Disgaea - How Is Disgaea On PC?

Disclosure: the author of this article was provided with a review copy of Disgaea PC by NIS America

Tomorrow sees NIS America's release of the original Disgaea on PC. Disgaea: Hour of Darkness was released in 2003 for the PlayStation 2, introducing gamers to a Netherworld of quirky humor, isometric turn-based strategy, and characters that can be raised up to Level 9999. The game was a cult hit, spawning a franchise that's still seeing new releases, such as last year's Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance for the PlayStation 4. This new PC version of the first Disgaea includes all content from the updated PSP version of the game, as well as new user-interface and texture settings. So for a series completely new to PC, does this conversion do justice to the adventures of Laharl, Etna, and the Prinny Squad?

Disgaea PC offers Gamepad, Keyboard and Mouse control schemes. Seeing as how this is a console game that was (as far as I'm aware) never developed with mouse controls in mind, the functionality offered in this new version of the game is surprisingly decent, in that you can actually play the whole game with just the mouse if you're up for it. Movement outside of battle is as simple as holding down the mouse in a direction, or pointing the cursor and clicking on the other side of a room. This is a bit imprecise and has Laharl dashing across the screen at ludicrous speed, but it's not a problem since navigating these rooms is a simple affair. It can get a bit fiddly though when trying to talk with other characters, as you'll usually need to position Laharl right beside the NPC and then click on them to get the conversation started.

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Mouse control in battle ranges from functional, to imprecise. I was surprised they got such a control scheme working on the game, with left-clicks on your characters opening up their actions menu, and the mouse wheel being used to zoom in-and-out on the battlefield. You can even hold down the left mouse button on a character and change which direction they're facing. Overall it works like any turn-based strategy game on PC... when it works. The mouse cursor itself isn't actually being used to interact with the characters, instead it just determines where on the map Disgaea‘s battle cursor is placed. This can lead to problems with character selection due to the game's maps being designed to vary the height of the terrain all over the place. The cursor can be very imprecise when trying to highlight a tile that's lower than two adjacent squares.

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