what level chara world to spread unique evilities

Disgaea 5: Too Many Mechanics, and a Too Long Review

I spent 100 hours on Disgaea five over the past two weeks. I'one thousand not sure, though, how much of this time was well-spent. I'yard writing this in part to clarify to myself just how much of that I would repeat if given the chance, in line with Nietzsche'south philosophy of eternal recurrence. This commodity should be accessible whether you've played Disgaea or not, and there is one modest spoiler (marked).

What if a demon crept later you lot into your loneliest loneliness some day or night, and said to you: "This life, as you lot alive it now, and have lived it, yous must live it again, and also innumerable times; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh, and all the unspeakably modest and peachy in thy life must come up to yous again, and all in the same series and sequence — and similarly this spider and this moonlight among the trees, and similarly this moment, and I myself. The eternal sand-glass of existence will ever be turned once more, and you with it, you speck of dust!" — Would you non throw yourself downwardly and gnash your teeth, and curse the demon that then spoke? Or accept you once experienced a tremendous moment in which y'all would respond him: "You are a God, and never did I hear annihilation so divine!" If that thought caused ability over y'all as y'all are, information technology would transform you, and mayhap crush y'all; the question with regard to all and everything: "Do you desire this once more than, and too for innumerable times?" would prevarication equally the heaviest burden upon your activity! Or, how would y'all have to become favourably inclined to yourself and to life, so as to long for nothing more ardently than for this final eternal sanctioning and sealing?

— The Gay Science, Aphorism #341

To begin, it's often joked amidst Disgaea players that the number of mechanics has ballooned in successive games, with this entry D5 even including a board game (!) every bit a key mechanic. Strictly speaking, I don't think information technology's possible to have "likewise many mechanics". It's true that having loftier mechanical complexity can brand a game hard to approach, but information technology as well can yield a form of depth which is most clearly on display in fighting games. This said, I don't recollect D5'southward multiplicity of mechanics fully lives up to this promise, because many of them — and the almost important of them — provide no depth, and are instead just areas for grinding.

Showtime, here's a list of the major mechanics in Disgaea, which are all necessary in some respect to challenge the last batch of Carnage bosses. We'll go through each one and discuss it.

• RPG levelling
• Equipment (Item Earth, Innocents)
• Country of Carnage
• Evilities
• Squads
• Curry
• Chara Globe
• Nighttime Assembly
• Postgame (Levelling, Reincarnation, Subclasses, and Extracts)

RPG Levelling

The RPG levelling in Disgaea is much deeper than normal RPGs. Offset, units only get levelling EXP and Mana for killing blows (or using support magic, merely only a few units can practise this). This ways you have to ration out experience from fights and then that everyone is levelling, which gives yous a tradeoff between boxing efficiency and unit development. Interesting! The other major form of RPG upgrades is skill EXP. When skills level upwardly, their SP cost decreases and their range increases (for certain spells). Y'all only get skill EXP when you apply a skill. The point about SP price decreasing is critical: when you upgrade a skill using Mana, its SP toll will double or quadruple, so an upgraded but unlevelled skill costs prohibitive amounts of SP. This ways you have to ration out what skills you use and upgrade looking forrad to what skills you lot volition use. Again, it'southward a tradeoff of battle efficiency and unit development.

The wrench is: this mechanic only forces tradeoffs during the main game. In the postgame, since levelling and skill EXP are primarily obtained via grinding, yous're reduced to grinding effectually these tradeoffs. Overall, this mechanic is the key to making RPG levelling — otherwise a boring and grindy system — into a ready of strategic tradeoffs, at least during the main game.

Equipment

In that location is a lot that goes into equipment in Disgaea. For each weapon type, there is a linear upgrade tree (hither it is). On top of this linear upgrade tree, yous tin can upgrade the level and rarity of each particular via clearing levels in the Item World of the item. However, even if you do so, this primarily buffs its stats, and thus does non delinearize the upgrade process. The other major item mechanic is Innocents, which are basically buffs that you apply to your item like adding stats or increasing crit harm. These kinds of unequalled buffs are usually the basis for nonlinearity and strategic tradeoffs in equipment builds, and in games similar Path of Exile are taken to an extreme. Here's an example from PoE:

Adds (255–285) to (300–330) Fire Harm in Chief Hand

Adds (255–285) to (300–330) Cold Impairment in Off Paw

(x–15)% increased Attack Speed

100% increased Damage with Ignite inflicted on Chilled Enemies

25% hazard to Ignite when in Main Hand

Chill Enemies for 1 second on Hit with this Weapon when in Off Hand

There are a few reasons why innocents do not produce strategic tradeoffs in Disgaea. First, you lot can freely shuttle these buffs effectually between items, so you never are in the situation of choosing one set of Innocents over another. Second, in that location are no dropped items which have a pregnant amount of buffs. In the main game, you become +one or +two HP when you already have some hundreds, and in the postgame, you get +100 HP when yous have several million. For the buff to be meaningful, you take to upgrade information technology by either grinding in the Item Earth or waiting for it to abound in the Innocent Subcontract. However, even this is limited, since innocents stacks are capped. Y'all can only get a stack of 50,000 HP innocents. Past the time doing this is viable, you'll already take 300,000,000 HP, and there will be no utilize in grinding several hours for such a boost. What ends up occurring is that you grind a few specific innocents postgame, like the +100% crit impairment buff, and put information technology on any character that deals harm. Yet this is grinding and no longer incurs whatsoever sort of strategic tradeoffs.

The ane possible exception to this is unique innocents. These buffs cannot be moved betwixt items, so if you lot discover an item with a unique innocent attached, there is a tradeoff between your normal equipment and this new equipment with a foreign buff. However, this does non occur in practise for several reasons. First, unique innocents appear naturally on only a few story and quest items, so y'all generally don't encounter them. 2nd, the effects of unique innocents as seen in story and quest items are rarely complex enough to force tradeoffs. Of the half-dozen furnishings from the PoE instance, a unique innocent will provide one, and multiple never occur on one item. Finally, because the story/quest items which contain unique innocents are cripplingly weak, you lot will probably equip them in your off-hand slot, which ignores stats. This means that the tradeoff in-practice of unique innocents is not complex item vs complex item, but one result vs one effect in the off-paw slot.

You lot can really get unique innocents on any item by upgrading information technology in the item world. This seems similar information technology would provide an interesting point of endgame build choice. In do, it's a grind, and y'all actually end up putting all the unique innocents on your item. This is considering you unlock unique innocents for each item randomly when you kill special bosses on every 100th floor of its Item Globe (and there are near 45), so by the fourth dimension you've randomly unlocked the few you need, the item volition take enough innocent slots to hold all the ones you unlocked. There's no strategic tradeoff because there's no limitation.

1 disquisitional location of build pick is in the three secondary equipment slots for each graphic symbol. This is because you can put any of the seven types of secondary equipment in each slot, each of which focuses on different stats. For example, Muscles raise HP, and Glasses raise INT and Striking. You might stack three Muscles on your bruiser and three Glasses on your mage. Only y'all now have tradeoffs. Possibly your bruiser'due south magical resistance (RES) is besides low, so you equip ii Muscles and ane Orb (which buffs SP and RES) instead. Maybe your mage is as well squishy, then you merchandise out a Glasses for an Armor (defensive stats). Maybe y'all have Ripple Impact (deal splash damage if your target is adjacent to you) equipped, and you need more movement, and then you lot switch something out for some Boots. These tradeoffs are real and significant, merely only occur during the main game. In the postgame, equipped items go meaningless — the stat buffs are decidedly tiny against your base stats — until you start duping a maxed-out Trapezohedron, which gives a 2m heave to all stats, and therefore yields no tradeoffs.

Detail World

I mentioned the Item World previously, just how does information technology work? Each item has its ain item world, which is a dungeon with an infinite number of floors. A floor is randomly generated on entry. Each floor contains some enemies and a Skip Gate. Defeating all the enemies volition increment the level of the particular, simply using the Skip Gate will not. Either way, you move to the next floor. Every 10 floors there is a boss, and every 100 floors there is an "Item God" dominate. These bosses are just buffed versions of normal enemies, and then aren't interesting on their ain merit. Y'all can leave and come back to the same flooring within a specific detail's particular world either past talking to an NPC at the "safe flooring" later on a boss, or using a common item (Mr Gency Go out).

On the face of it, the particular world is purely a grind. I desire to analyze just how pure of a grind it is.

In the principal game, you lot might jump into the particular world to strengthen some item a bit, but it's largely unnecessary. The item world is primarily a postgame feature. Let'south discuss its usage.

First, it is used for bracket mastery. In the postgame, before reincarnating your character, y'all should master all subclasses (clarification in the Postgame section). There are nigh l subclasses, and while the first few ranks of a bracket tin can be accomplished in a few postgame fights, the final rank is incredibly hard to become. The most efficient way to master a subclass is past teaching the character Geo Nail, entering the particular world for a stiff Land of Carnage (to be discussed later) particular on max difficulty, and using Geo Boom on a Geo Symbol. About subclasses will be instantly mastered with one Geo Symbol. You and so change subclasses and repeat. Doing this once is easy, but you will demand to exercise it 50 times on at least 5 characters. I didn't master a single subclass in the forty-hr main game, so imagine how bad the grind would be without this "flim-flam".

Second, information technology is used for upgrading innocent buffs. Without going too much into the mechanics, if you put an "unsubdued" innocent on an item, it will randomly appear in the item world as a neutral enemy, and you tin can impale it to make it "subdued". Subduing an innocent increases its forcefulness and tin be done only once per innocent. This is, over again, a grind.

Third, it is used for strengthening items. We volition discuss the specific usage in the Postgame section. In that location are actually iii ways to strengthen an detail in the item world: its level (increment past killing all enemies on a floor), its kill bonus (increment by killing enemies on higher difficulties), and its grooming bonus (increase by mystery rooms or bosses). Both the level and impale bonus are clearly grinds. What about mystery rooms and the training bonus?

Every time you articulate a flooring, y'all might randomly encounter a mystery room, which is a special room with an optional event. Some events are but opportunities to buy items, only to increase the preparation bonus, yous take to enter a fight outcome and kill all enemies. While it's overnice that you become to appoint in a more scripted fight, you'll exist repeating each fight 10 to 100 times to max the preparation bonus. It's a grind.

What makes mystery room fights especially annoying is that there is a super-strong neutral NPC in every mystery room. They won't attack y'all unprovoked, and you don't have to defeat them. However, the most efficient style to clear an particular globe floor or mystery room is via the spell Land Decimator, which hits all characters except the pulley. This makes the neutral NPC aggressive, and yous'll accept to defeat them. So: training bonus is an annoying grind.

There are two special mystery rooms which have incredibly of import endgame functions. One allows you lot to duplicate the item you lot're currently exploring. However, this duplication might fail if y'all're not 1500+ floors deep. Regarding the other: at the finish of each linear weapon upgrade tree are three rank forty items. The first you get via a mechanic described in the next paragraph. The second is just sitting there in a mystery room in the detail world of every weapon of the same type. Nonetheless, you can't take it at will: you must already take the first, as well as a grapheme with max weapon mastery in that blazon. Since mystery rooms are random, getting the second weapon is a painful and random formality once yous've satisfied the requirements (more like bureaucracy than a grind). And duplicating an endgame item enough times for your entire core party is a mind-numbing formality.

If yous have an item of rank X, and upgrade information technology to level 80 and 50 rarity (rarity increases with the training bonus), then the Item God boss on the 100th flooring will agree the direct upgrade of the item (ie. same blazon, rank 10+i). You can steal this item. This is a useful way to go rank 39 items, which are difficult to find, and is the only way to become the first rank 40 item. It'south an interesting mechanic, only in practice you're doing the same item-levelling grind, except on an detail y'all'll throw away.

The i tradeoff that occurs in the detail world is that you lot can modify the "road" on the safe flooring after each boss. Choice of route makes a specific type of grinding more than effective. If y'all are grinding innocents, apply the innocent route. If you lot are looking for mystery rooms, utilise the mystery room road. If you are upgrading the item level, use the item levelling route. In that location's little depth to this mechanic, but it is useful for grinding.

Land of Carnage

In the postgame, you go access to some challenge maps which lead to a questline that gives you access to Land of Carnage. The enemies in these challenge maps become up to level 2000 with up to 200k in all stats. This is somewhat problematic, as you end the game around level 100 (the last boss is level 120 and has 2k in all stats), and 200k stats for most characters come around level 9999. So you'll accept to practise some grinding to get there.

The Land of Carnage is, on its surface, harder versions of all the original maps. However, all these maps are extremely easy compared to the questline for admission and the LoC questline, so you'll probably never use them, except for the grinding stages. (There is 1 hard map, which is the LoC version of the final story boss map. This boss has capped stats — 100m — which puts it merely backside the LoC Super Overlord dominate. There is no advantage or acknowledgement for beating this map, and I'g not really sure why information technology's there, given that all other dominate maps have the boss removed in LoC. I took this "hidden" boss equally my final boss.)

LoC has a questline which gives you one challenge map per story affiliate. These maps leap significantly in difficulty, and you lot'll need to continue optimizing your team in between them. The final map is especially challenging, equally its boss has 50m stats, compared to 30m max for previous maps. I was getting ane-shot even with 300m HP and 40m stats. Via this questline (and the LoC access questline), LoC is the major guiding force of the postgame. It provides the targets that you lot need to piece of work towards in order to eventually beat the questline's final boss, and so the unacknowledged LoC story boss.

What distinguishes this method of a "string of targets" from standard progression is the gaps betwixt targets. In a normal RPG, and in the primary game of Disgaea v, you tin expect to exist able to clear level Northward+1 if you successfully cleared level Due north. In this postgame cord of targets, each level is much harder than the previous, and it's up to y'all to bridge the gap. What you might consider the absolute terminal level of the game — the LoC Super Overlord — is especially distant from the subconscious LoC boss.

I think that the functioning of the cord of targets method depends on what methods the player has to get from one target to the side by side. Disgaea is one-half-satisfactory in this regard. A significant role of preparing for these maps is picking a few harm dealers, building them in complementary directions, and organizing support roles. This is the kind of open-concluded team system which characterizes fun strategy. Furthermore, since these maps are particularly big with a lot of abrasive enemies that assault in parallel, you can't 4head them every bit yous would a normal map; you lot must devise a programme of attack.

On the other mitt, because this is ultimately an RPG with big stats, the main fashion that difficulty is actually increased between levels is by jacking up the stats of enemies. This ways that the histrion must likewise spend time jacking upward their stats to compete. This is where grind comes in. We'll discuss how this grind works in the Postgame section.

Evilities

Evilities are basically equippable passive skills, and are probably the all-time postgame mechanic. Without going too deep into the grit of the mechanics, I want to give some examples to testify how incredible the build multifariousness is here. Every bit a general notion, you lot take 20 common evility slots and 4 unique evility slots.

When filling out evilities, you take two goals: become the graphic symbol to +100% in all stats (the evility cap), and and then build in whatever direction is convenient. Both of these are much more than open than they might seem. For instance, here is how I build my Sage (a magic caster).

Beginning, I consider how I want to employ the Sage. One use case is a first-turn global AoE — useful for the Item World, where you lot want to clear the stage in one turn, as well as boss stages where at that place are a lot of small-scale fry. In this example, I start with Unstable Power, which for ane evility slot gives +l% stats on the first turn, merely cripples your character afterwards. The standard pick for +fifty% stats is Violence, which costs half-dozen slots. Hasty Rush allows me to attack an extra time on the offset turn simply. Over Limit increases my spell ability, but drains SP rapidly every plow. If I plan to focus on not-boss units, I can add Fatal Slash, which gives a chance to deathblow enemies with lower SPD. Another apply example is as a more than focused local caster. In this case, I'll drop the first-turn evilities and focus on more than consistent ones, like Attack Weakness, which enhances spells that take type advantage (not useful for the global AoE Land Decimator, which has no type). I could, of course, merge these employ cases, by hitting a strong Country Decimator on the start turn, and so switching to local casting. In this instance, I might keep Jerky Rush, and I might switch Attack Weakness for King's Dignity, which increases impairment against bosses, who often don't have type weaknesses.

I took ii gunners — Salvatore and Asagi — and built them in completely opposite directions. I buffed Salvatore'southward range with Sniping and Flying Bullets, and so gave her Acceleration Shot (increased damage when you are farther from the target) and Back up Attack (when an ally attacks an enemy, attack information technology if it's in range). For Asagi, I gave her Close-Up Shot, which increases gun impairment against next enemies, and Assault Assault, which increases damage the more you move before attacking. I gave her 3 Boots for secondary equipment, and then she flies effectually and shoots enemies at point-blank range.

There is, equally you can run into, a lot of choice that goes into evility builds. However, there are 3 wrenches. Every bit mentioned, evilities are primarily a postgame mechanic. This is because you unlock evilities on a character primarily past levelling upwards the subclasses associated with those evilities. Levelling subclasses is painfully slow until you can exercise the Geo Nail flim-flam, merely you lot need to exercise it on a LoC item, which you won't have until halfway through the postgame. The default evilities are uninteresting (and are almost never used in final builds), and so earlier this you're left with a bunch of evility slots and not much reason to fill them. The "ideal" style evilities would work is that yous would choose subclasses with interesting evilities and level them upwardly during the chief game, acquiring a few pieces of an early build and unlocking more pieces as you go. This might be possible if subclasses were easier to master, and if there were some manner to really know which classes give which evilities. AFAIK the only way to fifty-fifty find out which evilities exist is to bank check one of the info dumps. But you can't expect players to dig through GameFAQ threads in society to play your game. As a result, evility builds are a mechanic available primarily to dedicated postgame players.

The second wrench is that you don't have all your evility slots past default. You have to get through some formalities and grinding to become them. For each graphic symbol, you demand to get eight common slots past running through the Chara World (the worst mechanic in the game, to be discussed), and 2 unique slots by landing the killing blow on two bosses from the LoC questline (over again, a postgame mechanic). While I recollect the EXP-on-killing-blow mechanic is interesting, as it forces you to ration out kills, this ane is an badgerer, as it forces you to echo a boss battle for every graphic symbol you want to build.

The tertiary wrench is that some evilities require a random formality to unlock, similar to finding the two primal mystery rooms. In general, once you acquire an evility on whatsoever character, y'all can indistinguishable information technology and give it to another grapheme past running through the Chara Globe. This is an annoyance, but it'due south not the main problem. As mentioned, most evilities are unlocked by levelling up subclasses (the grapheme in question can then buy the evility for themself). Some are unlocked by levelling up unique characters (these must be duplicated), and the remaining are simply bachelor in the Chara World. Specifically, at the end of a Chara Globe run, one of your options is to choose a evility to add together to your character, out of about 5 options. At that place are over 200 Chara World evilities. This means you can expect to do near 40 Chara Globe runs to find the one evility you lot need.

Squads

A squad is a group of characters which produce a special outcome. Each grapheme can be in only one squad. There are two aspects to squad optimization: character selection, and strengthening. Yous have to select which characters become in which team, and y'all accept to buff squads past sending prisoners to work for them. In the primary game and early postgame, strengthening is the main form of optimization, as many squads provide universal bonuses. For example, the Cyber Special team gives a universal accurateness boosts, and the Interrogation squad controls the interrogation feature, which is independent of combat. But the Skill Preparation team, which allows yous to copy skills, and Boot Camp squad, which allows EXP sharing, require significant selection. In the postgame, strengthening becomes a grind and selection becomes a formality. This is because you lot need to subcontract large quantities of prisoners from maps like the Sandcano challenge map, MT4, and Double Simulated in order to get anywhere almost strengthening the important postgame squads. Selection is a formality because y'all basically dump your stiff characters into the Human foot Soldier Team (stat boost for members but), so spread your unused characters around support squads like Dark Associates Team and Cyber Special Squad. There are no real strategic tradeoffs, only card fiddling.

Overall, though, the squad mechanic primarily requires grinding for prisoners. What little pick is required in main game strengthening is undercut past the by and large unsubstantial furnishings of squads. Well-nigh strengthening bonuses come downwardly to minor benefits like "squad size +1" or "'increase effect' of X". There are a few incredibly powerful effects; the Interrogation squad allows you lot to interrogate all prisoners at once when you level it up for the first fourth dimension. Yet this imbalance of incredibly powerful and more often than not unnoticeable boosts doesn't create any meaningful choice, only an obvious path and a lot of grind.

Curry

Curry is an incredibly imbalanced mechanic which is absolutely necessary for the postgame. You throw some random stuff into a pot and so get a vitrify. I didn't utilise this feature during the chief game considering it'southward a crappy cooking mechanic without any real explanation. What occurs when I put a spear instead of a sword in my back-scratch? What if I put both? What if I put a spear and a staff? The starting time time you attempt the curry mechanic, y'all'll probably run into a minor buff which lasts you lot for one battle. You tin can as well buy the default curry, which provides a pocket-sized buff for ane boxing. After that, you'll consider information technology as a waste of fourth dimension and a waste matter of items.

Back-scratch becomes useful when you read on GameFAQ that you tin put three Carnage Elixirs and 100 Thimbles in a curry, exit out of the menu before eating information technology, win 100 battles, then eat it to become a 180,000,000 HP heave and a 100% crit rate for 100 battles.

Not merely is curry an opaque mechanic which really doesn't brand much sense at get-go glance (I take no reason, later all, to wait that dropping contumely knuckles in curry volition increment crit rate, or that exiting a menu, which usually cancels operations and in the Item World makes NPCs ignore you, would increase the power of curry), it'south also an extremely powerful mechanic with only i "right" solution (as it is the only method to heighten crit rate to 100%) that is in no mode obvious.

Permit me add together that putting 100 Thimbles requires manually selecting 100 items, since items do not stack in Disgaea. Even this is a bureaucratic formality.

Permit me also add that the furnishings of back-scratch, for those who are inclined to experiment with opaque systems, are also opaque. The just place where I could find curry's effects stated was on the curry menu. Hither's the statement for the 180,000,000 HP and 100% crit rate curry:

HP Upward HP/SP Heal

That'south right — information technology doesn't even tell you lot that it boosts crit rate. Bless the heart of anyone who wants to experiment with this.

Chara World

While I clearly bear much resentment towards the curry mechanic, I call up Chara World is worse, as it's an absolute pain whether or not you're browsing GameFAQ while working through it.

Chara World is a lath game (!) that y'all play past selecting a character and paying some mana. However, every time you play, the cost goes up by 10x, capping at 100k. This means that y'all might be able to play Chara Earth two or three times per grapheme in the master game. Even so, you need to do it closer to threescore times per character to max them out. As a result, it's primarily a grindy postgame mechanic.

Basically, every turn you gyre a dice, and can move your character that many squares in any direction. The foursquare you stop on volition have a random result depending on the color (blueish is good, cherry is bad, green is random). You accept to fight enemies on the way by rolling dice. When you accomplish the goal, y'all can select one of several rewards. You can duplicate an evility or spell, choose an evility to learn, proceeds an actress evility slot, increase innate stats similar movement range and throw range, and increase weapon or equipment aptitudes.

During the main game, this mechanic gives you a short diversion and two or 3 useful upgrades for your carries. You really have to call up out how you move effectually the board, since the carmine events can significantly harm you (specially past draining your mana) and enemies might really kill you, but you can become neat stat boosts from blueish events. In other words, information technology'southward bang-up.

During the postgame, running through Chara Earth carries no such tension. Enemies are trivially weak, you have so much mana that losing or gaining some doesn't thing, and the stat boosts are likewise small to exist relevant. Rather, you lot just spam the motion buttons until you reach the end, and so claim your reward and repeat 60 times. Imagine playing Snakes and Ladders with yourself, 60 times for every graphic symbol you want to build, except none of the snakes or ladders do annihilation.

The i upside to this story is that you simply need to do Chara Earth lx times per character if yous want to properly maximize your graphic symbol, which would be necessary to fight LoC Super Overlord. You can get away with doing information technology around 10–20 times per grapheme if yous don't do equipment aptitude maximization, since that'southward the main cost. With 5 DPS characters, I think I only played Snakes and Ladders around 100 times. I think I enjoyed information technology almost 10 of those times.

Dark Associates

There are certain actions you can take which crave calling the Night Assembly and having them vote. The about important ones are for unlocking postgame maps and getting buffs for one battle (eg. have one character have all EXP gained on that map). The most important bills volition exist extremely unlikely to laissez passer, and you'll either have to bribe or fight the senators to get them passed.

The Dark Associates accomplishes several goals at one time. Information technology is thematically appropriate: you lot are engaging in "demon politics", and then of course the emphasis is on bribing or chloroforming senators you don't similar. It besides forces tradeoffs, as bribing involves giving away your items, some of which may be useful, and the all-time bribing items are generated by the Alchemist, who you might desire to take creating something more useful. And like the Chara World, information technology is a diversion from the principal combat mechanic.

The Dark Assembly doesn't fall into the same repetitive rut equally the Chara World. Even though you might have to laissez passer the same nib multiple times — the bill to increase a grapheme's evility slots and the nib to hog all EXP on the next map come to mind — the Night Associates prevents itself from becoming annoying by carrying over "bribing progress" betwixt bills. This means that in one case y'all go through several rounds of bribing on common bills, they will become basically guaranteed to pass, and you no longer have to spend time on them. Information technology may seem foreign to praise a mechanic for making itself disappear, just ultimately, the Nighttime Assembly and the Chara World are shallow diversions, and shallow diversions aren't fun to repeat.

Postgame

As mentioned, the content of the postgame is primarily the Land of Carnage challenge maps and the questline that leads to it. Also equally mentioned, the structure of the postgame is a "string of targets" where you need to span the difficulty gap by doing extra work in betwixt missions. Our question hither is what this work consists of.

As a long-term goal, you need to go your core squad (probably 5 members) to 20m stats, where it is possible to fight everything except the Super Overlord.

At that place are ii lines required to get to 20m stats on one grapheme. Get-go, you must master all subclasses, reincarnate, and level to 9999; this gives y'all 10m base stats. Second, you must get 10m in bonus stats, primarily from extracts.

Before y'all can efficiently level subclasses, you need to unlock the State of Carnage. This requires raising a few characters to at least level 2000–5000. By and large, you practise this via grinding on the Martial Training maps, which are a set of v maps with convenient enemy layouts and EXP buffs for piece of cake grinding. This is the early postgame. While the method of bridging the difficulty gap between the concluding story missions and the first postgame missions is adequately 4head, information technology'southward non likewise bad an feel, since there are several miscellaneous postgame maps to do in between, many of which are prerequisites for unlocking the LoC, and a few of which give you some new characters to play around with.

After unlocking LoC begins the mid postgame, where y'all will focus on subclass mastery. Subclasses work every bit follows: you can freely assign each character one of well-nigh l subclasses. When you fight enemies, you lot also proceeds subclass feel. Subclasses max out at level seven. Without delving as well deep into the grit, the number of mastered subclasses determines how many stats you gain when you level up. Since you'll already exist near max level by the time y'all master all subclasses, you need to reincarnate (reset your level and stats to level 1) to get the maximum level upward effects, and this gives y'all 10m stats.

The process of mastering subclasses is tedious. The but efficient fashion to do it is via Geo Blast. You enter the Item World, go through a couple levels until you lot find a Geo Symbol, destroy it, leave the Particular World, switch subclasses, and repeat 50 times per graphic symbol. There's a lot of carte du jour-lilliputian involved in every footstep likewise, which is aggravated by that you can only switch subclasses afterwards leaving the Item World. This also isn't something y'all tin can do in the process of doing something else: you must do it all at once, and information technology is the commencement affair you must do. The Geo Blast method requires using an LoC item and max difficulty, and so a political party that isn't already maxed out can't actually fight any enemies. While this procedure as well levels upward your characters, y'all don't get many benefits until after you lot reincarnate, and then it's a long slog that doesn't have much in the way of existent content to break it upwardly, unlike the early on postgame Martial Grooming grind.

Once y'all've mastered all subclasses, you reincarnate and level to 9999 once again to get the beginning 10m stats. This is some other grind, but luckily, y'all but take to practice it in one case. This is because in that location is an easy mode to level from i to 9999 via the "take all EXP on the next map" Dark Associates effect, but you need a helper graphic symbol who has about 8m stats to do it.

This completes the first line. The second line — the late postgame — is "bonus stats". The only practical method of acquiring bonus stats is via shards and extracts, both of which you tin subcontract either at Double Imitation or MT4. Once you collect 10m stats worth of extracts, you can utilize them all at once on upwardly to five characters, which is why your core DPS volition probably consist of five characters. The question is then: how long does information technology take to learn 10m stats worth of extracts when your core team has 10m stats?

What makes bonus stat farming then tedious is how insignificant shard and extract drops are, and how the game limits your progression in this area. With the best possible setup (that I could prepare up), I was getting around 50k in stats per run on MT4 (a fast map), and about 100k in stats on Double Fake (a slower map). I concluded up running MT4 140 times, and Double Simulated 32 times. It's a grind.

I should accept been able to get away with half as many. With 10m stats and a good build, y'all can farm MT4 on max difficulty — the enemies in that location accept 40m stats. Nonetheless, when farming extracts, you need to capture enemies and then "interrogate" them. Problematically, the interrogation function is based off i grapheme's stats; this means that you're forcefully limited to farming extracts on lower difficulties until you're finished farming extracts.

With these 2 methods, you tin get 5 characters to 20m stats, and this is enough to beat everything except for the Super Overlord. As you can see, the postgame is extremely grindy, and it'due south a tedious sort of grind — running the aforementioned few maps several hundred times.

And the Super Overlord?

What if you want to beat the Super Overlord? The tedium of the final grind far outclasses anything we've discussed and then far. You'll need to get a few characters to 50m stats, which, offset off, requires doing the full sixty Chara World runs on each of these characters. (I might accept gone for the Super Overlord if not for this.) Afterwards, you demand to do detail powerlevelling.

Specifically, you want to get a Trapezohedron — the level twoscore all-rounder secondary equipment — and max its level, its impale bonus, and its training bonus. You can max the level by clearing (killing all enemies) about 330 floors of the Item World. The kill and grooming bonus might take slightly longer, but they can all exist done together.

Then, you lot demand to dupe it three times for each character. As previously mentioned, duping is not hard; information technology is just a random formality, where you have to repeatedly go through floors in the Item Earth until you randomly happen upon the room where an NPC might indistinguishable the particular. Based on my experience, I would say you tin can expect this room every 50–100 floors you lot consummate (kill all enemies or use the skip gate). Withal, again, the NPC only might duplicate the item, unless you're a adept 1500+ floors deep. I did non even make it through 1500 total floors afterward going through the Detail World to subclass ten characters, acquire a Trapezohedron, and get it to level 112 before giving up.

How practise y'all find a Trapezohedron anyways? It doesn't have to come up downwardly to luck, but it can exist a flake tedious. As mentioned, past leveling an item to eighty and boosting its preparation bonus, you can steal the linear upgrade from the Particular God on the 100th floor of the Particular World. This only takes a few hours. Yous get a Devil Band from a story quest, but then you'd need to repeat this eight times to get a Trapezohedron. If y'all're lucky, you'll randomly happen across an Exodus or Attestation, which tin be upgraded to a Trapezohedron inside two or three steps.

You can consider this the endgame of Disgaea. It'southward a brutal grind, and there's non a single piece of game content between the hidden LoC dominate — who can exist completed without this — and the Supreme Overlord — who cannot exist complete without this.

Disgaea is oft praised for offering many "possibilities" regarding how to defeat your enemies. It'south true that choice of core squad and evility builds offers possibility, merely in that location is no escape from the grind if you lot want to engage in open-concluded building, since those are postgame mechanics, and the postgame requires grind.

This completes our discussion of Disgaea'south mechanics. Simply after writing this have I actually understood only how grindy and thankless is the postgame's string of targets model. No grinding is necessary, though, in the main game. This would exist a point in Disgaea's favor if the primary game were any good. Only…

Story

D5's story is garbage. I don't take issue with the Disgaea storytelling method, nor with the Disgaea sort of twisted comedy which is admittedly pervasive in previous games. The problem is that D5 moves abroad from both towards a generic shonen fantasy model with tropes for characters and a Naruto-style NAKAMA Ability resolution to almost everything. Permit's go through some of the early characters you'll encounter (no significant spoilers):

• Killia, the MC, is the brooding shonen protagonist with a traumatic past that prevents him from making friends, only who will inevitably be opened up by the NAKAMA POWER of the people attracted by his untiring volition to assistance the suffering;
• Seraphine, the other MC, is the "temptress" who uses her magic powers to control men, and who falls in love with the single-minded Killia — the one man who doesn't submit to her magic (could nosotros not? this is terrible representation for an MC);
• Ruby-red Magnus, a musclehead;
• Zeroken, who is a wannabe apprentice to a legendary martial creative person and is eager to prove his potential to himself also as the earth;
• Void Night, who is literally only pure evil and randomly kills his secretaries for no practiced reason (this is the running joke)…

Considering most of the cast is then tropey, most of the story capacity follow a basic tropey shonen fantasy model: something bad happens somewhere, so the gang goes out to protect the people who are beingness injure past Void Nighttime, and on the way have to find something about NAKAMA POWER to defeat the Large Baddie at the end of the surface area.

I call up one chapter which started on a more classically Disgaean premise: a suspicious Prinny sneaks into your base and steals the last plate of back-scratch, which you lot must recover before it is lost forever. The problem for D5 is that y'all can't have many Disgaean bounds without Disgaean characters, and in that location are no Disgaean characters in D5. This episode barely subsists on a substitute, which is that everyone is obsessed with tasting this amazing curry.

Consider the kickoff episode. In D5, the premise is: there are bad guys in this ane random place, so we should go and defeat them. It'south In D4, the premise is: Valvatorez promised to give sardines to the Prinnies in his training before they left, only the warden takes away the Prinnies earlier he can, and so he must commence on a quest to defeat the warden and government agents in guild to fulfill his promise. The Disgaean characterization of Valvatorez here is his obsession with sardines and his obsession with promises, and this applesauce is affluent in the chance, no matter how serious information technology gets. Permit'southward also not forget Mao's legendary motivations.

Consider the bad endings as well. In D5, bad endings conclude with Killia broodingly concluding that he doesn't have the power to save anyone, and leaving the grouping, leading to interminable state of war or eternal domination by Void Night. It's basic and ho-hum shonen fantasy. In D4, bad endings are, similar the remainder of the game, absurdist. In that location is an interminable state of war bad ending: a virus turns everyone in the world into a re-create of Axel, merely they cease up in a war over the question of who's the most handsome amongst them.

Because of Axel'south strong self-confidence, none of them could admit that anyone else was better looking than they were, and then this battle lasted indefinitely… Thus, all Netherworld history came to an end.

I don't want to see low-quality shonen writing in Disgaea — in that location are enough Naruto clones in the world. I want to see this kind of absurdist nonsense.

There'south not much outside of the standard-fare shonen fantasy tropes to analyze in D5, just there are a few tropes which stand up out a scrap much. First is the extreme accent on sin, repentance, and "taking responsibility". It's an uninteresting and outdated morality to which anybody in the diegesis subscribes and which nobody opposes. Something similar infects D4 and makes it fairly preachy at times. Second is the demeaning presentation of adult women in the bandage. Until the postgame, Seraphine is the simply adult woman in the cast. (When others prove up in the postgame, all Seraphine does is mutter virtually them "competing" with her.) At the same time, she's an utterly shallow grapheme whose only office seems to be that of obsessing over the heart-searching protagonist Killia. And it but gets worse: towards the end of the story, each of the main protagonists has to overcome some personal doubt before enkindling their true potential. Settling by trauma, or facing their ain errors, or reforming their moral compass — classical personal growth stuff. Minor spoilers: Seraphine's personal uncertainty is that she'south scared of beingness poor. Information technology'southward a joke —especially given that she's abundantly rich throughout the entire story. She's the only character in the story who isn't given a serious conflict. And finally — I won't explain this, but y'all'll understand when you see it — is Schrödinger's Refrigerator. A superposition in the most literal sense.

This concludes our discussion of D5's story. I'd similar to terminate past talking almost a favorite topic of mine: localization.

Localization

Disgaea'southward localization is, frankly put, garbage. Specifically, the translation of evilities and spells is often inaccurate, due in part to structural issues and in part to incompetence.

Here'southward a structural issue. ATK is your damage stat when using a physical weapon (eg. swords), and INT is your damage stat when using a magic weapon or magic spell (eg. staffs). This is fine. There are also a separate quantity in damage calculation known as attack adjustment, which increases damage regardless of the weapon or spell. When a skill raises your attack stat, it says "increment ATK". When a skill raises your assault adjustment, information technology says (wait for information technology): "increase ATK". Now, the game doesn't tell y'all nearly attack adjustment, but it does tell you about the ATK stat, so you might get through the entire game without realizing that +ATK skills work on magic weapons (but only sometimes).

To brand sure that this is the fault of localization, I checked several badly described skills and all of them were translation errors. For example, this ATK problem doesn't be in Japanese, since the stat is referred to as ATK and the assault adjustment is referred to as 攻撃力 [attack power]. Imprecisely-translated skills like Magic Bundle (in English information technology increases "special skill power", which is not an bodily variable) were all perfectly clear in Japanese. Other localizations actually seem to be much ameliorate. In French, I only found the ATK/attack adjustment problem. I understand why the ATK/adjustment trouble occurs widely, simply many of the errors in the English localization are conspicuously due to incompetence. Here are a few examples which are peculiarly egregious, as nobody with a loftier-schoolhouse understanding of Japanese should make them.

Greedy Disposition

Increase stats by money endemic x iii%.

Stats + iii% ten le nombre de chiffres de la somme de HL que vous possédez. [Stats +3% ten the number of digits in the corporeality of HL yous hold]

プレイヤーの所持ヘルの桁数×iii%能力がアップ [Stats up by three% x number of digits in the HL held by the player]

Having several billion moneys, I would really enjoy increasing my stats by several billion pct. Don't forget your log signs, kids.

Kamikaze

Increase disquisitional harm dealt past 100% if target unit's SPD is higher than yours.

Dommages des coups critiques +100% quand votre VIT est > à celle de votre cible. [Damage of disquisitional strikes +100% when your SPD is > that of your target.]

攻撃対象のSPDよりも自分のSPDが高い時、クリティカルのダメージ＋100% [When this unit of measurement's SPD is greater than its target's, damage of criticals +100%.]

If yous're translating out of a textbook you might read "target's SPD is college", since Japanese comparisons ofttimes put the bigger thing offset. But like all other substantive-phrase relations in Japanese, the bigger and smaller thing in comparisons are marked by tagging particles (ーより is smaller). It shouldn't be possible to make this mistake. (To analyze but how bad this tagging particle business organisation is: If I say "I sent the letter to Sam", how bad at English language would y'all have to be to conclude that Sam wrote the letter?)

Mana Burn

Increase ATK by fifty%, merely apply 1% of mana every fourth dimension damage is taken.

ATQ +50%, mais 1% des dommages de mana consommé à chaque attaque. [ATK +50%, but i% of impairment of mana consumed with each attack.]

攻撃力＋50%だが、攻撃のたびにダメージの1%分のマナを消費する [Set on power +50%, simply every time you attack, consume mana equal to 1% of damage.]

Dropped the "damage" term, which is pretty important (ane% of impairment every bit mana hits the mana cap in postgame, but one% of mana is cheap). I have no idea how they got "damage is taken" from "every time you lot set on".

Damage Advantage

100% of the damage taken will be deducted from your HL instead.

[I don't accept access to the French version…]

敵ユニットに与えたダメージの100%分のヘルを得る [Gain HL equal to 100% of harm dealt to enemy units.]

This is particularly strange, as the proper name of the skill should accept ticked localizers or QA off (it'south also what made me suspicious when I saw it commencement). I see how the localizer might take gotten "damage taken" by once more misreading tagging particles, but I take no idea how they got the notion of HL substituting for harm.

There is one interesting affair to talk over in the localization of Disgaea as a serial, but I'll probably practise this in a more general article. Specifically, how do you localize gobi (Japanese judgement-ending particles)? That Prinnies use the gobi "su" is a critical office of their design, and it'southward a major running joke in every game (especially D4, since Valvatorez is a Prinny teacher and Fuka is a failed Prinny). The English localizations replace it with "dood". The problem, ultimately, is obtrusivity and flexibility. "su" is non every bit obtrusive as "dood" — in fact, it's pretty strange to end sentences with "dude" except equally a form of accost, but gobi like "su" are normal in Japanese. Because it's a standard class in Japanese grammar, yous can also play around with information technology pretty easily. There'south a scene in D4 where a daughter bearded as a Prinny says something like "shimasu wa su" — the joke here is that she uses the normal feminine gobi "wa", and so sticks "su" on the finish. But "wa" and "su" are incompatible as gobi, and this gives away that she doesn't actually know how to use the gobi "su". ("shimasu wa yo" is compatible.) Look forrard to the full rant — er, article.

Conclusion

My goal with this slice was, rather than to provide a "review" per se, to catalog the fashion that an RPG similar Disgaea operates. Information technology'southward clear that Disgaea in some areas could learn from other games — for example, incomparable equipment builds in PoE — and in some areas sets a bar — for example, postgame evility builds. Only the majority of its mechanics are founded upon painful grinds and dicerolls, and but a handful involve conclusion-making and tradeoffs, which are otherwise the core of strategy.

My assumption is that grinds and dicerolls are bad as foundational progression mechanics. While I can enjoy them for a while, I tin't behave them for long. I can recommend Disgaea 5 only every bit long as you know that this is what y'all're getting yourself into.

Thanks for reading this to the cease; I'll probably never write a piece this long again.

murphyexameste.blogspot.com

Source: https://bagoum.medium.com/disgaea-5-too-many-mechanics-and-a-too-long-review-7bcd9f6fc26a

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