Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited review for PS Vita

Platform: PS Vita
Publisher: NIS America
Developer: Nippon Ichi Software
Medium: Digital/Vita Card
Players: 1
Online: No
ESRB: T

If youโ€™re looking for the difference between Disgaea 3 and Disgaea 4 in a nutshell, here it is: in the former, you get a trophy just for starting a new game. In Disgaea 4, by contrast, you need to watch the opening animation all the way through in order to get a trophy.

That may not sound like much, particularly if trophies arenโ€™t your driving motivation, but it nonetheless captures the essence of both games. Where the last one โ€” my first in the series โ€” made some concessions towards accessibility for newcomers, Disgaea 4 will make you work. And work. And work. Nothing comes easy in it, and that design choice is reflected in the very first trophy.

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Of course, thereโ€™s more to Disgaea 4โ€™s difficulty that just the trophies (though those, obviously, rarely come easy). Itโ€™s a complex game, and it never tries to hide that fact. Admittedly, itโ€™s in a genre โ€” strategy RPGs โ€” that tends towards the complex, but even by those standards, Disgaea 4 is still pretty demanding.

See, thereโ€™s not just your typical โ€œmove your team around the battlefield and upgrade them where appropriateโ€, like youโ€™d get in Final Fantasy Tactics or many of the Shin Mengami Tensei games. Itโ€™s also managing the board layout via something called โ€œGeo Panelsโ€ (which, truth be told, Iโ€™m still a little fuzzy on). Itโ€™s making sure to upgrade your โ€œevilityโ€ alongside your weapons and your usual stats. Itโ€™s learning how to combine some monsters to form even bigger monsters, and then determining how many spaces you can move with those before the super-monster abilities wear out. And, above all else, thereโ€™s the Cam-Pain HQ.

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Cam-Pain HQ is, quite frankly, ridiculous. Itโ€™s as if Disgaea 4โ€™s developers looked at their game in all its grindy glory and decided what it really needed on top of all that was a complex political system. Sure, you could just move your characters across a board, but wouldnโ€™t it be even more fun if you could also form geopolitical alliances, pass bills through a Senate, and appoint a Cabinet?

The ironic thing in all this, of course, is that, much like the other games in the series, Disgaea 4 revels in being silly and light-hearted. Itโ€™s a game where the sorta-evil-secretly-good protagonist has an intense obsession with the restorative powers of sardines, where the corrupt government is called the Corrupterment, where (in keeping up with the seriesโ€™ longstanding tradition) everyone calls everyone else โ€œdoodโ€. Considering how deadly serious most RPGs take themselves, it continues to be refreshing that Disgaea never takes itself overly seriously.

That said, all the humor in the world wonโ€™t make a difference to you if youโ€™re not a fan of grinding โ€” and make no mistake, if you want to achieve anything in this game, youโ€™ll be doing a whole lot of that. You can grind your way to Level 9999 if you so choose, which means that you could literally play nothing but this game for months.

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Should you, though? I hate to say it, but you probably know the answer to that without me weighing in on it. If you donโ€™t want to spend every waking hour of the next few months grinding and grinding and grinding, then you may want to look into something less demanding. If, however, youโ€™re already a fan of the series, then youโ€™ll soon find Disgaea 4 has everything youโ€™ve come to know and love of Disgaea: itโ€™s long, itโ€™s deep, and itโ€™s funny. If thatโ€™s you (and I have to admit, itโ€™s certainly not me), then grab it now, and empty your calendar for the foreseeable future.

Grade: B
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