Nippon Ichi (Disgaea, Makai Kingdom, etc.)

Most hidden trophies are for finishing certain mandatory stages. If you're going to get the trophies regardless, why is it so important to even know of their existence beforehand?

Most but not all.

The point is being able to identify what the goals are in order to achieve platinum in the first place. If the actual goal is hidden then how does one get the trophy?

Based solely on the name "A legend in this hand", how would you go about getting that trophy? How about "Dimensional Devastation"? "This Belongs in a Museum"? But wait, it gets better, because thanks to hidden trophies, you don't even get that much, just a big blank spot on the list saying "Hey there's a trophy here but we won't tell you what it's about because of some dumb reason or other."

Trophies are inherently spoilery. If you care so much about spoilers, why look at the trophies in the first place?

And the trophies aren't even THAT spoilery to begin with.

Based solely on the name "You're Gorgeous" what can you tell me about the plot of Episode 14?

edited 19th Jan '16 12:50:54 PM by Eagal

That the chapter's boss is Gorgeous George, of course.

I admit that devs can get quite overzealous with the hidden trophies, but that doesn't mean the concept itself is terrible.

I recall running into several that deserved the spoiler tag, but not for NIS games. I'd provide examples, but I don't want to dig through my huge trophy list for them (PS+ and years of buying games makes them rack up fast).

edited 19th Jan '16 2:14:06 PM by burnpsy

NISA has some possible items for the Medic from TF2.

Anyone else annoyed by Flonne having the Dangerous Revival build (both parts of it) taken away from her and given to Nisa? Or is her overload skill meant to partially fill in the gap from that build?

At least Love Field is an interesting evility with nice synergy with Etna's overload, and via both of them together, more fuel to Anti Bully Aura builds.

I must say, the addition of armor mastery and replacing of the damage bonus for leveling up skills with a sp discount are the best things to happen to the series. Defense is actually useful now.

edited 20th Jan '16 8:29:41 PM by magnum12

Why is SP discount useful in postgame? Casting maxed 3x3 Peta/Tera tier magic was still a drop in the bucket with endgame stats in earlier games.

Also, weapon mastery coming back being presented as a good thing along with a new armor mastery sounds bizarre to me. I hated weapon mastery.

edited 20th Jan '16 8:32:51 PM by Arha

SP costs go up a lot with Ranks, but I think the point was supposed to be that damage does not go up, so you're not forced to grind every single skill. Or that's how I read it anyway.

Sp costs escalates very fast upon upgrades unless the skill is at a decent level. The discount starts being noticeable at around level 15.

The upgrades changing base power rather than net damage modifier is a significant improvement over the system in 3 and 4. However, to compensate for the escalation of upgrade costs, the sp cost of using a larger AOE for spells seems to have decreased from 2x per rank to 1.5x per rank. Very useful for level grinding low level casters.

Armor mastery is a great feature because armor finally gets the same ways of improving stats that weapons did.

Armor mastery plus the change to skill level effects seems to have FINALLY fixed one of the main problems the series had. Rocket Tag. Combined with the new (imo great idea for encouraging balanced team load outs) weapon resistance chart and star resistance, 5 is a significantly more tactical experience than previous games. So far, I've found that you have to either exploit weaknesses, use a lot of buffs/debuffs, or have significantly better equipment in order to one shot things now.

I'd say not being able to one shot a perfect Hell Dragon with a fist using mage is a great thing.

edited 20th Jan '16 11:10:58 PM by magnum12

Yes. Now I have to summon my -wind resistance netherworld before I can blitz everything with my wind mage. Far more balanced.

I'm kidding, I'm kidding, haven't gotten into the really deep end stuff yet.

The official website for Rose and the Old Castle of Twilight is now fully open.

^^^ In 3 and 4 I both had way more SP than I could use even with top tier spells and I also didn't raise spell levels that quickly because the innocents needed to make spells level quickly were a much lower priority than, say, guardians, statisticians or managers.

And the return of mastery seems like a terrible idea, but I suppose I can't argue about that one too much because I haven't played a game past 4.

Edit: Or wait, when you say leveling up spells do you mean like when you spend mana to increase the level or just when the spell's level rises from being used a lot?

edited 20th Jan '16 11:41:51 PM by Arha

When you spend mana. It's kind of absurd in 5 actually: I can't remember the exact numbers, but leveling up a skill makes it cost something like 5 times more SP for a 7% increase in base damage. The point of actually raising spell levels is essentially just to negate those cost increases.

edited 21st Jan '16 5:10:06 AM by Clarste

So using a spell a lot went from a 1% increase per level to a 7% increase, but jacks up the cost?

The cost increase is so absurd that someone like me who won't be playing much post-game would opt to just not upgrade anything.

What I'm saying is that leveling up (via repeated castings) reduces SP costs, while upgrading (at the skill shop) increases costs. From what I've seen, the upgrades seem to cap at SS+ rank, meaning some skills do not need to be upgraded the full 9 ranks.

Trust me, mastery is improved in D2 and 5 compared to 2 into something more convienent. The cheat shop (where you can customize your rate of earning EXP, mana, HL, weapon mastery or skill mastery) makes things go MUCH more smoothly.

So it upgrades but doesn't show the new rank? That's something that needs to be fixed in a patch.

edited 22nd Jan '16 7:19:29 AM by magnum12

Actually even when you reach SS+ rank the base power will continue to increase if you improve its ranks.

Disgaea PC coming February 24th, deluxe edition available for pre-purchasing if you're into that.

I hope that there will be a cheaper option for just the game.

edited 1st Feb '16 4:04:09 PM by Grounder

Doubtful. Physical PC market is tiny, so LE only makes sense.

But the thing is that this is not a physical item in the slightest.

Even the artbook and soundtrack are digital only.

Oh, I thought you were referring to the $30 physical version they just put up for sale.

Planning out an Usalia build designed to fully exploit Anti Bully Aura's max potential.

Unique Evilities: Anti Bully Aura, Precious People, Immortal Body, Gel Body, Hero Shield.

Common Evilities: Rabbit Ear Radar, Veteran Hero, Wisdom Incarnate, Advanced Guard, Fighting Instinct (a must with transformation overload skills).

The build will also use Christo (a must include if using Usalia due to excellent synergy with her) with Angel Protection and a few Floral Beast common evilities. Also Flonne with Angel Protection (Love Field synergy).

If my calculations are correct, then Usalia may be the toughest tank the series has ever seen. Even better with offense getting nerfed pretty hard via upgrade changes, changes to effect of special skill levels, and armor proficiency levels. Base damage reduction with just Anti Bully, Advanced Guard, fully powered Love Field, and Angel Protection is 110% damage reduction.

Based on modifiers via attacks targeting her, the worst case scenario is a star element fist attack (145% damage reduction). Best case scenario is a non elemental physical monster attack (230% damage reduction). All of this on top of 75% evasion via Tactician + Bunny Ear Radar combo.

I'm mainly calculating reduction modifiers. If they're correct, then Usalia has the highest damage mitigation potential of any character in the series.

IIRC, damage modifiers (bonus or reduction) are incorporated into the result after ATK modifiers. Since damage modifier evilities are significantly less common than ATK modifiers (their overall number shrinking compared to previous games), this may actually work in Usalia's favor.

edited 2nd Feb '16 7:34:17 AM by magnum12

It's kind of difficult to tell how those numbers work out. Could you give me a raw number, and then how much it would be reduced to?

Dood... why did no one tell me that Disgaea was released to Steam?

I really, really hope that that pans out.