Disgaea 4: 20+ Hour Final Checkpoint

Having completed a couple romps through Item World, I decided it was time to continue the main story for a few more chapters. With my powered up characters the story progressed without to much difficulty, the increased power of my characters, and their now upgraded equipment brought the difficulty of the fights back down to a fairly easy level.

Chapter 3: The Story Starts to Solidify
With the introduction of the three main protagonists complete the story starts to move forward. In Disgaea fashion the plot to overthrow the current overlord starts in earnest, and character motivations start to come into focus. The motivations for overthrow are introduced in this chapter, and have a humorously dark twist to them, which emphasizes the setting. The last battle of this Chapter gains another character for your party as well, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite characters in this iteration of Disgaea. The earlier Item World grind paid off, as the last Stage of this chapter requires that you have an item leveled up to 10 from the Item World.

Chapter 4: The End of the Beginning?
This Chapter seems to draw the intro to a close, and starts the main story in earnest. A couple more reveals are made, and each of the story characters have some character building time. With the pieces now in place it feels like the main story is about to begin in earnest.

Closing Thoughts and Overall Opinion:
Having reached the 20 hour checkpoint it's time to give the summary review.

The gameplay seems much improved over previous Disgaea games, with several new additional elements to the game. The online community elements add a sense of scope, and also an element of competition to those so inclined. Item World feels less like a chore with the new events and decisions being made, though make no mistake it's still a bit of a grind. The Cam-Pain map is a brilliant addition, and gives you an extra degree of planning.  

While the story started out slow, Chapter 3 and 4 greatly improved my opinion of the characters, and have introduce a couple more cast members. The increased party interaction seems to greatly improve the story, since it gives you a better view into all of the characters personalities. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing where the story goes from here.

My overall opinion is that this is an excellent addition to the Disgaea franchise. While the series is most certainly not for everyone, I would definitely recommend it for anyone that likes other NISA titles, or those that enjoy other Tactical RPGs like FF: Tactics or Tactical Ogre.  

Disgaea 4: 10 Hour Checkpoint

Item World, where freetime goes to die.

 
Having finished Chapter 2 of the plot at the end of the 5 hour checkpoint i decided it was time to dive into the Item World element of Disgaea 4. However, to describe my opinion of Item World I have to explain how it has changed from previous iterations and discuss the mechanical side of Disgaea games.

Item World Basics:
Item World itself is a side-area of the game used to improve your items. This is accomplished by working your way through a random dungeon associated with the item you want to improve. After completing 10 floors of one of these dungeons you are given an opportunity to leave, alternatively there is a special item that can be used to leave the Item World early. You can also enter the same Item World several times, picking up on the floor you previously stopped at. 

Item World and Leveling:
Item Worlds act as an optimal place for leveling. Each item has an initial experience level for its monsters, and each floor you clear leads to progressively tougher enemies worth even more experience. While you can gain experience by replaying Story missions, it is often far less efficient than attempting an Item World of an appropriate starting level.
Additionally, completing floors in Item World increases the stats of an item, and allows you to create items vastly superior to those that will be readily available from the item shops.

Item World Layout:
One of the major features of Item World, which goes back to the original Disgaea, is the use of complex random maps. It's not unusual to get a highly diverse mixture of monsters and condition panels that make each floor unique and interesting. This new version also adds a branching paths map and known event locations which makes Item World feel more interactive, and provides additional motivation to go 'one more floor.'

New Features:
I was pleasantly surprised by  the number of new features that have been added to Item World. A Mini-Map displaying event location gives you guidance, which can help inform what path you take through Item World. Item World suddenly feels a lot less like grinding down a tower, and more trying to maneuver toward events you want. 

The choice of paths is a new addition to Item World and has the effect of either making the individual item better, or making the stat improving residents better. The advantage of improving the residents is that they can then be transferred to other items, so the branching paths make you chose between short term power or long term improvement.

Another new feature added to Item World is Player generated Pirate Crews, a potentially very difficult but interesting random encounter compared to the previously fixed Pirate Crew encounters. Disgaea 4 has added a number of network features to this newest iteration of the Disgaea series, with the ability to create your own Council Senators and Pirates to gum up the online works and make the game feel like more of a community of players.

There are several other additions to Item World as well such as Leveling Spheres and special event platforms, all of which seem to help break up the monotony that Item World can sometimes have. 

WTF Moments:

Is that Pirate riding a spinning space turtle?!?

Closing Thoughts:

Having spent almost this entire checkpoint in Item World and the Cam-Pain map, I now have an appreciation for the new features of Disgaea 4. While the Story hasn't completely sold me yet, the improvements to Item World and the creation of the Cam-Pain map features, as well as the addition of several new online features, have sold me on this latest addition to the Disgaea series. I'm impressed with their taking the Item World mechanics, that have been more or less the same between all the iterations of the Disgaea family of games, and improved it noticeably.

Next time, the twenty hour checkpoint. Advancing the Story, and the lure of side-quests.