Review: Disgaea DS
As any die-hard turn based strategy fan will tell you, the Disgaea series is pretty much the quintessential strategy title for Sony consoles. Each game possesses its own self-referential, and often defacing fans, video games, and anything else that stands in it's path. It is easy to love a game that does not take itself too seriously. Earlier this week, Nippon Ichi Software released Disgaea DS for the US, a faithful remake of Disgaea: Hour of Darkness for the Nintendo DS.
I am going to start off and say, yes, the Disgaea DS is a straight port. Very little has changed from the previous incarnations of this game. To be most specific, the game is a straight content copy of the PSP remake released in 2006~2007. This may come as a bit of a disappointment to fans that were hoping for new content and features, especially in the game play department.
Normally, I would be first to jump on the band-wagon and complain that the game mechanics didn't change. Quite frankly a lack of change works well for this title. The basic core elements remain in tact. To those that may not be die hard fans, the game play essentially revolves around moving units from a home tile, placing them in battle and executing attacks. Depending on their arrangement, skills and random chance, combos may occur.
Disgaea DS expands on this by adding terrain changes and these delightful little gremlins called "geo panels". Geo panels are essentially just a color coded section of battle terrain. When a "geo prism" or "geo block" is located on a panel, all the panels of a similar color gain special attributes. These attributes affect any creature standing on them: they may increase defense, experience gained for attacks, or increase treasure drops. Additionally, destroying a "geo prism" or "geo block" will result in the associated geo panels color changing to the color the block or prism once was. If a panel chances color while a unit, prism or block is sitting on it, it receives damage. This little mechanic can be used to harm entire stages worth of enemies, and can often help in seriously crippling their entire army in just a few flicks of a sword.
The thing that must be remembered when playing Disgaea DS is that it is not so much about building levels and progressing in a linear fashion. Most games have loopholes which can create Munchkin like situations, players so insanely over powered that battles stop being challenging. Disgaea actually encourages this. Players can raise the statistics if their weapons and armor to such great lengths, damage becomes a magnitude that is best described as "exponential". There is something satisfying knowing that numbers 9999 is a relatively small later in the game. This is all accomplished by entering randomly generated battles inside of your items. Placating residents and delving deeper into items not only extends the game live dramatically, it also improves your weapons at a very deliberate pace.
Up till now, I've not really described how the game play has differed from the previous revisions. The one thing I must stress, more than anything else, is that the interface is touchscreen. That's the real primary difference. Placing units consists of clicking the home tile, the unit, click menu, then move, then the target tile. Normally, this would involve a lot of navigating with the digital pad of the PS2 or PSP. I'm not going to say this doesn't have it's moments, the function is still there, but the touchscreen interface is significantly faster. As a result, games take less time.
Now, for the downside. The DS screen is small. Significantly smaller than a television. The trade off is this: either you have a full zoom, where about a 5x5 block of terrain is visible at any given moment or you zoom out and make things harder to select. The original sprites are in tact, but you often spend so much time at minimum zoom, everything looks gritty and undersized. The biggest fault I've found so far is the game provides no "quick save" function. If you see your battery light turn red you simply have to rush through whatever battle you happen to be in, lest your battery die along with your progress.
The soundtrack is completely in tact. Admittedly, the PS2 soundtrack was excellent, but it maintained a certain "MIDI" quality. The only real change from the previous releases is the voice over work has been reduced, and Etna has been woefully recast. While I think the new player does her job well, she doesn't have the same snarky, sarcastic bite as her predecessor.
The bottom line is this: If you love the series, and loved the original, you've love the DS title. It is a solid port, with only a few hiccups, nothing that significantly impacts game play. If I had to recommend a version to new players? If you have time to play it on the PS2, do it. If you're on the go a lot, get the DS version, just keep your charger handy.
7.5 out of 10
Asterick
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 25 September 2008
· Comments (5)
Other stuff like this: disgaea ds, etna and laharel, nintendo ds, review
Also, no Japanese voice track.
Pretty much kills it, for me, tbh...
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Does anyone care about Disgaea one anymore? i mean...who HASN'T played it by now?
Yeah, lack of Japanese voice track kills any chance I had in getting this, because I hated the English voiceovers in this series. Looks like the PSP version is the way to go for portable Disgaea.
Would rather use PSP anyway...
I haven't played any Disgaea games, so being able to play it on the go is pretty appealing, especially since I'm commuting every day.