I recently picked up Afternoon of Darkness for a fiver in a PSN sale. I finally got around to playing it. Little did I know the price in lifetime might be innumerable.

After having wasted hours on doing an Item World run and failing on the 10th level, instead of being proper pissed at how fucked up that was (flippin' clone geo-thingies, and a horrid layout all but preventing a quick exit), do you think I'd have been able to put it down? Forget about it.

How bad can this get? How many hours might I put into this thing? I've seen youtube videos with characters lvls in the tousands. I'm like level 15, after hours and hours. I'm flippin' leveling starter gear! Jesus. Have mercy.

Try and scare me straight with some of your Disgaea horror stories. How bad might this get?

@seppli: You have wandered into an endless abyss from which there is no salvation.

Just my thoughts. And the Doomed revel in their despair. Intoxicated.

You are going to die. Disgaea is an endless black hole of character development and mechanical complexity.

At least I know being a Prinny in hell is not so bad.

AFTER DUPING THE STATISTICIANS BY USING THE PUPPY PAW STICK AND GOING INTO THE CLASS WORLD, MURDERING A COPY OF ONE OF MY CHARACTERS, ALL SO I COULD INCREASE THE AMOUNT OF XP I GAIN AND LEVEL MY CHARACTERS UP TO 9999, JUST TO RESURRECT THEM AND GET BETTER STATS SO THAT I WOULD HAVE A CHANCE AT DEFEATING THE CARNAGE VERSION OF ALL THE WORLDS, I clocked in about 300 hours into Disgaea 3.

I hope you like grinding, duder.

@seppli: There are 3 more games in the main series beyond that one. Most of them have more content than that one. You will never get out. You will never be free. You will die, alone, unloved and uncared for, and you will be unable to call for help as disgaeaphasia sets in and you become unable to communicate in anything but stat numbers.

They're pretty glorious, huh?

Jesus man. The sheer addictiveness of exerting my evergrowing competence at this game, and further pursuing the seemingly limitless potential of it...

Reading up on little questions I had about this and that, like how to conveniently level a Cleric, since only killing blows give proper XP, sent me way further down the rabbit hole. Listen, killing blows reward that specific character with mana aswell (1 mana for each level of the victim), which can be used to create new characters. The more mana you spend, the better stats that character will have, and the more of what is gained and learned will be passed on to an eventual resurrection. The kicker is though, the creator of this new character (aka The Mentor) can learn all magic spells from his Disciple's arsenal. How? By standing next to him or her in the field of battle, the mentor can use all of the disciple's magic spells. By casting these spells in combat, eventually The Mentor will learn that specific spell. And that's how a Cleric will learn offensive spells to deal proper damage (other than also using a gun/bow with some spiffy eyeglasses equipped).

This prompted me to restart my game, since all my characters were created by the main character, extremely limiting my options in terms of mixing up classes. And let me tell you something. It's bloody glorious grinding battles with all these things in mind. Disgaea is one of the very few games that I enjoy more for the grind in it. It has perfected the grind to a joyous artform, rather than soulcrushing work. Fucking devine.

All that said... I am AFRAID!

The rabbit hole goes pretty deep for this game (and like others have said, the other games in the series go even further). However, if you just wanna beat the main story it doesn't take that long.