After its first appearance on PlayStation 2 and the various ports on Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable, the first major title in the Japanese RPG tactics saga Disgaea, is ready to return to entertain us and go crazy in the version Disgaea 1 Complete, which will arrive on our PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch consoles on October 12th. After the announcement made during E3 2018 by NIS America, a lot of water has passed under the bridge, and all the players who had added the title to their wish list can rest assured about the validity of the title. But let's go now to discover more closely what this new version of the weirdest adventure ever offers us!
The hour of darkness
The story of this title sees you as the protagonist Laharl, prince of Netherworld, awakened after a nap of only 10 years by the vassal of the castle Etna, a young succubus all pepper ready to use any means to achieve their goals. After waking up, Laharl discovers that her father, Overlord King Krichevskoy, died two years earlier, and in the meantime all the demons of the Neterworld are trying to take possession of the title of "Overlord" to reign over everyone and everything: not surprised by the death of his father, but by the fact that the title can be stolen from him, Laharl will do everything to regain it title and show everyone who is the most ruthless demon among them all. Unfortunately, to put a spoke in his wheel he will find the little angel Flonne, a bearer of peace and love who will decide to return to Laharl's heart the love lost for others as a result of mysterious circumstances.
Like the good old days ...
… Let's go back to going crazy in front of a simple and complex game at the same time. Tactics will change from level to level and from world to world, and it will be up to us to understand and implement the best strategy to move forward. If we don't succeed, the only solution will be to turn around and farm, playing the previous stages again to level up our characters. In the Disgaea that followed, everything was much more simplified over time, but Disgaea 1 Complete retraces its original version, and everything we get will not be given to us so easily! Do you want to farm? Well, let's say that if the best monsters aren't that high, then we can decide to go to the Dark Assembly, where we can call a vote to have more powerful enemies, and with the right luck the councilors will give us the ok. But what would happen then? We will not be dealing enough damage to them to progress through the game, and therefore we will need more powerful weapons. Also to obtain these we will again have to go to the assembly to have a vote approved and have more expensive items at our disposal. All this seems easy to say, but I assure you that at the time - as now - for a novice it is a great challenge; a challenge that was lost in the last few years and that makes us finally and happily turn on the brain to go on with our strength and in the shortest possible time.
Complete, not very complete
Unfortunately Disgaea 1 Complete doesn't just give us joy. In fact, we find some flaws in the art department, with a full-blown recycling of soundtracks and graphic assets taken from the original title. Although the soundtracks and the pictorial illustrations of the backgrounds can be saved without problems, it must be said that it is not possible to promote the art of the characters. Not that they are to be thrown into the trash by eagerly clicking "empty everything", mind you, but you really feel the fact that they are from a past generation. In addition to giving a coup de grace to the whole there is a basic inconsistency: the illustrations on the cover and the promotional ones of the game that were created by the artist of the saga Takehito Harada with its modern style. Nothing bad so far, but then entering the game, here we are arriving in front of us like a door in the face, a style that sparks incongruity from every pore, clearly different from the one seen and presented just before. The bad luck is that these elements are present in huge numbers in the game, and having a high importance it is really a shame that they have not been redesigned, but simply recycled. The in-game graphics used come directly from Disgaea 5 Complete both for the sprites of the characters and for the 3D models of the levels. Unfortunately, returning to the inconsistencies, the updated 3D models give an even stronger moral - as well as visual - slap to the illustrations of the characters.
Latest Notes
Between the two available versions of the game, the experience to write this review was lived on the Nintendo Switch hybrid console and, as already proved with the porting of the fifth chapter, also Disgaea 1 Complete performs perfectly both in dock and in portable mode. There are only some points in which the joy-con cannot be used, but only the directional arrows (this happens especially when choosing to save and load data). You get used to it almost immediately, so nothing serious, but even in these small details you notice how they did not want to review some features of the original game, presenting them in all their annoyance, even if marginal and that does not affect the gaming experience.
The addition of new playable characters, and therefore of bosses that can be faced, still makes the game longer than it already was., bringing these characters to the best of the Disgaea 1 Complete timeline. The result? An even more comical and demented experience, but also with serious and emotional scenes based on the moment of the story. The latter, in my opinion, is the most complete of all those in the series so far, in terms of narration, charisma, and all the categories related to them.
