A bit easier, I would say? The first one is sometimes pretty brutal with geo effects.

Also, Disgaea 2 PC comes with all the DLC characters.

Hmm, it's hard to say without any bias. I remember having an easier time with this one compared to the first, but then again, I started with D1, so some of it might've helped on my playthrough in 2. There are quite a few more options at your disposal in this game (and it only increases with each game), but that also goes for the enemy side as well. I've also heard this game was comparatively on the hard side of things (with 5 being the easiest), but I can't say from personal experience.

All in all, I'd say just give it a shot (there's the demo as well, if you just want to test the waters). There are plenty of exploits that you can use to make the game relatively easy, though how much you want to abuse the system is up to you. Depending on how you approach it, the main game shouldn't require much grinding (in a casual playthrough), but there are several points in the postgame that can be grindy, tedious and/or RNG dependant, but it's not like you have to go that far, if you think enough is enough you can just stop at any point.

It is easier indeed. In my experience, each new installment has better quality of life additions than its immediate predecessor, e.g:In Disgaea 2 you can disable the animations for better grinding in item world, in Disgaea 4 you have the cheat shop and item level/innocent gate for item world, etc. So yeah, it still is grindy af but it is slightly less grindy and time consuming than Hour of Darkness. If you wanna grind, search for the armaster and mentor specialists early (don't make my mistake) , and visit the bailiff often too so you can have a potential 300% extra exp for a character (300 felonies)

Right. Thank you everyone here for all your useful info! I'll definitely play this one once I can

depends on your goal really, the story is much easier as there are less difficulty spikes. the post game content, however, is much more difficult and this game heavily relies on rng for a lot of the post game stuff

They are very much alike. I thought it was harder than the first one, it was easier to find good place to level up in the first game. The second last level where you had to go up for a stars and kill some dragons, but only on limited tima cause soon they ads so the floor takes 20 pervent, if all four activates you die. Felt like you should be overpowered to meet this room. Made the final boss feels easy.

The first one is probably the overall hardest one in the entire series. All the QOL changes throughout the series do not exist in the first game, such as letting you reassign orders to characters if you planned to have multiple ones attack an enemy and the enemy dies before they could attack. The first game also had lower aptitudes for generic characters and gave all the story characters except Thursday 100% aptitudes, which while decent comparatively, is nowhere near optimal. Weapon balance was also way off, with swords and guns just far outpacing everything else. It also had most likely the hardest final boss in the series. I remember my first time beating him he killed everyone except Laharl who was literally one hit from death with no healing items left by the time I finished him off.

By contrast, the second game actually optimizes a lot of stuff in ways that would remain throughout the series. For example the easier tier unlock system, better class balance, monster int weapons, etc. It also has possibly the easiest final boss in the series.

The PC version of the first game might just barely edge out as easier only because it gives you Pleinair right off the bat. Who is very overpowered, with good aptitudes, a useful special skill, and specializes in guns, which are very overpowered in the first game.

Gears of war 2 was definitely harder