Well, I’ll buy it regardless, most likely. But if I have problems with the amount of time between saves, I’ll probably not play much, which would be a pity.
That’s Mr.Gency Exit to you.
(I keep forgetting to use it. This item is scarce in the beginning, but it can be farmed once you play more.)
I play my turn based games slower than most people on TWITCH, so even (later) regular story levels can be 1+ hour affair. There are options in this game to speed up all kinds of things (spell animation, movements, etc) so once you know what you’re doing, the game becomes really fast.
Much love for Disgaea. Looking forward to it.
Cool post on Steam about how they’re handling graphic updates: http://steamcommunity.com/games/405900/announcements/detail/75795020937989014
In short, you can choose between old/new graphics, and even mix/match (so use new graphics for tiles/terrain, and old for characters/UI, etc).
I love Disagaea like a parent loves their child, but I honestly think it would be challenging to go back to the first. We’ve got a pile of sequels that have layered on and refined the mechanics immensely. The current product (Disgaea 5) is a much better game, even if the story doesn’t grab me like the first one did.
The first game lacked tower attacks. That would hit me the hardest. I’m pretty sure there was no mechanism for elevating the aptitudes of the named characters, so once you unlock the Majin class, there’s no reason to have anything but, with the exception of a thief for stealing equipment. The mentor/pupil relationships never made any sense. Evilities, added in D4, add magnificent depth to the strategic combat and roster composition. The highest challenge in D1 requires much less power leveling than the series is known for.
If I bought the game, it would be the 4th time I have done so – so it will probably happen! But I doubt I’ll actually play it when I have Disgaea 5 waiting for me.
Just out of curiosity, what is the LAST platform you would expect ？
I saw some side by side comparisons and the old characters look better, but the new UI looks better. So if I can do that, I will.
I am, however, a bit worried about going back to the first game. I found it had the lamest early power leveling map (or maybe I should say “the one that took the most effort to get going”). I can’t recall why but I swear making towers was more complicated (I think it’s because in all subsequent games you just move a character on top of another character to form the base tower, and only need to have the tower “pick up” the person on top who needs to be able to move). Or you couldn’t make towers at all, and you just had to set up networks of people to throw runners at exits? Man it’s been awhile.
Baren, regarding named character aptitude that’s my memory. They’re essentially frozen in place and inferior to Majin (and frankly Ninjas), when it comes to the crazy power gaming. The series really does get better mechanically as it goes. I probably would wind up missing a lot of that stuff. I also haven’t played Disgaea 5 so I ordered it.
Conundrum!
I don’t know, I just really really love Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy!
Psych! Last Platform:
XBox. Even though xboxen get some pretty niche-y Japanese titles, this series lives in Sony-space.
IIRC peacedog is right; in the first Disgaea, to form a tower, you have to position the characters in a line on the ground first (can be a winding line), then pick up characters at the top first and go downwards. And towers cannot move. I’m not even sure it can attack.
The first powerlevelling level is in chapter 5, I think. It’s a little bit of a grind to get there.
5-3. It’s the level where every space is covered by an invincibility geo symbol except one. The monsters are all positioned at pathway crossroads. You can throw monsters into each other to level them of course, but you have to spend time tossing things into the killable space and it’s a lot of work to toss things around… There’s no risk - because invincible - but it’s a hassle to set up. Compare to the awesome leveling level in I forget 3 or 4. You needed to move 2-3 guys out of the base to toss Geo Blocks onto the right colors (since all the enemies are bunched on those colors, iirc it’s bonus experience and something else) and then send the leveler out to kill everyone while moving everyone back into base on turn 2. It only took a couple of tries before the leveler could use Blackhole or whatever that amazing 3x3 glove skill was to quickly one shot entire groups, and then you’re just burning through the map on repeated tries.
That was another way that Disgaea lagged behind later games. Laharl used swords. Sure he could switch over to something else later but he was getting special story character abilities that were sword only IIRC. The mains in several subsequent games, in addition to the improved mechanics, used glove weapons and so were speedy/dodgier which was much better, not to mention awesome glove skills.
And I think you’re right about how to form towers. It was so ungainly. Not sure I can stand it after playing 2-4. And with 5 on the way. I do wish we could get more Disgaea games on PC though.
I’ve played D3, D4, D5 and whichever was on the PSP/DS
I’m excited for this but I’m not sure I could play without the quality of life improvements in D5
Towers can even move, you can undo towers if you mess up.
You can reposition any character before actually taking an action (skill or attack)
You can quit back to your home base, in effect rolling back to before you entered the dungeon
There’s very few actual game over situations. No longer do you need to obsessively save
Item world: no item level limit, so you don’t need to min max every board. No reverse pirating.
Super turbo mode to speed up all animations.
Reposition characters on your list - lots of options to save you clicks and movement while you do your grinding.
Last item, item world is very easy - it’s mostly flat, not made out of geo blocks like it used to be (or was that chara world?) There’s very few puzzles with geo blocks and panel effects. Remember before there seemed to be deathblow, reverse damage spaces very often.
It may make D5 feel too easy. But I’m also lazy. I’m conflicted.
Disgaea is so brilliant. I’m sure it’s of less concern to us grizzled old men for whom there is only war, but I honestly enjoy the hell out of the tone of the games. It’s very much that quirky anime school type thing, but clearly written by adults for adults. Frequently hilarious, but with just enough pathos to ground it in reality.
Dammit. Now I want to go play Disgaea.
Blocks was Character world and then just story levels (see rhamorim, they even added character worlds! That’s Disgaea for you).
Regarding deathblow/reverse damage/etc, is it you just see them less often? While occasionally frustrating, I did quite like puzzling out how to handle floors, and I liked how often you encountered them (another great one was the guy who grew the color he was sitting on so that it eventually took over the level. Made for difficult decisions in some cases).
I never minded the elevation, because in the later games you were so ninja/monk focused that everyone could hop around like mad. Though I recall some times in 1 or maybe 2 that you had to throw people up to an exit.
I’m very surprised to hear the item world in 5 is easier. I hope I am not disappointed. Also I had forgotten that maybe the “undo moves” thing changed over the course of the series. That would be another thing where it would be too hard to go back from “cancel moves before someone commits an action”).
I’m reading everything. With Disgaea PC and XCOM 2, February 2016 will be a busy month for me gaming-wise.
Keep in mind that what we just talked about is not in the original nor apparently the PSP remake.
Canceled movement was a feature of D1. The bit that’s different in D5 is that you can move freely within your original radius after a move without canceling, up until you perform your action. It’s equivalent functionality, but feels a mite smoother now.
How’s the story in D5? I thought 1 was great, 3 was good, 2 was okay, and haven’t played 4.
I’m only on episode 5 of D5, but so far it’s dumb as a post. It’s inoffensive at best. Instead of building up the plot with bad guys or developing the main characters, it’s so far been about collecting guys to fight the bad guy.
Also, don’t forget about Disgaea D2 out there, complicating the timeline with a return to Laharl and crew.
XBOX. Duh.
OUYA is #3.
Ok item world now has infinite levels so you don’t have to stress about killing item king in floor 99, gencying out, and going back in to kill it again.
You also don’t need to stack coaches and gladiators to affect stat growth.
There’s two stats that affect item growth, Level and Training Bonus. gaining bonus gauge levels 1,4, and 9 (not exact) will get you +1 level each.
Training bonus is obtained from doing the special rooms.
Lastly I think it may have just been easier because of one particular generic introduced.
here
The Sage. Without getting much into it, it removes the tedium from leveling up the lower levels of an item. Click click click, clear entire floor. They have a floor-wide attack, so you can build it in certain ways that the character is attacking multiple times a turn.
Wow that sounds kind of out there.