Disgaea 5

[Rendakor]

Since there seems to be a lot of us buying it over in the other thread, I figured it could use it's own.

I'm on Chapter 7, although I'm quite overlevelled (my team is 60-70, enemies are ~30) because Item World is a blast. I like all of the IW changes I've seen so far.

Some tips on new systems that aren't really explained well:

• Subclasses let you "unlock" higher tiers of generic characters using story characters; this works for the quests to unlock new classes too. I think you can do something with Evilities at max subclass rank, but I'm not there yet.
• Subweapons still apply the effects of their Innocents when attacking with the main hand. Raised Flag (+10% stat growth on level up) and Megaphone (30% chance to capture killed foes) are good choices here.
• You can improve squads by sacrificing prisoners; this is done in the Squad UI and not the Interrogation UI. Interrogated prisoners give more Squad XP.

[Quinton]

I'm only a few stages into the second chapter so far, but D5 is filling the SRPG-shaped hole in my life I didn't know I had.

Many of the quests are puzzling to me -- like there's one about boxes, but destroying the boxes (which are marked with Quest Item markers) doesn't eem to help.  Doesn't seem like I can stuff them back into my base plate.  Not sure what to do with these boxes!  (edit: guess you just need to destroy enough of em!)

Some info about game systems: http://disgaea.us/d5/html/system/summary.html

[Falconeer]

I am in fucking Munich and I can't play and this thread makes me homesick.

[Rendakor]

Quinton do you remember what stage had the boxes? I'm 2/3 and haven't seen a box in several chapters.

[Quinton]

I think 1-2 and 1-4?

I haven't seen any boxes since stage 1.

[Rendakor]

Found them in 1-2, thanks. I had hoped they would show up later or in Item World but no such luck.

The DLC characters are all pretty badass and come with good weapons for early game; I snagged the season pass which gives you all of the content instantly. Current party:
Plenair
Metallia
Killia
Laharl
Sicily
Red Magnus

I also have Logan for throwing, and two decent level generics (Skull and Magic Knight) for backups.

[Falconeer]

DLC characters? So sad...

[Rendakor]

They've had the old protagonists as DLC characters for at least two games now (4 and D2), so I'm not really surprised. At least the whole shebang is priced reasonably instead of how awful and expensive it was in 3.

[schild]

I don't think $34.99 is reasonable for shit they made during the normal course of the game. But you know, ywmv.

[Quinton]

I realized that I never played Disgaea 4 (which looks great on PSVita and apparently got very positive reviews) either.  Now I'm torn between 4 and 5.  I should probably save 4 for travel -- SRPGs seem like a perfect distraction for being stuck in airports and planes for many hours...

[Rendakor]

4 is great, but you already bought 5, right? No point in switching now.

[Rendakor]

Finished (skipped through) the main story last night. Time to get my post-game grind on this weekend. So many new systems unlocked towards the end: Innocent Farming, Alchemist, Evility Transfers, etc.

[Falconeer]

It's great. It monopolized all my gaming time in the last week. Better episode so far since Disgaea 2.

[Rendakor]

Put a dent in the Postgame; need to kill an Item God and clear all the Chara World difficulties to unlock LoC. Here's a good tip for early powering up; I used the Metallia method because I bought the DLC. Easy way to get your stats up high enough to clear the Martial Training (read: Ordeals) maps so you can start levelling for real.

[Rendakor]

Got LoC unlocked. You only need to clear the 3rd Chara World difficulty; basically following all the million Hl quests will get it unlocked. The 3rd of the last 3 maps you have to clear was actually pretty rough even at 9999. Starting LoC tomorrow.

[Falconeer]

The Chara World... I can't even. I am not that deep into the story yet, just starting chapter 6, but I've already sunk 30 hours into it which I believe says a lot about how good everything is. In the previous games I've always kept my party down to a size of 10, maybe 12 characters, but with this version the Netherworld Research, the system to create characters that are already leveled up, and the squad formations, easily stimulated me to generate more than 30 already. And when I thought we had more than enough mechanics the Chara World popped up. So much goodness to deal with!

[Zetor]

Hmm.. this may be relevant to my interests.

I love me some SRPG, but from what I remember, Disgaea (the first one) was super-grindy with not really interesting combat compared to something like Tactics Ogre, FFT, or even Fire Emblem... f'rex, the tougher fights felt gimmicky instead of challenging, and I wasn't a big fan of geo tiles (and how getting a chain-of-death was the way to get through item world levels). Have they changed things up for 5?

[Rendakor]

D1 required a lot of grinding; more recent titles are only as grindy as you make them. You can complete the story without dipping more than a toe in the various grindy bits (Item World, Chara World, maxing subclasses, etc.). If you want to clear all the post game stuff, get your grinding pants on.

The combat has never been as tactical as Fire Emblem (which requires the most strategy of the 3 you listed because of permadeath), but with the cheat shop you can adjust the difficulty on the fly to keep the game as challenging as you like it. Most of the interesting choices come from character customization and party selection.

[Goldenmean]

Hmm.. this may be relevant to my interests.

I love me some SRPG, but from what I remember, Disgaea (the first one) was super-grindy with not really interesting combat compared to something like Tactics Ogre, FFT, or even Fire Emblem... f'rex, the tougher fights felt gimmicky instead of challenging, and I wasn't a big fan of geo tiles (and how getting a chain-of-death was the way to get through item world levels). Have they changed things up for 5?

Rendakor pretty much covered it, but nope. It's the same formula they've had since the first one. Each Disgaea game adds some new system to the mix, but the core game itself remains the same. The Disgaea games will probably always be a grinder's paradise instead of real tactical games. You can easily overlevel the storyline just by jaunting quickly into an item world, and the answer to practically all of the post-game content is "Just grind another few hours". The few parts of the game which take thought usually come in the form of geo tile puzzles, which are more of a puzzle game feel than an SRPG feel.

I like the series, mind you, but they scratch the same sort of progression itch that idle games, or grindy MMOs do. I don't play them when I want to think.

[Rendakor]

I like the series, mind you, but they scratch the same sort of progression itch that idle games, or grindy MMOs do. I don't play them when I want to think.

This sums it up really well. I like grinding while watching Netflix.

Got my LoC Trap tonight; once I level it up to 500 and snag a legendary weapon, killing Carnage Dark should be pretty easy.

[Zetor]

Yea, that makes sense. thxinfo! I'll still consider it if they ever release a Vita version (or just play the earlier games on the Vita) just for idle grindage.

Aside wrt Fire Emblem: I'm not a fan of how it implements 'challenge'. Permadeath is fine, but in the games I played (FE6/7) at least 50% of the difficulty comes from RNG as well as metagame knowledge about which characters have non-crap growths / good supports / etc. There are also the "fuck you" kind of enemy reinforcement spawns that have like 9 movement and can attack on the same turn... good luck not getting a squishy character gibbed unless you already know when/where they will be appearing. FE6/7 at least weren't as engaging tactically as FFT or TO (or JA2, Telepath Tactics, Blackguards...). Different strokes I guess.

[Falconeer]

To me Disgaea has always been so much more than just grind. I don't want to be long (who's gonna read it?) but suffice to say that to me it's something like a "Create your own Tactical JRPG". Every single minuscule aspect of it is customizable, and that's the point. On top of the story and the characters of course, which I always love and take about 30+ hours to clear so well worth the price anyway.

But when you are done with the story, a world of infinite dungeons, infinite characters and infinite weapons opens up for you to play with, which is way different than just grinding in order to get something new or rare. Even before you can consider tackling the secretest monsters or unlock the zaniest character, there's an infinite amount of challenges that you can summon up and tweak so that you can beat them in any way is enjoyable for you.

To sum it up, when I describe the Disgaeas I mention:

- Really cute story and characters, long enough to justify any price.
- Ridiculously huge amount of character customization (not visual) for a ridiculous amount of characters and a ridiculous amount of weapons.
- Lots of horizontal subsystems to take care of between battles to the point of almost feeling like a sandbox.
- Infinite replayability (the grind, eventually).

[Rendakor]

TO was very easy to overlevel because you could do that training thing where your own guys fight one another; FFT scaled the random encounters but not the story missions, so you could trivialize that too. The few FE games I've played didn't have much in the way of repeatable content so you were rarely higher level than your foes, which meant you had to play more carefully.

[Zetor]

Well, yea... if you approach SRPGs with that mindset, earlier FEs, incl. the ones I played are harder. I don't grind as a rule, though, and never used the training room in TO (TO's battles did scale enemies to your highest character in the PSX version, too). I didn't find FE6/7 particularly challenging other than getting screwed by RNG (hi Lyn with 8 STR at the endgame / someone getting lol crit for their entire HP bar when the enemy had 10% chance to hit!) and requiring extensive metagame knowledge to have a chance of succeeding in hard modes. In general, I think games like this are much more fun and challenging if your characters are consistently underleveled throughout.

I can certainly respect Falc's points, and I DID like the idea of crazy party variance and lots of random stuff to do (like the the item world, the assembly... hell, even geo-tile puzzles in small doses) in what I've seen in Disgaea 1 -- it's just that the combat gameplay itself was not that engaging for me. I'll probably still end up picking up one of the Disgaeas for my Vita for some light / casual play during long commutes and whatnot.

[Goldenmean]

There's an infinite amount of challenges that you can summon up and tweak so that you can beat them in any way is enjoyable for you.

So, I agree with you on most of the good points of Disgaea, and like I said I do like the games (and NIS in general), but I feel like finding a challenge suitable for you is really where it fails. There's a ridiculous amount of variance in player power and a ridiculous amount of variance in enemy power, and while that's great, it also means that you will almost never stumble upon a suitable challenge for your current power level.

I agree that the game practically is a sandbox, but sandboxes of that nature are basically impossible to balance, and while they provide lots of dials and knobs so that you can balance it yourself, you're going to play a ton of either faceroll easy or completely impossible maps before you get to anything even vaguely the right level of challenge, and it's going to be a never ending battle to keep that level of challenge while you continue to gain levels/stats. I must have played tens of thousands of maps across the various disgaea games, and maybe .01% if that were any sort of challenge. Most are just one guy leaving your base and blowing everything up in one move.

Some sort of feature that would automatically spawn a map full of enemies based around your current stats level would help a lot.

[Falconeer]

I see what you mean and I can't disagree simply because I am particularly good at finding challenges in all games. Meaning, I usually understand where the game is setting the bar and then decide to gimp myself -now without not even noticing- or simply slow my advancement in order to keep the game fun. This is what I did in all the previous Disgaea. When I see I am getting too strong, I start pushing in the item levels until I get to the point where I feel it's getting hard again and then I linger there and try to proceed horizontally more than just vertically. I always felt that Disgaea does give you exactly that: lets you pick what levels you want your dungeons and enemies, and since the cap is hilariously high you have an almost endless amount of challenge "if you want it". Can't speak for Disgaea 5 as I am still very low level, and I am not saying that people should play these games the way I do, but I honestly always felt that the best part about Disgaea was that you could annihilate pretty much everything if you wanted to, or pick a higher level-item and get yourself in trouble.

[Rendakor]

Got to floor 100 in my LoC Trap and things started getting rough, so I'm taking a break to farm Asagi Extracts. Getting about 300k to all stats per run; once I hit the 10m cap there I should be able to finish off the Trap. It's about halfway to 500.

[Falconeer]

 

[Rendakor]

And Carnage Dark goes down; now I can steal stats from bosses!

[Yegolev]

Yea, that makes sense. thxinfo! I'll still consider it if they ever release a Vita version (or just play the earlier games on the Vita) just for idle grindage.

I was playing this game remotely on my Vita last week, so if you have wifi then you're (probably) set.

[Rendakor]

Finally hit the Extract cap; stats around 20m now on 2 characters (Metallia and generic Sage) without gear or Evilities. 3 more with about 10m but I don't feel like doing the subclass grind again again. Once I softcap my Trap I need to get a r40 LoC weapon, then get all the One Time Bonuses and I'll have the Platinum trophy.

[Rendakor]

Platinum is mine. Not sure if I'll fuck with Baal or not; I'll at least give him a try but I don't have the heart to do a lot more grinding.

[Falconeer]

I admire your dedication. I have put 70 hours so far in this and I haven't even finished the story. Granted, being a sandbox everyone proceeds at their own pace and I am leisurely enjoying so many aspects of it that obscenely growing in power or beating some of the hardest challenges might not ever be one of my objectives, but I still have an appreciation for your endeavours especially considering you are seriously "beating" the game and seeing all of it. The story, as cute and adorable as it is, is just the tutorial.

I can't stress enough how much I am loving this installment.

[Soulflame]

I am seriously considering breaking down and getting a PS4 just for this.

Damn you all.

[Rendakor]

Do it Soulflame, it's good; the best in the series easily in terms of mechanics (story-wise, I prefer 3).

I like that the endgame (once you hit LoC) is broken down into several distinct steps, each of which can be worked on independently at your own pace:

• Maxing all subclasses, then reincarnating for 10m base stats.
• Getting a LoC Trap to ilvl 500/2m stats.
• Shard/Extract farming for +10m stats
• Getting your r40 LoC Weapon and/or Legendary weapon, and leveling it up
• (Optional) Grinding Chara World for 300% Aptitudes

I didn't do the last; didn't bother with Chara World much because I don't like how different it is from the "real" game. The boardgame mechanic is interesting, but it was always too easy and yet too time consuming compared to grinding a few stages of Item World. I grabbed a few points of Move and a few Evility slots on my mains and that was about it. Doing the above will get you the Platinum easily, provided you cheese the tough fights (and the 10b damage) with Angels and support spells.  If anyone needs advice on how to get to the next bit of postgame content, I'm happy to help.

Re: Baal (spoilers in case anyone doesn't want to know how the fight works; tl;dr I lost)