Well, after clearing the main campaign once, i guess it’s time to put some of my thoughts about the game into writing for the first time… so here we go.
Disclaimer: The main campaign of any Disgaea game has always been just a (very) small part of it all, you ain’t seen much even after completing it. So take the following as just a sneak peak into the game.
A short summary for people who haven’t played this series so far (HOW DARE YOU): The Disgaea games are a series of tactical rpgs where you spend most of your time on a turn-based battlefield, using up to 10 units to (usually) clear the map of any enemy left standing. To do this you have a vast array of classes available over time, starting of with a limited selection that increases as you unlock new classes. These range from simple close-combat / ranged classes to specialized ones that need to be used in specific ways to get the most out of them (example: a Beast Trainer that grants stat boosts to Monster Class units).
Let’s look at some of the changes since Disgaea 3:
- Graphics: This game looks absolutely beautiful now that it transitioned into HD. They stuck with 2D for the characters and 3D for the terrain like in Disgaea 3, but since this game was developed for the PS3 from the get-go, they went with high-resolution sprites. There is an option to switch to “classic” low-res sprites, but why would you ever want to do that?
- Attack Combos: Characters no longer combine their attacks like in Disgaea 3, so no more searching for weird combinations. Personally, i don’t miss it that much.
- Demon Fusion: Monster class characters can now fuse together to make one bigger, more powerful monster. Any 2 Demons can be combined.
- Magichange: Additionally to the normal Magichange, you can unlock the possibilities to Magichange 2 Demons, 1 Giant Demon or even 2 Giant Demons, making this option much more powerful. As usual you can only use this for a few turns, so be careful.
- Torture: captured enemies now don’t automatically join you, instead you can torture them for treasure or make them join you for example (haven’t examined this option yet).
- Cam-pain Base: Aside from the pun, this is a very useful feature that replaces and expands the classroom feature from Disgaea 3. Like in the classroom, characters standing next to each other get a higher chance of team attacks, but Magichange is not limited to groups anymore. Instead the further you progress you can unlock more and more “Evil Symbols” that give characters in their influence grid bonuses, for example all characters in a specific group gain 10% of the EXP that any character in this group gains in combat. Over time you can also assign several characters as Ministers, each with its own advantage.
- Network Features: I haven’t looked closely into most of these features yet, but you get a Map Editor in which you can build your own custom maps (limited in the US and EU version compared to the Japanese release sadly) that other players can try out and rate. Another feature is the selection of a “Foreign Minister” that can randomly appear on other players Senate hearings. This can possibly get you bonus items if another player chooses you bribe your senator.
I’m sure there are a lot more differences, small or large, but these are the main ones that i noticed and come to mind so far. Feel free to comment about changes you noticed.
After playing through the main campaign once and being in the middle of a second play-through of it i can safely say that this is a worthy entry in the Disgaea series. The characters are great, the story is well done, adding more and more plot threads, revealing things slowly but steadily and as usual takes a lot of cliches and tropes, takes them over the top and runs with it. The new features and changes to the game keep it fresh and interesting and as usual you will grind… a lot (even though you don’t really need to if you only want to go through the main story once, but as usual that only scratches the surface of what the game has to offer).
Fans of the series will be happy to hear that two characters return in more (Axel) or less (Flonne) prominent roles.
Happy grinding!
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