Disgaea: Hour of Darkness

The sleeper game of the year.

Everyone has had one of those days: your staring at all the games that you have in your rack or wherever you keep them, and you just cant find anything interesting. So you shoot down to the local game store to check out the latest releases. If your like me, you usually won't notice the bins that are underneath the shelves, but for fun I decided to take a look and one game stood out in that box. Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is an endless strategy title that (IMHO) has to be one of the better sleeper titles I have ever played. This game didn't even have any commercials in North America and was released anyway, with a cheap price tag! Disgaea begins its story with the main character, Prince Laharl, a demon, awakening from an extremely long "nap". Upon waking up, you find out that while you were sleeping, your dad passed away, and the entire Netherworld (where you live) is in chaos from the power vacuum that was created when every demon's mother and father ran for the throne! Although this game attempts to have a storyline, it really doesn't serve any purpose. If you skip the story sequences in between each battle segment you can still get just an much enjoyment from this game. Most people like to think of these kindof titles as a chess game with no brains but brawn. Now let's take that chess game, throw in geo panels, a way to put in extra, added effects to the battle, the ability to throw people around (no joke), the combo attacks, and you have a brain buster of a strategy game. This game never ends due to its incredible level system. The max level for any character in this game is 9,999, which I have never heard of in a strategy game. It is also entirely possible to reach the maximum level, but is incredibly hard to do. Add in the fact that this game also allows you to not just have human allies, but monsters as well, and you quickly see that this game can shave a lot of hours from your boredom time.