(Image source: Atlus.)

I’m closing in on the end of Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness‘s main storyline. I’m not just enjoying playing the game, I’m consuming it greedily. As I mentioned before, it’s been far too long a time since I’ve had a turn-based strategy game that hits all the right notes for me as this one does.

As I also mentioned previously, the game is not excessively difficult and in fact, is quite lenient in many respects. Character deaths in battles aren’t punished severely as a visit to the Netherworld Hospital will return a fallen character to full strength. There will, of course, be Hell to pay. (Hell being the currency of the Netherworld.)

On the other hand, a party wipeout will result in a Game Over screen. There’s one really tough fight which occurs early on at a point when your characters are fragile and lack offensive power — lose this one and you’ll get a credit sequence with a full song — but the game shouldn’t prove to be too frustrating.

At least until you get to Episode 11.
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(Image source: Disgaea.jp)

Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness is a pretty complex game. The manual, in-game help and tutorials will help players come to grips with the basics of the game but there’s still a lot to take in and keep track of.

(There’s also some stuff that has been omitted. For instance, the L and R buttons on the PSP page up/down long lists. This is very useful when you’re managing equipment in your item bag and warehouse.)

It’s no surprise DoubleJump Books produced a strategy guide for the game but what was surprising was the company gave away a PDF version of the guide for the original PS2 game, Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. The rationale was people would love the free PDF guide so much they would buy the printed version. I thought that was very cool of the company. It was pretty much a big gamble since there was every possibility people would be content with the PDF file.

There was also the possibility someone would abuse this act of goodwill and the world being what it is and some people being who they are, this is exactly what happened. Some ne’er-do-well decided to sell links to the PDF file on eBay. By ne’er-do-well, I mean “complete jackass.” By comparison, those gamers who bought a link to a free PDF file would be “partial jackasses.”
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