So, I hate RPGs.

There are a few exceptions to this rule - I adore Lunar: Silver Star Story and Lunar: Eternal Blue... I enjoy a good romp around Neverwinter Nights 2 and Xenogears now and then, Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6 are decent as well.

On the other hand, I think that Final Fantasy 7 should be burned from existence, and removed from the collective memory of mankind before it is able to further taint the universe. My opinions regarding most other RPGs aren't quite so pointed, but still tend to be quite negative. I'd like to blame Squaresoft for turning me sour toward the genre, but that probably wouldn't be fair.

Anyway, a while back a Japanese PC game called Utawarerumono (of which I've spoken in the past about) received the honor of being translated by a group of fans, who described it as being a visual novel with SRPG elements.

Visual novel? Color me interested. SRPG? Not so much (at that point my only exposure to the genre had been through Super Robot Wars, which I hate almost as much as Final Fantasy 7 - which is saying a lot), but still - I figured it'd probably be worth it for the VN element, and plunked down some money to have the game imported. Good decision.

The game's visual novel elements are good. Absurdly so. My only complaint would be that the... 'romance' scenes seemed completely forced, unnecessary, pointless, and in more than one case completely out of character - but considering that such scenes played a thankfully minor role (and could be skipped by way of the control key), I was able to ignore them for the most part, as I enjoyed the story and cast quite a lot.

What really surprised me however, was the fact that I rather enjoyed the story driven SRPGish battles. The combat system was amazingly basic to be sure, but was still a lot of fun, and didn't make me want to castrate myself in the same way that Super Robot Wars had. So, when I finally completed the game, I wanted more, but didn't know where to look. Eventually I forgot about the whole deal until I was online looking for games to buy for my then-newly purchased PSP and stumbled upon Disgaea.

Being the cynical sort, I had a lot of misgivings, but decided in the end to throw out my relatively hard earned cash on the game. And let me say,

****ing hell.

I threw myself into the game without really reading any of the instructions or such (as any real man should do, I might add) but was still able to go through and wreck **** up, while having a jolly good time at it. Fast forward sixty-some gameplay hours (according to my save file), and I'm still coming across things that I hadn't known before...

If you pick an enemy up and throw it into another they merge into one higher level enemy? Brilliant!

If you pick an enemy up and throw it into your base panel you can attempt to capture and enslave it (or have it ruin your base and kill all of your undeployed units, if that fails)? Excellent!

I've completed one run through the story, got the fairly bad end that I'm certain most people get the first time around, and have begun my second cycle through with a focus on leveling my already absurdly (by the main story's standards) powerful characters up until I'm ready to take on all of the extra missions, after which I plan to go through and grab up the story's several remaining endings, in a plan that will most certainly require an absurd amount of time to see through to the end.

If I'm not sick of the entire genre by the time I'm done, and if Disgaea 2 is able to hold my interest as forcefully, Disgaea 3 may eventually force me into buying a Playstation 3.