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37 of 38 found the following review helpful:
For fans of previous Disgaea gamesSep 06, 2011
By Kaducii Disgaea 4 offers some tweaks and improvements from its predecessors but the core gameplay and mechanic stays the same. If you didn't like any of those, you won't like 4, but if you haven't tried this game genre (FF Tactics, Ogre Tactics) I'd definitely give it a try, it's very unique.
Now is Disgaea 4 worth it or could you just pop in your Disgaea 3 disc and not miss a thing? The answer really depends on how much the tweaks matter to you. Here are the ones I felt were most important:
Graphics: They updated all the sprites and animations so the characters look really sharp, nothing revolutionary but the artistic feel is improved. Characters: I didn't particularly like the characters in 2 or 3 but I think 4 has a very nice group of characters whose chemistry might end up rivaling that of Laharl and friends. The story is still pretty over the top and plays a minor role in the game but the jokes are less forced than 2 or 3. Voice acting is top notch.
Monster character improvements: They made monster characters a bit stronger now. (I never used them before 4 in my core party). Monster characters can fuse together to make a giant version, they have 3 evility slots instead of 2 for human characters, when they magichange they confer their evility bonuses to the wielder. Capturing monsters is also more interesting, you torture them to have them join you or give you items or gil. I think they also took out queuing 2 weapon skills together into a combo (introduced in Disgaea 3).
Story maps: Story maps had more puzzle elements to them. Obviously if you overlevel, you can just steamroll everything, but if you want to put a minute of thought into planning the fight, you can do that too now.
These last 2 were important for me. % progress: As someone who likes to get everything, there is now a form that tracks everything you've encountered and compares them to the rest of the Disgaea playing crowd. It tracks things such as items owned, endings found, levels cleared, special skill animation seen, etc. It's really awesome for a game as deep and complicated as this.
Online connectivity: This adds a little variety to the game as you can download pirates, senators and maps from other users which really beats seeing the same pirates for the 100th time 100 hours in. You can also see how other people customized their characters and see how yours match up to theirs. When you upload your creations to the net, you can give them a preset AI command (you don't actually control them) to have your pirate ship help the other player or mess with them. I have a pretty strong senator uploaded that, if a player forces a bill to pass, will seek out another senator and fuse into an uber senator and duke it out, they can be bribed and they'll bring the bribed items back to your game (You can give them your old gear if you are nice like that). This feature is not game changing but it sprinkles in some variety to the zillionth randomly generated minion. You can also challenge other players in deathmatches where you both control your characters.
19 of 21 found the following review helpful:
Finally a Worthy Successor to Hour of DarknessSep 13, 2011
By C. Fugate I will admit up front that I am a Disgaea fanboy. I bought two copies of the original on the PS1, and I bought it again on the Nintendo DS when it came out, and have hundreds of hours on both versions. I also have Disgaea 2 and Disgaea 3, although I find less to brag about there than I do the original. Disgaea 4 though is an entirely different story.
The Changes One of the first things you will notice is that there is a smaller amount of classes available in this game compared to Disgaea 3, and I count that as a good thing. D3 tried to be "PC" and have both a male and female version of as many classes as possible, meaning you'd get a male Gunner and a female Gunslinger, which were still basically the same class. While some classic classes don't make a return (no angels, no EDFs), there are new ones to compensate (including one that is very much like an upgraded EDF), as well as classes from the previous two titles like Beastmaster and Sorcerer. Geopanel and Geoblock mechanics have not been touched, nor have the classic tagteam attacks. You still gain mana from kills that has to be spent on learning skills/evilities, boosting your skills, etc, and the classroom club mechanic from 3 returns in an upgraded (and not nearly as annoying) format as well. The biggest change/upgrade comes with monster characters. The ability to magichange into weapons returns, but is now accompanied by "fusion" which lets you merge two monsters into one super monster for that one battle, as well as being able to duel wield magichanged monsters. You can even fusion and then magichange for some truly ridiculous combinations.
The Characters The original Disgaea hit a very rare balance with its characters and story, a balance that (for this reviewer) D2 and D3 simply could not live up to. Disgaea 4 gets things back on the right track. All of the characters are extremely well voice acted, none of them are grating in the way D2/D3 characters were (I'm looking at you, Tink), and all are as over the top fabulous as the original cast. Some characters will make you think you won't be able to stand them at first glance (Fuka) end up being very well done, while others are just love at first site (you're not human if you don't instantly fall in love with Desco as the cutest final boss ever made). Like the original, everyone has substantial character growth over the course of the game, and all of your favorites are either available now after beating the main story mode (like Etna and Flonne), or will be made available in the future (Pleinair is confirmed as being future DLC).
The Plot Without giving anything away, the main plot is again much more in line with the original Disgaea than the sequels. Your mission is to overthrow the Netherworld President (this game's version of the Overlord), with some twists thrown in after you do to kick things up a notch. The more convoluted twists and turns of the sequels are gone, letting the game focus more on it's central story and character development. More interestingly for me though was how the roles of demons, humans, and angels have been fleshed out. Instead of simply existing as three different worlds, Disgaea 4 weaves them all together in a method reminiscent of Monsters Inc. where the Netherworld is fueled by Human fear, but the demons are tasked with being the stick to keep humanity on the right track (while the Angels are the proverbial carrot). Heaven and Hell can't exist without the humans, and the humans can't properly exist without Heaven and Hell keeping them balanced. Its all very well done.
Should You Buy This? In a word, yes. As I've said, I bought at least one copy of all three previous games, and this one is on equal footing with the original. Great characters (I think Valvatorez may have almost displaced Laharl as my favorite main character), good story line, and all of the polished gameplay in one package. Plus if you get the deluxe package you also get a mini artbook and a magnetic Fuka figurine (the figurine and the base are separate pieces, with magnets that snap them together). I never finished 3 because I got sick of the characters and the plot, I didn't find 2 all that wonderful either, but 1 and 4 are like wonderful bookends. If you only play one game in this series, make it Disgaea 1 (the PS1 version, with the good voice actress for Etna). If you play only two, get 1 and 4 and you can safely ignore the middle two.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Fans of Disgaea will EnjoyJan 28, 2012
By J. Viveiros
"Escapist Extraordinaire"
Disgaea 4 is a great strategy rpg. It takes everything from past disgaea's and builds upon that successful formula. For those looking for a fire emblem-esque game, look elsewhere. Disgaea 4 is not nearly as streamlined and linear as fire emblem or final fantasy tactics. There are many ancillary parts to Disgaea. One example is the item world. The item world is a feature back from the original Disgaea where you can go into randomly generated battlefields up to level 100. Imagine now all the random weapons found and the possibilities for trying to achieve "completion." It's a bit staggering and for me, is one of the reason's Disgaea 4 is not a perfect game. Too often the narrative is sidetracked by all the extraneous stuff. If you like massive amounts of SRPG content and don't mind taking detours in the story to level up items for hours at a time then you will love Disgaea 4.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Ahh... more DisgaeaJan 17, 2012
By skc Overall, this is just more glorious Disgaea. (If you haven't already, by the way, play the first in the series. It's available on several platforms: PS2, PSP, Nintendo DS.) The characters and the story from the original, in my opinion, are still the best. But of any of the sequels, Disgaea 4 comes closest to matching the appeal of the original's cast and plot, especially your starting cast members, Valvatorez and Fenrich. And in regards to gameplay, Disgaea 4 keeps up all the best traditions of its predecessors and adds in a few more.
So, in general, I love the game and recommend it.
But for the benefit of readers familiar with the series, here are a few critical points that I feel are worth mentioning:
Detracting from the telling of the story are a few obnoxious character voices in the English voice track. Other reviews I read suggest playing the game with the Japanese voice track in order to avoid the occasionally jarring English voice acting. I agree: I plan to switch mine to Japanese and leave it there after I've finished the story in English once.
Regarding patches to this title, NIS seems to assume that most of its player base will have access to high speed connections. They are probably right. However, for the handful of players still stuck with slower Internet speeds, getting any patches for the game will be a laborious experience. Version 1.12 (released January, 2012) was a whopping 1300 MB download, and Version 1.13 (also released January, 2012) was a whopping 1700 MB. In terms of storage it's a relief to know that each new patch overwrites the old ones; that's 1700 MB of game data on your PS3, not 3000 MB. But, again, for slow connection speeds these scorched earth updates, which cannot be performed as background downloads, will each be a difficult pill to swallow.
That said, you don't have to update to the latest version to play the game. Refusing to update only prevents you from using Network features, which I occasionally want to turn off anyway.
Network features are cool: Senators from other players' games show up in your voting sessions, pirates from other players' games show up in your item world, and you can play on custom maps built by other players.
But they are also a bit annoying: Level 9999 senators will show up and skew the vote if you don't bribe them, power-leveled pirates will show up and smash your party to bits (although you can set some loose caps on the levels of Network pirates that can appear), and Network features introduce a little bit of extra loading time. For example, the Item World contains a special map called Summit Hearing that loads up a bunch of other players' senators into one room. The game hangs a little bit as it loads that room, and the first time it happened I wondered if my game had frozen. Fortunately, if you get sick of them they aren't hard to turn off.
THIS IS HANDS DOWN, THE BEST GAME I HAVE EVER PURCHASED!!!Apr 14, 2012
By Empacted Colon i'm so glad i'm retired, because if i wasn't, i'd loose every single job i'd ever get because of this game! my ruitine: i wake up, eat breakfast, clean house (2 hours), play disgaea(1 hr) do yoga and shower(2hrs) play disgaea(6 hrs). it's all i can think about!!! my daughter plays it with me in between her homework and martial arts. this is alot of video game time for me as i used to only log 1 hr or so a week. this game is the best! the story is top notch and the voice acting is incredible. there's always something to level up, modify, equip, new skills to learn, it's paradise for someone who doesn't want to spend alot of money on games. this one will definately keep my daughter and i busy for the next year or so. by that time, we'll have bought a ps vita with disgaea 3 for when we move to japan in december. definately buy this game. i just don't see how you could possibly go wrong in doing so.
based on 18 reviews
( 18 customer reviews )
