I boosted Usalia's Berserk Stream skill to the maximum. It cost over 2 million SP to use.. But since she only has it during Overload, it only ever costs 1 SP.
I've always seen Disgaea on the shelf at game stores but I never checked it out, I'm kinda mad at myself for not finding these games sooner, they are so damn good.
Better late than never, right? Disgaea Complete just dropped today as well if you want the original Disgaea experience; it's not as mechanically sound as later ones -- less quality of life features, more grind -- but it kills it for characters and narrative.
I'm planning on it, I've met some of the older characters through their DLC appearances in Disgaea 5: Complete and I've seen fanart around for them over the years so I am definitely going to play it... I heard recently they announced Disgaea 6 is in development recently too so I'm definitely hyped for that.
Mezchano my favorite is disgaea 2 great story and great game. The story in Disgaea 5 kind of sucked compared to the other ones though. Story wise the games are like this: (disgaea 2, disgaea 1, disgaea 4, disgaea 3, disgaea 5) in my opinion of course.
Oh,ANerd Great - I don’t know. I feel like they made the rewarding mechanics too streamlined, made the grinding way too easy, and put artificial caps on stats to make it so you have to grind in a bunch of different ways barely any of which feel rewarding late game, especially after early game was super easy. And then they have barely any extra maps to grind for. Just the few that ramp up in difficulty like crazy so you have to grind for a millennium before you can even hope of beating the next area. It just felt too artificial compared to the earlier games. I honestly liked Disgaea 2 the best gameplay wise, even though cave of ordeal didn’t have a 3 by 3 which was kind of annoying and they didn’t have statistics which made the grinding a bit harder. Disgaea 1 (especially the DS version that I grew up with) will always hold a special place in my heart and I honestly think that, clunky as it was is, it’s gameplay is really tight and it never gets too grinds unless you want it to be. Ive heard criticism of the Disgaea games grindy nature, but if you know what your doing you don’t even need to grind to beat Disgaea 1 and even when you do the extra content you never really have to spend all day grinding to be able to complete the challenges ahead. Just a few hours grinding and maybe some item leveling. (I still don’t know 100% percent all of the mechanics though, because my latest play through it looked like the equipment stats scaled with the character who equipped its level, I don’t think that it was aptitude playing tricks on me because the difference was quite striking when you got into the thousands compared to equipping it to a level 100. Disgaea 4 had some pretty good gameplay too and it had some pretty fun new mechanics to boot. Gameplay wise in my personal and probably biased opinion I would rate the games: Disgaea 2, Disgaea 1 and Disgaea 4 (hard to choose), Disgaea 5, Disgaea 3, and Disgaea D2 (finally got my hands on it, it was okay, but I never had that much fun. and the story left much to be desired, especially following Disgaea 1) Sadly, after Disgaea 5 I feel like certain people will have a hard time getting used to less streamlined mechanics and point towards the tedium that wasn’t in D5 as a negative, even though it’s simply another mechanic that you have to work for it to be fruitful and as far as I’m concerned the earlier Disgaea’s weren’t as worried with streamlining the process and more worried with making the process rewarding. Disgaea 5 sort of ruined a few things for me: Character creation wasn’t rewarding in the slightest as you could just get a high level ally right away and you never had to work to have a useful ally early to mid-game. Character creation also ruined the fun of capturing enemies to join my team for me, because you could rarely ever capture someone useful enough to outclass an ally that you could simply make to your specification. The whole class mechanic also sort of ruins the purpose of having a variety of characters and classes in your party as you can now make one character to your specification and you never have to worry about having a specific character for stealing or anything else, because any character can have the proper evilities. (It’s a fun mechanic, don’t get me wrong, but it sort of breaks the games difficulty, making it way too easy, and ruins some of the fun of creating a large varied team where each class has its purpose that can’t be usurped by another.) I’m sure I can think of other mechanics I’m unsatisfied with, but I know I can go off on a tangent really easily, so anyway Sorry for the rant and have a nice day.
I played D1&2, then haven't even looked at 3&4 since life got in the way. Jumping into 5 was surprisingly easy even with all the changes; even though there's a lot of differences they all seem to be built around or under the old systems instead of outright replacing them. It's like riding a bike, but my new bike has a chaingun and cup holder.
That's what happens when you put your bike through the Item World enough times. ;) The series has done a great job of building around a solid set of core mechanics over the years. I'm hoping we get an HD sprite version of Disgaea 3 someday so that more people might get to check that one out. It had an amazing sense of meta humor.
The Hub worlf music is basically Killia and Sera relationship, a seemengly mellow music in Sera love nest but the lyrics is about Killia sadness and he doesnt have sera in his mind for a second, he has someone else he lost and he is both moving on and afraid of doing so.
i have watched like 5 other reviews and this one is the best, with this review i feel like i know exactly what im getting into and im certainly going to buy this game after watching this review
I'm glad the review helped out! I like to break games down so that people know what the game offers rather than just going off about what I love or hate (I get to do that plenty on the Twitch live shows anyways). =)
Its funny how games like this do literally everything right and go relatively unknown. I got Disgaea 5 complete on switch recently, it's my first game in the series and i can't believe what I've been missing.
Definitely a very good review, very fair and highlights the game's ups and downs. I'm well past 1200 hours into the game, and I'm STILL finding new things I can do in this game; it's hard to put it down, I just wish I had more time in the day to invest into it.
+Michael Melendez *whistle* That's some serious hours! Going to go after the Baal or LoC Baal fights? I think I platinum'd the game around 100 hours but I never did either of those fights in the end. I'll go back for them one day. =)
@@arkadiuszjandylewski1688 you mean the cheat NPC right? the one you unlock after passing the bill? I mean... the npc (once you get her) has all the cheats set at DEFAULT which is what you were playing with even before you passed the bill. If you don't like using cheats, then simple, don't change any of the values or mess with it.
And the award for best game of the year 2015 goes to: Disgaea 5 My muscles are happy! :) Very good detailed review with a good look at everything we discoverd so far. Can't wait to see more of it :) Also would buy 10/10 if i had a PS4
well if u own a switch it's on there now too along with disgaea 1 complete, although that game doesn't have all the quality of life changes the rest of the series got
Great video, you really broke down the game very well with wonderful detailed explanation. I just got D5 a few days ago before I even watched this video. I must say, if I had saw this video earlier I would have bought D5 even sooner. As an RPG I would say this game is perfect. The level of customization, the steady progression, and simply being rewarded for everything you do makes this game so fun!
True, I saw their press release! I'm debating whether or not to give it a livestream review for comparison, though I wouldn't have time for another video like this. =\
The game is layer upon layer upon layer of strategy and tactics. You can win in more ways that I can think of - and lose of course. It's a real sandbox game if ever there was a Tactical JRPG that was a sandbox - this is it. It makes the tactical options in FFT and FFT Ogre seem pretty limited in comparison (great games though they are)
Hey Guitarzuyen! I actually marathon'd this for 40+ hours pre-release as part of a huge event cast. We finished up over the days after. I may do a day's review on the Switch version when it drops though. =)
This video, along with the live stream showing, make me want to buy this game. Thanks for the video and live stream by the way to get me interested in picking up this game.
Male Warrior with the musclehead voice (forgot what it's called) is freaking hilarious! "Muscles!" "Training!" "My muscles are happy!" Also, when he does that muscle laser, he gets a buff to attack and some other stat xD
I did this after about 60 hours with the game, but damned if I didn't still find more afterwards. Always more to Disgaea games than you seem to expect, right? lol
13:00 Guess we both had a similar idea on what our curry should have. Expect I went a bit crazy and ended up making a monstrosity that afflicted my entire party with amnesia and intelligence being reduced to 1. Also hi carelevelzero ^_^
Disgaea games get a little bit crazy like that. If you REALLY want to see games within a game, check out the Yakuza series. Yakuza 0 dropped for PS4 back in January and their minigames are generally polished enough to be entire other games. =D
Great review dude. Very informative, to the point, and spoiler free. I learned some things about the mechanics that I wasn't aware of by watching this.
this video is a good help even for someone who owns all the Disgaea games. (i been playing D1 Complete on the switch so going from D1 to D5 is a big jump and hard on the brain) i just picked D5 Complete up on the Nintindo Switch E-shop. for £16.49, i do also own the PS4 copy to that i picked up back at the start of 2018. but never got going on it. the Switch will let me play it more. it funny i played more of the Disgaea games on PSP/Vita systems (and now the switch the sreen is so big when put next to the PSP go.) then PS3 or PS4. (1st game i got was Disgaea 2 on psp go.) and after that i fell in love with the Disgaea games. it a grate game to play on the move to kill time. i even own "Disgaea D2" but i never played it. lol. i got it and was going to play it after finishing the story of Disgaea 1 on psp. but never did finish it. even now i spend more time leveling up on D1 then finsihing the plot. "Disgaea the game that will get you side tracked." i do hope that "Disgaea D2" come to switch. well i hope that Disgaea 2 and 3 also get a port to the switch. to have all 6 games on it that be so cool. but i am happy that Dishaea 4 got it port to the siwtch. comeing out in the next months. what 2 or 3 months to go for that :)
From a design standpoint, this game seems like a stat-builder's sandbox grinding paradise except with weird streamlining at some points and gross feature-creep at other points. My question would be, what design lessons can be learned from this game, good or bad?
+TC Petty III It's almost a stat-builders grinding paradise but it suffers one critical failure that I didn't see so much in prior Disgaea titles; there comes a point fairly early on where every unit, regardless of class, starts to have the same stats. When I finished, everyone had a base of 40,000 in every stat, which meant that class was meaningless for anything other than determining your primary skill. It's nice that everyone can be everything but it also robbed most of my team of any sense of identity or unique role in the end. The game offered a lot of interesting interplay between systems and some great min-maxing options prior to reaching the equality plateau. It also offered a lot of Quality of Life improvements for players of previous Disgaea titles; I think that's where the best design lessons it offers come in. They clearly paid a lot of attention to how people played the series and made adjustments to accommodate. One of the simplest examples I can think of is Disgaea D2, wherein the hospital only ever offered Legendary quality rewards because so many players would churn the RNG in prior games until it gave them Legendary anyways. It's a small change but it means people spend more time playing the game and less time bouncing in and out of a menu until they get bored.
I wish your review had this sort of information in it. You obviously have some insight as a game designer but you cheated yourself out of discussing this by doing a long description of what the game offers rather than an in-depth critique (what I was hoping for.) I think it'd be great if you talked about things like this in the future.
I agree, honestly. Some of this didn't come to light until I'd put more time into the game; at the time of review, I believe it was ~50 hours play time. Some of it also wasn't relevant to systemic breakdown, which is what was generally requested.
Brought Disgaea 5 Day 1, haven't brought the PS4 to play it so far. xD. I really want to play it. But hearing about the system makes it sound like the best Disgaea so far. :P The Mana -> Hell change is kinda positive and negative. It makes getting the overpowered higher tiers a lot easier once you get a Broker. But it also gives you some way to actually spend money as it was mostly useless to buy items from the shop in the past, outside of fast equipping a new character. But the unique Evility was in past games too. At first is was just text and then with Disgaea 3 it became an Evility that you can actually look at and see stat values for. Common ones are the ones you can change and make those great combinations with.
I can tell from your avatar. =D There's a version coming out for the Switch as well, sometime around Spring now. Mechanically, it's right up there with Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness for me. Narratively, I rate it fairly low in the series. It meandered around in some very generic shonen themes for most of the game.
I know, but I will get a PS4 eventually for other games too. Then I will open my Day 1 Edition. I think the narrative will be fine, I will played every Disgaea game from 1 to 4. Yes, I use that as an Avatar because I always create the Thief since the first installment of the series. Always named Shigure too xD. well, I got Disgaea 3 before I got a PS3 too. Disgea D2 made a lot of stuff easier, that was good. I still think that for 6 they should add even more mechanics. :P
3:20 imo I love this change, not only does it make me want to use combos more but it also makes stuff like heals/buff/debuffs contribute to the combo after an enemy has been hit. You'll have more interesting kinds of combos this way.
It made things a little too easy for my taste compared to some of the earlier titles, where you had to plan, prepare, and execute with more thought in order to score the really good combos. To be fair, though, they broke a lot of that when they stopped letting you target empty panels anyways. You used to be able to target empty space because you knew an enemy was going to get moved there as part of other attacks. Really fun to set those chains up. =) This change does make the Desperado's 100% combo hit bonus a little bit broken. lol
Yeah I can see why you prefer it that way, I just prefer the more simpler and more lenient combo system. Hmm? I don't remember ever being able to target empty panels, which games allowed you to do that? I don't remember it in the psp versions of 1 or 2. Was it in 3 or 4? Haven't played those. Personally I think the 100% accuracy think really tame compared to most of the broken stuff you can do in this game. These games are basically made to be exploited.
Hope you like Disgaea 6 too. It does change things in some ways, probably for the best. Some changes are quite drastic / jarring compared to before.... Disgaea 6 flows really well..... Disgaea series is so much fun!
I've "finished" D1 twice. Played D2 for a couple months. Played D5 for a few months. Thought it was great but eventually tired of it. Almost too much to do. I've recently began another playthrough of D1 Complete and I find it the most satisfying.
Nothing wrong with more of the original trio! It's a shame A Brighter Darkness never made it to more systems, being the only other entry starring those three.
I've started playing the game for about 2 weeks ago, so late comment, but still. Lol. You don't actually have to reincarnated your mages for new spells.. You do have to reincarnated for different elements though.
I'm actually gonna do that with flonne in Disgaea 2 Marona also fits that bill with having both 140% int and Res (its not because I want a hybrid I want a char that's has both high res and high int growth with high sp) cause I technically have ice and fire covered (Technically I only needed wind and star but I'm playing disgaea 2 and I want flonne to have everything bad news is flonne is an extra char and is a late game char very late char same with laharl) Marona is my early best bet to get everything thou reason why I don't make multiple mages in disgaea 2 is that I have so many chars so many that I dunno what to do with I've got the dlc and some extra char let alone generics lol
@@scarletrose8766 in Disgaea 1 i gave flonne star and she became a powerhouse :), i give star to my cleric for the hybrid job since they are good in both res and int. Question are the dlc characters n Disgaea 2 worth it? i only have the base game characters im only at the chapter where i have to find etna for her demon lord ingredient. I know what u mean but having 3 witches and 3 magicians for the elements is fine by me, i've got star covered by another character so i don't need a star mage my roster is pre big but i don't mind scrolling through them
I like fire emblem do you think I'll like this game? I also liked tales of zesteria weapon making and white knight chronicles thanks to anyone answering
Though both tactical RPGs, Fire Emblem and Disgaea are almost polar opposites in many regards. Whereas Fire Emblem favors low stat values, small numbers, and punishes for deaths, Disgaea focuses on ridiculously huge numbers and deaths tend to be extremely common. That said, I enjoyed the Hell out of the recent Fire Emblem titles along with Disgaea. Disgaea brings its own flavor to the TRPG table. It's great if you like min-maxing and developing powerful builds but Disgaea 5 was a bit weak on story for me; it wound up mostly being typical shounen. Generally: If you're looking for something that doesn't take itself seriously, has plenty of systems to delve into, and can offer up a lot of hours of playtime, it's a good game to look into.
You aren't just expected to constantly die, you are rewarded for it in multiple ways, the new Revenge Mode happens as people die and get hurt, and the Hospital gives away rewards for investing cash to revive and heal Units, also you have many many means of getting new units up to speed, from the classic Team Attack coming from even the original(Team Attacks happen similar to FE Support Attacks, except it can be anyone and everyone adjacent to the attacker, with various factors raising the rates for a particular duo) where in due to technically being a part of the attack, despite probably dealing nothing to the very powerful enemy being beat down, they get a share of kill EXP, to newer mechanics like Tower Attacks or the Boot Camp squad, or even just funneling money into the new unit now
Thinking of picking this up on the switch when it comes out, Since the switch version is a Complete edition I assume some sort of DLC was released? Does anyone have any insight into what that is
Taking from the press release NISA sent out: "The game includes all 8 bonus scenarios, 4 fan-favorite characters, and 3 character classes that were originally DLC in the PlayStation®4 release of Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance." Those classes are the Kunoichi, Sorcerer, and Celestial Hostess. I'm not sure which fan favorite characters they're bringing back or any details on the 8 bonus scenarios. Incidentally, I believe you can grab the game from the JP Eshop with English already, though you'd have to hit Google for the details on that. =)
Awesome thanks for the quick reply, I just saw a quick video and someone mentioned that the DLC may be locked to the Japanese account still so I can wait a couple more months, Game looks super fun though and i'm looking forward to it! Great review!
Thanks, glad you enjoyed the review! I had some other issues with the game later on -- mostly the overly shonen story -- but it had a lot of good mechanics and was generally fun overall. =)
Since you asked, I was on the design teams for Mass Effect, Jade Empire, Dragon Age: Origins, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Darkest Dungeon 2, and a few others over the years.
is spending mana the only way to get the area of effect magic in disgaea 5? in the older games that was unlocked by leveling the skill which is much easier than getting mana and the method i prefer
You forgot to mention that you can not eat the curry right away and let it spoil, er, age for up to a hundred map clears, and when you eat aged curry, the effect remains for the same amount of map clears that it was aged for. There's even a trophy for eating curry aged to the maximum time.
+Christian Groff Yeah, we completely missed that during the marathon that this review was put together from. We also missed the team specials; never actually got any in the 43 hours we played up to the point I made this video. Game had plenty to discover, that's for sure. =)
This sounds so much like Final Fantasy Tactics. What i really loved in that game was the ability to use skills from one class with another one, and with different weapons sometimes changing the range of the skill. Or you learned to doublecast spells with one class and used that skill with all the other abilities from different classes. Is the class and ability system in disgaea similar to that?
There are certainly some similarities between FFT's systems and Disgaea's, loosely. You can assign a number of passive skills to each character and these can be learned from your active class. Some of these are shared between classes and some of them are specific to individual classes. It's not quite the same as Tactics though; your active skill set is always based on your weapon (any class can use any weapon but some are more suited than others) and your current class. Magic is a bit different in that it can be taught and remembered amongst classes freely. There's a lot of min-maxing you can do with the passives and your gear. I re-ran Tactics just last month and finished with a squad of Black Mages subbing Samurai. Draw Out is insanely effective in the hands of a Black Mage. =D
Those passive skills sound interesting, can they be used in combination with other skills? Also if you use a shared active ability with a different class, is it gonna make a difference? From the looks of it, items play much more of a role in disgaea, i hope there's more to upgrading abilities than just having their damage/range/AoE increased. So learning skills still requires you to wield a weapon which has that skill? good I am really interested in how the weaknesses play out, it'd be nice if it was a bit more strategic than FFT, like the actual battles. And those monsters who can morph into weapons are also intriguing :) Hmm i can't remember what Draw Out was exactly, has been a while since i played it. I always used summoners with subclass redmage for the Double Cast ability (i think it was an active) I still remember one epic moment i had with FFT though: One time i had a bluemage using the passive Learn ability and randomly fought some monsters. Then one of them uses the Roulette ability to randomly kill one character and it chose the bluemage. I didn't think much of it since he had an amulett which revived him instantly again. All of a sudden a textbox appeared, and he had actually learned the skill, just because of the instant revive, all by chance. It blew my mind!
The passive skills mostly affect stats or have conditional effects on combat, such as being able to attack twice if you don't move. There are some pretty broken combinations available, much like OG Final Fantasy Tactics. Gear plays a huge role in Disgaea and there's an entire "world" of levels inside each item, procedurally generated, that you can run to improve stats and the like. Late-game Disgaea combat typically becomes a case of kill or be killed much of the time, with either side capable of destroying opposing units in a single shot. Numbers and the like get pretty ridiculous, with damage breaking into the billions if you really go in for the post-game content. The series has always prided itself on being extremely over the top. On the subject of battle tactics, Disgaea generates some fairly unique approaches. Some of this are the geo panels that influence units standing on their respective colors and a lot of it comes from Disgaea's mechanics for combo attacks, move cancels, and being able to stack/throw units around. No other game quite does what they do, in some strange ways. lol Draw Out, by the way, were the Samurai skills drawn from swords. They were based on magic attack, were AoE, and had 100% hit rates. In the hands of a Black Mage, that meant absolute destruction. ;)
Anybody remember the name of the last song used in this video? I love Disgaea, but every time I find a song I really like in it, it's an absolute nightmare wading through the entire soundtrack to listen to a specific song on loop.
Alright, for those who are interested, I found the song. The reason I couldn't find it before is because it wasn't originally a Disgaea song. It's actually called Speed Queen, and it's from Soul Nomad and the World Eaters.
Tough call! Personally, I think the first Disgaea is still ultimately the best, especially with the HD version (Disgaea Complete) being available. I think it had the most enjoyable characters and narrative but it DOES have the oldest mechanics, many of which have been improved over time. 4 and 5 have smoother mechanics but are much weaker in terms of narrative and characterization, so I guess the question is: how much grind can you stomach? If you're not too worried about that, come in with Disgaea Complete. Otherwise, I guess just start with 4 and almost any you play after will have an easy time leaping over the bar for characters that 4 sets; they were great concepts but terrible executions.
No, most of the games are generally unrelated outside of occasional recurring characters and some inside jokes. Disgaea 1 and Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness are the only real direct sequels. =)
Mechanically and visually it's pretty damn solid. I don't think it's quite on the level of Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness though and, for me, the best characters and narrative are still all the way back in the first game. Classic Laharl. =)
Laharl(D1) still shows the most growth of all the disgaea characters, specially when you couple certain scenes like in War of the netherworld part 2 or the multiple endings which are really good
I won't argue that! It's longer than I would have liked but there was a ton to cover for the game, and I like to be thorough. My reviews are normally done live on Twitch, though, which is a totally different approach with a lot more energy. XD Having a script definitely affects the way I deliver. I hope you enjoy Disgaea 5!
Yeah, the amount of detailed information put into it is why I liked it. Would definitely be interested in your take on other games with that perspective 👍
Update: I bought it and I LOVE it. It feels infinite but in a good way. It's very easy to lose track of hours as you play. Not as good as Xenoblade for me but a super solid title. Thanks again for the persuading video (If you have any recomendations for simular games please let me know)
Is Disgaea 5 still coming to switch in US? I was wondering cause I have found conflicting info. I plan to buy a ps 4 exclusively for d5 if it is not going to be on switch ( No there really is nothing else on ps4 that I want.)
It was briefly delayed but, to quote from a press release they sent in the last few days: "Disgaea 5 Complete is arriving on the Nintendo Switch™ in North America on May 23, 2017 and Europe on May 26, 2017 as a physical and digital release." It's still coming. =)
Bears with guns ? Insta buy ! The battles seem a bit confusing , when you clicked on the portal there was a lot of characters available, how does it work? is there a limit to the number of characters on the field ? do you have to use them all each fight ? Cause using so many characters seems confusing af
Hey! You can field up to 10 characters at once and each character that dies on the field reduces that count by 1 for the rest of the battle. Our list was quite large because it was full of story characters and our chat-named army, since we were checking out as wide a range of classes as we could manage. =) Traditionally, Disgaea starts you off with 2 story characters and 3 prinnies to get the ball rolling, so you build up to the larger army over time; helps you get used to it!
@@carelevelzero alright, well that's a buy for me, I've been searching for a good t-rpg to play for so long thanks for the video and the answer to my comment :)
Never played any Disgaea game before (never even heard of them) and I was able to understand most of what you said. Great review. Just ordered my Japanese copy.
Hmm, not sure. A lot of new abilities and new looks. I actually can't recall many of the spear abilities off the top of my head, but the last time I played was late 2015.
I didn't like this game at first, got the demo on Switch, the English voices are terrible, the main character is super stereotypical and bland (I liked Seraphina) and the game play seemed kinda meh. Then I started messing with the menus, items and stats and that's when the crack addiction started, I can't put it down, pls send help D:
Playing any Japanese made game with English voices is a mistake in general You'll feel the pain when you get to late game where the main characters gets new voice lines which are *unbearably cringy*
the English voices are great they are not terrible at all like you say, ill give it to you that killia is bland at 1st but from what i've seen his backstory looks interesting and the gameplay is some of the best tactical turn based gameplay out there i don't know what you have been playing but aside from naming Seraphina it doesn't sound like disgaea 5 at all
Thanks for the kind words! I'm glad you enjoyed the review. The game is certainly a bit packed; I'd played around 50 hours when I did the review and STILL found new stuff afterwards. lol
Yeah, the music from the game was only active as BGM in some clips. Video turned out longer than I'd originally expected but there was an awful lot to cover. =D
+DigitalViking Hah, that's an interesting thought! I'm genuinely curious why those classes are the only ones that progress that way; it doesn't match up with anything else. Would love to pick somebody's brain at NISA about it. =)
Probably due to the weird way Mages progress, rather then just a straight path you start with the first three(Blue Red and Green) and at least in prior games you needed to work on all three to get Star Mage, and then work on Star for Prism and Prism for Galaxy, that starting bit is probably why it has those hickups, for all I know, maybe once you get a Prism or Star it'll auto jump forward /shrug
Disgaea 7 coming out soon 😂 Though I admit, the last Disgaea I really liked was Disgaea 5 (also the only one I can continue to play to this day. The others are too outdated, or they simply don't run as smoothly as D5)
When I read the title "A Game Designer's Take" I was hoping the video would be something more like an in-depth critical analysis of the systems in the game.
Just checked out your video. Not bad, but I would have liked to see a more "critical eye" put towards the review. What systems were bad? Why were they bad? How could something be improved? These are the sorts of things that are sorely missing from reviews.
Thanks for the feedback! I usually save the in-depth critical analysis for when I'm live streaming since I spend a lot of time with a game that way. Some of the bigger weaknesses in D5's systems didn't become particularly apparent until endgame (well after this video was made). For this video, I was mostly interested in breaking the game down into its component systems so that people could see what changed, what came back, etc. compared to previous series entries.
I only made use of a couple of the unique characters for a few reasons. The first is that the playthrough was done on Twitch, so custom characters named after chat were used for the majority of the roster. The second is that the nature of customization in this actually made custom characters more effective endgame than many of the uniques, if you built them right.
This game, to me, is like fire emblem and final fantasy combined, even in feel. I love both, but final fantasy has gameplay I like more and fire emblem has long battles and failing late in to the mission is such a pain so I hardly ever play a bunch at once. This is like a middle ground sort of for me
Fire emblem problem has to do with me playing on permadeath and normal difficulty with the rule of 1 death = reset quest. It's just a handicap I feel makes the battles require an immense amount of strategy. I will say though in the most recent fe games I'll have like a character or 2 that just dodge every single hit so lol
I disagree with this assessment. I contrasted this game next to D1 and Enter the Breach, and found this game to be bogged down by superfluous features. In fact, just in comparing to Enter the Breach, this game is too reliant on novelty and the central game play loop is lacking. I like the minimalism of Enter the Breach way more. It didn't seem there was much strategy to this game in the sense that I had to decide between 2 or more decision. Nor did I ever feel much regret for having a varied strategy. It seemed more grind based.
Wait, free combos? That was the main thing i liked about D1. Was thinking about trying D5 but not sure now, that was kinda the main depth source of the battles
This was, hands down, the WORST Disgaea game in terms of plot and character design. Like...holy shit. So bad. Wtf is Killia's outfit supposed to be? What is Seraphina's motive for doing anything? Why do the demons suddenly have a "code of honor" that they have to abide by? Back in the good ol' days, Laharl just wanted to kill everyone and come out on top. While Disgaea 5 did the best job at the grinding, it failed literally everywhere else when you compare it to the previous titles.
Story is mid, but it's the best Disgaea for this simple reason: Gameplay. Disgaea games stories are never anything too amazing, and a good story doesn't make for a replayable game. So Disgaea 5 having the best gameplay, actually makes it the best entry in the series, as eventually, you will just skip all the story beats, and get straight to the gameplay, which is all that really matters with this kind of sandboxy SRPG stat game.
I feel like they made it way too easy to get overpowers in this one. I just grinded a bit with the capture ability and got some elixir that made me way too overpowered by the time I remembered the story mode I was easily beating every map at max level.
This isn't a review. It's basically a 'what's new from the last games', which is only helpful for fans of the series and does nothing to help people new to it.
Glad you enjoyed it! Have you checked out Disgaea 6 yet? Some interesting changes and things to adapt to, for sure, but it seems pretty solid (and very breakable) in my time with it so far.
"Why the hell not? it's Disgaea" you just summarized the entire franchise in a sentence
It really does seem to be their mentality during development at times! Kitchen sink? Throw it in too!
@@carelevelzero My starter Prinny was named kitchen sink ^_^
I boosted Usalia's Berserk Stream skill to the maximum. It cost over 2 million SP to use.. But since she only has it during Overload, it only ever costs 1 SP.
Same 😂
If you delay her transformation, she can be in feral mode and not be on revenge.
I've always seen Disgaea on the shelf at game stores but I never checked it out, I'm kinda mad at myself for not finding these games sooner, they are so damn good.
Better late than never, right? Disgaea Complete just dropped today as well if you want the original Disgaea experience; it's not as mechanically sound as later ones -- less quality of life features, more grind -- but it kills it for characters and narrative.
I'm planning on it, I've met some of the older characters through their DLC appearances in Disgaea 5: Complete and I've seen fanart around for them over the years so I am definitely going to play it... I heard recently they announced Disgaea 6 is in development recently too so I'm definitely hyped for that.
Mezchano my favorite is disgaea 2 great story and great game. The story in Disgaea 5 kind of sucked compared to the other ones though. Story wise the games are like this: (disgaea 2, disgaea 1, disgaea 4, disgaea 3, disgaea 5) in my opinion of course.
@@christianboi7690 disgaea 5 story is a bit trashy i guess, but the gameplay is a banger
Oh,ANerd Great - I don’t know. I feel like they made the rewarding mechanics too streamlined, made the grinding way too easy, and put artificial caps on stats to make it so you have to grind in a bunch of different ways barely any of which feel rewarding late game, especially after early game was super easy.
And then they have barely any extra maps to grind for. Just the few that ramp up in difficulty like crazy so you have to grind for a millennium before you can even hope of beating the next area.
It just felt too artificial compared to the earlier games.
I honestly liked Disgaea 2 the best gameplay wise, even though cave of ordeal didn’t have a 3 by 3 which was kind of annoying and they didn’t have statistics which made the grinding a bit harder.
Disgaea 1 (especially the DS version that I grew up with) will always hold a special place in my heart and I honestly think that, clunky as it was is, it’s gameplay is really tight and it never gets too grinds unless you want it to be. Ive heard criticism of the Disgaea games grindy nature, but if you know what your doing you don’t even need to grind to beat Disgaea 1 and even when you do the extra content you never really have to spend all day grinding to be able to complete the challenges ahead. Just a few hours grinding and maybe some item leveling. (I still don’t know 100% percent all of the mechanics though, because my latest play through it looked like the equipment stats scaled with the character who equipped its level, I don’t think that it was aptitude playing tricks on me because the difference was quite striking when you got into the thousands compared to equipping it to a level 100.
Disgaea 4 had some pretty good gameplay too and it had some pretty fun new mechanics to boot.
Gameplay wise in my personal and probably biased opinion I would rate the games:
Disgaea 2, Disgaea 1 and Disgaea 4 (hard to choose), Disgaea 5, Disgaea 3, and
Disgaea D2 (finally got my hands on it, it was okay, but I never had that much fun. and the story left much to be desired, especially following Disgaea 1)
Sadly, after Disgaea 5 I feel like certain people will have a hard time getting used to less streamlined mechanics and point towards the tedium that wasn’t in D5 as a negative, even though it’s simply another mechanic that you have to work for it to be fruitful and as far as I’m concerned the earlier Disgaea’s weren’t as worried with streamlining the process and more worried with making the process rewarding.
Disgaea 5 sort of ruined a few things for me:
Character creation wasn’t rewarding in the slightest as you could just get a high level ally right away and you never had to work to have a useful ally early to mid-game. Character creation also ruined the fun of capturing enemies to join my team for me, because you could rarely ever capture someone useful enough to outclass an ally that you could simply make to your specification.
The whole class mechanic also sort of ruins the purpose of having a variety of characters and classes in your party as you can now make one character to your specification and you never have to worry about having a specific character for stealing or anything else, because any character can have the proper evilities. (It’s a fun mechanic, don’t get me wrong, but it sort of breaks the games difficulty, making it way too easy, and ruins some of the fun of creating a large varied team where each class has its purpose that can’t be usurped by another.)
I’m sure I can think of other mechanics I’m unsatisfied with, but I know I can go off on a tangent really easily, so anyway
Sorry for the rant and have a nice day.
I played D1&2, then haven't even looked at 3&4 since life got in the way. Jumping into 5 was surprisingly easy even with all the changes; even though there's a lot of differences they all seem to be built around or under the old systems instead of outright replacing them.
It's like riding a bike, but my new bike has a chaingun and cup holder.
That's what happens when you put your bike through the Item World enough times. ;)
The series has done a great job of building around a solid set of core mechanics over the years. I'm hoping we get an HD sprite version of Disgaea 3 someday so that more people might get to check that one out. It had an amazing sense of meta humor.
Bear unit is a pun. Bear in Japanese is Kuma. The closest word to Devil in Japanese is Akuma.
Almost.
The Hub worlf music is basically Killia and Sera relationship, a seemengly mellow music in Sera love nest but the lyrics is about Killia sadness and he doesnt have sera in his mind for a second, he has someone else he lost and he is both moving on and afraid of doing so.
I like the way you think!
And when he gets his lost love back, he ignores her and continues adventuring with Sera.
i have watched like 5 other reviews and this one is the best, with this review i feel like i know exactly what im getting into and im certainly going to buy this game after watching this review
I'm glad the review helped out! I like to break games down so that people know what the game offers rather than just going off about what I love or hate (I get to do that plenty on the Twitch live shows anyways). =)
Dude your voice is perfect for narration and/or voice acting. It's got that timber and pitch that is easy to listen to.
Thanks for the kind words! I thought my narration was a bit flat in this though; side effect of having a script instead of improv.
Its funny how games like this do literally everything right and go relatively unknown. I got Disgaea 5 complete on switch recently, it's my first game in the series and i can't believe what I've been missing.
Welcome to the series! We've got Disgaea 6 releasing next year to look forward to.
@@carelevelzero Loved Disgaea 5, but I can't help but feel 6 was a few steps backwards. Just couldn't get into it.
Definitely a very good review, very fair and highlights the game's ups and downs.
I'm well past 1200 hours into the game, and I'm STILL finding new things I can do in this game; it's hard to put it down, I just wish I had more time in the day to invest into it.
+Michael Melendez *whistle* That's some serious hours! Going to go after the Baal or LoC Baal fights? I think I platinum'd the game around 100 hours but I never did either of those fights in the end. I'll go back for them one day. =)
I don't quite rush the game like many do.
Speaking of which, I finally beat Baal last Tuesday and got the Axel Gear.
- M
I've been playing since release; just a lot of progress dumped into it.
I forgot what Trap I'm on at the moment, I think it's my 9th.
I do not like cheat room, I think it should be removed. The game should have fixed rules.
@@arkadiuszjandylewski1688 you mean the cheat NPC right? the one you unlock after passing the bill? I mean... the npc (once you get her) has all the cheats set at DEFAULT which is what you were playing with even before you passed the bill. If you don't like using cheats, then simple, don't change any of the values or mess with it.
Story in Disgaea is just a 50 hour tutorial for the post-game.
Skip Demo?
> No
Yes
Hey, this was actually a really great review. I hope to see more "A Game Designers Take" videos!
Thanks! You have a great sense of timing, it turns out; I just released another one and there are some more on the horizon. =)
And the award for best game of the year 2015 goes to:
Disgaea 5
My muscles are happy! :)
Very good detailed review with a good look at everything we discoverd so far.
Can't wait to see more of it :)
Also would buy 10/10 if i had a PS4
+Horaktyle Hah, I'm glad you enjoyed it man! Looking forward to getting back to the game on stream soon. =)
well if u own a switch it's on there now too along with disgaea 1 complete, although that game doesn't have all the quality of life changes the rest of the series got
7:56 i am sad that the ghost was removed from this game. it was one of my favorite monster classes.
I said the same thing. The ghost and also the power rangers you could call on the phone from D2 never made a return :(
Great video, you really broke down the game very well with wonderful detailed explanation.
I just got D5 a few days ago before I even watched this video. I must say, if I had saw this video earlier I would have bought D5 even sooner. As an RPG I would say this game is perfect. The level of customization, the steady progression, and simply being rewarded for everything you do makes this game so fun!
Coming soon on Nintendo Switch apparently (Spring 2017 so just a couple of months) I will get it again for sure. It's that good.
True, I saw their press release! I'm debating whether or not to give it a livestream review for comparison, though I wouldn't have time for another video like this. =\
Hi zero is guitarzuyen, i would love to see play this game =)
The game is layer upon layer upon layer of strategy and tactics. You can win in more ways that I can think of - and lose of course. It's a real sandbox game if ever there was a Tactical JRPG that was a sandbox - this is it. It makes the tactical options in FFT and FFT Ogre seem pretty limited in comparison (great games though they are)
Hey Guitarzuyen! I actually marathon'd this for 40+ hours pre-release as part of a huge event cast. We finished up over the days after. I may do a day's review on the Switch version when it drops though. =)
I'd love to see a port of Disgaea D2. I think it's still my favorite of the series from a mechanical perspective overall.
Bottlemail from phantom brave!? Oh man thats nice
This video, along with the live stream showing, make me want to buy this game.
Thanks for the video and live stream by the way to get me interested in picking up this game.
Male Warrior with the musclehead voice (forgot what it's called) is freaking hilarious!
"Muscles!"
"Training!"
"My muscles are happy!"
Also, when he does that muscle laser, he gets a buff to attack and some other stat xD
I got a pretty big kick out of our Muscles warrior, especially with his flex beam. XD
Watching reviews for Disgaea are funny because people always miss out on a bunch of other aspects of the game. So many things to work on, good review
I did this after about 60 hours with the game, but damned if I didn't still find more afterwards. Always more to Disgaea games than you seem to expect, right? lol
13:00 Guess we both had a similar idea on what our curry should have. Expect I went a bit crazy and ended up making a monstrosity that afflicted my entire party with amnesia and intelligence being reduced to 1. Also hi carelevelzero ^_^
+Rebellion Now THAT sounds like some amazing curry! =D What ingredients did you use? Also, hi Rebellion!
If I had to guess I used hard liquor, chloroform, bomb, and an angel cake xD
Haha, nice! In the end, I always wound up using Elixirs and 100 of the cheapest Fist weapons to get that +100% crit. =D
I started doing that but with no elixers I go with the fists and stuff xD
God damn this like a game with in a game type
Disgaea games get a little bit crazy like that. If you REALLY want to see games within a game, check out the Yakuza series. Yakuza 0 dropped for PS4 back in January and their minigames are generally polished enough to be entire other games. =D
Great review dude. Very informative, to the point, and spoiler free. I learned some things about the mechanics that I wasn't aware of by watching this.
This was probably the high point of the series.
Yea... The games improved from 1-5, just like the Pokemon series. Then it went 3D....
this video is a good help even for someone who owns all the Disgaea games. (i been playing D1 Complete on the switch so going from D1 to D5 is a big jump and hard on the brain) i just picked D5 Complete up on the Nintindo Switch E-shop. for £16.49, i do also own the PS4 copy to that i picked up back at the start of 2018. but never got going on it. the Switch will let me play it more. it funny i played more of the Disgaea games on PSP/Vita systems (and now the switch the sreen is so big when put next to the PSP go.) then PS3 or PS4. (1st game i got was Disgaea 2 on psp go.) and after that i fell in love with the Disgaea games. it a grate game to play on the move to kill time. i even own "Disgaea D2" but i never played it. lol. i got it and was going to play it after finishing the story of Disgaea 1 on psp. but never did finish it. even now i spend more time leveling up on D1 then finsihing the plot. "Disgaea the game that will get you side tracked." i do hope that "Disgaea D2" come to switch. well i hope that Disgaea 2 and 3 also get a port to the switch. to have all 6 games on it that be so cool. but i am happy that Dishaea 4 got it port to the siwtch. comeing out in the next months. what 2 or 3 months to go for that :)
From a design standpoint, this game seems like a stat-builder's sandbox grinding paradise except with weird streamlining at some points and gross feature-creep at other points. My question would be, what design lessons can be learned from this game, good or bad?
+TC Petty III It's almost a stat-builders grinding paradise but it suffers one critical failure that I didn't see so much in prior Disgaea titles; there comes a point fairly early on where every unit, regardless of class, starts to have the same stats. When I finished, everyone had a base of 40,000 in every stat, which meant that class was meaningless for anything other than determining your primary skill. It's nice that everyone can be everything but it also robbed most of my team of any sense of identity or unique role in the end.
The game offered a lot of interesting interplay between systems and some great min-maxing options prior to reaching the equality plateau. It also offered a lot of Quality of Life improvements for players of previous Disgaea titles; I think that's where the best design lessons it offers come in. They clearly paid a lot of attention to how people played the series and made adjustments to accommodate. One of the simplest examples I can think of is Disgaea D2, wherein the hospital only ever offered Legendary quality rewards because so many players would churn the RNG in prior games until it gave them Legendary anyways. It's a small change but it means people spend more time playing the game and less time bouncing in and out of a menu until they get bored.
I wish your review had this sort of information in it. You obviously have some insight as a game designer but you cheated yourself out of discussing this by doing a long description of what the game offers rather than an in-depth critique (what I was hoping for.) I think it'd be great if you talked about things like this in the future.
I agree, honestly. Some of this didn't come to light until I'd put more time into the game; at the time of review, I believe it was ~50 hours play time. Some of it also wasn't relevant to systemic breakdown, which is what was generally requested.
So just redo or add the extra
Looks cool, I just wish I wasn't burnt out after 1-4 and Makai Kingdom and La Pucell...
Brought Disgaea 5 Day 1, haven't brought the PS4 to play it so far. xD. I really want to play it.
But hearing about the system makes it sound like the best Disgaea so far. :P
The Mana -> Hell change is kinda positive and negative. It makes getting the overpowered higher tiers a lot easier once you get a Broker. But it also gives you some way to actually spend money as it was mostly useless to buy items from the shop in the past, outside of fast equipping a new character.
But the unique Evility was in past games too. At first is was just text and then with Disgaea 3 it became an Evility that you can actually look at and see stat values for. Common ones are the ones you can change and make those great combinations with.
I can tell from your avatar. =D There's a version coming out for the Switch as well, sometime around Spring now.
Mechanically, it's right up there with Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness for me. Narratively, I rate it fairly low in the series. It meandered around in some very generic shonen themes for most of the game.
I know, but I will get a PS4 eventually for other games too. Then I will
open my Day 1 Edition. I think the narrative will be fine, I will
played every Disgaea game from 1 to 4.
Yes, I use that as an Avatar because I always create the Thief since the first installment of the series. Always named Shigure too xD.
well, I got Disgaea 3 before I got a PS3 too.
Disgea D2 made a lot of stuff easier, that was good. I still think that for 6 they should add even more mechanics. :P
3:20 imo I love this change, not only does it make me want to use combos more but it also makes stuff like heals/buff/debuffs contribute to the combo after an enemy has been hit. You'll have more interesting kinds of combos this way.
It made things a little too easy for my taste compared to some of the earlier titles, where you had to plan, prepare, and execute with more thought in order to score the really good combos. To be fair, though, they broke a lot of that when they stopped letting you target empty panels anyways. You used to be able to target empty space because you knew an enemy was going to get moved there as part of other attacks. Really fun to set those chains up. =) This change does make the Desperado's 100% combo hit bonus a little bit broken. lol
Yeah I can see why you prefer it that way, I just prefer the more simpler and more lenient combo system.
Hmm? I don't remember ever being able to target empty panels, which games allowed you to do that? I don't remember it in the psp versions of 1 or 2. Was it in 3 or 4? Haven't played those.
Personally I think the 100% accuracy think really tame compared to most of the broken stuff you can do in this game. These games are basically made to be exploited.
Original Disgaea for PS2 allowed it. Not sure what others did afterwards off the top of my head though.
Hope you like Disgaea 6 too. It does change things in some ways, probably for the best. Some changes are quite drastic / jarring compared to before.... Disgaea 6 flows really well..... Disgaea series is so much fun!
Here's hoping! I'm definitely keeping an eye on it. =)
I've "finished" D1 twice. Played D2 for a couple months. Played D5 for a few months. Thought it was great but eventually tired of it. Almost too much to do. I've recently began another playthrough of D1 Complete and I find it the most satisfying.
Nothing wrong with more of the original trio! It's a shame A Brighter Darkness never made it to more systems, being the only other entry starring those three.
I've started playing the game for about 2 weeks ago, so late comment, but still. Lol.
You don't actually have to reincarnated your mages for new spells.. You do have to reincarnated for different elements though.
Or use the master teacher mechanic ...... also same way you could if you want a mix between mage and healer
why bother giving them different elements anyway just make multiple mages for each element then there is no need to reincarnate them
@@scarletrose8766 if u want a mage/healer just get a cleric and teach her star or what ever element u want your hybrid to have
I'm actually gonna do that with flonne in Disgaea 2 Marona also fits that bill with having both 140% int and Res (its not because I want a hybrid I want a char that's has both high res and high int growth with high sp) cause I technically have ice and fire covered (Technically I only needed wind and star but I'm playing disgaea 2 and I want flonne to have everything bad news is flonne is an extra char and is a late game char very late char same with laharl) Marona is my early best bet to get everything thou reason why I don't make multiple mages in disgaea 2 is that I have so many chars so many that I dunno what to do with I've got the dlc and some extra char let alone generics lol
@@scarletrose8766 in Disgaea 1 i gave flonne star and she became a powerhouse :), i give star to my cleric for the hybrid job since they are good in both res and int.
Question are the dlc characters n Disgaea 2 worth it? i only have the base game characters im only at the chapter where i have to find etna for her demon lord ingredient.
I know what u mean but having 3 witches and 3 magicians for the elements is fine by me, i've got star covered by another character so i don't need a star mage my roster is pre big but i don't mind scrolling through them
I like fire emblem do you think I'll like this game? I also liked tales of zesteria weapon making and white knight chronicles thanks to anyone answering
I can get for £20 at the moment
Though both tactical RPGs, Fire Emblem and Disgaea are almost polar opposites in many regards. Whereas Fire Emblem favors low stat values, small numbers, and punishes for deaths, Disgaea focuses on ridiculously huge numbers and deaths tend to be extremely common. That said, I enjoyed the Hell out of the recent Fire Emblem titles along with Disgaea.
Disgaea brings its own flavor to the TRPG table. It's great if you like min-maxing and developing powerful builds but Disgaea 5 was a bit weak on story for me; it wound up mostly being typical shounen.
Generally: If you're looking for something that doesn't take itself seriously, has plenty of systems to delve into, and can offer up a lot of hours of playtime, it's a good game to look into.
Thanks for replying I think I'll give it a try it should keep me busy
I hope you enjoy it! =)
You aren't just expected to constantly die, you are rewarded for it in multiple ways, the new Revenge Mode happens as people die and get hurt, and the Hospital gives away rewards for investing cash to revive and heal Units, also you have many many means of getting new units up to speed, from the classic Team Attack coming from even the original(Team Attacks happen similar to FE Support Attacks, except it can be anyone and everyone adjacent to the attacker, with various factors raising the rates for a particular duo) where in due to technically being a part of the attack, despite probably dealing nothing to the very powerful enemy being beat down, they get a share of kill EXP, to newer mechanics like Tower Attacks or the Boot Camp squad, or even just funneling money into the new unit now
Thinking of picking this up on the switch when it comes out, Since the switch version is a Complete edition I assume some sort of DLC was released? Does anyone have any insight into what that is
Taking from the press release NISA sent out: "The game includes all 8 bonus scenarios, 4 fan-favorite characters, and 3 character classes that were originally DLC in the PlayStation®4 release of Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance."
Those classes are the Kunoichi, Sorcerer, and Celestial Hostess. I'm not sure which fan favorite characters they're bringing back or any details on the 8 bonus scenarios. Incidentally, I believe you can grab the game from the JP Eshop with English already, though you'd have to hit Google for the details on that. =)
Awesome thanks for the quick reply, I just saw a quick video and someone mentioned that the DLC may be locked to the Japanese account still so I can wait a couple more months, Game looks super fun though and i'm looking forward to it!
Great review!
Thanks, glad you enjoyed the review! I had some other issues with the game later on -- mostly the overly shonen story -- but it had a lot of good mechanics and was generally fun overall. =)
I also still find myself cancelling a character movement instead of just moving them again.
You forgot to mention the innocent farm.
What's game have you designed ?
Since you asked, I was on the design teams for Mass Effect, Jade Empire, Dragon Age: Origins, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Darkest Dungeon 2, and a few others over the years.
@@carelevelzero Origins :O One of my favorite games form my childhood. Nice
How do you get your researchers back after they research a netherworld?? I haven't figured that out yet.
is spending mana the only way to get the area of effect magic in disgaea 5? in the older games that was unlocked by leveling the skill which is much easier than getting mana and the method i prefer
You forgot to mention that you can not eat the curry right away and let it spoil, er, age for up to a hundred map clears, and when you eat aged curry, the effect remains for the same amount of map clears that it was aged for. There's even a trophy for eating curry aged to the maximum time.
+Christian Groff Yeah, we completely missed that during the marathon that this review was put together from. We also missed the team specials; never actually got any in the 43 hours we played up to the point I made this video. Game had plenty to discover, that's for sure. =)
This sounds so much like Final Fantasy Tactics. What i really loved in that game was the ability to use skills from one class with another one, and with different weapons sometimes changing the range of the skill. Or you learned to doublecast spells with one class and used that skill with all the other abilities from different classes.
Is the class and ability system in disgaea similar to that?
There are certainly some similarities between FFT's systems and Disgaea's, loosely. You can assign a number of passive skills to each character and these can be learned from your active class. Some of these are shared between classes and some of them are specific to individual classes.
It's not quite the same as Tactics though; your active skill set is always based on your weapon (any class can use any weapon but some are more suited than others) and your current class. Magic is a bit different in that it can be taught and remembered amongst classes freely. There's a lot of min-maxing you can do with the passives and your gear.
I re-ran Tactics just last month and finished with a squad of Black Mages subbing Samurai. Draw Out is insanely effective in the hands of a Black Mage. =D
Those passive skills sound interesting, can they be used in combination with other skills?
Also if you use a shared active ability with a different class, is it gonna make a difference?
From the looks of it, items play much more of a role in disgaea, i hope there's more to upgrading abilities than just having their damage/range/AoE increased.
So learning skills still requires you to wield a weapon which has that skill? good
I am really interested in how the weaknesses play out, it'd be nice if it was a bit more strategic than FFT, like the actual battles. And those monsters who can morph into weapons are also intriguing :)
Hmm i can't remember what Draw Out was exactly, has been a while since i played it.
I always used summoners with subclass redmage for the Double Cast ability (i think it was an active)
I still remember one epic moment i had with FFT though:
One time i had a bluemage using the passive Learn ability and randomly fought some monsters.
Then one of them uses the Roulette ability to randomly kill one character and it chose the bluemage. I didn't think much of it since he had an amulett which revived him instantly again. All of a sudden a textbox appeared, and he had actually learned the skill, just because of the instant revive, all by chance. It blew my mind!
The passive skills mostly affect stats or have conditional effects on combat, such as being able to attack twice if you don't move. There are some pretty broken combinations available, much like OG Final Fantasy Tactics.
Gear plays a huge role in Disgaea and there's an entire "world" of levels inside each item, procedurally generated, that you can run to improve stats and the like. Late-game Disgaea combat typically becomes a case of kill or be killed much of the time, with either side capable of destroying opposing units in a single shot. Numbers and the like get pretty ridiculous, with damage breaking into the billions if you really go in for the post-game content. The series has always prided itself on being extremely over the top.
On the subject of battle tactics, Disgaea generates some fairly unique approaches. Some of this are the geo panels that influence units standing on their respective colors and a lot of it comes from Disgaea's mechanics for combo attacks, move cancels, and being able to stack/throw units around. No other game quite does what they do, in some strange ways. lol
Draw Out, by the way, were the Samurai skills drawn from swords. They were based on magic attack, were AoE, and had 100% hit rates. In the hands of a Black Mage, that meant absolute destruction. ;)
May I ask your thought about season pass ?
Anybody remember the name of the last song used in this video? I love Disgaea, but every time I find a song I really like in it, it's an absolute nightmare wading through the entire soundtrack to listen to a specific song on loop.
Honestly, even after going through the OST I'm not sure which song it was. I pulled it directly from some of my game footage.
Well, damn. That's unfortunate. I might check the other Disgaea OSTs and see if it originated in another game.
Alright, for those who are interested, I found the song. The reason I couldn't find it before is because it wasn't originally a Disgaea song. It's actually called Speed Queen, and it's from Soul Nomad and the World Eaters.
Fantastic, thanks for sharing! No wonder I couldn't find it when you asked. =D
Disgaea 5 is on sale for switch rn for $20 . Used my 950 gold points and got it for a lil over $10. I feel so guilty for such a great game
Scooooore!
I never played before. 1, 4, 5 which one should I play if I have to choose one?
Tough call! Personally, I think the first Disgaea is still ultimately the best, especially with the HD version (Disgaea Complete) being available. I think it had the most enjoyable characters and narrative but it DOES have the oldest mechanics, many of which have been improved over time.
4 and 5 have smoother mechanics but are much weaker in terms of narrative and characterization, so I guess the question is: how much grind can you stomach? If you're not too worried about that, come in with Disgaea Complete. Otherwise, I guess just start with 4 and almost any you play after will have an easy time leaping over the bar for characters that 4 sets; they were great concepts but terrible executions.
do I have to have played the other games in the series to understand how to play this game or the storyline?
No, most of the games are generally unrelated outside of occasional recurring characters and some inside jokes. Disgaea 1 and Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness are the only real direct sequels. =)
D5 seems to be the best entry in the series!!!
Mechanically and visually it's pretty damn solid. I don't think it's quite on the level of Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness though and, for me, the best characters and narrative are still all the way back in the first game. Classic Laharl. =)
Laharl(D1) still shows the most growth of all the disgaea characters, specially when you couple certain scenes like in War of the netherworld part 2 or the multiple endings which are really good
Gameplay wise, it is by far the best. The only one I can replay after years. But the story is very mild.
3:49 Ha! I'm in the vid! Sorta.
Love the review to the extent of me wanting to buy the game, but needs to be less "scripty".
I found myself dosing off missing a lot what you said...
I won't argue that! It's longer than I would have liked but there was a ton to cover for the game, and I like to be thorough. My reviews are normally done live on Twitch, though, which is a totally different approach with a lot more energy. XD Having a script definitely affects the way I deliver. I hope you enjoy Disgaea 5!
Yeah, the amount of detailed information put into it is why I liked it. Would definitely be interested in your take on other games with that perspective 👍
Update: I bought it and I LOVE it. It feels infinite but in a good way. It's very easy to lose track of hours as you play.
Not as good as Xenoblade for me but a super solid title.
Thanks again for the persuading video
(If you have any recomendations for simular games please let me know)
Is Disgaea 5 still coming to switch in US? I was wondering cause I have found conflicting info. I plan to buy a ps 4 exclusively for d5 if it is not going to be on switch ( No there really is nothing else on ps4 that I want.)
It was briefly delayed but, to quote from a press release they sent in the last few days: "Disgaea 5 Complete is arriving on the Nintendo Switch™ in North America on May 23, 2017 and Europe on May 26, 2017 as a physical and digital release." It's still coming. =)
Amazing review! But I wish you talked about the story more!
Bears with guns ? Insta buy ! The battles seem a bit confusing , when you clicked on the portal there was a lot of characters available, how does it work? is there a limit to the number of characters on the field ? do you have to use them all each fight ? Cause using so many characters seems confusing af
Hey! You can field up to 10 characters at once and each character that dies on the field reduces that count by 1 for the rest of the battle. Our list was quite large because it was full of story characters and our chat-named army, since we were checking out as wide a range of classes as we could manage. =)
Traditionally, Disgaea starts you off with 2 story characters and 3 prinnies to get the ball rolling, so you build up to the larger army over time; helps you get used to it!
@@carelevelzero alright, well that's a buy for me, I've been searching for a good t-rpg to play for so long thanks for the video and the answer to my comment :)
Never played any Disgaea game before (never even heard of them) and I was able to understand most of what you said. Great review. Just ordered my Japanese copy.
Glad you enjoyed it! Hope you enjoy the game as well. =)
Excellent vid, got yourself a sub!
Thanks so much! I appreciate the kind words, even if I never quite managed another video like this one again since. XD
i kind of wonder if the spear attack that threw the moon on people is still there....
Hmm, not sure. A lot of new abilities and new looks. I actually can't recall many of the spear abilities off the top of my head, but the last time I played was late 2015.
what's the soft stat cap? is it upped also?
Can't recall if it was 40K or 40M, but at 40 something it gets much harder to make any upward progress in stats.
I didn't like this game at first, got the demo on Switch, the English voices are terrible, the main character is super stereotypical and bland (I liked Seraphina) and the game play seemed kinda meh. Then I started messing with the menus, items and stats and that's when the crack addiction started, I can't put it down, pls send help D:
Late, but yeah the cast in 5 is pretty weak compared to the rest of the series where everyone is ridiculously over the top.
@@s3studios597 Well, at least some characters in 5 are better than 2 & 3
But nobody can defeat the characters from 1 & 4
WingedLeo where at?
Playing any Japanese made game with English voices is a mistake in general
You'll feel the pain when you get to late game where the main characters gets new voice lines which are *unbearably cringy*
the English voices are great they are not terrible at all like you say, ill give it to you that killia is bland at 1st but from what i've seen his backstory looks interesting and the gameplay is some of the best tactical turn based gameplay out there i don't know what you have been playing but aside from naming Seraphina it doesn't sound like disgaea 5 at all
Good review! theres so much to do...
Thanks for the kind words! I'm glad you enjoyed the review. The game is certainly a bit packed; I'd played around 50 hours when I did the review and STILL found new stuff afterwards. lol
Will have to pick this game up. :)
+MMDE It's definitely a good Disgaea game, whether you're coming back to the series or just starting it up. =)
CareLevelZero I got some of the previous games. :)
"Or accidentally destroy entire Netherworlds"
eyes my research team Laharl leads*
Classic Laharl.
I got this free on psn plus a month ago, it looks pretty good and I really loved 4 and D2
I really wanted to like this game but I just couldn't get into it
12:55 Chloroform Curry xD
+Yoshimitsu293 The bonus it gave wasn't half bad, to boot! =D
Takehito Harada is a saint!
I enjoy his work quite a bit, so I've picked up some of his art collections. He has such a recognizable style. =)
Who would have thought that an "edgy" aesthetic could be so cute!? lmao
Didn't takehito harada just design the characters?
The level 7 area of effect pattern remains as deceptively useless as always.
you should add some background music dood :P just something to keep the pace of the video up. Idk. You still get the thumbs up.
Yeah, the music from the game was only active as BGM in some clips. Video turned out longer than I'd originally expected but there was an awful lot to cover. =D
is the mages having to be reborn to advance, a subtle nod to Gandalf?
+DigitalViking Hah, that's an interesting thought! I'm genuinely curious why those classes are the only ones that progress that way; it doesn't match up with anything else. Would love to pick somebody's brain at NISA about it. =)
Probably due to the weird way Mages progress, rather then just a straight path you start with the first three(Blue Red and Green) and at least in prior games you needed to work on all three to get Star Mage, and then work on Star for Prism and Prism for Galaxy, that starting bit is probably why it has those hickups, for all I know, maybe once you get a Prism or Star it'll auto jump forward /shrug
Its a shame that this is likely the last Disgaea game we'll get
disgaea is not dead yet a disgaea remake is coming
Also Disgaea 6 was teased in the same press conference as the D1 remake
Disgaea 6: "Am I a joke to you?!"
Disgaea 7 coming out soon 😂
Though I admit, the last Disgaea I really liked was Disgaea 5 (also the only one I can continue to play to this day. The others are too outdated, or they simply don't run as smoothly as D5)
I need this game. Hurry up and come to STEAM!!!!!!!!!
Hehe, I did have to wait a year, but it is finally here!
Sinbreaker haha check again pc peasant :P
tried to get it yesterday on steam - beta taken down O_O
2 MORE DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have to get this game
Christo is or rather will become seraph lambington.
When I read the title "A Game Designer's Take" I was hoping the video would be something more like an in-depth critical analysis of the systems in the game.
Just checked out your video. Not bad, but I would have liked to see a more "critical eye" put towards the review. What systems were bad? Why were they bad? How could something be improved? These are the sorts of things that are sorely missing from reviews.
Thanks for the feedback! I usually save the in-depth critical analysis for when I'm live streaming since I spend a lot of time with a game that way. Some of the bigger weaknesses in D5's systems didn't become particularly apparent until endgame (well after this video was made). For this video, I was mostly interested in breaking the game down into its component systems so that people could see what changed, what came back, etc. compared to previous series entries.
CareLevelZero Gotcha. No problem, just something I thought I would mention. :)
why arent you using unique characters? arent they stronger than generics?
I only made use of a couple of the unique characters for a few reasons. The first is that the playthrough was done on Twitch, so custom characters named after chat were used for the majority of the roster. The second is that the nature of customization in this actually made custom characters more effective endgame than many of the uniques, if you built them right.
This game, to me, is like fire emblem and final fantasy combined, even in feel. I love both, but final fantasy has gameplay I like more and fire emblem has long battles and failing late in to the mission is such a pain so I hardly ever play a bunch at once. This is like a middle ground sort of for me
Fire emblem problem has to do with me playing on permadeath and normal difficulty with the rule of 1 death = reset quest. It's just a handicap I feel makes the battles require an immense amount of strategy. I will say though in the most recent fe games I'll have like a character or 2 that just dodge every single hit so lol
I disagree with this assessment. I contrasted this game next to D1 and Enter the Breach, and found this game to be bogged down by superfluous features. In fact, just in comparing to Enter the Breach, this game is too reliant on novelty and the central game play loop is lacking. I like the minimalism of Enter the Breach way more. It didn't seem there was much strategy to this game in the sense that I had to decide between 2 or more decision. Nor did I ever feel much regret for having a varied strategy. It seemed more grind based.
Chloroform curry, its what's for dinner.
Wait, free combos? That was the main thing i liked about D1. Was thinking about trying D5 but not sure now, that was kinda the main depth source of the battles
Never spend HL to boost a level one to higher level. That is just a waste.
This was, hands down, the WORST Disgaea game in terms of plot and character design. Like...holy shit. So bad.
Wtf is Killia's outfit supposed to be? What is Seraphina's motive for doing anything? Why do the demons suddenly have a "code of honor" that they have to abide by?
Back in the good ol' days, Laharl just wanted to kill everyone and come out on top.
While Disgaea 5 did the best job at the grinding, it failed literally everywhere else when you compare it to the previous titles.
Story is mid, but it's the best Disgaea for this simple reason: Gameplay.
Disgaea games stories are never anything too amazing, and a good story doesn't make for a replayable game. So Disgaea 5 having the best gameplay, actually makes it the best entry in the series, as eventually, you will just skip all the story beats, and get straight to the gameplay, which is all that really matters with this kind of sandboxy SRPG stat game.
Sorry, but the Story in Disgaea 5 is great it is captivating.
I'm glad you enjoy it, but you can take your "sorry your opinion is wrong" way of presenting that and shove it up your ass. =)
@@carelevelzero how rude 😞
ZHP REFERENCE? TIME TO BUY THIS FOR FUCKING SWITCH! I WANT A SEQUEL TO ZHP BUT THATS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN...
Mmm... Yes... Chloroform curry, my favorite
Confusing game.. not sure if i should get it or not..
It looks just like D2
Interesting a game designer on TH-cam.
Analyzing games is all part of the job. =) Wish I had a bit more time to do videos like this one though. I usually just do direct streaming on Twitch.
Unpopular opinion: I like Disgaea 4's story more than Disgaea 1
I feel like they made it way too easy to get overpowers in this one. I just grinded a bit with the capture ability and got some elixir that made me way too overpowered by the time I remembered the story mode I was easily beating every map at max level.
Are you reading a manual? 😑
Sounds like it, right? I mostly worked unscripted after this instead. lol
I actually hate the music 😑
This isn't a review. It's basically a 'what's new from the last games', which is only helpful for fans of the series and does nothing to help people new to it.
Your review could of used some more sazz really....you even missed a few things as well.
This game is a masterpiece dood
Glad you enjoyed it! Have you checked out Disgaea 6 yet? Some interesting changes and things to adapt to, for sure, but it seems pretty solid (and very breakable) in my time with it so far.
It's fun, but definitely weaker in some ways. I enjoy 5 way more.