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Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited
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Graphics & Sound:
The Disgaea series has been around for a while now and visibly, it hasn’t changed much over the years. Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited is a port of Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten, but it includes all of the original DLC, as well as some new characters making the PS Vita version a fully complete package.
Disgaea 4 looks a bit like an anime. The characters are quite detailed and all of the areas are beautifully done. Hades is a dark place, but the colors are very vibrant and detailed. You’ve got vampires, werewolves, various demons, prinnies, humans, and many other characters. They were very creative with all of these creatures, making sure they all look different and unique. I am always pleased with the characters in this game series.
Your characters speak in English, but you can turn it into Japanese if you need/want to. The voices don’t quite seem to fit some of them at times, but they are always humorous. I did have to fiddle with the background music and turn almost all the way down so I could hear the characters speak, but once I got the levels right, everything sounded just fine. The background music is just that, so you can turn it down or off if you want. I kept it off most of the time.
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Gameplay:
In Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited, Lord Valvatorez is a vampire stuck in Hades and Fenrich is his servant. Many years ago, Lord Valvatorez was a powerful demon, but he made a promise to a human woman that he would not drink human blood again until he could make her afraid. She died suddenly, so now he is stuck either not drinking the blood of humans for eternity or breaking his promise. Lord Valvatorez refuses to break a promise under any circumstance, so he has been living on sardines instead of blood. He has taken a job as the Prinny instructor in Hades. Prinnies are the souls of human sinners in Hades. They take on the form of a penguin-like creature who says "dood" a lot. At the end of his current graduating class’s last day, Valvatorez promises each of the prinnies in the class a fresh sardine.
Before he can give them the sardine, the class is sucked up into a vortex. Valvatorez can’t break his promise to them, so he tracks them down and finds out that Warden Axel has gathered all of the prinnies up on the orders of the Corrupterment. Apparently, the Corrupterment has decided that there are way too many prinnies, so they are going to have a mass extermination to solve the problem. An assassination task force called the Abaddon will kill them all. In order to keep his promise to the last prinny class that they could have a sardine each, Valvatorez is going to fight the Corrupterment. I do realize it is a bit of a foolish plot, as does Fenrich, but it is an excuse to get his Lord back on top, so he’s going to go along with it. Valvatorez will do anything to not break a promise. Even after he releases the group of prinnies, he decides that it is time to fix the problems within the Corrupterment by taking control. You will even have a Cam-pain HQ where you can strategize. Here you can divide up your team to control the land, call the Senate to get things done, and more.
You will find that the world is very much like in the previous games. You’ve still got a nurse to visit to heal you. You can buy weapons, armor, and items at the various shops. You can advance the story by playing the next level at the inter-dimensional gateway. Evility Shop is where you can purchase new skills with Mana earned from battle. You need to equip the Evilities on your characters. Each character can have two equipped. You can use these Special Skills of various types to do more damage. Learning which character can do what is most important for the best possible outcomes. Just keep on fighting your way to the top and taking more territory as you go and you’ll get Valvatorez there, eventually. |
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Difficulty:
Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited is a turn-based strategy game, so the difficulty is purely dependent on how well you strategize. The first episode is really quite easy, which makes sense as it teaches you how to play. If you already know, you can choose to skip the tutorial and just finish off the enemies quickly to get into the real story. If you’re having trouble getting past a level, you can either try a different strategy or you can replay the previous levels and strengthen your characters. As your characters level up, they get stronger with better defenses. You can also strengthen them with new weapons and armor.
After each battle, you can go back to Hades and heal your characters. You can even revive them from death. However, if all of your summoned allies are killed in battle, you will get a game over and must choose to load a previous save file. I recommend you go back to Hades and save after each battle as you can save anytime you are back in Hades.
One thing to note, you will also need to be careful of where you’re stepping and watch for where enemies are located. The squares you are on can be Geo Panels. Based on the color, various effects will be applied. You can use these to your advantage, if you are careful. You can also destroy the Geo Panels that aren’t to your advantage or change them to other types by using Geo Blocks. Be warned that everyone on a Geo Block, including your allies, will take damage when it is destroyed or changed.
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Game Mechanics:
Everything in Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited is menu-driven. This is a turn-based strategy game, so you don’t need to do anything time-based. You can set everything up and get everything exactly like you want it before executing anything. Each character can only do one command each turn, but the more character’s moves that you execute at once, the higher your combo. Attacks are executed in the order that you gave the commands, so pay attention to who you tell to do what and when. If you have multiple people attacking one enemy and one kills it, you can then issue new orders to anyone who didn’t attack. After you’ve finished everything that you want to do, choose End Turn and then the enemies will attack as much as they can. Your trigger buttons will move the camera angle around, which can be very important in making sure you get your characters lined up correctly.
There are various things in battle that you can do to help, including lifting characters who are already lifting other characters which will allow you to make towers. These can come in very handy, so learn to use them well. Just know that only human-type characters can lift and throw and don’t forget that prinnies have a tendency to explode on impact. You can also do some special things involving monster units: Magichange and Demon Fusion. Magichange lets a human use a monster as a weapon. Different races turn into different weapons. They will only stay in this state for 6 turns though and after that, the monster is no longer available for that battle. Demon Fusion lets two monsters fuse together to make a larger monster with a wider range of attack.
Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited is an excellent addition to the Disgaea series. If you like strategy games, you really need to pick up this game today. Even if you’ve never played the others, you will still enjoy this one as it more or less stands alone. There are characters from the other games, but you don’t have to have played them to enjoy Disgaea 4. Go pick it up today! |
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-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl |
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