Disgaea 5 Announced (PS3)

[Friendly]

http://www.siliconera.com/2012/07/01/ye ... 5-one-day/

[Vexorg]

I've put more hours into this series than I care to count, but at this point I'm really not sure if I'm up for another another 200-hour grindfest.

[Op Intensify]

Wow, this series is officially milked to death.

They'd better at least draw a full set of new sprites this time. Too many of D4's sprites were just hi-res traces of the old ones.

Remember on the PS2 when Nippon Ichi never did sequels (aside from Disgaea 2), and every one of their games played radically different?

[DragonInstall]

This series lost it's charm after the first game.

I barely finished the second, and threw in the towel on the 3rd game.

[Teufel_in_Blau]

Oh, that is a little bit hard, DragonInstall.

The second one was by far better balanced. Healer needing to fight to level up was a very stupid design decision in the first one. While I agree that D1 had more fun characters, the whole battle system felt just so much better. Also I love to grind in the Item world with my gigantic monster chicken and trying out all kinds of crazy combos. =D

But I can understand that some people loosing interest in the series after playing one or two games. Disgaea is definitely an acquired taste.

[Op Intensify]

but at this point I'm really not sure if I'm up for another another 200-hour grindfest.

It shouldn't take you much longer than 30 hours to clear the main story of a Disgaea. They only turn into a massive timesink if you get into the postgame and grind for the strongest characters/items/abilities. You don't need to bother with that stuff if you're not truly committed and/or insane.

What I want to see from a Disgaea 5:

- Gridless movement. It's why Phantom Brave and Makai Kingdom are my favorite games from the company. It would be hard to integrate it with Geo objects, but I'm sure they could think of something. Bringing back vehicles and buildings wouldn't hurt either.

- Flawlessly integrated online multiplayer and custom map creation. I don't want map sharing taken out of the US version because of NISA's laziness, either.

- A Makai Kingdom-like setup where you have no playable story characters, which forces you to actually put thought into creating and building your party. In Disgaea 1 you almost didn't need anyone other than Laharl/Etna/Flonne for the main story, they were so powerful from the get-go and inevitably hoarded all the experience.

- Enemy AI that goes for deeper tactics than "blindly rush at party, regardless of HP or numbers." Create battle setups that are impossible to brute force your way through. D4 had these, but they were limited to the postgame X-Dimension missions.

- Make defense actually mean something. Disgaea 1 already favored OHKO skills. By D3, defensive equipment and ailments were all but meaningless. I don't want everything to die in 1 hit.

- Either draw a full set of completely new HD sprites, or go with 3D characters already. I also want environments that look better than PS1 quality.

- No Prinnies. I never want to see another exploding penguin or hear "DOOD" ever again, thank you. Make a new wacky mascot character.

[DragonInstall]

The second one was by far better balanced. Healer needing to fight to level up was a very stupid design decision in the first one. While I agree that D1 had more fun characters, the whole battle system felt just so much better. Also I love to grind in the Item world with my gigantic monster chicken and trying out all kinds of crazy combos. =D

But I can understand that some people loosing interest in the series after playing one or two games. Disgaea is definitely an acquired taste.

Yeah D2 was more refined, but overall the game felt too familiar.

D3 just felt like garbage too me. I guess I was expecting something new since it was a ps3 game. I was really wrong... a $ milk game imo.

[Op Intensify]

Disgaea 3 was originally planned as a PS2 game, they only moved it to the PS3 because Sony gave them moneyhats to support their then-ailing new $599 console.

They even considered releasing a PS2 version after that in response to low sales.

NIS was in danger of going under before Disgaea 4, and said that game would decide the future of the company. I guess it sold well enough to rescue them.

The thread title's inaccurate. They didn't actually say that Disgaea 5 will be for PS3, though it is highly likely.

[Teufel_in_Blau]

@Op Intensify

I don't agree with the Prinny part. Prinnies are adorable. I always have one or two Prinnies in my team.

I'm not sure if I should agree or disagree with the AI part. Disgaea was and is more of a turn-based survival puzzle game and less of a strategy game. A strategy game where the AI is a huge part of the fun are games like Advance Wars or Europa Universalis III.

The Item world is the actual meat of the game and the story part is more of a long preparation for it or for people who prefer to play their games for the story (nothing wrong with that, some people watch porn for the story and I'm certainly not the kind of guy who put judgement on other peoples preferences). Before going to the Item world you choose your team, put on the weapons and items you want to use (don't forget Gency's Exit) and start. While being in the Item world you trying to figure out how to make it to the top and every new room is some sort of a puzzle for itself that you can try to figure out. It is very satisfying to put out some crazy combos or flee with your last almost dead character to the next room. I don't care for the max level stuff, in fact I can't even tell you what level my characters are atm.

The joy lies in the feeling that you are getting from executing such tasks and you feel more intelligent than you actually are after that. It's the same with the bullet hells, they make you look and feel better than you actually are because of the tiny hitbox. A "good" AI would destroy this game. Every time when I play Advance Wars it reminds me how stupid I really am. I don't want to get such feelings from Disgaea.

But I can see where it would make sense: in the story mode. For people who prefer to think more tightly and play it basically like chess with lolis.

[Vexorg]

The whole OHKO mechanic is kind of a pain to deal with, but it seems to be pretty much what's expected these days. DEF and RES stats are completely meaningless in the postgame since the only way you're surviving anything past a certain point is to dodge it. Then again, when the whole point of the postgame seems to be to become ridiculously overleveled, that's kind of what's expected.

And even in D4 there really isn't a good way to level up a healer besides having it gain residual XP from another character (but then again, in D4 I just ended up just having Artina learn the heal spells and used that instead, it's a lot easier in the long run.) The problem is even worse with thieves, which are mandatory to steal rank 40 items from item gods, but really pretty weak on their own.

As a whole, I do think D3 was the weakest entry in the series, and I never even finished story mode on that one. D1 had the best story, but it's hard to go back and play it these days with all the refinements added by the newer ones. D2 is probably the one I spent the most time on, but half the characters just annoyed me (Axel in particular.)

[Op Intensify]

I liked the Prinnies in D1, but they totally drove the joke into the ground to the point where it was just annoying. They really didn't need two of their own games...if they wanted to do a platformer spinoff, why not just have you play as Laharl or Etna? They'd have a wider variety of moves.

Disgaea's randomized Item World antics grow tiresome very quickly, and can't compare to a good proper roguelike. It gets incredibly annoying when you're looking for a specific item drop and have to keep exiting and re-entering in hopes that the desired enemy shows up. I'd rather the games be centered around a tightly designed, concise story campaign. Expand on the sort of missions they tried with D4's X-Dimension, large-scale puzzle battles that fully exploit the Geo Block and lift/throw mechanics, without a lot of wiggle room for mistakes. Chess with lolis, if you will. It certainly wouldn't hurt the series to be more respectful of one's time.

Wonder if Sony will moneyhat the game into being a Vita exclusive like with D3. It would suit the platform quite well; the problem is that no one owns one.

[Vexorg]

Aside from a Disgaea port on the DS, a Phantom Brave port on the Wii and an Android version of Disgaea that appears unlikely to make it out of Japan anytime soon, Nippon Ichi seems to be content to just stick to Sony platforms. Admittedly, the Disgaea games seem a lot better suited to portables than to home consoles, but I think a far more likely (read: not entirely impossible) scenario would be a simultaneous release on PS3 and Vita with linked saves. That seems to be the direction Sony wants to take things in.

I doubt they could remove the Prinnies from the game without excessive backlash, but they do seem a bit overdone at this point.

[Op Intensify]

and an Android version of Disgaea

That's not actually a port of Disgaea, it's a very barebones original game that uses D1's graphics.

Having Prinnies as units is fine. They serve their purpose well as mobile bombs with the ability to attack. But keep them out of the story scenes.

[Op Intensify]

The infamous Ulillillia has some videos of him breaking Disgaea 2 over his knee.

There really is no better game for a math savant.

[cj iwakura]

The games never lose their charm, and I think they do a good job of keeping each version fresh.


That said, 2 was my favorite, especially the story.