Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance - A Contender for Overlord, Plip!

Edit: This review was done months ago, but I've been two flippin' lazy to screen shot images for it. Sorry for the delay.

It's already been well documented but if I was forced to list my favorite franchise of all time, you can bet your ass that the Disgaea franchise would be up there with the best of them. It's been a bit over a year since our last installment of this series (Disgaea D2), and while I had some lukewarm feelings to the necessity of it, I still enjoyed my experience with it.

It's been a number of years since the last numbered installment way back in Disgaea 4, but if you go back to that very vintage review of mine, you can see that I felt it was a return to form, being the that game I have liked the most since the original. This series has been consistent since its inception, but now we have our first shiny PS4 edition of the game. How will it hold up the legacy before it?

DISGAEA 5: ALLIANCE OF VENGEANCE(PS4)

Our tale opens up with us learning that there is a fierce demon emperor by the name of Void Dark, who is assembling a massive army of demons called "The Lost". Like an unstoppable wave, the Lost have been rolling through the Netherworlds either subjugating them to the Lost army or destroying them outright.

Here we find an Overlordess named Seraphina who is currently in the midst of battle with the Lost in the midst of an assassination plan to kill Void Dark. Before her forces start to get overwhelmed, a lone demon named Killia takes a seat in the middle of the battlefield and begins to eat a meal. When the Lost try to attack him, Killia dispatches them with incredible ease.

Serphina quickly becomes enamored with him and tries to use her Balor Gaze overload ability to subjugate him and make him her servant. When it doesn't work, she somehow becomes even more enthralled with him and begins to follow him as they reveal they both are out to defeat Void Dark. They don't know it yet, but this will be the seed that beings to form the Rebel Alliance of Overlords to take the fight to overthrow Void Dark.

It was interesting to see that Disgaea of all series decided to take on a theme of revenge and vengeance for its major plot points considering the very tongue and cheek nature of this franchise. I was concerned that they were going to go full serious with the story. The series always manages to have its serious moments but it manages to do so while still be amusing. Thankfully, as I played through it didn't really take long to show that despite the theme, the cheeky nature of the dialog wasn't going to be absent this time around. 

I kind of have split feelings on the cast this time around at the start of the game. This is usually a contested point in almost every version of Disgaea because there is always some really strong characters, and always some really weak ones. Disgaea 1 had Laharl but it also had Captain Gordon. Disgaea 2 had Rozalyn but it also had Tink, and so forth.

Disgaea 5 however seems to revolve around six major characters. Killia can be considered the hero, but he's kind of the cold stoic emotionless type. He's a deeply conflicted character, but his delivery always feels kind of monotone and flat. Seraphina kind of fills our Etna role, as she's the posh and pampered overlord of the wealthiest Netherworld, who abuses and underpays her prinnies. They are both great characters because they tend to compliment each others nature, I just wish Killia had more range.

Then you guys like Christo, Zeroken, and Red Magnus. Each of them falling into their own kind of anime trope. Christo is the tactician so its hard to know if he can be trusted, Zeroken reminds me of Axel in the way he jumps in like he's bad ass and ends up getting squashed. Then we have Red Magnus, who quite literally yells all of his lines, which is bad enough but when you realize almost all of his dialog is basically just citing the mid 90's version of the Rock from WWE, it becomes cringe worthy. None of them are grossly horrible I guess, but some are more likable than others.

But the best character, hands down, is Usalia. She's basically a bunny demon from the Netherworld TotoBunny, who is cursed to eat the food she hates the most: Curry. If she doesn't she basically turns into a berserker version of a were-bunny and pretty much can shred her opponents to bits. She's out for vengeance because she witnessed both her parents get murdered, but through it all she is a sweetheart to everyone and cute as a button. It was impossible for me to not love Usalia. Even though she is a monster type character which I never use, I had to because she was too great to be riding my bench.

She's a demon bunny who loves curry and blows up a planet with a giant prinny.
How can you NOT love Usalia?

This leads to my problem with the characters, because on top of having 6 major protagonists and 3 major villains, in addition to that every time you beat a Netherworld (read stage/chapter) their respective overlord joins you, basically adding another monster type to your party and taking up another spot. This annoyed me because I already have a list of created characters I made that are barely getting used because I have so many major protagonists to use. I know you can use up to 10 people in a level, but I pretty much never did.

Thankfully, the pocket netherworld (read: home base) as a number of things you can do with them here. A lot of the old mainstays are here like your weapons and items shops, the Item world, this games version of the assembly for the various things you can vote on. The Cheat shop makes a return so you can divvy up the earnings from a stages for level, money, mana, or skill grinding as well as raise the difficulty. But in addition to these things, there are a couple of new tricks to look at here.

The home base is packed with even more things to do than ever.

Most importantly, you can make "squads" these various squads give a number various effects that can take place in battle, in the netherworld, or through some of the other things you can. Boot camp is great for grinding because it takes a percentage of the experience of the leader, some shops like the Curry shop or the Alchemist only open up when a squad member is there. And then there are odd jobs people can do like the Research Team, where you can send off unused party members to other netherworld to get items, exp, prisoners, and other bonuses. There is like 30 squads and many of them are very useful so you'll want to level them up.

Some of these squads break the game in ways the old Disgaeas didn't. The Assembly squad is one of the best, because if you can max the level of it, everyone in that squad will always vote yes when you try to pass bills for new levels, bosses, abilities and so forth regardless of their stance on the issue. So you just pump like 30+ characters into the group and win bills you have a 1% shot to win by a landslide. In post game, you need the Elite squad, which I'll get into later.

Pro Tip. Putting your strongest character in the Capture squad is a great way catch people.
Using captives to level your squads is a great way to max out the important ones. (Or all of them)

In addition to things like the Item world, they've added a new "Character world" which basically lets you play a Mario Party style board game that if you can navigate to the finish by the end of the level, you can give yourself a permanent boost to some of your abilities which is great for increasing movement, or adding more room for passive abilities. Then you have the Innocent shop, where you can take your subdued innocents from the item world and make them breed and level, making getting that 900lv Statistician to level a grind a breeze.

I honestly could keep going about the various new shops and features you can play with in the pocket netherworld, but that could literally take up a whole review itself. So let's get back to the game. First thing I noted is that this game has an incredibly long campaign. I think before you get to the post game there is like 16 chapters of story each with at least 6 or so maps to fight through. It actually can be pretty daunting because some of these maps are pretty big, and geo panels can be frustrating. But as we all know, the solution to that is grinding for levels.

The character world is a great way to get your character extra stat boosts.
Which I basically spent on movement and nothing else.

And thankfully, this installment of Disgaea knows this more than others, because it seems to be the most grind friendly version of the game. I was late to learn this, but there is a glitch in the game that if you fight an enemy that is level 99, it gives the experience of one that is 300+. So that is a good place to get started until you can unlock the Martial Training levels. These unlock as you progress through the game, and if you can tackle a semi difficult level, you are rewarded a spot that is great for grinding at increased XP and Mana.

Going through these stages in rapid succession with the right combinations of items, innocents, attacks, buffs from the netherworld suddenly doesn't turn the game from a grind to level 9999, but how many times and how fast can you do it. If done properly, there is a martial training stage that is so difficult, if you can clear it it jumps you from level 1 to 9999. This is where the Elite Squad comes into play. When you are in that group, XP is reduced to 25%, but you get an massive increase to your stat growth, and this is where you start building your godlike characters.

Once you start one Hit killing these guys, Grinding is a breeze.

I guess I should talk about the game play at some point. Disgaea 5 stays true to the grid based tactical RPG roots that brought it to the dance, but not without innovation. Much of the mainstay Disgaea battle system goes unchanged from what you might remember. Bring up to 10 characters out and chose your moves and actions before you actually execute them, using your abilities or using team attacks if everyone is in proper proximity to do so.

Tower stacking is of course back and there are a whole new slew of tower moves you can use in battle, but I will be 100% honest because of the grind friendly nature of this one, I didn't use the tower attacks all that much this time around. It is still helpful for giving some of your lower level characters a quick jump, and in the late late late stages of grinding, its probably still a massive help.

In the last installment you were able to mount monsters, apparently this wasn't a very popular feature because they return to the Magi-change system where monsters can become weapons for a humanoid character to use. This of course, promoted my use of Usalia because she turns into fist weapons, which is exactly what Killia uses, so grinding with them increased the productivity twofold. But in addition to that monsters now finally have their own throw.

Even at high level, Enemies and Bosses can be tough to bring down.

Well sort of. They can't pick up and be in the center of a tower like others can, but they get something called Mon-toss, which allows them the basically punch a character to another square on the map. With some monsters boasting a 7 throw, this is a useful way to move some people. But also, if a enemy lands on monster, they are instantly tossed the throw distance in the direction they are facing. so with proper placement, you can move a character nearly across a whole stage before they actually have to take their move action. 

This is handy because it seems like some of the levels are way bigger than some of them need to be, and with some geo effects it forces you to take a long annoyingly linear path to complete them. Some of them forcing you to rely on throwing to even be able to complete a stage sometimes (or so it felt like to me). I thought we had gotten away from that style of play way back in the original Disgaea.

So what didn't I like about Disgaea 5 that I already haven't mentioned. The home base music. The home base music from Disgaea 5 is going to be the song that plays in the elevator that descends me to hell for eons.  I can barely understand what she is singing about. I can't tell if its in English, Engrish, Japanese, or some unholy combination of them. You will most likely be in your pocket netherworld often, so you will hear this song often. For the love of Christ use something a bit more upbeat like Makai Kingdom used or something.

It feels like there are less jobs than normal, but that's ok due the number of
characters the story barfs onto your party. You won't use half of them.

The rest of the music in this game is your pretty typical Disgaea fanfare. Kind of weird sounding future epic style music with some kinda tango-y undertones as I could be describe it. The only song in this game that blew me away is the one for the opening movie, which is also played for one of the final bosses and it makes the fight feel more bad ass. I am always a huge advocate of a proper score complimenting a video game to make its moments more impactful.

And I have bitched about this shit before, but Mugen Souls in all its failures had one really good idea, and that was to slightly animate the stills for emotions and reactions during dialog sequences. it tends to break up the monotony of the still images you see in visual novel style games and cutscenes that have been so prevalent in Disgaea. Almost everything about this game seems more polished up and new, but the visual novel style images make it feel old. It wouldn't have been a drastic change and I think it would have helped.

I hate to continue to beat a dead horse with an adopted red-headed rented step-mule, but this is another example of a DLC ruining what used to be a good thing. All of the old Disgaea's prided themselves on an abundance of post game content and unlockables. Lots of characters to play, bosses to fight, and mini stories to unlock. Now all that shit is withheld because they want to you pay for it with DLC separately or with a 30$ season pass.

And lo and behold, there was glitch for people who got the season pass that unlocked all the DLC at once instead of releasing it overtime like they planned to do. Again showing that the content was created, completed, and locked away on the disc instead of releasing it as part of the package. When will this shit stop? How much more do these companies need to gut their fucking customers out of their money? So now, I won't get to unlock all the old characters because I refuse to be any more for the content that should have been on the disc to begin with.

Characters from all over the NIS universe are available if you are willing to pay for them,
Which I'm not. Fuck you and fuck your DLC.

So by not doing that, the greatly reduces the amount of post game you can play. Now as far as I can tell, you can play 2 post game chapters to unlock bosses, fight a reoccurring minor character, fight Baal, and either play the carnage levels (increased difficulty), or new game plus. In the old versions of the game all the shit that would have been DLC would have all been included as stuff to do. Kiss my fucking ass, NIS.

This one is starting a get a bit long winded so I'll wrap it all up like this. Disgaea is a game series that has always been a model of consistency. It's a game that has been constantly making little tweaks and changes to to the formula to improve things, and have taken things out that didn't work as well. All the while managing to do so without changing how the overall feel of the game has been played. Even a bad Disgaea game is still pretty good game. What it usually hinges on is how good the story and characters are.

And if I can CRTL + B right here, I will say that Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance might possibly be my favorite one since the first, if not overall. When I really got rolling with the story, I found it next to impossible not to love these characters, even with all their flaws. The story managed to get more exciting as it progressed, and all the little annoyances I had with the series (with the exception of DLC) have been polished to a mirror shine or removed completely.

When I finished the campaign story and some of the additional chapters, all I really had left to do was grind my characters beat some extra stages before I could fight Baal. I had other new games to play that I wanted to get to. But I didn't. I continued to grind my way to start boosting my characters, started going through the process of making my godlike characters to stand against Baal. I had to force myself to put it down so I could continue my other games.

It's been a long time since I wanted to just sit and grind with a Disgaea game. Probably not since the first, and that says a lot about how much I enjoyed this one. I felt that Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten was a return to form for this series, and I feel that Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance has some serious potential to be the best in the series. Highly, HIGHLY recommended.

This game makes me want eat curry, plip.