For PSP owners, 2007 will be known as the year of the tactical, grid-based RPG. Jeanne d'Arc, Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions and now Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness have all proven that turn-based strategy games work brilliantly on Sony's handheld. But as a port of a classic PS2 game, Disgaea has a lot to live up to, its original version being one of the most expensive games on the market at one point due to its popularity. But is the game the best example of a strategy RPG this year?

As the young demon price Laharl, you find yourself emerging from a coffin after a two-year long slumber. The world has been turned on its head while you have been gone and your father, The King of the Netherworld, is dead. As the only rightful heir to the throne, Laharl finds his world overrun with demons attempting to steal his crown. The story seems simple at first, but as it progresses, the plot thickens, with lies and deceit echoing throughout the halls of your great mansion. These dramatic events are told with masses of humour, which is possibly the highlight of the entire game. The characters are hugely funny, with lines that seem to make no sense yet make you laugh. This is also seen in between the episodes that make up the adventure, with anime style 'next time' clips coming from leading lady Etna, a strange girl who knows more than she can tell. In fact, the whole story is very much like watching an anime, even down to the voices and visuals. The story is enjoyable throughout, giving you a big reason to continue playing, while feeling wholly original at the same time. It's also very straightforward, which contrasts to nearly every other aspect in the game.

Laharl's mansion forms the game's hub and you spend all of your time outside of battle in here; it will become your second home by the end. Every aspect of the game is accessed here, from the shop (which upgrades its items as you level up) to the hospital where you heal yourself, and the dark assembly, a courtroom where new characters can be created and pleas for new items can be made to a jury, to the item world, a place where you can go inside any item in your inventory, plus you can enter any of the dungeons that the game has to offer. When you fist begin to learn about these aspects of the game, you will be inundated with information that only a true Disgaea fan will understand straight away. The game even tells you that you can get through the game without using certain features, which broadens its appeal while offering as much depth as the player wishes to explore. This is a bad move however, as the sections of the castle cannot be 'dumbed down' for anyone - this is hardcore SRPG territory. The item world, for instance, sees you traversing up to one hundred battles in succession, even if you can stop after every ten. This can take up hours and hours of playing time, only to level up a single weapon or item. This is too deep for most I suspect, even if you can make it to the end by only dipping your toe into the sea of things to do.

The battles themselves are where the real fun is to be had, as they're fast and easy to pick up yet consistently engaging. You access them from the dimensional gateway keeper, who transports you to the various areas your adventure takes you. Unlike many SRPGs, you don't control one member of your party at a time. Instead you have a turn and then your enemy has a turn, and when it's your turn to attack you can move and attack with any and all of your varied fighters in the order that you desire. This concept is further developed in that rather than automatically ending your turn after you attack, you can simply execute whatever actions you have set up to take place, for example moving and attacking with one or more of your party. Once this has played out, you know if an attack has killed an enemy or not and so you can alter your tactics for the remainder of your fighters. This can also be used to free up movement tiles of enemies, allowing you to traverse a larger area of the battlefield. Movement is a grid-based affair, with each character able to move a certain amount of squares per turn, depending on their speed and the items they are using. You select your attacks from a basic menu, which, by not being overly complicated, makes the battles easy to navigate, enhancing their speed considerably.

The abilities that your party can use vary from person to person. Depending on the weapon equipped, you can perform powerful blows on your enemies, both in a physical and magical sense. Area attacks devastate large numbers of enemies and along with other abilities, use up SP. You learn new abilities as you level up, making the slow grind even more enticing. You will find combinations of abilities and enemies that work well and repeat these over and over. This doesn't become tiresome however, which is a surprise to those who find the lengthy battles in SRPG games repetitive. Using the same techniques in every battle is strangely compelling, as the game throws another layer to the battles, one that is unique to Disgaea. A battleground can contain a number of coloured panels on the floor, known as Geo panels. These give the person or monster standing on them positive or negative status effects, depending on where the Geo Symbols - small stones that hold special effects - are placed. The effects that this can have on your party ranges from healing a small amount of HP every turn to giving monsters ten times the power that they normally have. By destroying one of these symbols, you can cause an explosive chain reaction that damages everyone standing on the affected panels, along with bagging mounds of cash, which is further enhanced by causing multiple chains with explosions that destroy other symbols in one extended sequence. Add this to creating combos of Geo Symbol enhancements by lifting and throwing them onto a different coloured panel, an action that can be performed on any of your party, and you have yourself a hugely complicated system that makes battles even more interesting.

If after reading all this you feel that Disgaea must be overly complicated, then you should see the hardcore nature of some sections of the game! The item world is a place where an endless amount of battles can take place and literally any item in the game can be levelled up in here, making it a place for the true SRPG fans only. There are certain points during the main story where entering this foreign world is needed to progress, but apart from this, players wanting to keep their life in check may want to steer clear. This can also be said for the Dark Assembly, where hours can be wasted creating new units, asking the court for new items and plenty of other things. Unlike most SRPGs you can send out plenty of units into the fray, but having a select group of around four to five main party members makes levelling up less of a chore, as the main story will be enough to see your characters through.

One surprise that the game throws at you is the hidden endings. At certain points in the adventure, after winning or even losing a battle, an ending can occur. This doesn't just take you to the game over screen however - the credits roll and you have 'completed the game' but you can save at this point and start all the way from the beginning. This happens if you lose the first boss battle in the game, causing a look of horror to cross your face! You anxiously press the save button and find yourself watching the opening video again! The catch is that you retain all of the items, weapons and abilities that you had last time around, something that completists will revel in. The game features lots of these endings and unlocking them all can multiply your playtime greatly. It's another unusual feature that helps the game retain its 'weird' aesthetic.

Afternoon of Darkness looks decent, just like the PS2 original, Hour of Darkness. The graphics are very stylised, with small sprites moving and reacting in distinctive ways. The environments are as basic as they come, but nothing worse than other games in the genre. When the characters speak, their anime style body appears over the text box, along with a welcoming sound bursting from the PSP's speakers. There is a tremendous amount of voice acting in the game - even more than the original - which is all delivered in a way that's perfectly in line with the game's quirky tone and mood. Actors blurt out witty lines, helped by an excellently conceived script, while every character has an individual personality that you will become accustomed to, injecting life into the game world. The sound of the rest of the game is good too, making the journey pleasurable for your ears. As a PSP title goes, 2D looks great in 16:9 here; the attack animations are interesting, but not too over the top that the game struggles to keep up (a problem with FF Tactics). In look and sound, Disgaea is spot on and perfectly suited to the PSP, while the ability to quick save at any point no matter what you're doing is an absolute lifesaver for on the go gaming.

As the third game in a triple hit of excellent SRPG titles, Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness holds its own by being entirely original. The story is brilliant, giving just enough reason for you to continue on with your journey, while the battles become hugely fun in their own right. The only real problem is that it's a hardcore strategy RPG in nature and the amount of digits, levels and abilities that are on display is unimaginably large, making the gameplay as deep as it can be. You can go through without knowing any of this information, but the feeling that you're missing out always lingers over you. However, it is this aspect of the game that, while perhaps making it daunting to the casual gamer, many hardcore SRPG players will consider its greatest strength. Whichever way you look at it and whatever you want to get out of it, Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness is brilliant, proving that the PSP has a lot more to give than it has so far - and for strategy and RPG fans alike, this is simply a must buy.

Reviewed by Sam Atkins for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).