Disgaea 4 Catch-All

Stele wrote:

A little surprised by Best Buy, but not the rest. Gamestop never orders extra past their preorders.

Depends on the Gamestop. The one I got my copy at had one preorder and then three more copies for retail. *shrugs shoulders*

A solid 10+ hours in and it feels pretty good. Like always it seems like this game should come bundled with the strategy guide as the manual, but so far I haven't hit too many things I couldn't work out... yet.

Like: The graphics really do look better and they did a good job with the sprites.
Dislike: Still no separate inventory container for bribe items.

90+ hours in and I'm now in the post-game for the first cycle.
Nothing like an unexpected week off of work due to surgery complications to get my OCD grind on. Disgaea and Vicodin are like peanut butter and ladies.

Wow. I just got some birthday money, debating picking this up now, or waiting for a slight sale.

Stele wrote:

Wow. I just got some birthday money, debating picking this up now, or waiting for a slight sale.

Honestly, If there's anything else on your horizon I'd probably spend that on a 'new' experience and hold out on this 'evolution' until a sale hits. While playing I keep getting twinges to load up Disgaea 3. There's quite a few changes for the better, but none of them are earth-shattering evolutions.

The Classroom is now a 'Cam-pain' map. More map-squares/Character slots unlock by beating story missions. Clubs are now facilities that you place on the map. Each facility affects certain squares around it, with one marked as the 'leader.' Characters placed on those squares 'join' that facility. There's a bit of a Tetris quality about placement, matching the facility effects with characters and the available unlocked squares.

The item list now shows item levels right on the icon of the item. Very handy for keeping track of what you've cleared and what you haven't.
Carried over from the PSP version of the original there is a Data-Manager that will show you stats including ranks of items you've encountered, special moves you've watched, and endings you've cleared... among many other things including universal stats reported in by other players.

The online stuff I haven't dabbled with beyond loading them up and playing for a few minutes, and my crew isn't quite ready for Reverse-Piracy just yet. I've cursed several 'foreign' senators for hosing what should have been an easy vote for me. Basically the Super-Senators of old are now 'Foreign Senators' uploaded by other players.

Monsters got a bit of a boost by being able to 'Fuse' with each other, which creates a super-sized monster for a few turns. Also MagiChange is now available for anyone, not just club members. Monster-weapon types got shuffled around a bit, which caused some confusion at first. Prinnies are now bows, Orcs are now Swords, etc etc.

Items now have branching paths every 5 levels, with different possible event pools for each section. The map it shows is of a triangle. You start at the top and every 5 levels get to choose between the Innocent path or Item path. Innocent path gives boosts to the ranks of the cleared Specialists and may even generate more. Item path is all about maximizing stat growth in the item.

After that it's Disgaea with a new story, some new attack animations, and a few different classes.

EDIT: Which for me is enough for an immediate purchase. But people tell me I'm weird.

I have to disagree with Rezzy on this one. I can't imagine going back to Disgaea 3, even though I got so much of that stupid DLC. You see, Disgaea 4 actually makes sense. It has an interesting story. It also looks way better and it seems that upper-level specials are now based on character tier rather than item-world diving.

I am, however, pissed off at GameStop again. It seems that everywhere else in the world, you'd get a Fallen Angel Flonne DLC character with all first-run copies of the game. In the US, only if you pre-ordered with GameStop.

Bear in mind that I bought my copy from GameStop, on release day. Their only copy. If I'd known about the promo at the time I might have asked if they could help me out.

Oh well. Never really liked Flonne anyway. Little love freak.

How can you not love a Ninja?

I'm closing in on the ending, at about 60 hours in. They require a fair bit of grinding in this one.

I recall that NISA was hiring a translator a while back. Not someone to translate directly from Japanese, but to smooth out a rough translation in typical NISA style. Seems like whoever they got wasn't that great. A lot of the dialog is awkwardly phrased and repetitive, with weird word choices (the word "abolish," as a synonym for "kill," came up 4 times in one cutscene). It's surprisingly light on humor, and surprisingly heavy on characters talking like 90's rappers. Not entirely sure what's up with that.

The voice acting isn't up to par either. Valvatorez and Fenrich are pretty good, which is fortunate since they have the most dialog. Valvatorez sounds very dramatic but it fits with his character. I started flipping through the cutscenes, just reading the dialog (which is something I pretty much never do in any game) after Desco said "Final Boss" for the 50th time.

The story is also far better than in Disgaea 3. It actually has a story arc that doesn't contradict itself and things happen for reasons. They even managed to add some complexity while tightening up what they added last time, so it's easier to build characters. There's still a "Chara World" that lets you improve characters above and beyond the limitations of the standard system, but it's purely optional.

They did go a little crazy with the geo-panels/cubes. It seems that 90% of the story missions are some sort of geo-panel puzzle. Very few of them are straight contests of strength between your team and the enemy, and just about every item world level starts out with figuring things out. Charging in blindly tends to end poorly.

So basically it has solid gameplay, improved graphics, and a serviceable story (which isn't really the main point of a Disgaea game in the first place).

Over in Japan they've released a ton of DLC for Disgaea 4 already and it looks to be trickling stateside, with one free character already available. They're throwing in entire character classes as DLC this time around (which actually makes things easier due to how skill inheritance works), but most of them were available in Disgaea 3 by default. We'll have to see what the prices and packages look like once they come out over here.

Thanks for the update. Glad I waited at this point, with Dark Souls consuming all my time. Hoping to pick this up in a holiday sale now I think.

New DLC out. Two of the $3 packs, the Celestial Host and the Prism Ranger, include a new class to create (the Celestial Host and Prism Ranger, respectively). I picked up the angels but didn't bother with the Prism Rangers. They're a decent joke but I don't see $3 worth of appeal in creating my own. Each of those packs also includes a unique version of each class (Main Hero B and Prism Red, respectively. Main Hero B is apparently from one of the PSP games).

Looks like Main Hero B was on the PSP version of Disgaea 2.

Hm, Amazon has the premium edition on a lightning deal for the next 2 hours for $40 instead of $60.

That might be worth dropping some leftover holiday gift card on I guess. I figure they won't keep selling the premium forever, with the artbook and character.

Huh I guess I didn't read enough... just perusing the manual today and you can make your own maps?!

Guess that eliminates the need for a special story level with a 3x3 grid of enemies to grind up on with +xp geo panels under them, when you can just make your own.

Looking forward to playing this now. Part of me wants to go back and finish off post-game D3... but I think I'll just pop this open. Wife is going to a conference this weekend... hopefully 72 hours (-sleep) will be enough to binge through the main story at least.

Might as well prep a bit checking FAQs and figuring out how to unlock classes and so on... typical Disgaea readiness.

Is the online stuff random? Or can I specifically fight against Lobster's pirates?

That really does cut out a lot of the grinding. That's awesome.

Oh and the art book is very nice. Glad I went with the premium, thanks to the Amazon sale.

Looking back at the last page, was the soundtrack only for pre-orders? Or is it something digital where I go to the site and register the game? Didn't see a CD in my package.

I don't really know how the pirate stuff works. I haven't messed with it much as it doesn't really interest me. I typically keep the "network" stuff turned off as in my experience, all it really does is make it virtually impossible to get a bill passed (you keep getting senators from other people's games and they're usually impossible to please).

I haven't messed with level creation either since it seems limited in terms of what you can actually get from them, possibly to prevent abuse.

If you're looking to power level, try 5-2 after passing enough "Tougher Monsters" bills so they're ranked 8. That'll make all 16 of the enemies on that stage level 99 (at level 100, XP switches to a different scale and it kind of glitches out at level 99 so you get way more XP per kill than you're supposed to). If you move to the lower right corner of the map and toss the yellow geoblock into the pink area and then destroy it, most of the map becomes a +150% XP area.

It's very easy to level up monster classes there by fusing them with Desco (to make a Giant Desco). Giant Desco has one 3x3 area attack and another 3x6, which makes it very easy to take out groups of enemies, which are arranged in 2x2 blocks. Make sure Desco is on an intersection between the training area and the mana pyramid in the campaign HQ so other characters can benefit from her power leveling. She costs 100 mana to reincarnate (every time) and after about 5 reincarnations dumping all points into ATK, I've got her to about 10,000 ATK at level 200 (that's a lot).

I understood everything up until the monster fusing part, and the campaign HQ. But I guess I'll get that when I start.

Looks like they backed off on some of the generic class requirements this time. Highest you have to level any class to to unlock another class is 30. I don't think I even unlocked everything in D3. Really slacked off on that one a bit.

Yeah, you'll see what I mean once you're there. Short version: you have a campaign HQ where you can place new units and "evil symbols" on a map, and each level you beat unlocks a new square for use. Evil symbols have an area of effect so positioning counts.

They REALLY beefed up monsters in this one. They're actually really useful now. You can "fuse" two monsters together to make a gigantic monster with similar improvements to its attacks (all special move areas of effect are essentially doubled). You can also unlock evil symbols that let a character dual-wield magichanged monsters, or magichange a single giant monster. On top of that, monsters get a third evility slot. Evilities are powerful passive abilities with a variety of effects. One might boost a character's stats while they have adjacent units of a specific type. Another ("Euthanasia") lets you kill enemies with under 25% health in a single hit, and another adds an ailment effect to normal attacks. That sort of thing.

You can also reincarnate demons into monsters and monsters into demons without taking the usual "prinny" step in between.

LobsterMobster wrote:

Yeah, you'll see what I mean once you're there. Short version: you have a campaign HQ where you can place new units and "evil symbols" on a map, and each level you beat unlocks a new square for use. Evil symbols have an area of effect so positioning counts.

So something like classroom seating in 3, but expanded?

Yeah I never really used monsters in D1. And never got deep enough in D3 postgame to try them vs weapons and delve deep into item world and compare more.

Yep, quite a lot like that, Stele.

Monsters have basically been useless in every previous Disgaea game. Most of their abilities are tied to their current class (though some do learn spells), they can't lift or throw, they only get generic weapons that don't get special attacks like demon weapons, and their unique abilities are rarely worth the trouble. I think 4 finally gave them enough of a boost to make them worthwhile again. Maybe even better, in some cases. Once they've learned all their spells, there really isn't much of a reason to leave a spellcaster as a demon anymore since there are monster classes with better perks (ghosts restore 10% of their own MP per turn, for instance).

I played this game a ton. I stalled out at about level 5000. the first 100 levels are the hardest. The pirateing system is interesting, but it is basically just an extension of the item world. I liked all the different specialists that are in the game, but I wish they could be accessed sooner. A lot of the cool customization is like 70 hours in. Also I wish the computer AI wasn't so stupid. The challenge in this game relies 100% on the enemies being stronger cus they just walk forward and attack.

It's no Tactics Ogre PSP.

I think I like valkyria Chronicles more on PS3, but this is a lot longer.

It is a competent iteration of the series. The story was cute.

Presents interesting tactical decisions, but inter-map strategy is pretty lacking.

Having fun through 4 episodes. Think I'm spread a little too thin trying to unlock classes. I may have to just focus in on the 10-character party or so and level up. It's a bit annoying, as I really want to get a Ninja, and check out the new classes too.

I did finally turn on the networking once I unlocked map creation so I could try out other people's maps. Sadly it seems that the top rated maps are all about post-game farming, so I couldn't even defeat them. And you have to beat maps to earn CP to buy more parts to make decent maps yourself. You can get CP from others playing your map, but obviously I can't build a very good map with just the basic starter parts.

And you guys seem to be right about foreign senators. I was able to select Lobster's foreign minister and have them appear. But I think they attacked my senators! You have the option in foreign minister settings to press square and change your minister's personality. I think I set mine on boost dragon party or something like that. But other senators that have showed up seemed to vote me down more often than not. It seems like it would be cool because you can check a senator to always show up, if you got one that was friendly and you could keep bribing. But so far it's been more harmful.

Story is definitely more entertaining than 3. Never played 2. 1 will always have a special place, but it really is nice to have a couple of "adult" main characters for once. I guess I'm getting too old for teenage protagonists.

Don't worry about unlocking classes yet, Stele. It'll eventually be negligibly easy. I apologize for the inappropriate and unauthorized actions of my senator, whom has been severely reprimanded (took away her top hat). I don't know if attitudes carry between sessions, as if they do you could just bribe that senator until you know they'll always support you. These days I usually rely on my own senators to support me, and a few times I have been able to force a bill. It's not easy, but sometimes it seems like the only way to get your bill passed.

I agree that the story is much better than that of 3, but that's not really a tall order. The writing feels more like a direct translation than N1's usual excellent localization, which is a shame, and the voice acting is horrific in places. Despite my avatar, I couldn't agree more that it's refreshing to finally see some characters who are at least old enough to drive.

Yeah I finished 5-2 last night and that looks like a sweet leveling up spot for now, or later with enemy bills. xp +200%.

I also finally passed all the bills available to me, as I had enough on multiple characters to get the 600/700 mana ones. I have somehow managed to arrange thing where Val is the leader of 5 different groups.

As for the senate, I did have to force two bills to pass. One of them was a Nay by a little sliver, almost looked like an Aye. And then when I chose persuade, my own stupid Fenrich had voted against me! The old tossing senators into each other to clear still works beautifully though. I should probably start using the cell phones to improve the race approval. Never dealt much with that in D3.

I'm also still hesitant to use monsters, from all the time they sucked in previous games. Desco seems pretty cool, but that's about it so far.

There is a spot in act 9 where the monsters stand in the exact pattern of one of desco's fuzed attack. You will want to fuze a cat woman to desco cus after that you will want to use a fuzed fist weapon when you fuze wield in ordeals lv4.

Yay gibberish!

Stele wrote:

Yeah I finished 5-2 last night and that looks like a sweet leveling up spot for now, or later with enemy bills. xp +200%.

I also finally passed all the bills available to me, as I had enough on multiple characters to get the 600/700 mana ones. I have somehow managed to arrange thing where Val is the leader of 5 different groups.

As for the senate, I did have to force two bills to pass. One of them was a Nay by a little sliver, almost looked like an Aye. And then when I chose persuade, my own stupid Fenrich had voted against me! The old tossing senators into each other to clear still works beautifully though. I should probably start using the cell phones to improve the race approval. Never dealt much with that in D3.

I'm also still hesitant to use monsters, from all the time they sucked in previous games. Desco seems pretty cool, but that's about it so far.

You can get 5-2 up to +200% XP but it's much faster to use the yellow XP block to color-change the entire area for an instant +150% XP.

Succubi are surprisingly good. Their stats are pretty solid all around, they learn an assortment of offensive and defensive spells and have surprising range on their normal attack. Plus, boobs.

Speaking of boobs, they just released some new DLC, including the Kunoichi class:

IMAGE(http://download.minitokyo.net/Disgaea.273024.jpg)

DotD at Amazon, same as the lightning deal recently. $39.99 for the Premium version.

NISA has released a full US DLC schedule here.

It's hard to read because they didn't organize it by date for some reason.

LobsterMobster wrote:

NISA has released a full US DLC schedule here.

It's hard to read because they didn't organize it by date for some reason.

You can just click on the header to sort by date.

That is good to know. I thought it was just raw text.