even to the point of ridiculing itself for 90% of the game. Having said that, it is this reviewer’s opinion that the departures from Judeo-Christian values and a Biblical world-view in the game are only detectable to someone reasonably well-versed in Scripture and that the game should likely not be played by young Christians.

Disgaea, like other strategy role-playing games, plays out much like a game of chess, with the player’s view being from above and 3rd person. The game characters are two-dimensional, animated sprites superimposed on a three-dimensional, rendered background. The style of the graphics is very much in line with Japanese anime and manga tradition and very cartoonish. Most of the character models (the demons in particular) are stylishly on the level of children’s Halloween costumes, but there are 2-3 models out of the game’s several dozen that are voluptuous females, and while never nude, wear essentially suggestive bathing suits. There is one scene containing blood in the form of a small, static pool, but otherwise there is very little graphic violence and the character’s weapons and special powers all make sparks and flashes when making contact, with no damage being visible at all on the opponents.

The musical score goes well with Disgaea’s comical mood and is often over-the-top and whimsical. The sound effects during battles are fun and light, being essentially comic-book type ‘POWS!!’ and ‘CRACKS!!’ The game’s plot is almost entirely moved by the voice acting however and plays while unanimated still pictures of the speaking character’s are displayed. The voice acting is quite convincing and emotive, especially for a localization of an originally Japanese game. There are however two or three suggestive speaking parts, the worst of which is a suggestion of pornography (though no image of any such thing ever shown). There are two vulgar words used as well; “flat-chested” and “damn”, both cropping up in a small handful of conversations between the characters.

Disgaea’s replay-ability and unlockable extras are something of a double-edged sword in this reviewer’s opinion. Players familiar with role-playing games are familiar with spending many enjoyable hours trying to find ways to develop their characters and greatly overpower enemies. Disgaea in a sense, is the obsessive role-player’s dream come true, with character levels climbing into the thousands and characters stats into the millions! One the one hand, this can be very rewarding, since players have a very wide array of options for customization and development of their characters. But it also risks encouraging obsessive play and rewards players for spending many hours over-preparing for upcoming stages. The game also sports almost half a dozen different endings and allows players to import all the characters from a previous play-thru, so they never have to start from scratch to replay the game. The endings however are a bit imbalanced, with the standard ending being ‘good/redemptive’ in some sense but with the remaining unlockable endings being varying degrees of ‘selfish/evil’. I’ll come back to this point when I discuss the Family Friendly Factor.

The gameplay is organized into a series of battles, punctuated by dialogues between to advance the plot to the next set of battles. The player is allowed to field up to ten characters during a single battle and can pick from a maximum roster of about 100 developed characters. Different characters have a myriad of strengths and weaknesses and the player achieves victory most often when taking advantage of enemy weakness and playing to their own team’s strengths. Add to the this the game ‘geo panel’ system, a way to use the environment against your enemies (or for them to use it against you) and the battles make very challenging and rewarding exercises in problem solving. This author is a bit forgiving on the score card for Disgaea mostly because of the gameplay. There is the least amount of suggestive or offensive material during the battles and the player will spend the vast majority of their time in battle, solving problems and fighting enemies. While the player can form their party of demons, they can also form a party entirely of humans and angels as well and nearly all of the enemies are other demons. Again, I’ll come to this point when discussing the Family Friendly Factor.

Disgaea is not a Christian video game. It does contain interesting allusions to Christian themes but more often then not, it doesn’t get them entirely right. So, as this reviewer wrote above, its probably best played by a mature Christian, if at all and most likely not by children or teenagers. The redeeming quality of the game, in this reviewer’s opinion, is the redemptive message of the standard ending. At the risk of spoiling the story, the main character, the demon prince Laharl is convinced to embrace love and abandon evil by one of the game’s only fairly good characters. She in fact sacrifices her life to spare Laharl in the face of judgment, even though he clearly is still a selfish brat and doesn’t deserve it. It’s one of the game’s only serious, ‘ungoofy’ moments and it reminds this writer of Christ’s sacrifice for us, perhaps more than any other event in a game he’s ever played. All the endings, good or bad, are a result of the player’s choices during the game, so the game never requires a player to commit evil to succeed. This writer is looking forward to the sequel Disgaea 2, to see how this story line continues to unfold.
- Wes

Graphics: 54%
Sound: 51%
Replay/Extras: 63%
Gameplay: 52%
Family Friendly Factor: 36%
System: Playstation 2
Publisher: Atlus
Rating: 'T' for Teen
{Comic Mischief, Mild Language, Mild Violence}

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