Hour of Darkness ps2

Disgaea: Hour of Darkness

Developed by: Nippon Ichi Software

Published by: Atlus

Released: August 25, 2003

Strategy role-playing games have been around for decades now, but it was Nippon Ichi Software's tongue-in-cheek approach to the macabre land of demons and angels that truly perfected the grid-based setup of classics like Ogre Battle and Final Fantasy Tactics. Plus, let's face it Disgaea superfans, the first game still has the best characters (and Prinny voice actors, d00d!); no offense to Adell and Mao, but Laharl, Flonne and Etna are where it's at.

It wasn't just the cute, dark world that NIS created though, it was the ease in which players could move their units around and make tag-team attacks. That you could cancel out of moves or stack multiple actions in quick succession lent itself far more to setting up ridiculous tag team strikes. The first game's then-ludicrous numbers have since been surpassed thanks to people that power-leveled through the game and influenced NIS to make its own adjustments to things, but for sheer amounts of depth, grind-ability, story and relatively newbie-friendly approach to executing actions within turns, nothing beats the original.