#i mean our protagonists' main goal would likely be to close the huge gates in hawkins and fight off the monsters coming through

[loreweaver-universe]

Y’know, today I feel like talking about Disgaea, specifically my problems with Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance.

Spoilers for Disgaea 1, 2, 5, and Makai Kingdom, I guess.

So, first off, let’s talk about...

The Narrative.

Disgaea 5 tells the tale of edgelord Squall Leonhart wannabe Killia, a former asshole who got redeemed by falling in love with the daughter of the only demon to ever give him a proper ass-thrashing, who spent his time teaching Killia how to find inner peace blah blah blah it’s actually pretty bland.  Killia speaks in a constant monotone, half-heartedly tries to get his rapidly accumulating party of Overlord-level demon pals to leave him the hell alone, and is generally just really goddamn boring.  It’s not to say this kind of character can’t be interesting--in fact, I name-dropped Squall earlier, and until Final Fantasy VIII went completely off the rails in the second disc he was a legitimately nuanced character and I was interested in seeing where he went.  Here’s the problem with all that, though:

The Disgaea series is a parody.

Now, full disclaimer--I’ve only played Disgaea 1, 2, 5, and Makai Kingdom.  I have Disgaea 3 and 4, but I haven’t been able to secure a PS3 to play them on yet, so I’m leaving those out of the discussion (though from what I’m aware those are parodies as well.)  However, of the four games I have played, Disgaea 5 stands out as being the only one of them to really take itself seriously.

Well, 2 did as well to a certain extent, but other than the looming issue of “we’re trying to off your evil dad, Rozalin,” Disgaea 2 takes itself about as seriously as Disgaea 1 did, and Disgaea 1 is a farce.

A beautiful, glorious, hilarious, one hundred percent intentional farce.

Laharl is a ridiculous creature.  He’s petty, narcissistic, and childish, and while there are serious story beats (Etna being blackmailed, that asshole Angel stealing Flonne’s protective pendant, etc) Laharl never stops mocking his foes, his friends, and the genre itself.  Disgaea 1, in short, is taking the piss, parodying the most ridiculous parts of anime and JRPGs (and, hell, American raygun gothic) with delightful glee...which is why, when things turn deadly fucking serious in the final chapter, it’s so goddamn heart-wrenching and effective.  That slow burn of Laharl growing to care about Flonne enough that he tears the Heavenly Host several new assholes to try to save her from their judgment (and, even in the best ending, has to talk himself down from murdering the head angel in cold blood because she wouldn’t have wanted him to take revenge for her sake) is one of the most effective tonal twists in the history of media, in my opinion: all of a sudden, it’s not funny anymore.

While Disgaea 1 lampooned the genre as a whole, Disgaea 2 takes a different tack, and lampoons common anime/JRPG character archetypes.  The hot-blooded, idiotically honorable melee fighter; the spoiled rich brat of a princess; the annoyingly perverted goblin of a third wheel (and, ugh, I wish that archetype would die already), the plucky little kids who are the least innocent characters in the whole crew other than the aforementioned perv goblin, on and on and on.  The goal may be serious, but the characters are almost as silly as they were in Disgaea 1, and I actually think 2 manages an even better balance of humor and compelling storytelling than 1, because not only is the romance between Adell and Rozalin natural, enjoyable, and endearing, the dramatic beats come along without undermining the sheer silliness of our protagonists until it can have the most impact.  There’s a moment in one of the later chapters where Laharl from the first game appears without warning, pissed off, heavily geared, and more than a thousand levels your superior.

(Yes, I said a THOUSAND levels.  For those of you in the audience who aren’t familiar with the series, the level cap is 9999, and you can reset a character to level 1, storing attained levels for bonus stats.  I’ll be talking about the grind later, don’t you worry.)

The encounter with Laharl accomplishes several things over the course of the two fights with him: it delivers a joyful reunion with the protagonist of the first game, which turns to terror when you see his stats, which turns to horror as you send your team into the meat grinder to die helplessly...and then it shows us that something is frighteningly wrong with Rozalin as she is seemingly possessed and tears this impossible foe apart effortlessly.  From there the story really kicks into high gear, and like Disgaea 1, transitions into a deadly serious final assault on Zenon’s stronghold, but unlike Disgaea 1 it’s not a shocking swerve in tone--the story’s been building to this over time, gradually reconstructing the genre it gleefully tore to pieces over the previous game and a half.

Makai Kingdom is a very different affair, and can actually be most closely contrasted with Disgaea 5.  In the Disgaeaverse, an “Overlord” is a very powerful demon who rules a pocket dimension called a “Netherworld.”  Laharl’s an Overlord, for example.  Makai Kingdom deals with a set of protagonists on a whole other level of power; these are the Overlords that other Overlords view as gods, and they essentially sit around on their asses playing card games and throwing popcorn at their TV.

I think you can see where I’m going with this.

Makai Kingdom is a return to Disgaea 1′s attitude--relentless silliness, mockery of itself, with a sharp turn at the end.  Whether it accomplishes this goal as well as Disgaea 1 isn’t all that relevant, but it is something we can compare to Disgaea 5.

Disgaea 5 starts off similarly--hideously powerful Overlord-level demons gather together, but the characters are...not exactly dour, but played straight, I guess.  There’s no parody, no lampooning; it’s very stock JRPG comedy (and “comedy”), with dramatic tension, a serious approach to its story and antagonists, and predictable story beats obvious to anyone who’s ever seen a mediocre anime or played a mediocre JRPG.  Hell, the main villain’s name is Void Dark, and not a single character makes fun of that!  There are some interesting designs, and I actually think Majorita is a compelling villain for Usalia, who I likewise enjoy immensely, but the story abandons almost everything that made the previous games’ plots entertaining.  Topple an empire, murder some baddies, get your homes back, save your dead love from the creepy brother with the incestuous undertones.  That’s it.  That’s all.  As a story structure, it works just fine, and as evidenced by my love for the rest of the series I absolutely think challenging established conventions is a good thing, but it doesn’t do so successfully enough that it stands out as a worthy entry in the series.  Where it does shine is in improvements to gameplay quality-of-life and beautiful animation, which brings me to...

The Gameplay.

Disgaea 5 improves the UI, adds all sorts of neat little quirks to character customization, and improves game control substantially.  It adds extra ways to gain stat points (like I said before, character levels cap at 9999 and can be stored for stat bonuses--this game also allows you to train stats for stat points via minigames) and is just generally more in-depth than its predecessors...at the cost of being stupidly easy to grind out.

Yes, I think an easier grind is a bad thing.  Let me explain: I have over ten thousand hours in Disgaea 2 alone over the last twelve years.  I picked the first two games up when Disgaea 2 was brand new, and have beaten the game dozens of times in the intervening span.  Most recently, about five years ago, I created a save file on the PSP port of the game, and I spend idle trips or the time I’m falling asleep grinding it out as kind of an idle game.

Literally everything you do in a Disgaea game gets you experience for something.  Weapon mastery, skill exp, character exp, you name it.  Hell, you can run randomized dungeons inside your items to level those up, too.  It’s incredibly satisfying and makes for a constant sense of progression--even if you don’t level up in a fight you’ve still gotten experience points for the skills and weapons you’ve used, making it stronger, more effective, etc.  My personal goal is to, eventually, have one of every character class maxed out on stored levels and every skill and weapon proficiency in the game, which is a deliberately impossible task because it’s just so much fun to chase it forever.

Here’s the other thing: the Disgaea series, due to the ludicrous level cap, is known for its absurdly deep pool of ever-stronger bonus bosses, stretching, yes, all the way up to the level cap.  The hunt for those is likewise extremely satisfying, and takes quite a while, especially since the campaign usually caps out at around levels 70-90.

With all this in mind, imagine my dismay when I realized I was blowing through skill and weapon exp and hitting the caps on everything in a tiny percentage of the time I was expecting.  To be fair, there is a “Cheat Shop” NPC who can adjust the EXP you gain up and down, which is neat, but I have to crank it down to literally single-digit percentages of normal to get the same amount of chase-time out of it.  This is not to say that the game should be inaccessibly grindy; in fact, Disgaea 1 and 2 aren’t.  The story campaigns in those games are perfectly completable with the normal skill progression and a small but admittedly grindy amount of extra leveling in unlocked areas.  It’s all the extreme bonus content that’s gated behind the postgame grind, and the huge ceiling on skill levels and weapon proficiencies means you’re constantly rising in power and challenging new heights.  I think that’s a fantastic reward for being dedicated to the game!  And Disgaea 5 in its default state takes that away.  I had a character capped out on all proficiencies, subclasses, and aptitudes within my first hundred hours of the game.

It was...disappointing, I guess.  All around, mostly; for every step forward it took, it also took a step back.  Ultimately, the story takes a backseat to my points about the grind, because the campaign in any Disgaeaverse game is literally about 2% of the game’s content.  Disgaea 5 took my grind from me, and that’s why I’m salty enough to have just spent an hour typing up a book report on its failings, I guess.

#disgaea #disgaea 5 #disgaea spoilers #disgaea 2 #makai kingdom #bloggin #inbetween