Disgaea Megathread: The numbers are limitless

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Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

I have a question about weapon mastery in Disgaea 3, in contrast to the other games it only shows a list like: "This character is proficient with: Sword, Spear, Axe."

Does that mean that character will handle all of those equally well, or are the actual compatibility levels hidden now?

# ¿ Mar 9, 2013 22:00

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# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 09:01

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

Cape Cod Crab Chip posted:

With regards to skills, Weapon Mastery is not a modifier to how fast you earn weapon type EXP. In fact, there is no weapon type EXP at all. What a character's weapon proficiency listing tells you is what types of weapons' skills that character can purchase with the mana they earn from killing enemies. If we take your "This character is proficient with: Sword, Spear, Axe." example (which I assume to be Mao), this character can learn Sword, Spear and Axe skills by spending mana. You don't need to use the specific weapon whose skills you want to learn for this. Unfortunately, though, having proficiency in a weapon doesn't mean you can learn all of that weapon's skills, at least if you're playing the PS3 version. If you want a character to learn a skill it cannot learn at the Skill Trainer, you have to use the Class World for that.

I'm playing on the Vita, is that version different on that, or did you simply mean you only know that for the PS3?

Also, thanks a lot for the detailed explanation. Now i know i can just hand my dudes whatever without worrying about being ~inefficient~.

(That is actually a really nice change in contrast to earlier ones.)

# ¿ Mar 9, 2013 22:46

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

XkyRauh posted:

Does this really work? I thought that Cloned enemies gave less/no experience?

Clones give 25% of the XP, which still makes them usable.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2013 19:32

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

FractalSandwich posted:

It costs a lot of mana (700), so you'll want to save-scum to get it to pass on the first attempt,

There's absolutely no reason to do that. It's more useful and not cheaty at all to just buy 30 throwaway items from the item store and pass a few of the easier ones until the success percentage for the Samurai is 70+ reliably.

Also, no need to grind for mana. Doing a run through the character world of any level 1 character and making sure to destroy all the geo blocks will give ~2000 for a single ten-level run.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2013 12:17

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

Some more comments:

Q: Help, i'm afraid of messing up my savegame FOREVER!

A: That can't happen. There is one way to (mostly) reset yourself to zero, which is to throw away all your items, delete all your characters and reincarnate your story characters back to level 1. However even then you'll be better off than at the start of the game, because your reincarnated characters will gain stats faster and you'll have unlocked game mechanics.

In short: There is no way to gently caress up your game unless you intentionally try REALLY HARD.

Q: Help, my [X] doesn't learn skill [Y]!

A: Most characters can learn most skills. In general it involves this: A character has skill [Y], is set as the student of character [X]* and is next to them in a battle. [X] should then have skill [Y] in their skill list at level 0 and can cast it. Once it reaches level 1, they learned it.

* I'm not 100% clear on the exact conditions here in D3, it might involve putting them in the same club and doing some leader/member shenanigans. Play around a bit and use a guaranteed transferrable skill like Heal for your first experiments.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2013 12:31

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

FractalSandwich posted:

That would also work. I just didn't want to go into the vagaries of how bribes work, because it's confusing and I don't even know all the details myself.

It's hilariously easy.

You buy a ton of cheap random items and offer them. As long as the item says at least "is a little interested", it'll make them like you.

That's it.

There's extra stuff like some senators REALLY like certain items, and sleeping ones need to be woken up with bombs, and drunk ones need medicine or the result of whether they like you more or less is random and other stuff. However you can safely ignore all of that and just do bribing in the way described above and avoid everything else.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2013 12:35

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

To be fair, the idea of the Disgaea games is to find exploits to avoid grinding.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2014 21:20

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

Endorph posted:

Because it's draconic and idiotic. The punishment for failure being boredom and tedium isn't good game design.

On the other hand, managing to get all your dudes killed in item world requires a pretty special kind of obliviousness and boredom and tedium are a good negative incentive to maybe stop and think and use that gency next time.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2014 22:18

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

Lethemonster posted:

I have D3 on vita and it seems to come with all of the / most of the bonus characters as part of the package. Is it likely a version of D:D2 will come out with lots of them included? I don't want to buy a �40 game to have loads of extra content locked behind spending another �60 on extra characters.

Atlus has been doing this for a while with Disgaea now. I do recommend waiting it out.

# ¿ May 8, 2014 18:49

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

sentrygun posted:

Atlus doesn't publish Disgaea, they only did the first game before NIS started publishing their own stuff.

Oh dang. It never quite clicked for me and was just this conglomerate of "japanese guys that put out jrpgs that aren't final fantasy". Thanks for the correction.

# ¿ May 8, 2014 20:54

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

ThisIsACoolGuy posted:

Version differences are pretty minor surprisingly

English version has:
*Gutted as all hell map editor, you can only do very very basic shapes, you can't make patterns or much of anything. Really not worth the time
*All names are randomized. If I name a character Steve it'll be censored if it goes to someone else, no names allowed. (Same with maps and whatnot)
*Post game was fully voice acted, where the post game missions were silent in Japan.

This is unclear. Are you talking about the english PS3 or Vita version of Disgaea 4?

# ¿ Jul 7, 2014 11:21

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

megamariox posted:

Honestly, the simple and main hint is perspective:

You can see the front of both her bunny ears, so she's turned slightly towards the viewer, while you can see both of the wings no the back of the prinny, and all of the bow on its back, meaning it's turned away from the viewer. If they were both the same creature that would be pretty drat weird, so i guess she's just standing behind it.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2014 02:48

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

Erg posted:

Is anyone having a problem with D4V where the Euro character is showing up where blank spaces should be? I've got the physical version so I'm thinking my cart's just defective.

I have the digital us version and I'm definitely not seeing that.

Also, quite glad I actually prefer playing with the Japanese voices. Constantly switching VA would drive me insane.

As for which to play first: Disgaea is played for the technology, not the story, so always choose the most modern one to play. Vita D4 in this case.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2014 23:50

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

Mr.Dr.Jr. posted:

Those battle quotes are what I'm talking about. It's confusing and disorienting. Why did they mix in a new VA? they didn't need it!

They want you to play in japanese.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2014 01:23

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

5er posted:

Tried that. The voices just seem less... emphatic?

They play it more straight, less overacting. That's a weird bit in the Disgaea series: Much of the humor you see in the english dialogues? It doesn't exist in the japanese original.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2014 02:38

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

Momomo posted:

This is the most bizarre thing I've ever heard. Does the Japanese version just use a different kind of humor?

Japanese as a whole has different humor than the western world. They have puns that work entirely differently, since they're based on different readings of words that you can only know if you know kanji. They also have a wide variety of accents that are inherently funny to japanese, but make no sense to anyone else anywhere since the osaka accent simply isn't a thing people know outside of japan. And lastly there's the whole matter of western speakers being extremely explicit in what they say, while japanese as a language works massively by way of contextual implication.

But outside of that, Disgaea simply isn't as funny in japanese as it is in english. (There are other examples of this phenomenon, there's for example a french movie series with a guy called Louis de Fun�s. It's mediocre in french, but the german dub is extremely funny since they rewrote most of it.)

# ¿ Aug 13, 2014 02:46

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

Small warning: Save before interacting with the map editor. One time when i tried to go into the parts store in there the game just flat-out crashed on me, throwing me back one mission.

Also: It's a lovely map editor with only prefab parts available.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2014 03:24

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

Speedball posted:

Is this for DD2 or the Vita version of 4?

A little bit of googling suggests it's a D3 feature.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2014 19:24

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

ThisIsACoolGuy posted:

I'm like... level 120+ in chapter 4 thanks to item world and getting progressively more and more annoyed at how little mana I'm getting.

Changed my starting cleric into a green mage "I'll get her some magic then change her back!". I still need Tera magic and it's just such a slooog.

I did take a break to do the new campaign though, it was surprisinglyH nice despite the few oddH typos with the letter H. Nagi is great.

The best way i found for getting mana is having Val with magichanged Desco murder 4-2 (the hallway with all the ninjas) repeatedly. I used that to get chara world opened and was able to go from reincarnation to level 40 with ~1100 mana in 2 trips, using the cheat shop to beef enemies up for the second trip.

Also goddamn, the original base is laid out so annoyingly that i will have to make a custom one to cut down on travelling around between missions.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2014 03:46

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

ThisIsACoolGuy posted:

Meant more like on my mages and stuff, Val has more mana then he knows what to deal with, mages on the otherhand it takes like... forever.

I just put them on the mana sharing evil symbol and have Val murder a map. Since they get 50%, that's a ton, especially if you leave them there for a map or two.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2014 03:54

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

ZZT the Fifth posted:

5-2 also gets you level 99 enemies at 8 stars

Does Disgaea 4 still have this thing where it's useless to grind on enemies between level 100 and 300?

# ¿ Aug 18, 2014 04:56

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

I see they're using low-res sprites for humor?

# ¿ Aug 18, 2014 05:58

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

Heavy neutrino posted:

Out of nostalgia I started re-playing through Makai Kingdom and man, I miss the time when NIS actually tried new stuff instead of jumping pumping out safe mainline games and stupid handheld ports of safe mainline games. Nothing like riding into battle with a silly rear end weapon selection consisting of giant magnets, fishing poles and syringes.

And you didn't bring screenshots?

# ¿ Aug 30, 2014 14:52

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

projecthalaxy posted:

A friendly tip! Don't be like me and only depend on the Vita's suspend function instead of in game saves. If you do that, then eventually you'll stumble into a mystery gate in the item world, get killed by lv800 monsters, and lose like 12 hours, a few hundred levels, and 4 shop levels! Hooray! You can't gency out of mystery gate rooms.

Don't you simply get sent to the base after dying D4V now, without losing anything?

# ¿ Aug 31, 2014 13:58

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

megamariox posted:

Some more details on Disgaea 5 have been revealed.

quote:

Since we�re making it, I want to be able to offer something that could only be done with the PlayStation 4.�

Another quote from Niikawa says: �The number of characters that can be displayed at once has vastly grown. On the PlayStation 3 it was limited to 10 characters shown in high definition, but the PlayStation 4 can display 100 characters.�.

Crap, i don't think we'll be seeing that one on the Vita.

I'm also a little baffled how they can have such limits on sprites. I understand they're animated sprites, but drat.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2014 15:10

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

5er posted:

I know most of you guys loving hate the idea, but if Pokemon can make the leap to 3d rendered units, I think Disgaea could.

That would not alleviate the performance problems they're already having.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2014 21:39

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

Ryoji posted:

However I just have a PC and a PS2.

To be honest, if that's the hardware you have, i'd recommend trying to see if your PC can simulate, so you can use turbo button, save states and have higher resolution.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2014 16:49

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

Dis posted:

Where the hell is the toggle for classic/HD sprites in D4V? I can't tell if it's obvious and I'm blind or if it's something you have to unlock.

Since it comes with hi-res sprites by default there is no such toggle. It was only in the previous versions because it allowed you to choose to apply a blur effect to the sprite textures or not.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2014 03:13

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

Dis posted:

I have extremely limited knowledge of the way these things work, but I guess I could see why they'd lose it if it took up a lot of space to offer the option.

Basically: The sprites are images. The images were meant for screens with low resolutions, where they looked fine. Put the same images on a high-resolution screen and they look super-jaggy and blocky. Since they couldn't afford to actually add new sprites for the older games they added a filter to blur the sprites, instead of having them be blocky. They didn't have two sets of sprites or anything, it's the same images. Only you got to choose whether they were blurred or not on your bigger screen.

As for the trophy: Later in the game you get cameo characters from older games which don't have hi-res sprites, maybe it's related to that.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2014 04:01

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

CaptainWinky posted:

I like leveling staves to give them an early damage advantage. Even just doing 10 levels in a cheap staff can make a new mage's life a lot easier.

Alternatively, do some item-worlding and find a good map with an invincible panel, combine all the enemies into one by throwing, then tower-attack to kill it. The result is that you get a LOT more money than if you'd killed them one by one, allowing you to unlock high shop levels. Bonus points if the map also has level-up panels.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2014 17:03

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

Admiral H. Curtiss posted:

No, Disgaea 4 PS3 actually had a set of "low-res" sprites along with the new ones.

It always seemed like a pointless feature to me since the new sprites look fantastic.

Well poo poo, i am an ignorant buffoon. Thanks for correcting me. Also, as a guess: If the PS3 had item world slowdowns like the Vita has, maybe using the lowres sprites minimized those?

# ¿ Sep 23, 2014 23:49

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

Both of you are right that he's wrong about the math. Yet he's also right that it's about math. Just not the gameplay math.

Here's the real issue: Tons of animated and alpha-blended transparent sprites.

2D sprites are easy. Animated sprites are a little harder since you now need texture memory for every sprite multiplied by how many frames the animations have. Transparent sprites are a little harder if you only use 0/1 stippling like Minecraft does for trees. Transparent sprites with soft alpha blending are gently caress-off hard since you have to sort them into the right order on CPU for each frame before rendering them. (Though maybe some of this can be offloaded to GPU with modern APIs, either way, it's still really hard.) And obviously the processing power required for sorting the sprites exponentiates when you add more sprites.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2014 16:49

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

XboxPants posted:

I've been playing D4 vita and oddly the thing that makes it start to chug isn't usually too many characters on the screen, but instead when there's a poo poo ton of geo panel poo poo going on all over the place. Turning off the glowing squares helps a bunch for some reason.

That has two reasons:

1. transparency - i'm pretty sure the geo panels are rendered by putting two colored transparend blended polygons (aka a sprite) over them
2. dynamicness - this is less easy to cache since geo panels can change a lot, wouldn't surprise me if they just render them one by one all the time

# ¿ Oct 26, 2014 02:35

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

maou shoujo posted:

About the random names, there are some names that are references to demonology or to otaku culture, but misspelled. Stuff like Asmodeous instead of Asmodeus. Is that intentional? Among others I've seen Lehurl, Asoggy, and Niptoonia, which makes think it is. Previous Disgaeas had the same trivial issue, so I've been wondering for a long time.

I'd guess it's more likely that the japanese dev team tried to cram english words into japanese syllables first, followed by the translation team trying to translate that back to english and just keeping the imperfections introduced, or trying to to be funny. There is a lot of "let's make this funny where the original japanese was totally dead-pan" in the disgaea translations.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2014 19:18

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# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 09:01

Mithaldu: Sep 25, 2007; Let's cuddle.

FractalSandwich posted:

Alright game, I give up. You win.

Trip report forthcoming.

What, only 6 movement?

# ¿ Apr 25, 2015 17:54

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