Lootception

So...

I started on Disgaea, and holy crap is that a new ride.  I've played my share of grid-y, gritty tactical RPGs over the years, and while there was plenty of pixellated badass to be enjoyed, there was also a great deal of darkness.  They weren't the darkest overall genre by any means, but sometimes it really just felt like they were trying to borrow Warhammer Fantasy's grimness without the over-the-top qualities that made things great.  Nobody remember that Warhammer (and Warhammer 40,000) deliberately took things to absurb amounts of grim to where it was actually funny; kinda like if the Monty Python bunch went through a goth phase.  I didn't quite burn out on them, but it did kinda get samey and boring after a while.

But damn, here's a game that I wished I picked up a lot sooner.  Disgaea just takes that grimdarkness is grim, and converts it to utter whackiness!  There's plenty of dark themes floating about, but what it really comes down too is that you're running an army of slapstick anime demons and other ridiculous freaks as they tear about and pillage the weak and learn about love and smash evil(er) and stuff.

There's all sorts of craziness to be had; so much so that I don't have time to delve into it for now.  But one of my favorite new addictions is the Item World.  If you're like me and live under a rock, here's the lowdown:  Every item in the game has a pocket dimension called an Item World.  In gameplay terms, this translates into a series of ten or more randomly generated floors.  And we're really talking random, here.  You can have small little cakewalk maps with a few mooks, to scary maps with tons of nasty effects that wind up being as close to 3-d Space Hulk as you can get with cutest sprites.  Complete ten floors, and you power up the item considerably.  There's a good few more details than this, but the thing I really want to cover is that while you're down there, the game's standard approach to loot still applies.  While you're upgrading your loot, you can (and often will) come away with even more loot, which will have it's own Item Worlds to explore and pillage.

Seriously, you wind up with an infinite fractal of looting and upgrading going on, and it can suck you in if you're not careful.  Forget Candy Crush or Tetris, this is a serious brain-sucking fruitopia of gaming goodness!  How the in-game economy functions at all it beyond me...