Disgaea 4 Review

Few franchises do as good a job of sending up gaming conventions as Disgaea. Since Laharl derided the series’ first major antagonist and renamed him Mid-Boss, the grid-based Netherworld has been packed with sly jabs at common tropes, unexpected outbursts of creative vulgarity, frequent disregard for the fourth wall and even referential pops at Disgaea’s own trappings as a strategy game.

But Nippon Ichi’s ambidextrous approach to game design always shines through. While it prods and pokes with one hand, it builds with the other – this is a series where one added feature can lead to hundreds of extra hours of gameplay, and between this and the ever-improving core mechanics, there’s a serious case to be made that Disgaea has never been better.

That being said though, there’s an equally valid argument that newcomers to the series have never had a more daunting uphill struggle ahead of them.

While it’s true that Disgaea’s open-plan approach means most challenges can be overcome by banging your head on the Grinding Wall for hours on end, the extent to which features outside of story battles and the repetition thereof can be used in improving your party is never really given the thorough explanation it could use.

Novices will likely burn hours in the Item World only to find their improved gear is outclassed by rewards, drops and shop stock just a few levels later; reincarnation to each slight class upgrade may seem like the way to go, but the benefits at low levels make it largely a waste of time; less inquisitive types may never even find many of the character classes or the useful Chara World.

Newcomers might run the risk of drowning in this sea of possibilities but with so much to think about, even veterans will struggle to juggle the various tenets of party management efficiently from time to time.

The new political setting also gives rise to the Cam-Pain HQ, the natural evolution of all the senate meetings and character creation options seen in previous games.

The Cam-Pain HQ is by far the most confusing element of the game.

The grid-based layout expands as you complete story maps and both characters and developed structures can be placed about it for various effects – one building allows units placed in its catchment area to contribute extra attacks to combos, others can help less powerful characters gain experience or Mana without even participating in battles while another lets you kidnap and torture enemy units.

Particularly early on when grid space is limited, balancing this can be extremely tough, and that’s before you even approach the Senate with ideas on beefing up your arsenal or unlocking new options. 

The whole voting process is just one of many features made all the more interesting by the addition of passive online functionality and while there’s still no direct competitive multiplayer, there are plenty of opportunities to benefit and learn from others or just to subject them to proxy punishment.

Foreign Ministers can be appointed and will appear in other players’ Senate hearing at random, which really changes the game – with various actions and attitudes they can perform as your representative, these cameos can turn a sure thing into an legislative nightmare and vice versa.

Similarly, a Defense Minister can fill the same role in battle, an emergency phone item used to summon an ally belonging to someone else on the network that could be anything from a level 9,999 superninja to a level 1 Prinny.

This connectivity also makes the Item World even more treacherous, the AI pirate crews that randomly invade as you descend into the dungeon hidden within your favourite gear joined here by the crews of other aspiring tyrants and upon repelling your first crew, you’ll have the option to send out your own ship to sail around the PlayStation Network in search of riches.

Elsewhere, it’s business as usual as Nippon Ichi delivers its house special one more time – a blend of impossibly large numbers, generally amusing dialogue and some of the tightest SRPG action money can buy.

Geo tile set-ups often mean you have to adjust your strategy.

Geo Panels and Geo Blocks offer the best twist on the action, often turning battle maps into complex puzzles; while it’s not usually mandatory to clear the map in the way the designers intended, doing so will generally earn you a pretty healthy advantage.

These colourful opponents are daunting enough when meticulously laid out and guaranteed to have a solution, so in the Item World – where the layout and appearance of Geo elements can lead to battling overwhelming odds or even impossible tasks, if you’re extremely unfortunate and/or too slow to do anything about it – they’re a constant reminder that even with a party of Level Stupid beefcakes, you’re never safe.

It feels weird to think of everything that goes on after the main story wraps as the ‘post-game’ – having only flirted with three-digit levels and four-figure stats before the credits roll, those thousands of levels waiting to be gained and the wealth of extra missions to get absolutely ruined by mean it’s probably more accurate to refer to everything that goes on before the staff roll as the pre-game.

The amusing banter and clever map design make it worth seeing through even for the most casual SRPG players but the hardcore, even after pouring hundreds of hours into the additional content, will likely struggle to recount a single event from the narrative. And it won’t matter.

After all, you’ll still have a near-summitless numerical mountain to climb, an entire armoury’s worth of equipment to level far beyond the bounds of reason and a whole world of marauding pirates to put in their place.