Hark, oh hardest of hardcore RPG fans! Nippon Ichi’s Disgaea is now even more complicated. Just when you thought the genre couldn’t get any more substantial, along comes Disgaea and buggers the whole thing up again, forcing you to spend literally hundreds of hours playing a remake of a title that you thought you’d finished. Sure, it’s unlikely that many of you out there have completed Disgaea: Hour Of Darkness. But if you had the spare months to chug through that magnificent specimen of the genre, chances are that you’ll fancy a pop at this, as it’s not just a straight port, and for the enthusiast it has to be one of the best games on the system.

Don’t get us wrong, Disgaea has its fair share of issues, some of which are derived from its very nature. As possibly the deepest videogame ever created, it’s not going to be enjoyable for those who fancy a quick dip in and out every now and then. While the gameplay is split up nicely into PSP-sized chunks by nature, were you to take a casual approach to it, you would die of old age before getting even a quarter of the way through. That may sound like an extravagant flourish of language, but we assure you it’s very much the case.

For anyone who hasn’t played Hour Of Darkness, this version of Disgaea is nearly exactly the same in terms of narrative. There are some hilarious cut-scenes, filled with surreal humour throughout the story. To give you the short version of the story, a great demon has been killed, and his son, slumbering for over two years has just woken up to find his entire kingdom of the Netherworld is vying for the throne. He basically has to show them who’s boss.

New to this iteration is an Ad-hoc mode, which allows you to pit your created team up against your friends in turn-based RPG wars. It’s not just combat though, as you’re able to swap wargear and embark on another entire quest, which tells the tale of what would have happened had beauty queen Etna killed Laharl at the beginning of the game. While it’s tougher, it’s not any less enjoyable, and as an extra for the PSP it shows with remarkable clarity that PSP titles can outdo their PS2 cousins in almost every way, especially within this genre.

As a strategy title, some may take issue with Disgaea’s unforgiving nature, but for some that’s the whole appeal. You’ll have to level grind, and in places grind up an entirely new character if your party doesn’t contain a decent mix from the start. Sometimes this can be frustrating, but as with almost every Nippon Ichi title, you’ll always come back to it sooner of later, if you have the time. This is one of the best straight-edge RPGs in existence, it’s that simple, and if you think you can deal with a couple of hundred hours of gameplay, it doesn’t come more brilliant than this.

Tom Leclerc