Woofels   11 November 2011

The Disgaea series has made a name for itself as the king of Strategy RPG's with it's deep battle systems, whacky characters, lovable stories and all around insanity and the fourth installment in the series delivers on all these things in abundance!

Setting

Again taking place in the Nether world this time however it has a strong political and thus slightly more mature feel. The Nether World is slowly loosing power due to humans no longer being afraid of demons and instead being more frightened by other human beings, you take on the roll of a group of rebels who go against the Netherworld Government (The Corruptement) and overthrow it so that you may restore the Netherworld is it's former glory.

..........

The game still has it's usual bad is good in the netherworld feel, but again as usual it turns out the Demons are not all as evil as they're made out to be.

Story

The main lead in the game is the ex-tyrant Valvetorez who is a vampire that has lost his powers due to a promise he made with a human girl over 400 years ago. With the lose of his powers in dropped in rank and has become a Prinny Instructor in Hades.

The job of a Prinny Instructor is to raise and instruct the Prinny's on how to behavior and obtain salvation in the Netherworld through hard work. One day how ever when The Corruptment send a squad of goons to exterminate all his Prinny's he goes on a mission to stop them along with his loyal servant Fenrich.

Characters

The original Disgaea trio of Leharl, Etna & Flonne has been unbeatable since the series 2003 debut but the cast of Disgaea 4 gives them a serious run for their money.

Every character in the cast from your party members to villains comes to life in this, they are all rich with quirks and the comment that fly between the cast they gel unbelievably well together.

Graphics and Sound

This is what people will notice first, the HD sprites and the smooth movement of the character cut out's during the story board scenes. You can now actually see expression on the sprites face as well as details, all the colors of visually very bright and pop and give the world a rich feeling.

The sound track as always has those tunes you will be tapping your foot along with, right down to the ones that make you feel creepy but nothing really stuck in my mind sound track wise.

The story board sequences are lovely to look at with cut-outs now moving into position and animated gives a far better feeling with the story.

Gameplay

Disgaea 4 pushes the tried and tested method of the last 3 games further and improves on every aspect. The most noticeable change to fans will be the new Evilty landmarks and the new Map based HQ.

Each time you beat a stage in Disgaea 4 it unlocks a black on the map, here you will place characters you want to use aswell as the Evilty landmarks. What these basically do is give area's of the map effects e.g

Training Ground - Each member will each 50% of the exp of a party member.

Meaning each time one of the 4 members of training ground defeat an enemy you the other 3 get 50% of that exp. It's a great system that saves alot of time and grinding overall making it a more pleasurable experience.

Geo Puzzles play an even bigger role in this one than every before with almost every stage involving some sort of geo puzzle to it, but most of it is unsolvable and really there to cause effects on the map.

Item world is still here aswell as the Returning of Charaworld which you now need to use to learn skills (no more master pupil system).

Post Game

As always Disgaea really opens up post game, with a whole bunch of extra missions which will give you characters from previous games, and then all the challange matches such as Land of Carnage. The amount of play time post game is ridiculous.

Network Features

You get a custom map editor which lets you make you own stages (pretty cool) and play other peoples stages, it is fairly robust but the NA & EU version's were nerfed a-little.

The most fun though is probably creating your pirate ship with parts you pick up, these pirates are then sent into other peoples games and act depending on what instructions you gave them, help or destroy the other players.

Overall there is some fun to be had here but the primary part of the game is still in single player.

Conclusion

Disgaea 4 overall is probably the best game this series has to offer, it's a great starting place for new comers as it explains everything in detail and is easier than the previous games, veterans though will find plenty of challenges in post game.

To get the most out of this game though you have to be willing to put the time in, it's about a 40 - 50 hour journey for the story but post game can easily take another 20 - 30 and to get everything in the game? you will be playing for a few hundred hours plus.

Disgaea 4 is a game that has immense replay value, a wicked sense of humor and alot to offer, if your a fan of either Anime, Strategy RPGS or a grind fest you will find endless hours of fun with Disgaea 4.