Review: Disgaea 4 (PS3)

Disgaea…the name brings up horror stories from my friends telling me about this series that will eat your soul and steal all your time away from you. I never believed them, thinking they were over exaggerating the extent and vast amounts of battles within the game. Up until a few weeks ago, I never played a Disgaea game. Starting with 4 was a challenge in and of itself to be honest. Weirdly seeing as this is my first Disgaea I did not have much to say about it that is bad, and I truly take this as a rarity and a sign that from an outsider this game series is great and rather accessible. (Well, my PS3 controller taking a swan dive on me was about the only bad thing I can think of about this game.)

The story is hilarious. You must save the prinnies from genocide since they are causing pollution in the netherworld. It makes for this funny and witty story during battles where the characters talk about motives and sardines (you don’t want to know). The story itself has many odd twists and turns in it and can at times make weird jumps within the plot that can leave you dazed and confused, but that kind of whimsical and nonsensical humor and story help make the entire game a fun and memorable experience from a storyline perspective. The characters alone within the story help make it fun. Just watch the interaction with the protagonist, Valvatorez and your loyal sidekick, Fenrich. The two of them really stand out for the dialogue their voice actors deliver. They give so much feeling and effort within those lines it makes what they are saying believable and less ridiculous than it really should be. You even at times will get a special ending if you lose one of your missions. This adds a little flair to a frustrating defeat and takes some of the pain away by rewarding you even if you lose. The game itself has many different endings that give it many different layers of replay value, so no need to fret about only completing the game once and being done with it.

The graphics are very stylized and when it comes up to the cutscenes for the most part it feels like it should be a anime more than a video game, with the flowing movements and the way the dialogue is delivered. The 2d isometric grid view sticks around, even when not in the battle system. It helps to keep from breaking the pace or tone of the game and instead helps build up the world more so than if it was simply going from battle to battle. With these graphics, though, it feels more like a handheld game than a game that would be on a console. This can at times detract from the game itself a slight bit, but not enough for the game to be any less enjoyable for the player. When walking around at times you feel like the sprites could pop more than they already do, like there is a small thing missing from the pixels that contain the characters. It might be that the way they move does not translate the personalities the characters themselves possess or it might even just be trying to find faults within a game where there are really none at all.

At times the game feels like it is just taking its time with battles, whether it feels like one of the battles is running for one too many turns or that the game is just kicking your ass in completely. At times the curve in difficulty gets ridiculous. For example, in one mission you are breezing through, then in the next you are having the toughest fight in the game and find yourself unable to beat it without spending 8 hours grinding up experience to just progress the story. Then you get this complex block system that you can use to create massive combos against the enemies. After attacking one of these different colored blocks you can create a chain of combos that will cause damage to anything on one of the colored squares that corresponds with one of the colored blocks that you attack. To go along with this combo system you can string attacks together from any character you are standing next to. Another odd and fun little system is the ability to turn an ally like a prinny into a gun or even a spear to use in combat. With this you can create many different strategies and take a useless ally and turn them into something useful and grand. On top of this you are able to go into your weapons and clear through a certain amount of levels to unlock each weapons true potential causing a simple sardine or sword to turn into an amazing demon slaying weapon from the heavens.

On top of the combat system you get this whole other system where you have to bribe senators to get certain legislation passed in order to get upgraded weapons to use or upgraded armor for your characters to use. There are other little things you can get the senate to vote on, but I’d rather not give that away and prefer to let you sit down and enjoy the intricacies that are held within that little system yourself.

After sitting down with Disgaea 4 I fell in love with the system of what it is. From the weird political storyline and system that has been installed within it to the oddball characters with Napoleon complexes, it just makes it so enjoyable and like the world is truly coming alive. Is it flawed? Yes, the game’s difficulty curve takes a steep and sudden turn that forces you to adapt quickly or lose the game and have to restart that mission. Is it still fun and funny and entertaining to play with these flaws? Yes, it is. If you are looking for a hard hitting, time sinking game pick up a copy of Disgaea 4 and enjoy yourself.