Disgaea: Hour of Darkness/YMMV


 * Awesome Art: Though criticized at the time for lacking polygonal models in reviews, the extremely detailed sprites and character animations have barely aged the game.
 * Crazy Awesome: Exemplified in Laharl's most powerful non-weapon special attack wherein he summons a freakin meteor and rides it towards his target(s) while laughing evilly.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: The entire soundtrack.
 * Demonic Spiders: In the main story, EDF soldiers because of their high levels, but they're put to shame by the Celestial Hosts that comprise all the enemies in the final episode. Outside of Majins, mentioned below, they are easily the best class in the game, excelling at physical combat and magic.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse:
 * Aramis, the owner of the Gag Penis Zombie, became rather popular despite appearing in only one episode. This may have lead to his later appearances in Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice and Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?.
 * Mid-Boss gained popularity due to his sheer hilarity, even though he has roles beyond that.
 * Fetish Fuel Station Attendant: Etna.
 * Funny Aneurysm Moment: If you want to get a chuckle out of Laharl's fear of well-endowed women at all, don't ever, ever read about the novels..
 * Game-Breaker:
 * Majins. They have 110% aptitude in all stats, 120% at higher tiers, S-rank with all weapons, and their first tier form has stat growth rivaling the highest tiers of other classes. They take a long time to unlock, requiring five specific jobs at Level 200 and all in your party at the same time, and the cost to transmute a character into one is huge. But once you get them, the game is ridiculously easy.
 * Flonne as said under Magikarp Power on the main page. With enough apprentices, the girl can basically solo a greater part of the game once she gets going.
 * In the PC port of the game, instead of having to go through specific unlock conditions, you end up getting Pleinair from the start. With great stats and being tailor-made for guns, which in this game can be considered Game Breakers in themselves, Pleinair can easily carry the entire team for most of the game.
 * Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Captain Gordon, Defender of Earth! has a much larger fanbase in America than in Japan.
 * Growing the Beard: Creator wise, this is where Nippon Ichi started using the sort of parody style humor and pop-culture references their later games would be known for and saying their games were set in a shared universe.
 * Hilarious in Hindsight: Fighting against the Prism Rangers is that much more ironic when you consider that Laharl's English voice actor is Rita Repulsa
 * Magnificent Bastard: Seraph Lamington. Leans further towards being a Guile Hero, of course.
 * Memetic Molester: Mid-Boss has had this status for quite a while, due to his rather stalkerish behavior, especially prominent in the manga, in which the other characters flat-out accuse him of being a pedophile.
 * Memetic Mutation: Captain Gordon, Defender of Earth! Gordon's bombastic personality has endeared him to many a fan.
 * Memetic Sex Goddess: You are loli for Etna. No exceptions.
 * Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Captain Gordon is a parody of 50's and 60's-style American sci-fi action heroes. He is also hugely popular in America, much more so than Japan.
 * Moe: Flonne is just precious.
 * Moral Event Horizon: Laharl crosses this in Flonne's mind if he opts to kill Hoggmeiser in Chapter 3 (which opens up if you've got at least 50 ally kills up to that point). She decides at that point that demons are evil after all.
 * Narm Charm: Exclusive to Etna Mode in the remake, Justice Flonne's So Bad, It's Good Sentai cosplay is just a helmet, but she's so enthusiastic in her persona that you can't help but find it adorable and more than a little awesome. It helps that she's your rival in that mode, and eventually gets a bit challenging near the end.
 * One True Threesome: Laharl/Etna/Flonne, one of the most iconic instances in an RPG. They play off of each other so well that fans find it an obvious solution.
 * Polished Port: The PC release has been stated to be "not just a port", with updated interface and map textures that look good at 1080p.
 * Scrappy Weapon: Bow weapons. Their damage being based on ATK and HIT meant most players found getting a good bow user was too much of a pain. Not helped that guns had much greater range than them and more powerful special attacks. The only real reason you'll ever use a Bow is to unlock the Archer class (in turn to unlock the Celestial Host) and so your Clerics have an offensive weapon (assuming you use unmixed Clerics at all), otherwise they're useless.
 * Tier-Induced Scrappy:
 * Thieves, on account of sucking hard in pretty much every way. Even the highest rank of Thief, the Space Pirate, has only a C-rank with Guns, 60% and 70% aptitude with all stats except Speed and Hit, and has lower base stats than even first-tier jobs in other classes. However, Thieves are the only class that can throw with a range of 6, they're the only ones that can steal reliably, and are needed to unlock the Majin, so you pretty much have to use them if you want to get the most out of post-main quest gameplay.
 * Despite being a beloved class due to its cute design, it's hard to justify using the Archer class. They have rather pathetic stats and their highest ranked weapon is the bow, which is unfortunately the game's Scrappy Weapon, with no other weapon reaching beyond rank D. The only reason to have an Archer is to unlock the much better Celestial Host class.
 * Hoggmeiser and Maderas, two monster characters that join during the story, are actually weaker than their generic monster counterparts (Nether Noble and Vampire respectively). They're decently strong when they're acquired, but are quickly outclassed by custom characters.
 * Monster classes, in general. The inability to lift and throw, lack of a Weapon Mastery to increase their damage potential, and general lack of versatility make them a hard choice when compared to the humanoid classes. Luckily, later Disgaea games introduce various mechanics that allow the monster classes to be just as useful as the humanoids.
 * Unpopular Popular Character: Laharl won Nippon Ichi’s character poll of 2009 and 2010, but he is not well liked among other Nippon Ichi characters (just ask the cast of Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories and Phantom Brave). Even his friends will criticize him whenever they get the chance.
 * Woolseyism: In the Japanese text, King Krichevskoy apparently died from choking on a Dark Manju. In the US version, the food was changed to Black Pretzels, invoking a Reverse Funny Aneurysm from when George W. Bush briefly lost consciousness after choking on a pretzel.