Nippon Ichi (Disgaea, Makai Kingdom, etc.)

nevermind

edited 13th Mar '11 3:07:10 PM by SpellBlade

Say, since I can't play D3 and D4, could someone summarize the gameplay changes from D2 to them for me? Of course, that might depress me further, but it's a risk I'm willing to take.

"Summarize"? Oh boy. Okay, I'll give it a shot.

• You don't learn weapon special attacks by leveling up weapon skill; you buy them with mana. You also don't level them up individually; you buy that with mana too, making them do more damage or healing and increasing their SP cost. (And increasing range and area-of-effect if it's a magic skill.)
• Geo symbols are gone and replaced with geo blocks, which are the same except that you can stand on them. There are a number of very annoying puzzles centered around them in Disgaea 3, but they're less numerous in Disgaea 4. (The trend in D4 seems to be to move away from things like that and make the game hard by just making the core gameplay harder.)
• Every class and story character has a unique Primary Evility which which is similar to the unnamed passive abilities in Disgaea 2. Mages spend less SP on special attacks, Skulls spend more SP on special attacks but do more damage with them, male Fighters get stat bonuses when there are more enemies in melee range, female Fighters get stat bonuses the further they've moved in the turn, and so on.
• There are also Secondary Evilities which aren't bound to a single class. Each class gets a different selection of them, and some of them you have to be that class to learn, but unlike Primary Evilities you keep them when you reincarnate. You can only have one "equipped" at once, but you can learn a number of them and switch as you see fit.
• There's this thing called "Magichange" which temporarily turns a monster character into a weapon for a humanoid character. I found it to be pretty useless in Disgaea 3's main campaign because of all the restrictions on it, but I've used it much more often in Disgaea 4.
  • In Disgaea 4, it also expands into monsters Magichanging with other monsters of the same species to create giant monsters. (And then those giant monsters can Magichange with a humanoid to turn into a giant Magichange weapon. It's quite a sight)
• You have to place characters on a grid at your home base. This has effects which are hard to summarize.
• In Disgaea 3, you can assign characters to school clubs, which also has effects which are hard to summarize. Disgaea 4 has a similar system, but I don't understand it at all.

That's all I can think of right now. I'm sure there's more.

edited 14th Mar '11 5:08:14 PM by SuperDimensionman

Thanks for that, I appreciate it.

Speaking of Magichange and making the core gameplay harder, I'm on the last chapter of Disgaea 4, and it's pulling the Disgaea 3 "don't hold back on the difficulty even a little bit" trick. This time, though, there's more last-chapter maps before the final boss fight, so it has the opportunity to be cruel and merciless in more varied and interesting ways. (As it always has been and as it always shall be, fist- and gun-wielding enemies are my eternal nemesis.)

Disgaea 4's main campaign is long, too. My two strongest characters are almost level 100 already, and I haven't done any level grinding at all.

edited 15th Mar '11 6:24:00 AM by SuperDimensionman

And I never noticed this before, but by the look of it, each generic class in Disgaea 4 has three different sets of voice clips. That's amazing! I wondered what that mysterious new option during character creation was for.

edited 15th Mar '11 7:46:08 AM by SuperDimensionman

Looks like I have to eat my words. A remix of it does, in one of the Extra Maps.

edited 17th Mar '11 3:29:09 AM by SuperDimensionman

Super Dimensionman: Really? They took the time to give the Player Mooks extra voice options? Sweet. Yet another way to customize my characters whom I invest far too much time and energy in already. I mean, I was ridiculously happy with D3 letting us repaint the mooks, and the PSP remake of D2 adding that option, just so I could make all my mooks different colors without having to put them in the lower ranks.

Out of curiosity, did they keep all of D3's classes? Or did they end up removing some of them? I'll really miss ones like the Gunslinger or the Martial Artist or the Cheerleader if they did... I know you referenced the Superhero class, which is good, because that is awesome and I would've seriously missed that one...

Gaaah, waiting is so hard...! But at least it'll be coming out around my birthday.

I read the artbook before I played the game, so I already knew all this, but I'll spoiler-tag it for people who want to be surprised.

Not all of them, unfortunately. Most of the opposite-gender copies of D1 and D2 classes have vanished into the aether from whence they came; there are no more male clerics, archers or samurai and no more female gunners or ninja. Both kinds of martial artist are gone, but the Masked Hero is much easier to unlock now, and there's a new class (the Bouncer) which can use fist weapons. The Geo Master is replaced with the Yin-Yang Mage, the Cheerleader is replaced with the Professor and the Majin is replaced with the Android. The Barbarian is gone and sort-of-replaced with some kind of robot which uses axes, among other weapons.

Fire Demons and White Dragons are both gone, but the Dragon and Nekomata are back, and there's a new monster called the Gargoyle. (There might have been gargoyles in either D1 or D2 too. I don't remember.)

It might be easier to just list the classes that do reappear: Fighter (both male and female), Skull, Mage, Cleric, Samurai/Shrine Maiden (as usual, the game can't decide what it wants her to be), Ninja, Gunner, Archer, Heavy Knight, Thief, Masked Hero, Magic Knight, Witch Doctor, Beast Master. The monster classes that reappear are the Prinny, Slime, Orc, Ghost, Eryngi, Catsabre, Zombie, Mothman, Cait Sith, Succubus, Alraune, Cockatrice, Death, Rifle Demon, Wood Giant and Bone Dragon.

edited 17th Mar '11 11:48:53 PM by SuperDimensionman

Alright, thanks.

I'd been checking the Japanese site, so I figured some of them were gone, but it's nice to have confirmation. Makes planning out teams a little easier.

It's a shame they got rid of the opposite-gender counterparts; I really liked that aspect. They may not be needed, but it was nice. Makes sense that the Cheerleader's gone, though, since it's not set in a school anymore. And I like the Professor, and was glad to see her again, so that works out. (Though I'm sure a couple of my returning Mooks will 'complain' that they can't change into "super-trendy cheerleaders" anymore, and I'll really miss the female Martial Artist.)

How are the robotic clases working out for you? Their designs look really nifty to me. I'm also curious about the Yin-Yang Mages: are they functionally similar to the Geo Master?

Thanks for the info! Looks like a nice roster overall. Like I said, I'm stoked the Masked Hero made the leap; even though one appeared in the opening, it's still nice to know, you know? Especially since I, again, put farrr too much thought into my player mooks, to the point I have a running storyline between games just based off the mooks' antics.

edited 18th Mar '11 12:21:43 AM by FoominBlue

Yay, I'm not the only one who gets attached to my Player Mooks.

edited 18th Mar '11 12:33:43 AM by SpellBlade

Spell Blade: It's disturbingly easy to do, isn't it? Especially when the main cast has so much personality anyway; why shouldn't the rest be just as quirky? Or have their own goals and ambitions?

So having multiple voices to choose from should be fun, too. Even if some of them turn out to be... iffy. Especially the English voice clips. Heck, there might be major mismatching — for all we know, Random Voice Pack #1 could be 'cutely high-pitched' in Japanese and 'super sultry' in English. Weird and funny as heck.

I haven't had a chance to use any of those yet (I don't know how to unlock them), but to all appearances, the Android is literally just the Majin as far as gameplay goes; One Man Army, high-base-stats-low-aptitudes, no-natural-weapon-skills. Similarly, the Yin-Yang Mage uses Star and healing magic, gets stronger the more geo-panel colors there are on the map, and I think gets Item-World-manipulating special abilities; Geo Change, Geo Blast and so on.

To my unrefined gaijin ears, they all sound pretty similar. It seems like the same voice actor does all three of them for a given class, but the quotes themselves are different, as well as the delivery. (One of the Masked Hero voices sounds almost Almaz-esque in his nervousness.)

Well, that's still pretty nifty. Changing the tone and delivery and such... It'll be interesting to see what they say when it gets translated.

Witch #1: "Whoopsie~! My bad! ♥"

Witch #2: "Let me set your heart ablaze! ♥"

Witch #3: "DIE DIE DIE! EVERYTHING MUST BURN! MUHWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! ♥"

Witches #1 & #2: "......"

edited 18th Mar '11 1:10:31 AM by FoominBlue

Generic characters don't usually have that much personality. I'd be surprised if that's different this time.

I suppose the Masked Hero and Flame Demon were pretty memorable in Disgaea 3. And maybe the Cleric.

Most generic characters don't usually have that much personality.

Eh, well, I put a lot of personality into my Player Mooks anyway, so... Anything N1 does to add to that is just gravy.

If there's three times as many voice sets, they kind of have to have a bit more personality, more or less by definition. Even if it's only a single adjective that the game uses to differentiate them.

Like one set being more of a Little Miss Badass while another's Badass Adorable, and the third... I don't know, Little Miss Con Artist?

Well, we won't know for sure until it all gets translated, anyway... but it's fun to speculate.

Offtopic

The first thing I thought of when looking at that last trope was the little girl from Recettear shopping for her grandpa or something. She's harder to bargain with then everyone else.

/Offtopic

edited 18th Mar '11 2:20:47 AM by SpellBlade

Apropos of my recent activities in Disgaea 4:

Doing something extremely stupid to test a game mechanic? Pretty standard. Doing something extremely stupid to test a game mechanic and getting rewarded for it with a PS3 Trophy? Hilarious!

edited 18th Mar '11 11:11:00 AM by SuperDimensionman

Care to elaborate?

(Double post)

Looks like the money gained from the HD Asagi DLC will be going to the Japan relief effort.

Super Dimensionman: That? Is awesome. Wonder if that's a case of the Dev Team thinking of everything, or what the deal is there...?

Spell Blade: And that news is even more awesome.

Asagi gave up her game... FOR AMERICA I mean charity. >_>

edited 18th Mar '11 10:06:41 PM by Hobgoblin

Care to elaborate?

I killed one of my own characters with a counterattack from one of my other characters. It's probably much more interesting to speculate why I would want to do that than for me to tell you, so I'll just leave it at that.