Disgaea 5 Complete

[DF]

First, if you have any interest at all in the game, then go grab the demo through this SteamDB link,[steamdb.info] as it's not listed on the Steam page. And then go read the review of the demo I wrote here, ignoring that most of this review is a rehash!

After putting a good, uh, 50 hours into the demo, buying the full game on sale was a no-brainer. I still haven't played any other entries other than the first two games and their PSP ports, but this time, I think everything's finally clicked and I'm enjoying it. I played this using the Requiem mod, along with some Cheat Engine edits for things like breaking the 900 Statistician limit. I'm sitting at around 110 hours now.

What is Disgaea 5?

It's the sixth numbered game in the Disgaea series, a strategy RPG about demons in the many Netherworlds and their lives and conflicts and so on. As opposed to politics-heavy stories like in Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics Ogre, these are more off-beat and generally humorous games that draw heavily upon anime tropes. This is also the series where levels go into the thousands and stats into the millions.

Demon Emperor Void Dark is conquering the Netherworlds for some reason! Can the ousted Overlords of various Netherworlds band together and form a rebel army strong enough to combat the ten-billion strong Lost Army?

Gameplay

Gameplay shifts between interacting with the denizens and shops of the town, Pocket Netherworld, and actually fighting in the many maps. The game board is set up in 3D with variations in height and gaps and obstacles on the terrain, and enemies will start out spawned on specific tiles. You deploy your units one at a time from the white-blue Base Panel and then move them onto whichever tiles. Instead of immediately acting when ordered, all actions enter a queue and only trigger when you confirm with the Execute command. This allows you to manipulate the flow of battle in a way I haven't seen in SRPGs before, such as casting an area of effect healing spell and lifting an enemy out of the way so he doesn't get healed and then putting him back down, or bunching up your allies to trigger a Team Attack and then canceling everyone else's movement orders so they can move and attack elsewhere...or bunch up again to trigger another team attack. Once you're done with actions and Executing, you End Turn and the enemy moves and acts and the turn passes back to you until one side is wiped out.

You initially are limited to ten units out at a time, and the game doesn't impose any restrictions on you like always requiring Killia on the field (barring one story map), so if you want to make a team of generics with you and your friends' names, you can play the entire game with them and never use the actual main characters. Units that die are taken out of the battle, eating up their deployment slot in the process so you're not able to just keep sending your reserve units until you eventually win or get everyone murdered. Death is not quite as permanent as in Fire Emblem as there's a hospital in town that heals and revives everyone, but there's only one spell available on a late-game generic that can bring people back in the middle of battle--at the cost of that unit's life. The game allows you a maximum of 20 people out at once, but you'll need to get the senators to support your bill in the Strategy Assembly. And they're not gonna make it easy.

You have a lot of freedom when it comes to the development of your team. Even though Killia is good with swords and fists, you can always have him use a bow instead, just he'll learn bow skills slower than an Archer would. Every unit has two weapon slots for easy switching (and eventually dual-wielding) and three slots to carry armor and accessories. Humanoid-type units like most of the main cast, Warriors, and Skulls can use the biggest variety of weapons including axes, guns, and spears, while monster-type units like Prinnies, Orcs, and Zombies only can choose between STR monster weapons for brute force and INT monster weapons for spells. Characters learn class-specific skills at certain levels, and weapons other than staves and monster weapons teach their own skills at certain weapon mastery levels, and these level up just by using the weapon. Every class also has a Unique Evility only they can use (at first) and a handful of Evilities that can be passed onto anyone else, along with a stable of common Evilities everyone can buy and learn with no work. In terms of stats, every class has a setup of Equipment Aptitudes that impact how effective gear is, such as someone with 120% ATK getting more out of a weapon than the label says. Some of the fun in team building is figuring out what role you want everyone to fill and what combination of gear and Evilities will get you those results.

Classes stay locked until you progress to certain points in the story, and the Quest Shop will have assignments for you to undertake before you can make that class yourself. Some requirements are having another class at a specific rank, or just turning in so many of X type of item. While you can capture people in a class you can't make either through throwing them into your Base Panel or using Capture Squad skills, you can't put the victim on your team until you can naturally create said class.

The game has a predictable flow through the story. There's a story bit before the chapter title, then more story after that, then you're allowed to access the new world's first map, more story bit when you load in, then you can fight proper. And there's usually a story bit afterward, then you return to the map select screen and repeat. When you finish the last map of the chapter, you get more story stuff, and then the game gives you a gag "On The Next Episode" preview before giving you a prompt to save and moving you onto the next story bit before chapter title. The game is kind of story-heavy, but you won't sit through half-hour cutscenes waiting for the action to pick back up.

My Setup

For my team, I ended up with...

Killia with sword and Red Magnus with axe as direct damage dealers. Red Magnus' Overload won me several maps and caused him to outlevel the rest of the team for a majority of the game. Seraphina largely didn't seem to do much but I kept her on the team as a ranged damage dealer, and her effectiveness took off when she learned the Gunner's "Flying Bullets" Evility (can attack panels between straight lines with guns) and her second unique Evility, so she's much more lethal now. Christo and a Mage reincarnated into a Skull were both heavy artillery, having learned Tera-class spells with Skill Training Squad, and both are decent healers. Usalia was something of a tank and support unit, making great use of Sicily's "We All Get Along" Evility to force Team Attacks 100% of the time. Zeroken had surprising damage output and he's set to instant-kill Innocents in Item World. The Maid the game gives you stayed a permanent member and is probably the most powerful item user in SRPG history due to her class' Evilities boosting item range/potency/area. Nothing like using an item that restores 50% MaxHP/SP now fully restoring everyone in a five-panel plus and she can use an item without using up her action every turn by default. My Archer was Little Miss Killsteal and often competed with Red Magnus in level count due to her Unique Evility letting her attack enemies that other allies hit and she finished them off for a majority of the game. And my Thief, weak defenses all around, but the best source of stolen items period. I have an Angel Host as the 11th man for a single-use revive in Item World, mostly to pull my Thief back into play.

I used to use a Cleric for healing and an Armor Knight for defense and party-wide tanking, but I dropped both. I used to use one of the DLC Prinnies that didn't explode when thrown in the Giant Killer Squad for a nice stat boost, but he got benched too. I flirted with the idea of making a team of monsters for Magichange abuse, but I don't want to sub them in for people on my team, and I haven't expanded the deployment slots yet. I have at least one of each type of generic and all but one of the unique characters, and I'm like three units away from the army cap.

Controls

I still used a controller for this, though keyboard and mouse controls are available. Control stick and Dpad moves the cursor, A accepts, B cancels, X allows you to change which weapon is in your main hand when on the Equip screen or allows you to turn your units on the fly, Y sorts items and skips story events, shoulder buttons lock and favorite items in the item list or rotates the map 90 degrees in battle, and the triggers page through items or RT will speed through animations. The game will switch to keyboard prompts whenever you touch it, but otherwise will use controller prompts. And you can even choose between Xbox or Playstation buttons as well as generic buttons too. There's an option to control which direction the cursor moves when you press Up on the dpad, and I had to change it from its default for once. Dpad movement on the battle map is restricted by the grid, but the control stick is free-movement, though I found it hard to control this way.

Gameplay Modes

The town area is where you'll spend your time when you're not kicking ass across the Netherworlds. There are stores for items, a hospital for healing, a quest shop, a skill shop, you can manage Squads, Interrogate captured enemies to help level up said Squads, make new generics, and try to pass bills in the Strategy Assembly that unlock new content like recoloring your troops or unlocking content. NPCs randomly spawn in the area and you can talk to the game-provided ones for some conversation about current events, or to your own generic troops for looping lines related to the personality you set for them. You eventually unlock the option to edit a battle map to use as your town or make one entirely out of nothing, but I never found a way to use the spacey background the default town uses. The custom town even lets you assign unique characters you've unlocked to man the town facilities, and every one has their own lines dependent on their new job, and another neat feature is changing the currently-controlled character in town and causing different reactions in the people you talk to.

The Dimension Guide is where all of the story mode stuff is and how you advance through the story and eventually unlock game features and characters and so on. As there is no world map to traverse, you just pick a Netherworld and then one of the maps within to play. Story maps typically have a set layout for enemies, while repeat visits and quest-related revisits instead offer you a different selection of foes to fight.

Item World allows you to dive into an unequipped item and fight the people living inside of it, with your triumphs powering it up. The maps and enemies and their equipment are all randomized, though you'll face mostly the same types of enemies until you dive in pretty far. Some items have special creatures within that confer bonuses from stat bumps to ailment protection to increasing how much EXP the unit wearing that item earns, and by beating up these creatures, you can combine them with other tamed Innocents and magnify their effect. As opposed to the one-and-done setup of story maps, you advance through these back-to-back until you face down the boss on every tenth floor, where you're taken to Innocent Town to heal up, buy random wares, and leave, though there is an item that allows you to leave early. The thing I said earlier about death not being that big a deal doesn't apply here, as HP/SP lost and deaths persist between floors. Though the enemies within items are pretty weak for their level, they make excellent grinding fodder, and Item World never actually ends. Just at some point, you're gonna want to challenge the denizens of another item sometime.

Chara World is something like a big board game, though it's simple in execution. There are randomized maps with a number of panels within, and these panels have specific effects like granting extra turns during this session, increasing stat aptitudes or giving an outright stat increase, while others are random effects between good, bad, or anything in between. You have so many turns to get to the GOAL panel and it's up to you if you want to get there quick to guarantee success, or linger to load up on as many panels as you can. You move with a simple 1-6 roller to simulate rolling a die, and there are items to guarantee results. There are enemies here too, and their deaths give you more stat bonuses, though your death forfeits everything you gained this round plus the Mana you spent to play. Ouch.

There still aren't any online features at this time. You can't play custom maps (or make any to begin with), you don't fight player-created teams as Netherworld Invaders in the Item World, and you can't research player worlds in Netherworld Research. The only interaction you can get with other players is outside of the game, sadly.

Difficulty

It's hard to get a bead on general difficulty since everyone would roll with a different team, but I still didn't have too much trouble with the main story content. There are some curveballs, like one map putting you at a serious numbers disadvantage and mobbing the hell out of you, to another with a boss who revives every enemy you killed on this map, or there'll be Enemy Base Panels that spawn new units who immediately get to act on the enemy turn. Because I kept doing Item World in the demo, I overleveled the story content, but the Cheat Shop allows you to increase enemy strength up to 20 stars, though there's no visible correlation between stars and how much stronger enemies get, like it doesn't just give them +500 levels or anything. Just that they're the strongest at 20 and less below that.

I had serious troubles whenever Orcs and Succubi were on the field due to their Charm-inflicting skills. Status effects are already pretty impactful, but having your powerful units murder each other and still need to be cured of the effect before they do it again the next turn is quite scary, and it took me a long time to just buy and equip Charm Vaccine for everybody (so don't do what I did). Some maps have annoying setups, like narrow passages to limit how quickly you can move your team through, to having Heavy Knights barring the way with No Entry panels to their sides and a No Lifting Evility so you have to chew through them to advance. Nothing really stood out as being outright difficult, other than maps having stronger-than-usual units to fight. Of course, the post-game demands your troops to be much stronger than what you went through the story with.

Graphics

The maps are presented in 3D and the units are 2D sprites, but at least they're high-definition. Every Netherworld's maps conform to a set appearance, with Item World maps taking a mix of these and custom town tiles. Skills are usually pretty flashy and the later ones go hard into the spectacle and absurdity. Like, Red Magnus' 'Super Damage Lord' has him leap off the planet into the sun, absorb the sun and become big enough to fit the current planet in his hand and crush it. Even Team Attacks get gradually more elaborate the more people are involved. You can either speed up animations or disable skill effects for either side or both sides, though the first time any particular skill is used will play it out regardless of your settings. You can even have the movement and regular attack animations set on 4x speed for absolute grinding efficiency...as you take a moment to figure out what exactly happened during Enemy Turn.

Every generic class tier has their own color palette and you're given the option to use any unlocked tier or a set of three extra colors when creating or editing generics, and their portrait/cut-in pictures change with these. There's a bill you can pass to finely edit a color palette, but the character portrait will stay the same as whatever original palette you were editing. You can change unique character colors too in both ways, but their portraits never change. Some animations will for some reason default to the original palette despite your selections, such as Usalia eating the curry as part of her and Christo's Curry Break special, while every other part used my custom colors.

Story scenes between battles show large images of participating characters from about the thighs up, and there are quite a few to show various expressions/moods. Only the default pose seems to be animated with just blinking, and this came off as jarring since it should've been nothing to have the other poses blink too...or make nobody blink so it wouldn't stick out so much. Nobody's mouth moves either, but at least that's consistent.

Audio

I still didn't really mind the music, though I've already switched to playing my own tracks. You have the option to use specific songs for the town, for Item World, and for Chara World, or you can set them all to use random tracks instead, and the town NPC where you do this lets you listen to the game's music too. There is a lot of voiced character dialog, and Killia does actually stop being so flat...a few times. All of the story bits are voiced, though none of the skits or town conversations are. DLC episodes still don't have any voicework other than battle grunts here and there, but the post-game story actually is voiced. There are a few clips used when a character moves around or does something or uses a specific ability, and generics have a different set of voices depending on the personality you give them too. Some can get really annoying to hear over and over, such as my Thief quipping "glamorously invisible~!" every time I landed on a positive space in Chara World. There's Japanese voicework too, but I didn't use it.

Replay Value

There's more to the game after the credits roll, but how long you want to keep playing is down to what goals you set for yourself. Want to take on the Lv4000 superboss? Want to max out an item's strength? Want to play through the story again using only previous Disgaea heroes (though the game doesn't react to this)? Want to unlock Carnage Dimension and completely obsolete every piece of equipment you slaved away to power up? The regular game is already pretty meaty, but some argue that the story is just the tutorial and the real game opens after that. How deep do you want this rabbit hole to go? There's also a few town NPCs that keeps records of what items and what rarities you've collected as well as what special abilities you've seen, and then you can try to max out every skill, and...

What Worked For Me

I still like the degree of customization you have over your team. It's kind of overwhelming for the options and this gets worse when you factor in subclasses. Every generic class has its own set of learnable Evilities and everyone can learn these, so this really blurs the lines with class identities. And then when you unlock the Unique Evility? The only reason you'd keep someone in a specific class is to use their unique skills that they can't transfer. Unique characters also can't pass their Unique Evilities over, so that kind of encourages you to use a team full of them and then pick and choose whatever you like from generics to make an unstoppable combo. I know I said I liked the generics being pretty unique in the demo review, so it's amusing how that inverts later on.

I still like Item World! I like the setup of having to go through maps in succession since that puts a greater emphasis on careful play, even if the enemies aren't strong for their levels. I know I can always leave early, but I like this part of the challenge too! I don't do Item World enough to actually level up the gear I'm using, but I'm also before unlocking Carnage gear and I might as well wait for the much better stuff first. Item World maps are not only flat but they're generally smaller than story maps, so if having big variations in terrain is a draw, this won't do it for you.

It's really hard to pin down all of the quality-of-life features in this game compared to the ones I've played before, but a lot of things like not having to trick the game to do throws that aren't straight lines or being able to move Innocents that aren't subdued are pretty cool. It's weird to like a game for being easy to play but not having anything really explicit to say why. I missed three games (and two rereleases) of improvements and got to experience them all at once here. Oh, and no more Item Bag/Warehouse juggling is a plus too.

What I Didn't Like

For as willing as the game is to drown you in information overload, it doesn't at all show you stat growth rates (which aren't Equipment Aptitudes, remember). There's equipment and Evilities and Squads that improve them and all, but you're just blindly increasing them without knowing what you're getting, just higher values. There doesn't seem to be much data about it from what little I've found, just that the increase is tied to the base stat's value and there's RNG involved with how many points that stat gets too. It is some consolation that you can cap on stats if you master every subclass and level the character from 1 to 9999 in a maxed Elite Four squad.

I know I mentioned this in the demo review, but there was still something odd about how often 'at this rate' came up in dialog. I don't think there were any variations, nothing like 'if things continue as they are' or whatever. Was it that way in the original Japanese, or is it just how it was translated? I wish I could explain why it annoyed me so much. A few other bits of dialog were oddly-phrased too, but they didn't bother me like this did.

I don't really have a third thing I didn't like. I guess I don't like that the post-game story bits have pretty big jumps between maps for enemy strength, but that's how it's always been in the series as far as I know. Maybe that's where the 'story mode is the tutorial' sentiment comes from. Coast through the story and then have to put in serious work when the game really kicks into gear?

Verdict - 5/5

Seriously, get the demo first. Six episodes plus Item World and Chara World for free. But I'll say that the rest of the game on sale was worth it too! And I'm still pretty early in the game at like 110 hours. There are still better items to steal, and I'm currently working on unlocking the Carnage part of the game and its offering of completely new items, so I'll probably be here a while! You could stand to lose tons of hours just like me! Just maybe faster than me since I'm not playing optimally or anything. All I hope is that I'm not ruining other strategy RPGs for me since I have so many to do yet and so many old favorites to replay someday too.