[Mod] Classic Disgaea 5 Enhanced

[iHaku]

v1.2 released. probably final till 2.0

First, I'd like to explain why I made this mod.

"CD5E" was created to emulate parts of the experience of the classic Disgaea titles that made me fall in love with the series, while retaining many of D5's great additions and QoL features.

If you are someone who only plays trough D5's story casually (or only plays jrpg's for the story at all) and dips only lightly into its postgame, then there's not much to gain from playing this mod.

Disgaea titles have always been about grinding towards a goal while having some cool visuals and using fairly basic strategys to get trough the itemworld and level items, and while not a single one has been perfect, I love them nonetheless. Disgaea 5 however, in my humble opinion, has a few issues that hold it back from being the greatest. (Mechanicly. We dont talk about D5's story)

This mod removes and limits several mechanics, many of which help new players go get trough the game faster but are extreamly exploitable by veterans to skip large portions of it's post-game and it's road to power.

It also increases the potency of enemys in the itemworld drasticly, features a full rebalance of evilities to get the most out of this new system and makes status-ailments (and prevention) play a far more prominent role. (Get your cleanses ready!)

I welcome the changes that make the game feel snappyer and overal improve gamefeel, but I disagree with NIS' design to make D5 far shorter compareded to previous installments.
When I buy a Disgaea title, I sign up for grind.

For example:

Distinctions between generics or even unique characters have almost completly been removed besides Sage and Maid. The same 3 unique evilities on everyone is not "unique", and many of the unique skills arent actually special.

The IW is a terrible place to grind lategame because repeating the same stage(s) over and over again is infinitly better if you aim to simply complete game (looking at you: phantom copies / LoC ).

Being able to counter skills was something special in D4 that only nekomatas could do *and noone else*. Things like this dont exist in D5 anymore for generic units. They are *too* generic now.

Evilities being the way they are give the illusion of freedom. Stat% and raw damage evilities are the only thing that matters because you have very few slots and they give too much value per slot to non-supports.

"LD/CD spam" tactics just arent fun in the long run (feel free to disagree). But because of their effectiveness, they lead to bad memories and me not even wanting to startup the game.

These are just some of the reasons why this mod was created. It is by no means a "Fix" to the game, because that whould imply that something is broken (you can argue over that yourself). It is simply a different way to enjoy the game.


I'd like to thank everyone who helped me creat this and I hope that those of you who share my sentiment towards D5 can get as much enjoyment out of it as I do! =)

Anyone who'd like to provide feedback, ask about internal mechanics of D5 or simply report on issues with the mod, feel free to get in contact with me via the requiem discord or reddit.

iHaku~


Death's Requiem discord where most people that helped me with stuff are located: https://discord.gg/Q6TfXuh

If you'd like to know the real damage of skills, or cross-reference with vanilla values of evilities or unit-information, check out my google.doc spreadsheets.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/134aV1lRJw3n1GtWgEsqW1048GlfSSpu1pot2CMMZys0

ps: I am not a native english speaker. Please excuse any mistakes you find, thanks.

v1.2:
Download Link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1yQ0fgScWTMZtNwuYgS7rTIp8nfehRFS4

(Click the Download button in the top right)

[Fluffal Kyurem]

I have very mixed feelings right now.

[iHaku]

Originally posted by Black Kyurem:

I have very mixed feelings right now. :d5_usalia:

thats kind of how i feel about d5 and how you're literally everywhere going to get the advice of "ignore the itemworld and reincarnation, just spam Asagi/trial for basestats and elixirs untill your eyes bleed".
Not really the optimal way to enjoy a game for me. But hey there are people who enjoy being a truckdriver so there's probably people aswell that enjoy using land decimator / CD for 10.000 stages in a row and then putting the game down because there's nothing else to do and everything else is kinda just slow by comparison.

[iHaku]

Updated the link to version 1.1, changes are in the download. please read the first few lines in the "Important Info read first + Changelog" document to avoid a softlock related to the new characters.

Since overloads arent available to the player, so are the unique sprites a few characters take on, which is why I made those 5 characters available from the special content shop. They are "Tyrant Valvatorez", "Rozalin?", "Pure Flonne", Awakened states of "Killia" and "Usalia". The first 2 cant use their base skills tho, and none of the 5 will be able to use their overload exclusive unique skills. They are essentially downgrades to the original characters, but if you like the sprites+voices, you can still do everything else with them.

Also included Pricurry as a playable character, because he's been looking for a job ever since i removed curry and his/her voice is cute =)

[TheTrueFinalBoss]

Its interesting, but some of your changes go directly against what I would consider to be a part of the Disgaea experience. Stats on treasures for instance. Why? They have always been the go to all around accessory for anyone since Disgaea 1, more efficient to wear multiple treasures than a Muscle, Armor, and Belt.

Also I don't quite understand Overload removal. Your goal is to remove the things that make the game too repetitive when being efficient. So remove Izuna's Overload and Sage's unique attack, problem solved. Maybe Hedler's Overload too as its cheesy. But removing Overloads as a whole hurts the story, and they aren't all that overbearing in general. Killia gets 3 turns in one turn is probably the strongest. You are removing what makes the main characters unique, and many of the DLC characters like Petta, and making them generic.

[alicerinz]

I dont see why anyone in their right mind would want to complete wipe overloads from the game.

[Fel]

I'm not certain I understood this correctly, I might as well ask.

Does this mod add things to the game or is it only removing?

[iHaku]

Originally posted by Stephan Reiken:

Its interesting, but some of your changes go directly against what I would consider to be a part of the Disgaea experience. Stats on treasures for instance. Why? They have always been the go to all around accessory for anyone since Disgaea 1, more efficient to wear multiple treasures than a Muscle, Armor, and Belt.

Treasure items and Hercules armor literally invalidate 99% of all of the items in the game. In my eyes it makes itemization boring when every character has maxed out all stat and is wearing a copy of the same item.
"what I would consider to be a part of the Disgaea experience" is very subjective and i always hated that those items even existed. Maybe if limited to a single one per character, but i dont see myself having an option to wear a belt item on a character if i want to build for ATK because treasures not only have a higher value for that stat, but ALSO give me literally every other stat. To me this prompts the question as to why those items exist in the first place.

>I don't quite understand Overload removal. Your goal is to remove the things that make the game too repetitive when being efficient.

The goal of this change is not what you discribe here. Izunas overload specificly, yes. But the others arent. Many overloads scew certain characters arbitrarily to be just way better then other options because they get an insane powerboost that others couldnt possibly have besides their unique evility. You named killias overload yourself altho there are many other examples.
I could see someone argue that some, red magnus' overload, dont really do much, which is why i removed them in general, instead of selecting only those who stand out of line.

Originally posted by Fel:

I'm not certain I understood this correctly, I might as well ask.

Does this mod add things to the game or is it only removing?

Mostly removes and rebalances things. We currently dont have the option to truly add things from outside the game as it's basicly hardcodecity (modders of the demo have already complained about how they ported the game).
Changing sprites is still in the works and we are only around 4 people really doing things from time to time anyway.
Someone could argue that "black and white power" (which is a jp version only stat%magic ability) is "adding" something to the game, but it was already in the game anyway, just noone was able to learn it due to licensing of the western release. (the characters that originally learned it were completly removed in the western release and i'd need the original jp release and quite a bit of time to import them)
Same as adding Tyrant Valvatorez, Rozalin?, Pure Angel Flonne, unleased killia/usalia as individual, permanent characters, since they were in the game aswell, but are now playable (sadly with restrictions on 2 of them, they hardcoded the skills in the .exe to be blocked on tyrant and im at a loss where and how they did it because it's not the same as for flonne for example)

Sadly, i'm not able to simply add the itemworld scaling feature into the game, as it was probably disbanded during development. From the looks of it, it whouldve been much better then the bandaid fix that i applied to the itemworld.

Another change, not yet in my release, is the ability to see the projected enemylevel of items that you go into. In Disgaea games this has always been capped at 9999 for some reason. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/506522745534939157/582276376887951481/unknown.png
this isnt actually a change to how enemies are in the actual item, but you will simply be able to more accurately estimate how strong enemies in any given item are if the projected enemy level axceeds 9999

[Fel]

Thanks for the answers (and sadly I am not among the targets of the mod since I very much didn't enjoy the many hours of grind I did in disgaea 1).

Still, it's nice to see that things like this exist for those that want it.

[iHaku]

Originally posted by Fel:

Thanks for the answers (and sadly I am not among the targets of the mod since I very much didn't enjoy the many hours of grind I did in disgaea 1).

Still, it's nice to see that things like this exist for those that want it.

thanks and yeah, i dont see this mod appealing to many. it was ment as a project for myself to get more playtime out fo D5 (and learn about some of the internal working of it) as i was pretty much finished with the game in about 3 days worth of time, but im just putting it up for people who feel the same about D5.

[TheTrueFinalBoss]

It'd be cool if you distributed the methods to do this so that interested mod creators who have no experience doing this without someone who already went through your efforts (and released an editor of some kind or an interface) could give a whack at it.

[iHaku]

i already told you that on discord but for anyone else a tldr: all resources are available on our discord (which i linked in my post) and individual files could be extracted from my mod if you or someone else simply disagrees with a specific thing in my mod.

And a GUI aint happening atleast from my side. I lack the knowledge to get that done in a reasonable timeframe, but if someone wants to do that, i dont mind helping.

[zelurker]

The mod was a good idea, trying to be closer to the spirit of past disgaea games, but removing the overloads was a terrible idea, overloads are definetely one of the most important characteristics of d5, without them, it's bare, and you forget that there are whole chapters in the story about overloads, they would become a complete waste of time without the overloads. Also removing the overloads makes the bonus characters you provide through the special content pretty useless, what's the difference between an awaken valvatorez without his overload and a normal valvatorez except the portrait (and the sprite is slightly different too) ? What a waste... ! A good idea is to start a game with this, and switch to something like disgaea unleashed, once you have recruited these bonus characters, at least it makes an original experience !
Also it would have been nice to document the work, which tools were used, what was modified and how so that people can try to expand it, instead of seeing it die like it did, about 1 month after this release, what a shame... !
Because of the overloads missing, the disgaea unleashed mod from another thread seems more interesting !