Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness (PSP)

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After spending its entire existence mainly as a delivery device for arcade racers and bad UMD movies, the PSP has suddenly found itself as the go-to console for RPG fans. The past couple of months have brought us Tales of the World, Brave Story, and Jeanne D'Arc. While all stellar RPGs in their own right, they might end up being considered the table-setting for what could be the best of the lot. NIS' Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness is an ultra-deep tactical RPG that should spend a huge amount of time spinning in your handheld.

Of course, the Disgaea name isn't a new one to gamers. The first Disgaea, Hour of Darkness, came out for the PlayStation 2 in 2003 and was an immediate hit. It was followed up by last year's Cursed Memories, also for the PS2. You can think of Afternoon of Darkness as a sort of Director's Cut of the original Hour of Darkness. But unlike a DVD Director's Cut, where the sole bonus is the addition of an audio track from, say, the guy who thought it would be a good idea to remake 'Starsky and Hutch,' here you get the complete original game plus a second storyline and some multiplay.

The story begins with the Netherworld in complete chaos after the death of its overlord. You play as the deceased king's son, Laharl. The story opens with him being awakened from a long sleep by his vassal, Etna, who has been unloading an arsenal of fiendish weapons on the sleeping prince in order to stir him. Ordinarily, this would just be a humorous and goofball way to start a story, but the scenario also serves as the launching point to the game's bonus alternate storyline. But, I get ahead of myself.

As Laharl, it's your job to go out and reclaim your right to the throne of the Netherworld. To do so, you'll have to go through about a billion battles and deal with almost as many odd characters. What separates Disgaea from the rest of the games on the shelf that require you to win battle after battle against increasingly whacked-out foes is that here, just about every aspect of the gaming experience has been deepened by a notch or two.

While most gamers should appreciate the added complexity, some may be turned off by it. In fact, one of the few criticisms of the original game was that its initial learning curve was potentially off-putting -- especially for more casual gamers. To be honest, if you haven't played either of the PS2 games, you will have a question mark or two over your head for a while.

Take the actual combat, for example. On the surface, it looks like any other grid-based tactical RPG like Final Fantasy Tactics, Front Mission (which you should be playing, because giant robots are cool) or Advance Wars. The twist here is that, in addition to being able to do things like hurl exploding penguins at the opposition, you have to deal with the game's Geo Panels and Geo Symbols.

Instead of just being a regular old grid-based battlefield like the ones humans have been fighting their wars on for millennia, the fields are broken into different colored geo panels. These different panels can be affected by objects called geo symbols that will grant every character standing on that panel attributes -- extra attack power, defensive skills, etc. The strategy lies in being able to use these panels and symbols. You may end up sacrificing the distance you move so that you can be on a color that gives you better healing ability. Or you may decide to destroy an on-field geo symbol to negate some beneficial attribute your foe is enjoying. It can get mighty complex, but surprisingly, even with the small size of the PSP screen, it never gets overly confusing as to who is standing on what panel and where each panel begins and ends. Again, at first you'll feel like you're playing a game of chess on a backgammon board, but if you stick with it, you'll catch on. But that's just the battle side of things.