(Image source: Atlus)

As I mentioned in a previous entry, combat in Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness has layers of complexity.

Positioning and height make a difference in combat. As you might expect, whacking the sides or rear of an enemy unit will deal more damage. Similarly, hitting an enemy who’s on a lower level will inflict more damage.

It gets more complicated.
Continued…

Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness has a storyline spanning 14 episodes but for all the yakety-yak, everything still comes down to beating critters up.

Combat, like seemingly many things in Disgaea, is easy to get into but tough to master.

Take movement, for example.

The game is turn-based so you move your characters and then it’s time for the enemy to do their thing. Each character has a movement rating that determines the maximum number of squares he or she may move in a turn.

That’s simple to take in, right?

Here’s where it starts to get complicated.
Continued…

I’ve played all sorts of games but there’s no question turn-based games are my favourites. I just love being able to take my own sweet time in order to consider all possible ramifications of my actions before making exactly the wrong move.

These games tends to be very serious and staid, by and large. My favourites of the genre certainly weren’t filled with yuks. UFO: Enemy Unknown? I may have had a smile on my face as I took way too much pleasure in dispatching the last alien on a map but it was not filled with a great deal of ha-has. Panzer General, a classic of the genre, wasn’t LOL-tastic either. (Excluding perhaps those incongruous animations showing S-Boats firing torpedoes at Spitfires.)

I’m currently playing though my first funny tactical turn-based game, Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness for the Playstation Portable. Many a good thing was said about the Playstation 2 version of the game so I was keen on playing it but the fact I didn’t own a PS2 presented something of a problem. I don’t know who was responsible for getting the game on the PSP but I would like to thank that person profusely. I’ve spent four hours in total so far with the game and I can already tell this is going to be one of my all-time favourites.

Tactical turn-based combat, RPG character progression, a campaign with a funny storyline and characters, replayability … ah, for a game set in the Netherworld, this game is heavenly.

(Image sourced from the Disgaea Portable website.)