Disgaea: fastball special

Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness has a storyline spanning 14 episodes but for all the yakety-yak, everything still comes down to beating critters up.

Combat, like seemingly many things in Disgaea, is easy to get into but tough to master.

Take movement, for example.

The game is turn-based so you move your characters and then it’s time for the enemy to do their thing. Each character has a movement rating that determines the maximum number of squares he or she may move in a turn.

That’s simple to take in, right?

Here’s where it starts to get complicated.

Disgaea also has a movement mechanic I’ve not seen anywhere else: a character may lift and throw another character.

“Huh, what?” was my initial reaction as well.

Far from being a quirky thing to do, throwing characters is sometimes actually necessary as that’s the only method to get to some squares (and enemies) on some maps.

The oddness aside, it does enable a whole new set of tactical manoeuvers. At the simplest level, it extends the threat range of your characters as thrown characters can move and attack if they haven’t so. So a character with a movement rating of five could be thrown five squares in order to attack an opponent who was originally 10 squares away.

You can also use it for defensive purposes. For example, you could throw a fragile character out of harm’s way or throw a healer in order to reach an injured ally.

To further complicate matters, you can also throw enemies. Being thrown doesn’t incur damage but it may be necessary to throw an enemy because he may occupying a tactically advantageous Geo Panel.

Geo wha-?

I think I’ll leave that for the next entry.

(Image obtained from Atlus.)