Friday, July 22, 2011

Preview: Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten



Japanese RPGs are known to require a large amount of "grinding" to reach the maximum level in game, leading to towering stats and effortless final boss battles. And then there's Disgaea.

Developed by Nippon Ichi Software, Disgaea is a series of tactical RPG games in which the player controls a party of characters and battles on a grid-like field, similar to games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Advance Wars. Yet, what makes this series recognizable is its approach to this familiar idea of grinding. Disgaea blows this commonality out of proportion, where characters can grow to level 9999 and damage can exceed a billion.

Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten follows the story of former vampire Valvatorez and his mission to dethrone the government of the Underworld, earning his place as the new Overlord. He recruits multiple members to his party throughout this quest, all of whom have their own unique personalities and methods of attack.

Disgaea 4 features several classes that found in many JRPGs, such as the warrior, mage, and ninja. Yet, original classes are also introduced, incuding the Masked Hero and Beast Master. Disgaea 4's enemies follow this trend, where familiar beasts such as dragons, orcs, and slimes can be spotted, alongside extravagant monsters like Prinnies, Alraune, and Cockatrices.

Disgaea 4's gameplay, of course, is what truly shines. Following a similar fashion to that of Final Fantasy Tactics, characters move once per turn on a square, grid map based on their speed and attack stats. Yet, Disgaea 4 brings a slew of unique properties and concepts to the genre. The Magichange system, for instance, allows players to "fuse" monsters on their team into a "Mega Monster," a significantly more powerful version of a normal monster. Additionally, this creation can be combined with a humanoid character, giving the character a "Mega Weapon" with properties that a normal weapon cannot possess. This result can be applied to an individual character twice, allowing for dual-wielding capabilities, which gives the character the ability to attack twice within one turn.

Disgaea 4 also introduces the Punishment System, which allows characters to propel enemies into the base area of the field and convert them into allies using the Coaching Classroom. It is possible to physically stack party members on top of each other, initiating a "Tower Attack," a familiar attack in the series. The Tower Attack throws enemies at increasingly higher levels with every character attacking the enemy at each level in the process. This attack continues until the predetermined height is eventually reached.

Disgaea 4 includes online support, allowing players to barge into each others' games via pirate ship. Players will be matched according to overall party size and rank, so a player that is level 4782, for example, cannot be matched with a player whose party is only level 1357 under any circumstance. Similar to Demon's Souls, the player can either aid the host in battle, or directly attack him, initiating a player-versus-player type of combat. Additionally, Disgaea 4 features a map creation tool that can be utilized to create and share custom maps through the game's online interface.

Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten is will be released on September 6 in North America on the Playstation 3. The European release will follow sometime in Q3 2011.

Short Version: Disgaea is a relatively insane take on the JRPG genre, bringing a chaotic battle system, a slew of new features, and a whole bunch of attitude along for the ride.

1 comment:

  1. Im just blown away by this... and by "lvl 9999..." wow....

    Also not sure if the trailler was serious or not but i liked it!

    Lkcyn

    ReplyDelete