Review by David Jenkins – Ever imagined what a crossover between Fallout and Mass Effect might be like, or Fable and Diablo? Probably not, because you know it'd never happen.

But in Japan such match-ups are much more commonplace, particularly amongst smaller developers.

This, for example, is an unlikely crossover between Nippon Ichi's Disgaea and Gust's Atelier series.

Strategy role-playing series Disgaea is quite well known in the West, but a fan convention for Atelier wouldn't fill many convention halls even in Japan.

Oddly the gameplay doesn't resemble either series and the two developers have even brought in Spectral Force's Idea Factory to help too.

Considering the amount of effort it must've taken to organise you'd begin to expect something extraordinary.

The story certainly isn't ordinary, we can say that at least.

The game is set in its own universe, where random objects from time and space keeping popping into unstable orbit around the planet of Empyria.

The traditional means by which the locals avoid being wiped out by falling debris (from buildings to rubber ducks) is to force a demon god king to transform into a magic gem.

Demon dog king (he's a furry) Kanata though isn't too keen with his imposed career path and absconds.

At the start the game offers two difficulty modes, as you play either as Kanata or the valkyrie Rizelea.

Both of these are original characters, with Flonne, Etna and her prinnies from Disgaea only turning up later. As well as two characters from the Japanese-only Atelier Viorate game.

We're spending so much time explaining the set-up because it and the various talking-head cut scenes are by far the best thing about the game.

The story never really goes anywhere but the dialogue has lots of Disgaea's knowing satire, with digs at everything from cosplayers to spiky-haired heroes.

There's also lots of fourth wall-breaking, including things like Kanata fluffing his lines in a cut scene.

Once you get around to doing some actual role-playing though it all becomes a terrible anti-climax.

This is basically a dungeon crawler, where you enter one of the orbiting objects and trawl through it fighting monsters in random battles and collecting objects to synthesise later.

The combat boils down to standing politely opposite a group of monsters and taking turns to smite each other.

The graphics are pretty awful, both when exploring and in battle, and it takes a long time before you can do anything more exciting in battle than jab out a few short combos.

Your pre-battle preparations are often much more complicated.

Not only is there basic item crafting but also the concept of managraphics that give your weapons new abilities by painting images upon them.

If you play as Kanata you can create monsters from items, which when fought give you all-new special items.

Rizelea has a completely different talent that involves crafting meteorites to increase your stats.

None of this will be of interest to non-fans though, which is a shame as anyone can enjoy the characters, but few will want to endure the tedium of actually playing the game.

IN SHORT: A dungeon-crawling mix of Disgaea and Atelier proves just as impenetrable and cliquey as it sounds.

PROS: A lot of the dialogue is very funny and the 2D artwork is excellent. Mountains of complications for fans.

CONS: Dungeon exploration and combat is old-fashioned and tedious. Irritating save point system and weak story.

SCORE: 5/10 Out: Now (UK)