Wednesday 25 November 2015

Review: Disgaea 4

Disgaea returns with a new bunch of demons on a quest to save the reputation of the lowly Prinnies...? Dood what? So we enter another parallel Neverworld this time inhabiting Valvatorez the great. Or so we're told. Loyal fans to the series will see this as the 4th available on PS3 and PS Vita. We are greeted with a new set of classes, options and cast of demons.

The story gripped me at once, a hero who respects Prinnies? What's going on here, is he soft in the head. Apparently Valvatorez or Lord Val as most call him is banished to be a Pruinny Instructor. A totaly underdog of the demon world but with a past of once greatness. This greatness has been long forgotten since he stopped drinking blood due to a promise. A promise made to a human which in fact drained him of most of his powers. He is now stuck in a shrimpy body and obsessed with sardines which he feasts on instead of blood.

Alongside the law abiding Lord Val we have his loyal servent Fenrich who is pretty mean and bad ass, did I mention he was a werewolf too? Twilight resonances are appearing to me but nope there is no glitter just relentless trolling and beats. Whilst the Prinnies are slandered to be the cause of the receding death rates to Celestia and the Netherworld, the pair go on a journey and come across a great rag tag bunch. One of my least favorite recurring characters holds a lead role in this game, Emiziel. The president of the Netherworld's son, a right 'rascal' and pain in the butt. After much leveling you realise he has the second best magic in the game. The best magic is owned by Desco a big boss who gets whooped by the team and strives to over throw the couruptment to become the ultimate big boss. Also tentacles.

The game cleverly adds hints into the conversations on how to improve your characters like 'chara world' this was an interesting touch but I very quickly lost interest. For you see instead of the 'item world' concept where you clear out all the enemies, in char world you are surrounded by geo cubes that you must destroy to obtain the level ups and character bonuses. This takes a VERY LONG time to do. I found it was really worth while to do for the mages to unlock great spells and evilities. Otherwise it's a very tedious procedure for every character.

Within the stats demon, you can see what you have achieved ie. what percentage of rare items you collected, enemies killed, levels reincarnated (for Lord Val) which is handy for unlocking all the ending and through that you do get the indication of a hidden ending. *Squuueee* sorry ignore my inner fan girl. You can also re watch scenes and art from the game which is for the hardcore fans.

They also bring up the option of opening the 'Cave of Ordeals' early in the game for you to hideously fail at but aspire to play maybe in your third or fourth gameplay (no really it's pretty hard).

Basically you need to play this game becuase of tentacles. Nah just kidding, as much as I love the odd mix of characters, there is so much more to offer from the game. A great addition of extra levels so you can do endless grinding in different settings. Also there are a lot of cameos from a favourite past characters from the series including everyone's favourite fallen angel Flonne. If you like the Prinnies, you get a lot of interaction and conversations and well what can I say the characters like to ship each other which makes all otaku's happy. Fenich and Lord Val FTW. A JRPG fan's must play game.

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