Disgaea: DS Review

Disgaea DS Review
Disgaea: DS is an isometric strategy RPG on PS2, PSP and Nintendo DS in Europe April 3rd made be Nippon Ichi.
Story
Laharl, prince of the netherworld is woken by his vassal Etna by being shot at, after he wakes from a 2 year sleep he find out his farther: King Ktrechoy has died. Laharl goes on a journey to become the overlord of the netherworld. On his journey he encounters:
The dark Adonis; which Laharl calls mid-boss due to the fact you fight him about 4 times during the middle of the game
Flonn; a love obsessed angel,
Captain Gordon Defender of Earth,
His assistant; Jenifer
Her robot; Thursday
And many other characters
Oh yeah, how could I forget the exploding penguins who work 20 hours a day, 7 days a week at no pay; called prinnys
The game doesn’t end when Laharl becomes the overlord though, but saying anything else story related would spoil it.
I replayed the game counting all the funny moments, a funny moment is a moment Nippon Ichi intend to be funny. Throughout the 13 chapters, that’s 15-40 hours of gameplay (it took me about 33 on my first time through, on the PS2 version) I counted over 100 funny moments, no exaggeration (plays funny audio clip). Disgaea IS the funniest game ever played. The game has 6 different endings. Although it’s a funny game, the story can still be taken seriously, leaving me crying when I got the bad ending, and that’s not because the ending is titled “bad”. DO NOT GET THE ENDING OF THE GAME SPOILT FOR YOURSELF, PLAY THE GAME AND SEE IT THAT WAY!
Graphics
The graphics are 3d and 2d. The character models are 2d anime styled sprite in battle and during most cut scenes they are 2d anime styled character models with a 2d anime styled background, with one character at one side of the screen and another at the other side. The menus are 2d… well what do you expect? The 3d part of the game are the environments. The battle animation is graphically well done. The feel you get by seeing Laharl jumping amazingly high, landing on a meteorite falling down onto the stage just to make there hp decrease is amazing, however after the first few times it gets annoying. Every special attack has its own over the top battle animation. Luckily in both the PSP and DS version of the game you have the option to turn battle animation off.
Music
Disgaea consists of at least 41 songs. most of them being average, a few being horrible and even fewer being a bit about average.
Voice Acting
More people are obsessing over voice acting, Disgaea has some good, unique voice acting that fit the characters very well, however I highly doubt anyone else would agree. Nippon Ichi have changed Etna’s and the prinnys voices from the PS2 voices, although I originally didn‘t like this change but after playing the PSP the amount I have and going back to the PS2 version, I consider it I big improvement. There is an option to switch the voices to the Japanese voices and you will be able to hear Laharls Japanese voice, voiced by Kaori Mizuhashi, famous to Nintendo fans for voicing Navi from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Gameplay
The thing that makes this game different to any other Strategy RPG is the insane amount of things to do. After beating the difficult LV 90 final boss, there is still loads to do, such as unlock hidden characters, beating the hardest boss in the game or getting all your characters to level 9999, and after you do get them that high you can reincarnate which puts that character back to LV 1 but they get an extra stat increase after every level-up. Doing this long enough can result in you dealing damage in the billions! The game consists of 66 story levels, some extra levels which expand the games difficulty, and a place called “The Item World” which consists of an infinite number of randomly generated levels. The item world is used to level up your items which you can equip to your characters to increase there stats even further. The further into the item world you get the more difficult it gets. Another way to effect the difficulty is the dark assembly, this is a place where you can make a proposal to present to a room full of senators. You can propose for things such as stronger or weaker enemies, new equipment to be purchasable in the shop and eventually, new places to go which often result in you getting a very powerful character or a very difficult battle. To increase your chances of your proposal being approved you can bribe the senators, increase your characters rank or, if they disapprove the proposal, you can kill them, however that is not an easy thing to do.
DS Exclusive
The DS version of the game has some positives and some negatives to the previous versions. The DS version had a low quality map on the top screen, however the DS versions resolution is much lower than the PSP’s version. The DS version has some exclusive characters in that appear in other Nippon Ichi games such as Overlord Zetta from Makai Kingdom. The DS version has some cut scene voicing removed. The DS version has some touch screen functionality but the buttons work more effectively.
Final Verdict
Disgaea is a game you will either really enjoy or be greatly disappointed in. If you do have an interest in it already and have a PSP then I would recommend you get that version, otherwise DS. If you don’t have a PSP or DS, then buy one! This game deserves to be tried by everyone who likes games.

New blog + feed

New blog/website also the new feed should be up on iTunes soon. Don’t worry, the link is still www.thatgamingcast.com ^_^

Is it good news or bad news? It’s news I suppose…

I’m going to sell my DS, games and other stuff on ebay soon and I’m hoping to get a bit of money towards a Mac Mini or Xbox 360. I’m still finding out how much I’ll be selling it all for so if your interested in an old DS and a few games and other stuff then watch this space.

EPISODE SIX BITCHEZ

Click me. For some people I’ll play in browser. And for other people I’ll ask you to download me. I think I only ask you to download me in Firefox.

And clicking ME will be the same as if you clicked the iTunes button just to the right of me but still =]

We recorded episode 6

We recorded episode 6 tonight, since we had a shortage of hosts we invited Andrew, Alec and Christian (I’m not sure how it’s spelled) from SMBP (Super Mega Podcast Bros.) enjoy.

In this episode we discuss:

DICE: Nintendo Courts Indie Developers for Wii, DSi
PS3 sells 21 million worldwide
Life for teenager who killed friend in row over Xbox
RPG’s?

 

Episode 5: You have a virus

Two words. Fuck. Yea. Thank you.

Here’s the link if you don’t want to download it (click me)

In this episode we disscuss:
Nintendo Expands in Hometown of Kyoto
PS3, Xbox 360 sales below Wii in Jan. U.S. sale
The Lost and the Damned: Rockstar treats Xbox 360 owners
What do you think of Nintendo rehashing the old Gamecube games with Wii controls to appease the “hardcore” gamers?

Episode 4: Seeklums

Hello my friendly young friend.

Episode 4 is out, and if you can’t be bothered to subscribe on iTunes, you can click this link (click me) and stream it off of the Interwebz.

In this episode we disscuss:
Nintendo Mii avatar wanted by police in Japan
‘We simply have to suffer,’ says Sony Europe’s gaming chief
Xbox 360 HDMI Update Alleged to be “Killing” Consoles
What do we think of Nintendo rehashing the old Gamecube games with Wii controls to appease the “hardcore” gamers?

You can access our Forum even easier now!

Go to our forums (click me) to access our forum quicker and easier.

And we have moved to LibSyn (click me) but we told Feedburner to accept the new LibSyn feed, so those of you using iPod/iTunes will not be affected. For those of you using MP3 players you have to bear with us and we’ll try to find the link to the download page. ^_^

Episode 3: No You’re A Toilet!

Thank you for your patience. I apologize for not getting it uploaded by midnight yesterday but it’s up now! ^_^

Episode 3: No You’re A Toilet

Do not Put Wii Discs in A Slot-loading CD Drive!!

Please do not put your Wii Discs in a slot-loading CD drive. You will not be able to eject them, and you will be stuck with it in there. If you do, and are on a Mac, type this in Terminal…

“drutil tray eject” (Exactly as in there, but without the quotation marks )

Guess what I did today…