It’s a new Disgaea Dood!
Nope, just a port.
Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited is a port and slightly updated version of Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten, bringing it from the PS3 to the PSVita. Additional content, all DLC and increased values are all advertised with this release and sets it up to be an ultimate edition similar to game ports like Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden with their longer stories and added side quests and characters.
Story
The story in Revisited is the same as in Unforgotten, following the life of a Vampire-Demon by the name of Valvatorez who has fallen from his powerful personification of a Tyrant due to his motto of never breaking a promise and forbidding himself from drinking human blood. Being pushed down to the bottom of the Ladder in Hades, Val is forced to train the incoming souls from Earth who have turned into Prinnies, a Penguin like creature and who must pay off the sins they committed in their life.
Life is not so simple for Val however, as just as he begins to graduate a new class of Prinnies they are taken away from him without notice, and sadly they never got to taste their precious Sardines. Being a man of his word Val goes out to rescue the Prinnies, feed them their Sardines then set them off to work off their sins. But nothing is ever that simple it seems, the Prinnies have been arriving in Hades in droves of increasing numbers and are being culled by the government of Hades.
Fighting past the president’s own son, his personal guard, extermination forces and even higher up officials of the President of Hades and the Corrupternment, Val and his faithful Servant Fenrich find themselves in a widespread conspiracy to kill all Prinnies and change Hades as everyone knows. Gathering up allies from the surrounding areas of Hades, including more Prinnies, Monsters like Slimes, Mushrooms, Goblins and more as well as defeated foes like the son of the president the team sets their eyes on the Corrupternment and the President.
The Main story will take up to 50 Hours to complete with added time from endgame content, DLC’s and side missions and tasks to complete. The game in total easily surpasses the 100 hour mark and is a great game for fans of the series who are looking for another investment of their time.
Gameplay
Disgaea 4 Continues on with its turn based tactical gameplay, putting your characters onto the board and playing like a chess advocate with each pawn under your control to demolish the opposition. The battle starts off with the enemies on a map and allowing you to spawn in your troops one by one by the beginning portal then moving them to your desired location on a grid based board. After moving your allies you can also decide if you want them to be out of sight of enemies, fighting with melee or ranged weapons or use their skills. One option is also to block incoming attacks or to lift and throw objects around the map including allies.
Besides normal combat there are also several pieces on the board to change the way battle progresses and occurs, the main one being GEO blocks that affect characters in certain ways, from healing them after their turn, increasing damage or simply making it so the blocks can’t be picked up. These Geo blocks can also affect GEO panels on the floor, which can encompass half the map, changing their colour and spreading the effect to a widespread area. Breaking a block within a differing panel can cause the surrounding panels of the same colour to change to the blocks colour, dealing damage to anyone in the panels, including more blocks which can create a domino affect to switch the colour upwards of 3 times, effectively killing off the majority of foes in your way with one swift blow.
Along with affecting the map you can change your characters in a similar fashion with Fusion and Magichange, with fusion, allowing you to morph two creatures together to make a final monster with twice the size. You can then combine the fused monster or smaller monsters by magichanging them into a Human character to change the monster into a new weapon for the character to use. Increasing damage output or changing the type of weapon they use, the characters using Magichange can become invaluable at times, either by giving them overpowered swords too long shooting guns and bows.
Overall Thoughts and Feelings
Short response: Bargain.
Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited as a game includes the base game, Time leap Episode, new magic and skills, cheating, more customising, new characters, Movie Viewer, Increased items in both level and quantity, improved gameplay and around 47 pieces of DLC content individually worth around £60. With everything that is added in this release it is without a doubt a brilliant price to pay for what you are getting.
The music in the game hasn’t changed much from release to release, sticking to the same genre and formula it has used for years of Disgaea. However Revisited’s soundtrack doesn’t really hit the high notes in my opinion, as a lot of the tracks don’t match up to the scenarios they are played , especially some of the battles and boss fights with one jumping out in particular as it is simply a girl with an annoying voice saying the same word over and over. The music became too “anime” in the game for my liking.
The graphics are clean and clear with some great colour palettes for both the characters and environments, helping to show off their details, expressions and the ways you can maneuver the battle field. Their style fits with the PSVita more than it did on the PS3 and definitely fits the style of the game in its entirety.
With all the good points about the game, it would seem it has it all, which sadly it doesn’t. The camera is placed horribly at times, showing a weird perspective of the battlefield, even with the ability to change the direction it faces, ending with me moving the wrong way and to redo movements over and over. The voice acting is also deplorable in points, with the stereotypical young girl voices and annoying children’s voices that can really pull on your patience.
Overall, I give Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited a 3/5, it is the best edition of the base game and fits extremely well on to a handheld device, though its flaws are too noticeable and are consistent throughout the game. Gameplay becomes boring with long play sessions and certain characters will put you off for their whole section. Fans of the series will come to expect the flaws in Revisited and may even enjoy some of the parts I hated, but for the average Joe picking their up you will hate your decision.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
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