Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten (PS3): A return to form, Dood!

Lets do a quick math problem shall we? What do you get when you add 650 hours + 211hrs + 28hrs + 97hrs + 59hrs? You get the embarrassingly large amount of time I have spent playing Disgaea games. Each one of those digits represents the time stamp on of my save files. So if you haven't figured it out already, I kinda like these games. And even sadder, those numbers don't include the offshot titles produced by the same company like La Pucelle Tactics, Phantom Brave, Makai Kingdom, Soul Nomad, or Raphsody just to name a few more.

The first entry of this series Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is heralded by its cult following as one of the best tactical RPGs ever released. Boasting incredibly depth, Fun characters, incredible customization, and a tounge in cheek story light that goes from goofy to brilliant in a heartbeat makes it one of the most memorable games I've ever played. The story will play you about 40 to 60 hours. But if you look at my 650 hour save you can see that I still haven't done everything the game has to offer. With different aspects like character reincarnation, tons of hidden levels and bosses, character throwing and Geo panels, the first Disgaea was nothing short of phenomenal. Since its release there have been sequels and offshoot series, but nothing has matched up to the first one. And I can tell you the three reasons why:

Meet Laharl, Flonne, and Etna. The reasons to play Disgaea

The story of demons, angels, and humans may be the overall driving point of the story, but the dynamic of these three characters are what make it special. Their tongue and cheek attitude to each other and other characters is hilarious in every chapter almost to the point of being nauseating to the non-anime fan, but if you can stick through it, when the main climax starts to roll up the they show such development as characters to real make you feel for them even if you are getting the good or bad endings (one that is particularly heart wrenching). Both of which are equally satisfying and drive you to play through the game more than once. Which is great because the game lets you keep your characters and levels.

Sadly, because of these three hitting the mark so perfectly it makes it almost impossible to repeat this. So when the 2nd came out, I knew this and took Adell and Rozalin as their own pairing and found them to be just as entertaining in their own interesting dynamic. The 3rd one however really missed the point. The game was fun to play the but the story was just awful. So it was with a little hesitation I jumped into the newest installment of a game I loved so much. 

Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten: (PS3)

The game starts off with you controlling Tyrant Valvatorez, a vampire who has lost his powers and relegated to his new role as a Prinny Instructor in Hades with his servant, a Werewolf by the name of Fenrich. (For those who don't know, a prinny is basically the soul of a human trapped in an combustible penguin demon  form who is forced to work essentially slave labor to atone of their sins in life in heaven or hell). Val sustains what little power he has left through an obsession with sardines. Fenrich makes multiple efforts to try to make Val drink blood again to regain his powers that make him a tyrant, which Val ardently refuses to keep promise he made years ago. While he is about to reward his graduating class for completing their prinny training before they go on the Netherworld or Celestia, a vortex rips them away to be destroyed and he follows after them to maintain the promise he gave. Here the game begins.

Generally the play style of Disgaea maintains its core roots. The sprites are much better detailed this time through but the game gives you the option to go to the classic sprite style. It uses the same grid tactics system you would see from its previous installments, and after a few tutorials you are pretty much free to go after all the features of the game right from the get go. You start off each chapter in your home base where you can equip your characters, run to the item world, talk to some of the inhabitants, or go to your Cam-Pain headquarters.

The Cam-pain HQ, for those who played 3, is essentially the same as the classroom system. Here is where you can create your new characters and adjust their bonuses. The Senate voting system comes back here as well. For those who haven't played Disgaea, you use the senate if you wish to get better equipment for the store, unlock new powerups for your map, raise or lower the difficulty of the levels, unlocked new character classes, open additional levels, and a myriad of other things as well. Many of the same tricks you might have learned in past editions are there as well. Such as a cheap trick to make some extra money. When you use the hospital and they give you and item for healing so much, instead of taking the item right away, back out and check it again. Doing this gives you the chance for a rare version of the item which will have better stats and value if you need to sell it. They did take away the ability to get Legendary items from this as I haven't been able to do so.

They went back to the Skills and Evilitiy shop for getting new attacks and abilities. Before in the older versions when you would play, every class as an aptitude for certain weapons. And the more you used them, the more special attacks you would get.  I preferred this because it was easier to boost up a character.  In this there is a shop you spend the mana you earn from killing baddies to unlock new attacks and level up their strength or attack range, its slower and kinda forces you to keep using the same characters, so if you've built 20 characters some of them are going to ride the bench.

Disgaea's best attribute in the actual play is something that they hold over most tactics games is the ability to make changes to you selections after you make them. Meaning if  you line up 3 or 4 people to make an attack on a certain enemy, but then realize you'd rather go somewhere else, you can can cancel out those selections as long as you did not execute them aside form a move. Most Disgaea vets use this constantly, as you can move characters towards your healer, have them cast their heal and then undo the moves to put them right back in the fray. The tower throwing and attacks come back as well, with a slew of new tower attacks to use to help level up those lower level characters.

Doing a review for a game like Disgaea is difficult because there are so many different features to talk about that I could go on forever. Now like I said earlier, I came into this installment a little sluggishly because with Disgaea, the story is everything. Three was fun to play but the tale was so uninteresting it really took away from the game. It just didn't have any of the magic that the first two had. For the first few hours of the game, I did get a bit of a chuckle out of some of the scenes but I wasn't rushing to play it. But as I was trudging along in the game, I found Valvatorez to be a very likable character. He sometimes is downright hokey in his heroic banter or sage like advice for the other characters, yet in the very same conversation is so absent minded that he can be manipulated by Fenrich at will. But almost every single bit of banter he has with characters made me laugh through the course of the game with every chapter raising a new question to be answered as you play. And while the overall story branches into a series of different sub paths as every single character seems to have a different motivation,  The climax at the end pretty much has me completely gripped that I'm ignoring the shit I need to do to try to finish the game to see how it all ties up.

So not every line is gold....

Lord Val giving Desco tips on being the Final boss.

Ain't it the truth....

I guess what I am saying is that this one brought Disgaea back for me. Even as I write this article with homework sitting on the desk in front of me I'm thinking about flipping the game back on to get a little more level grinding to start ubering my characters to shred through playthroughs to see the other endings the game has to offer. If you are a fan of Tactical RPGS, don't mind some anime cliches or pop culture references, or are looking for a story that doesn't take itself too seriously then I would highly recommend Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten.

Which probably doesn't mean much coming from me.

Oh yeah, and Axel still sucks.