Disgaea Megathread: The numbers are limitless

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homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Ramagamma posted:

I'll admit I bought Hour of Darkness for a fairly absurd amount of money in a "last paycheck I can blow before I move out" situation whereby I snapped up all the highest rated PS2 games I hadn't played to occupy me for those first months of self sufficiency. Never got round to playing Disgaea but the phrase " shark dragons and disgruntled pumpkin people " is kinda making me want to go fish out my copy.

You're better off playing a later version, honestly. Hour of Darkness had the best story (up until Disgaea 4 anyway), but its just so primitive mechanically and the postgame content is just really weak. Its a really early entry in NIS' exploration of this kind of weird metastrategy genre, and they didn't really get everything nailed down until Disgaea 2.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2013 23:16

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 00:10

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Head Hit Keyboard posted:

I bought Disgaea 2 (the PS2 classic, as I lack either a PSP or a Vita) on a whim with the $10 of PSN credit I got last month. What's the best way to go about playing this if I've never played a Disgaea game before?

Don't worry about it, just jump in. These games dole out their mechanics pretty slowly over the course of the story, and you never really have to dig deep into them until the postgame. For now just gently caress around with whatever seems interesting. If you run into anything confusing hit up the wiki or ask in this thread.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2013 00:09

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

XboxPants posted:

I was just about to ask about some of the other one-offs. There are quite a few TRPG non-Disgaea Nippon Ichi games at this point. What are some of the better ones, if I'm judging by a standard of "I want to play a sweet Disgaea game"? I did enjoy Makai Kingdoms pretty well.

In particular, I'm into games where I can take a really lovely no-name level 0 character and build them up with an absurd degree of customization & progression.

That's kind of what ZHP is all about. What Disgaea does to SRPGs, ZHP does for roguelikes.

Check out Phantom Brave too, its not NIS' greatest game but the mechanics are really interesting. Its all about accumulating items, rocks, trees, skulls, etc, and turning them into characters.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2013 12:38

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Harlock posted:

Make a sequel to Phantom Brave already, NIS It's your best game.

As an aside, Disgaea 2 is probably my favorite of the series. I thought the tone of the plot along with the minor changes in the mechanics all came together into a fun package. I've owned Disgaea 3 since its release but never got more than an hour into it. Should I just give up on it after all my attempts to get into it? It's hard to say what I don't like about it. If it's the story/characters, or the classroom system, or the magic change system that I'm not exactly sure how it works. I thought about going right to Disgaea 4.

Just skip it, the overwrought drama of 3's story can be pretty insufferable, and the school theme either clicks with you or it doesn't. 4 is better in almost every way, particularly tonally.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2013 15:20

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

I think the postgame in D4 is a little grindier, especially if you aren't exploiting that dupe bug. That's about the only negative thing I can say about Disgaea 4.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2013 15:23

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

I think Disgaea can appeal to a whole spectrum of people. You can easily beat all the story missions and totally ignore the side stuff, you can dabble in the Chara/Item Worlds to lightly pump your characters up, you can peel away the strategy layer and dig into the rewarding metagame underneath, or you could be ulillillia.

Don't totally dismiss grinding in Disgaea though, its pretty different than in most games. NIS actually dedicates a ton of design and mechanics to making grinding interesting and rewarding. It actually takes a decent amount of thought to engineer the scenarios to grind most effectively. I hate grinding in most games but I just find it really fascinating in Disgaea. I barely even consider them SRPGs anymore really.

homeless snail fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Mar 11, 2013

# ¿ Mar 11, 2013 15:56

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Harlock posted:

If I wasn't clear, I was playing D3 on PS3. I don't own a Vita. I guess I will just skip along to D4. Is there a reason why they seemingly nerfed monsters from D2 to D3? I had some pretty badass Prinnies and other monsters in D2 that helped compliment the human classes. But like most SPRGs, stock characters suffer when you have special NPCs.

A fist weapon Ninja/Adell just steamrolled everything for me.

I don't know if they nerfed the monster stats from 2 to 3, but Evilities and Magichange are designed to make monster classes more flexible in the newer games. I definitely find myself using them way more often than I used to.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2013 20:26

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:

Makes sense, but are there any hard numbers anywhere? A level 163 Saint Dragon doesn't have Ice's Blessing. Since reincarnation costs double I can't keep up guesswork.

The Disgaea wiki is usually pretty comprehensive about this kind of thing: http://disgaea.wikia.com/wiki/Disgaea_3_MA_Abilities
Says Ice's Blessing is tier 4 lv120, so you need to reincarnate one more time.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2013 04:49

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Wrist Watch posted:

What's up with skills still gaining exp though? I saw in the evilities shop that I could boost a skill's power in exchange for mana, but the system where they get stronger the more you use them is still in place?

Yeah, skills in D4 still get marginally more powerful as you level them up, but spending mana has way more of an impact (but also increases SP cost). Its just a relic of the old games, really. It doesn't even factor into the new tutor/pupil system like it used to.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2013 00:00

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

XkyRauh posted:

Speaking of the master/Pupil system, in Disgaea2, you could stand a Master and a Pupil side by side, and let the Master cast the Pupil's spells until they earned enough XP to level the spell up, and from that point on, they knew it for themselves. Is there anything like that in Disgaea4? Having the Master cast the spell didn't earn any XP.

There's an Evil Symbol for making relationships between characters, and one of them is mentor/pupil. Instead of having to learn individual skills though, once they take the oath the pupil can use any of the mentor's spells as long as they're both on the map.

Or you can just go through Chara World and buy the skills you want with mana.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2013 03:45

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

"This summer, 'Makai Wars ____' decision!!"(?) (The decision is that this game will never exist)

Although April 1st would be a pretty hilarious time to announce it for reals... Maybe something will happen Friday :shrug:

# ¿ Apr 1, 2013 10:19

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Makai Wars Episode 1: Asagi's Counterattck (e: or maybe its a Star Wars reference, Asagi Strikes Back) was announced today. Its a live concert/event in commemoration of NIS' 20th anniversary :v:

homeless snail fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Apr 5, 2013

# ¿ Apr 5, 2013 04:10

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Lizard Wizard posted:

Just to make sure I'm not incorrect regarding Item World: killing specialists makes them available to move from item to item, and there's no reason to fully clear any floor if it doesn't have a boss, right?

Right, just rush straight for the gate and only stop to kill residents/grab treasure/steal stuff as you like. There's some postgame stuff that might change the way you approach the item world, but for now don't worry about it.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2013 00:12

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

King of Solomon posted:

No Mr. Champloo? No characters from Disgaea 4 at all? What the gently caress?

Val, Fuka, and Desco are already in the game, what other D4 characters are there? :v:

# ¿ Apr 26, 2013 21:45

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Shoopuf posted:

Weird, but quick question. At what point in Disgaea 3 (Detention, not Justice) should I actually care about having a bunch of cool, different units and when is too early to just grind everything into oblivion? I'm only in chapter 2, having just returned to Mao's heart after eating the sunny-side up dragon egg, and it's hard to tell when numbermania is supposed to start!

As far as getting my hands on the rest of the games go, it looks like only Disgaea PSP is good to get? With a Vita version of 2 being released and 4 also getting the Vita treatment. Is this correct?

You probably shouldn't give much of a poo poo about grinding until you get into the postgame, at which point you'll have the tools and resources to make grinding fun and efficient. At least wait until you unlock Class World, not sure if the vita version changes anything but you should be getting it pretty soon.

Disgaea 1, even the PSP version, is really primitive compared to the later games, its kinda hard to go back to it in a serious way. The story might be good enough to go back and just play the campaign though. If you want to go backwards, the PSP port of Disgaea 2 is the game you want to play. As far as I know its not coming to Vita but I don't really keep track of that stuff.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2013 17:08

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Dr Pepper posted:

I have yet to play a Disgaea game without a spear using Lady Fighter.

She's my MVP.

This is always the first guy I make and she never leaves my main group :unsmigghh:

# ¿ Jul 26, 2013 03:12

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

Zilkin posted:

How geopanel heavy are the maps in D3 btw? Almost through 2 now, and I'm not huge fan of how much more geopanel puzzle maps there seems to be in dark hero days compared to the first game.

The newer games use geo blocks that form part of the terrain of the level instead of the old things that obstructed movement, they're way easier to manipulate in general. There's probably fewer straight up geopanel puzzle maps in the campaign but the class/chara world is totally predicated on clearing levels.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2014 07:26

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 00:10

homeless snail: Mar 14, 2007

The backported features usually feel really weird and out of place anyway, like when they grafted magichange onto the PSP version of D2. Its just a dumb fun thing for people to gently caress around with if they don't feel like going through the postgame for a second time.

# ¿ May 21, 2014 08:08

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