Title: Disgaea 4 Complete+
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Developer: Nippon-Ichi Software
Publisher: NIS America
Release Date: October 29th, 2019 (NA)
File Size: 4.5GB
Review copy provided by NIS America
Today I’m reviewing my second Disgaea game. I reviewed Disgaea 1 Complete last year which I enjoyed enough but had issues with it so I only ended up giving it a 7 out of 10. This is actually the third Disgaea game on Switch, with the first release being Disgaea 5 Complete back in 2017, so NIS is oddly going out of order for these; 5, 1, 4. I’m going to take a wild guess and say Disgaea 2 Complete will follow next year. Anyway, will this game make you feel dissed, or will it be your number one guy…uh. Oof, that was bad even for me. 😛
I prefer anchovies.
This entry stars the ruler of Hades (a prison in the Netherworld); Valvatorez. Unlike Laharal in Disgaea 1 Complete, this guy is a very competent person but also has a notable soft side to him. He is served by his right-hand werewolf Fenrich, who is similarly competent and classy too! Really I’m finding the leads already to be a pretty big improvement over the prior game… but I guess it helps that we’re talking about the fourth entry compared to the first after all. 😛 Valvatorez used to be a tyrant, but lost his powers due to a promise he had to keep in the past. Keeping promises appears to be a sort of weakness of his, since he will not stop at anything to keep them, no matter how trivial or costly to him. That’s sort of where the story takes off.
See, Valvatorez was training the Prinnes, the cute penguin people who are actually dead human’s souls as a form of limbo. Well, he finishes training them and promises them all a single sardine each! Yum! But then they are all kidnapped by the Axel the warden before said sardines could be served. So with the promise unfulfilled, Valvatorez pledges to rescue the Prinnies, all for the promise of sardines! That’s the gist of it really.
A look at a battle against Axel the warden. Meet his pink kitten minion!
Like in other entries, Disgaea 4 Complete+ is a turn-based tactical RPG, but really it’s also very much like a sort of puzzle game. In matches you’re not just tasked with beating the opponents (well it’s the main goal anyway), but figuring out how to activate certain effects (like Geo Blocks which I’ll explain in a bit), but also keeping in mind how enemies attack you and by who. You’ll be forgiven if it gives you a god damn headache at times!
Before you start missions on your adventure, you’re placed in a small hub area where you can do a lot of different things with more unlocked as you progress. Examples include buying weapons and armor. What’s notable here is that not only can you get an entirely different selection of weapons and armor (they’re two different shops FYI) each time you access them, but if you buy and sell enough stuff, you get “experience” for the shops and as they grow, you’ll get better benefits in them. Another area is where you can heal your party with its own perks. The more damage and KOs are inflicted on your party members, the more items you can earn from the nurse. The game legit encourages you to get your ass kicked.
Here’s a battle with the flat camera angle. Also note the Geo Blocks and the colored tiles.
Back to the fights. You start by selecting your fighters from the starting portal. What’s cool is that as long as you don’t pick an action like an attack, lifting, defending, etc, you can move and redo movement ’til your heart’s content. Of course characters can only move a certain range depending who they are. Valvatorez and Fenrich naturally have the farthest movement to start. The aforementioned lifting is an action where you can lift allies, enemies, blocks, etc and throw them to other allies and can actually traverse a lot of ground for whichever character/object you throw, as long as your allies are placed just right. This is another bit of the puzzle gameplay I mentioned earlier.
Speaking of which there are the Geo Blocks. These are special effect objects that color the area around them with their color. And certain ones give different effects to you and enemies. If you break the block (say blue) on a color not its own (say green), the blue block will explode and a neat literal domino effect where each and every green-colored tile bursts in a line and literally anything caught in it will take some damage and the result will change all green tiles into blue. A bonus is that if another Geo Block (say green) is hit and destroyed during this, that block will change every blue-colored tile into green, basically doubling the tile explosions and all that (because the different colored tiles are usually connected to one another). Even better is that as this is done, your bonus meter goes up the longer the chain goes. Bonuses are gifts you earn when winning battles. Every bonus level reached is another better item, experience points, or HL money.
What? We’re not using Game Shark? NAY!
One technique is where two monsters can combine to create a bigger sprite of the monster (say two Prinnies). This has good and bad points. Good because you’re more powerful, but your movement is not just lowered, but if your tile size is too big for that bridge over there, welp, you’re stuck. And if your giant Prinny is killed, then both of the merged Prinnies are killed too, a two-for-one KO. Monsters can also become weapons for the human characters, like the adorable kitten monster can become a cat gun (that fires in purrs).
Another major mechanic is the voting system. See, you can have this thing where you can unlock new things to do in the main hub, or once per battle effects by holding a senate in an actual court setting. You can just take a shot and see if you get more Ayes than Nays. Get 51% Ayes and you win! If you lose, you could just try to fight the voters (good luck with that), or beforehand you can bribe them to hopefully win a Aye from them if you have what they want. Stuff you can unlock here include more expensive but better items in the shops, a sort of cheat section (yeah, I’ll explain), or get a full bonus meter in a battle (this is once per battle as said before). The cheat section can allow you to earn more experience, mana (its own currency for character creation, senates, etc), or more HL money, but at the cost of the other. But from the get go you can get more of two out of the three without cutting the third, so try going for that ASAP.
Here’s the Cheat Shop menu for reference.
Visually the game is pretty alright. Disgaea 4 on PS3 was the first true HD entry (Disgaea 3 was basically a PS2 game in 720p). As in this was the first with native HD spritework (same was the case in Disgaea 5). Disgaea 1 Complete just used pre-existing HD spritework but left a lot of PS2 assets untouched as I said in the review for that game. But here everything does look nice and crisp. I assume it’s still 720p in docked and portable modes (hey I’m no Digital Foundry, okay? :P). It seems to run at a locked 60fps? All-in-all it looks the part.
Audio-wise, the voice acting is great! You can certainly recognize voice talents from your fav anime dubs, like Tory Baker as Valvatorez (I would’ve swore it was Travis Willingham myself) and Patrick Seitz as Fenrich (this was clear to me). The music seems fine. It doesn’t go for spook town but an oddly peppy and jolly twist on it? Like Christmas in Halloween or something. I dunno, it’s serviceable, not a standout, listen to it endlessly on YouTube or anything like that.
Here’s a look at the bonus screen and what rewards this match would’ve earned.
Overall I’m not sure what to say about this one. There’s clear quality and good production values for what it is, but the puzzle-esc nature, plus all the mechanics (trust me, I BARELY scratched the surface here), legit kind of drives me nuts. I found Disgaea 1 Complete easier to figure out, but that game was much simpler for obvious reasons. If you’re a fan of the series and haven’t played Disgaea 4 yet, this is a definite recommendation, but I don’t think this was for me in the end.
You’ll Love:
+ The presentation with it being proper HD assets, plus the near full-voice acting is VERY nicely done.
+ It runs nicely at seemingly a locked 60fps.
+ The music is alright, certainly more good then bad. It’s… Disgaea-y, is all I can say. 😛
+ A crap ton of mechanics and stuff to unlock and build towards. If you’re into this sort of thing, you’ll be busy for a good while I reckon.
+ Building up the bonus meter (when things actually click for you) is very fun.
+ The game tries to be very original and out there, and definitely doesn’t take itself seriously in the slightest and that is pretty awesome.
+ A good note is that if the voice-acting sounds too quiet to you (it was for me), you can adjust the volumes of the BGM, SE, Event, and Voice audio all independently.
+ Has screenshot and video capture support.
You’ll Hate:
– I can only speak for myself, not for those who know the series like the back of their hand. I found the game confusing and hard to figure out in a very bad way. This took me way too long to review because of it.
– I’m not a fan of the isometric view (or at least how it’s built with around it). Things can get in odd angles where it’s hard to see, regardless which way you spin the camera (it’s by 90 degree angles only). You can get a more flat view by clicking the right stick, so that does help a bit. I thought Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle did this much better. This specifically also refers to just selecting things with the cursor. Is this simple for fans to use? it wasn’t for me. I think it’s because you have to move the stick in an x and y axis, not diagonally in fights, yet the usual view is normally diagonal. Stick with the flat view when you can.
Score: 8/10