Still waiting on that western release date though. I hope it isn't gonna be like 6 months after the Japanese release; I think it will be though because they're going to want to market and sell the monster eating game first.
There has always been a fairly significant time delay between the JP and Global releases of every Disgaea game. I'm pretty sure it was close to 6 months between the release of Disgaea 6 in Japan and everywhere else.
Started a new Disgaea 4 playthrough because I had two cross-country flights last weekend. It's striking how much random silly pointless bullshit is in 4 that quickly got excized from D2 and 5. There's no reason that literally every single generic needs their own recruitment cutscene, frequently with custom sprites and animations and shit. And the excessively bolted-on cabinet where they pose for pictures with a random assortment of fake beards, monocles, top hats, etc. I would take way more of that over the half-assed curry thing or all the mini-achievement quests.
Also though, this is the third time I'm playing through, and I swear that I forget weapon aptitudes are replaced by fortes every time and go through the thought process of "Wait, is this really how this works here? This is so dumb" each time. And also getting so antsy because I'm like level 35 and desperately want to reincarnate to get out of the basic classes, but there isn't a single decent grinding map until like 5-2. And even that one is just an all-out brawl on 150% Exp panels, not the crazy-ass setups 5 had from around chapter 2. Thank god at least Complete has Promotions.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
Started a new Disgaea 4 playthrough because I had two cross-country flights last weekend. It's striking how much random silly pointless bullshit is in 4 that quickly got excized from D2 and 5. There's no reason that literally every single generic needs their own recruitment cutscene, frequently with custom sprites and animations and shit. And the excessively bolted-on cabinet where they pose for pictures with a random assortment of fake beards, monocles, top hats, etc. I would take way more of that over the half-assed curry thing or all the mini-achievement quests.
Also though, this is the third time I'm playing through, and I swear that I forget weapon aptitudes are replaced by fortes every time and go through the thought process of "Wait, is this really how this works here? This is so dumb" each time. And also getting so antsy because I'm like level 35 and desperately want to reincarnate to get out of the basic classes, but there isn't a single decent grinding map until like 5-2. And even that one is just an all-out brawl on 150% Exp panels, not the crazy-ass setups 5 had from around chapter 2. Thank god at least Complete has Promotions.
Funny, I liked that stuff, I thought it had personality.
I didn't mean it was a bad thing. I like it too, and would prefer it to all those busy work dumb things like Netherworld invasions, repeating kill 10 *random thing* quests, or the hojillion obnoxious skits. But it's also so plainly overloaded with random stuff thrown in from every angle, and speaks more to how little of any of that the subsequent games had.
I just started a playthrough of the original Disgaea (or at least the PC version) and man you wanna talk about taking it back old school.
I knew but had definitely forgotten in the many years it's been since my last playthrough just how incredibly many quality-of-life improvements have been made to the game over the years.
I feel like all of my playthroughs end up basically the same. Just jank my way through until a decent grinding map then powelevel a skull and then just use that to solo the game. Sometimes the main character also does things because they are also overpowered. All the extra bells and whistles either support that or not to varying degrees, which also tends to be the amount of focus I give those things.
Ugh. Skulls, and mages in general, are the worst. Fist users with high counter, high move, and can shove things off item world exits are what invariably ends up being the carry unit, though 5 had so many ridiculous power leveling maps that it was always just "Oops, someone's too powerful, go to one of them, put them in a tower and there. Everyone's caught up."
I know that I said I disliked Disgaea 5's Chara World, and geopanels are a requisite part of Disgaea for me in the past, but after like four straight 10 minutes stages where I spent 5+ minutes just throwing fucking blocks around while being pelted by enemies, I'm ready to go back on both those thoughts. I then spent about 15 minutes just powerleveling Desco and a Nekomata from about 70 to 300, have now trivialized the rest of the main game, but Ordeals doubles down on the geopanel awfulness, and D4 didn't even let you get Statisticians without Reverse Pirating, so grinding is extra obnoxious and basically limited to Giant Desco until you break through the 20+ level 300+ monsters on a map entirely entirely covered in Silence. And even dealing with the chara world is a pain because you basically have to reincarnate first and then rebuild them despite no easy way to rubberband back.
I think this playthrough may be at its end. I'm amazed I apparently pushed my way through this twice in the past and regret the bad things I've said in the past about D5's chara world. I still don't like it, but it was less painful than this.
im pretty sure all of my D4 playthroughs have ended with basically get desco, level desco, kill everything with desco, and dont touch end game. it's easier to get felonies and pirate maps in d2 than deal with 4s crap.
Ugh, no way. Felonies were the worst. Want to use a new character? Tough shit. No exp bonuses for you to catch up until you grind out the item world a shitton. And enjoy this shit cluttering up your inventory repeatedly and constantly. D4's power leveling is just overly prioritized to monsters, and even then, specifically Desco and a Nekomata. Until you're rocking like level 750+, you're using them and you'll like it. Though I do think Priere and Gig can do about 90% of them. Still, monsters gate it way too hard.
Out of curiosity, I loaded up my Disgaea 5 Switch save from two years back to compare the time and progression for where I gave up between the two, with the caveat that this was my third playthrough of D4 (PS3, Vita, Switch) vs second for D5 (PS4, Switch). This D4 playthrough, I tapped out at the start of the postgame with Desco and a Nekomata at around level 700 and about 27 hours. D5 was about 35 hours, but with a full party at 9999, a smattering of random Carnage equipment, and (I think) all the DLC characters recruited. It looks like it was the subclass grinding where I went nah. But man, you powerlevel like whoa in D5 compared to the rest.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I had fun in the post game maps, and I barely used Desco, I just had Valvatorez and his garou bestie slaughter everything with 1/2 AOEs.
you dont use desco? who hurt you?
She's okay, but I liked her more in a supporting role.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
As much as I like La Pucelle, the Classics release feels very slimmed down on the VA, like the only had the budget to voice the absolute bare minimum of important scenes. I feel like the PS2 version had more VA.
As much as I like La Pucelle, the Classics release feels very slimmed down on the VA, like the only had the budget to voice the absolute bare minimum of important scenes. I feel like the PS2 version had more VA.
Wait, they didn't just re-use the same dub?
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
As much as I like La Pucelle, the Classics release feels very slimmed down on the VA, like the only had the budget to voice the absolute bare minimum of important scenes. I feel like the PS2 version had more VA.
Wait, they didn't just re-use the same dub?
Not that I know of, I thought it was recast?
Yep:
Sounds like they didn’t get Jennifer Hale as Prier back for whatever new dialogue was recorded for this.
As much as I like La Pucelle, the Classics release feels very slimmed down on the VA, like the only had the budget to voice the absolute bare minimum of important scenes. I feel like the PS2 version had more VA.
Wait, they didn't just re-use the same dub?
Not that I know of, I thought it was recast?
Yep:
Sounds like they didn’t get Jennifer Hale as Prier back for whatever new dialogue was recorded for this.
I'm surprised VA contracts don't cover remakes and the like. "If we remake this we'll pay you X amount to keep using your recorded voice."
Or does this version of La Pucelle have additional content?
As much as I like La Pucelle, the Classics release feels very slimmed down on the VA, like the only had the budget to voice the absolute bare minimum of important scenes. I feel like the PS2 version had more VA.
Wait, they didn't just re-use the same dub?
Not that I know of, I thought it was recast?
Yep:
Sounds like they didn’t get Jennifer Hale as Prier back for whatever new dialogue was recorded for this.
I'm surprised VA contracts don't cover remakes and the like. "If we remake this we'll pay you X amount to keep using your recorded voice."
Or does this version of La Pucelle have additional content?
This version has stuff from the PSP update, but that's mainly the Disgaea cameos and Overlord story/extra chapter, which is what the new voices are. It's definitely the same voices for the most part.
Out of curiosity, would anyone care to give me a brief overview of the Disgaea games between the first one and five? By that I mean general highlights, interesting game mechanics, etc.
I played the first game soon after it came out but for whatever reason didn't come back to the series until Disgaea 5, and now I'm currently playing Disgaea 6. I really liked the main cast of 5, especially Killia, and the story was pretty fun. So far I'm not as invested in the Disgaea 6 main cast, and the final boss of each chapter being against the same enemy is...a choice.
EDIT: I didn't know about that Monster Menu game until just now; I'd love to play a demo.
That's a little complicated since re-releases have backported some, but not necessarily all of various mechanic updates and stuff.
1 regular stuff.
2 introduces unit/class specific passive abilities (evilities).
3 introduces magichange, character worlds, clubs, skill boosting, generic/multiple evilities per character, and reverse pirating. It also uses Weapon Aptitude (buy skills with mana) instead of leveling weapon skill (as does 4, but no others). It also changes geo symbols to geo blocks, which are basically the same, but can be stacked/stood on and auto-delete when thrown next to each other (again, 4 carries this, but no others do)
4 introduces HD sprites, monster fusion/giant monsters, dual/giant/dual-giant magichange, tower skills, and a bunch of editors for pirate ships/maps and stuff (plus a metric shitload of postgame content even compared to other Disgaeas).
D2 replaced magichange with monster riding, introduced free range throwing, and the cheat shop (which would be added to most re-releases of previous games), but also loses a number of mechanics from 3/4 (eg pirate stuff, and no chara world stuff).
5 had a lot of minor mechanical changes. Characters can use a subweapon, subclass mastery, revenge mode, shards, innocent farm, curry, chara world is a minigame instead.
6 is off in its own complete nonsense land of stupidity.
E:
2 probably has the best story, but it's all Adel and Rozalin. The rest are either non-entities, obnoxious, or "HEY LOOK, DISGAEA 1 AGAIN." 4 has my favorite protagonist by a long margin. Val is charismatic, goofy, and spends the entire game being the voice inspiring the entire cast to be better people. It does tend to run a lot of its gags into the absolute ground though. 5 is... fine. It leans heavily on shounen tropes, and I can't stand shounen. D2 is just literally rehashing D1 in pretty much every way. 3 is just generally low end on story and characters. It has its moments, but Almaz and Sapphire would've made much better main characters than Mao/Raspberyl.
At the moment in Disgaea 6 I've been using the strategy of having my Armor Knight absorb damage while ranged attackers equipped with the Temptation evility attempt to charm everything they hit. With both the Archer's Support Attack evility and the Bullet Set evility installed on gun-users it's been easy so far to mass charm enemies. I am starting to get a bit bored with it, though.
I like the forced movement abilities of the Psychic and have messed around a bit with putting their Shockwave evility on other units, but I've not come up with a particularly good use for it yet.
As much as I like La Pucelle, the Classics release feels very slimmed down on the VA, like the only had the budget to voice the absolute bare minimum of important scenes. I feel like the PS2 version had more VA.
Wait, they didn't just re-use the same dub?
Not that I know of, I thought it was recast?
Yep:
Sounds like they didn’t get Jennifer Hale as Prier back for whatever new dialogue was recorded for this.
I'm surprised VA contracts don't cover remakes and the like. "If we remake this we'll pay you X amount to keep using your recorded voice."
Or does this version of La Pucelle have additional content?
The original version of La Pucelle was localized by Mastiff, and the rights to the English VA files might have never been acquired. Usually the original JP developer would retain those rights, but it's hard to say what their specific agreement might have looked like.
On the one hand I'm glad they got rid of the 9999,9999 thing. On the other hand, I can't ignore the fact that the UI is blatantly setup to be able to show level 99999999. I'm guessing they're waiting for postgame / LoC for that this time, which I'm fine with.
It's Disgaea adjacent, but Mugen Souls, the CompaHeart game by the Disgaea team (I think?) is getting a Switch remaster by East Asiasoft, with promises to be faithful to the Japanese. (Read: They're undoing all the censorship and content removals that NISA/Ghostship did + maybe fixing the localization.)
I never got into it or the sequel because of the localization + the insane elemental wheel. I can remember "fire beats ice but loses to Earth" and if you really push it I can remember "Fire beats Wood but loses to Metal" but if you ask me to remember "Tsundere beats Kuudere and Masochist but loses to Sadistic and Genki Girls" my eyes glaze over instead.
Mugen Souls was fucking bad. I grabbed it on a lark because the pinballing mechanic seemed fun, and I was hoping the ship battles were like Skies of Arcadia, but... no. It's fucking awful. That said, I think if they were serious about a remaster, I could see how they could iron out the worst parts. Of the gameplay and the HOLY SHIT technical problems like the main hub area taking no exaggeration 20+ seconds to load, mind you, not the other stuff, which was probably best left censored.
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IanatorGaze upon my works, ye mightyand facepalm.Registered Userregular
I was also pretty unimpressed with Mugen Souls. Seemed like it was trying to "do Disgaea things" with not much regard to making them work well or work together.
Still want to try MSZ and still have the Nep cosmetics DLC on my wishlist though.
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I'm pretty sure it was made by the hacks at Idea Factory, not NIS.
(At least I hope so)
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IanatorGaze upon my works, ye mightyand facepalm.Registered Userregular
I'm pretty sure it was made by the hacks at Idea Factory, not NIS.
(At least I hope so)
I think it was one of their last collaborative efforts before their falling out. The character art I can find from the first game looks to be tagged with Takehito Harada (the Disgaea character artist) along with someone else on the IF side.
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So Disgaea 7 comes out next week in Japan, so maybe around a summer release here?
Also, Monster Menu comes out in March. NISA page is up, and it's up at physical retail shops for $50, but it still doesn't show up in the eShop yet.
Also also, Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society comes out on Valentine's day.
That was in DD2, and was the quickest way to break the game because you were very likely to get things that sold for more than it cost to roll by like... a huge amount. Not just technically infinite money if you spent a long time grinding, but completely ruined the non-NG+ game economy an hour or two into the game.
ArcTangent on
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
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There has always been a fairly significant time delay between the JP and Global releases of every Disgaea game. I'm pretty sure it was close to 6 months between the release of Disgaea 6 in Japan and everywhere else.
Also though, this is the third time I'm playing through, and I swear that I forget weapon aptitudes are replaced by fortes every time and go through the thought process of "Wait, is this really how this works here? This is so dumb" each time. And also getting so antsy because I'm like level 35 and desperately want to reincarnate to get out of the basic classes, but there isn't a single decent grinding map until like 5-2. And even that one is just an all-out brawl on 150% Exp panels, not the crazy-ass setups 5 had from around chapter 2. Thank god at least Complete has Promotions.
Funny, I liked that stuff, I thought it had personality.
I knew but had definitely forgotten in the many years it's been since my last playthrough just how incredibly many quality-of-life improvements have been made to the game over the years.
I can still find the fun for sure, but hoo boy
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
I think this playthrough may be at its end. I'm amazed I apparently pushed my way through this twice in the past and regret the bad things I've said in the past about D5's chara world. I still don't like it, but it was less painful than this.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
you dont use desco? who hurt you?
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
She's okay, but I liked her more in a supporting role.
Wait, they didn't just re-use the same dub?
Not that I know of, I thought it was recast?
Yep:
I'm surprised VA contracts don't cover remakes and the like. "If we remake this we'll pay you X amount to keep using your recorded voice."
Or does this version of La Pucelle have additional content?
This version has stuff from the PSP update, but that's mainly the Disgaea cameos and Overlord story/extra chapter, which is what the new voices are. It's definitely the same voices for the most part.
PS2
Switch
I played the first game soon after it came out but for whatever reason didn't come back to the series until Disgaea 5, and now I'm currently playing Disgaea 6. I really liked the main cast of 5, especially Killia, and the story was pretty fun. So far I'm not as invested in the Disgaea 6 main cast, and the final boss of each chapter being against the same enemy is...a choice.
EDIT: I didn't know about that Monster Menu game until just now; I'd love to play a demo.
1 regular stuff.
2 introduces unit/class specific passive abilities (evilities).
3 introduces magichange, character worlds, clubs, skill boosting, generic/multiple evilities per character, and reverse pirating. It also uses Weapon Aptitude (buy skills with mana) instead of leveling weapon skill (as does 4, but no others). It also changes geo symbols to geo blocks, which are basically the same, but can be stacked/stood on and auto-delete when thrown next to each other (again, 4 carries this, but no others do)
4 introduces HD sprites, monster fusion/giant monsters, dual/giant/dual-giant magichange, tower skills, and a bunch of editors for pirate ships/maps and stuff (plus a metric shitload of postgame content even compared to other Disgaeas).
D2 replaced magichange with monster riding, introduced free range throwing, and the cheat shop (which would be added to most re-releases of previous games), but also loses a number of mechanics from 3/4 (eg pirate stuff, and no chara world stuff).
5 had a lot of minor mechanical changes. Characters can use a subweapon, subclass mastery, revenge mode, shards, innocent farm, curry, chara world is a minigame instead.
6 is off in its own complete nonsense land of stupidity.
E:
2 probably has the best story, but it's all Adel and Rozalin. The rest are either non-entities, obnoxious, or "HEY LOOK, DISGAEA 1 AGAIN." 4 has my favorite protagonist by a long margin. Val is charismatic, goofy, and spends the entire game being the voice inspiring the entire cast to be better people. It does tend to run a lot of its gags into the absolute ground though. 5 is... fine. It leans heavily on shounen tropes, and I can't stand shounen. D2 is just literally rehashing D1 in pretty much every way. 3 is just generally low end on story and characters. It has its moments, but Almaz and Sapphire would've made much better main characters than Mao/Raspberyl.
At the moment in Disgaea 6 I've been using the strategy of having my Armor Knight absorb damage while ranged attackers equipped with the Temptation evility attempt to charm everything they hit. With both the Archer's Support Attack evility and the Bullet Set evility installed on gun-users it's been easy so far to mass charm enemies. I am starting to get a bit bored with it, though.
I like the forced movement abilities of the Psychic and have messed around a bit with putting their Shockwave evility on other units, but I've not come up with a particularly good use for it yet.
The original version of La Pucelle was localized by Mastiff, and the rights to the English VA files might have never been acquired. Usually the original JP developer would retain those rights, but it's hard to say what their specific agreement might have looked like.
I've found every single Doublejump Strategy guide that they published in print, I think. Have the Soul Nomad one ready to go, heh.
The music sounds incredible, like Tenpai Sato's been waiting to do a traditional Japanese OST.
Bring on the glasses!
https://www.play-asia.com/mugen-souls-limited-edition/13/70fu1j?sc1=
I never got into it or the sequel because of the localization + the insane elemental wheel. I can remember "fire beats ice but loses to Earth" and if you really push it I can remember "Fire beats Wood but loses to Metal" but if you ask me to remember "Tsundere beats Kuudere and Masochist but loses to Sadistic and Genki Girls" my eyes glaze over instead.
Mugen Souls was fucking bad. I grabbed it on a lark because the pinballing mechanic seemed fun, and I was hoping the ship battles were like Skies of Arcadia, but... no. It's fucking awful. That said, I think if they were serious about a remaster, I could see how they could iron out the worst parts. Of the gameplay and the HOLY SHIT technical problems like the main hub area taking no exaggeration 20+ seconds to load, mind you, not the other stuff, which was probably best left censored.
Still want to try MSZ and still have the Nep cosmetics DLC on my wishlist though.
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(At least I hope so)
I think it was one of their last collaborative efforts before their falling out. The character art I can find from the first game looks to be tagged with Takehito Harada (the Disgaea character artist) along with someone else on the IF side.
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(just videos for space)
Also, Monster Menu comes out in March. NISA page is up, and it's up at physical retail shops for $50, but it still doesn't show up in the eShop yet.
Also also, Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society comes out on Valentine's day.
Why hasn't that been ported to Steam? Seems like its social stuff would be a perfect fit.
Though I'd say the same about that one Vanillaware game that never made it over.
Code's probably lost to the ages.
No word on RMTs.