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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Aisha Anime ^_^

Review: Disgaea 5

Since it first arrived in 2003, the Disgaea series has established itself as a challenging and rewarding tactical role-playing game series with almost infinite replay value in it’s extra dungeons and enemies, making it a rare gem to play. Since then, the series has grown with new iterations across the PS2 and PS3, and more recently, remakes of the games for portable devices like the DS (Disgaea 1), PSP (Disgaea 1 & 2) and PS Vita (Disgaea 3 & 4).

Personally I believe the handheld porting was an excellent route for the Disgaea series due to the never ending grinding, I love the grinding, but this can be tedious when you die in the item world and lose all your progress, so why not have a quick stint on your commute to work?

The first characters we meet are Seraphina, the Overlord of her home netherworld, Gorgeous, and the mysterious wandering demon Killia, whom she finds in her path devouring a rare ramen dish as she’s about to be attacked by the enemy army. If you've played Disgaea before, you probably know that food is an important factor in the game to heal HP/TP.

So apart from Sera's obvious fan service we do get a lot of comedy from her arch enemy the Reg Magnus who turns out to be a big brute with a heart of gold, she just doesn't like to wash his pants.

The full review  is on Parallax Play. But I wanted to add some more points whilst I continue to play this game.

UPDATE

I thought I'd mention the changes in interrogation - in Disgaea 4 you would gain prisoners by throwing enemies into your base panel then speak with the Beast woman at your base. So I didn't use this feature much. In Disgaea 5 you have demons surrendering automatically so I ended up using the feature quite a bit. This time you speak to the blonde professor lady in your base and she gives you a list of prisoners with their gauges showing how much hostility they have against you. If they have none you can make them citizens straight away.

If they harbour a lot of 'Revenge' best to beat it out of them, though you have to figure out whether it's through beating, specials or starvation.

Fusion  is much more handy in the game where if you have an army of prinnies you can fuse to make a stronger character on the battle field similar to Reg Magus using his overkill to grow large.

For more news on anime, cosplay, games and Japanese culture follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Aisha Anime ^_^