The Disgaea 1 Experience (A First Thought)

So as of the past few days, I've been playing a classic RPG series from the early 2000's called Disgaea 1 (the version I am playing is the PC version on Steam), and I've been pretty addicted to the game since I started to re-play it from the beginning to actually experience the entire thing proper. As of writing this, I'm at Episode 7, and I can safely say that this is a really good experience.

It's a tactical RPG with very simple yet complex mechanics, with a very solid story to boot. It's about a Prince who woke up from his 2 year slumber and finding out that his father passed away before he was asleep for that long, so he is attempting to take the role of the Overlord in his absence. There's a lot to talk about but to simplify, it's a story about a guy who's trying to learn how to become a ruler of the Netherworld, but also learning how to feel love thanks to one encounter from an Angel called Flonne (she is a Trainee but she's also doing her own investigation about the nature of demons). It's a very simple yet very impactful storyline that does have a lot of things to take out of the experience, and seeing Laharl undergo through change thanks to the influences of others is something that I do appreciate from a narrative standpoint.

It's worth noting that by this point of my playthrough I unfortunately unlocked myself from the True Ending due to misclicking and killing off one of my characters, which is important to not kill any of the characters in order to achieve said true ending. With that said I am going to go through the Normal Ending in order to at least finish the game, I will replay it again at a later point but there is no turning point from the save I did. Thankfully I did not screwed myself over because of this and I can proceed with no issues outside of the True Ending, and so far I've been having a blast.

The only real issue I take with this game is the Item World, but that's also because the way the Item World works mechanically in the first game is very flawed. RNG-based dungeons aren't a bad thing on their own, heck I've played Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games and those don't tend to be an issue for me to go through. But sometimes there are going to be dungeons for this game that are basically impossible to beat or accomplish without a proper plan, and because these are randomized in nature it's difficult to plan things out.

It's not the worst thing in the world but it is the weakest aspect of the game overall so far, and if the only issue I take with the game is the way RNG works for the Item World, a game mechanic that's essentially for upgrading your items and equipment, then in spite of these flaws I can be able to look past them so long as the rest of the experience is good in my books. I think that this game regardless of these problems, is still worth experiencing.

It's also worth noting that the game does have on occasion humor that would lean to the lewd side but none of them crosses the line, which is good because I think this game does a good job at striking a balance between this type of humor and other types of comedy like 4th wall-breaks, jabs at other people, and a bunch of other stuff.

Overall I think this experience with the game so far has been very fun, and I do look forward to the rest of what the game has to offer.