| ARTICLE |  USA |
Got a Tip?
RSS
AtomRevisiting Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness as Etna
If you ever wondered what would have happened if Etna had succeeded in murdering Prince Laharl in his sleep, then wonder no more; the Etna Mode add-on to Disgaea for the PSP answers exactly that question.
Etna Mode starts off with the surprising murder of Prince Laharl and contains just as much hilarity and silliness as the PS2 game. My favorite part is the prinny 'dressed' as Laharl whom everyone can tell is a fake by just looking even though he has "antennas just like Laharl!". Don't worry, Etna fans, her tongue is just as sharp in this add-on as it is in the main story.
I was worried that the new chapters would be just more of the same thing, which in essence they are, but then I realized that if it's more of the same thing that I liked, then it's not necessarily a bad thing. Long time Disgaea players will feel right at home with the gameplay, but will be treated to an increased difficulty (Etna Mode is an endgame feature afterall) as well as an alternate story featuring some of their favorite characters from the main story. (Yes, even The Dark Adonis.)
While just Etna Mode alone might not be worth the purchase of a Disgaea port, the portability of playing one of my favorite SRPGs on the PSP is. Sleep mode on the PSP is great since the monotony of grinding can brake up the monotony of a bus ride. This might show my bias for the game, but as soon as I heard that Disgaea was being ported to the PSP, I exclained, "Good! Now I finally have a reason to get a PSP!" Another feature added to the port is the ability to skip those long outrageous attack animations; that definitely cuts down on the time it takes to finish a map.
Fans of Disgaea have probably gone out and bought this game already, but if you're on the fence about it, I say: buy it. If you're new to the game, you can play the main story mission and the portability makes it more accessible. If you've already played the game and liked it, Etna mode is good for a laugh and power-leveling suddenly doesn't seem like such a chore anymore thanks to sleep mode.
Related Posts
7 Responses to “Revisiting Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness as Etna”
November 7th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
I agree. It’s pretty hard leveling up healer type characters because they often don’t land the killing blow. Luckily, it forces you to place your guys in formation to hopefully LAUNCH AN ALL OUT ATTACK!
I like using the trick to place people adjacent to attackers, and then pressing triangle to pop them back into their orginal places so that they can move somewhere else to leech off another attack.
November 7th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
I usually have my healers create a mage character in order to learn their attack spells.
I have to say, NIS really did a great job of porting it to the PSP. Other than the initial load, there’s basically no load times, just a couple seconds (if even that) to load a map, which I think improves over the PS2 version.
Which is a big constrast to some of the idea factory titles NISA brought over, like the first Generation of Chaos, which couldn’t make it through a sentence of text without a 3 second loading pause.
November 7th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
I’d say if you cannot kill someone with one blow, you are not a very good demon prince at all! More like… A demon formerly known as Prince, or something. I dunno’!
November 7th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
This is my first time playing Disgaea, since I can’t track down a copy for it for the PS2, and I am loving it.
November 8th, 2007 at 2:43 am
i agree on the annoyance “jeffx” mentioned..
but im fine with it,its just makes it more demanding with low leveled peeps,but you can always backtrack on previews levels so its not too bad…
im currently playing disgaea 2 for the first time,almost done 
amazing game and i hope to get this one on the psp (yet to have my own psp)
can wait to try etnas story aslong with Laharls..
Gaming Map
November 7th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
My problem with this game remains: you can only get experience from killing blows. What a dumb idea.
BTW to unlock etna mode: Triangle, Square, Circle, Triangle Square, Circle, X on “new game”