Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance - A Review/Guide

Disgaea 5 is an isometric story driven turn based tactical game, in which you give orders to multiple characters under the command of a roguish leader by the name of Killia to achieve one goal. That goal is to beat the arch nemesis Void Dark and his lost army. I have only played two of the Disgaea games before this one so I am not "in-the-know" with the whole story. However, I have played quite a few hours of this one and know how the game plays, feels and looks. So stay a while and listen to my experience with Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance.

When the game is first booted up, you are greeted by a very well made and flamboyant Anime styled intro introducing characters and what I assume is a little insight to past story. As an anime fan I found this to be a highlighted point because I appreciate the art of Japanese Animation. Once the theatrics were over I was sent to a rather colorful main menu of a galaxy with several strange looking planets floating around which I assumed were the Netherworlds with some rhythmic battle music which made me want to get straight into the fight.

Starting the game begins with scrolling text read by Killia, which rounds out the story you are set in. Then you are greeted by the classic Japanese tactics games looks and cutscenes, much like that of Final Fantasy Tactics and my personal favorite Tactics Ogre. I could tell at this point it was going to be fun. The battlefield opens to two factions, the lost and their ruthless army of fighters and monsters and Seraphina's army of Prinny's (Penguin looking characters who end their sentences with 'Dood!'). Seraphina's Prinny's get all but wiped out and it's here we meet one of the main characters Seraphina, a female protagonist that has had a rich and spoiled upbringing. I instantly disliked this character and at that point Killia's character walks onto the battlefield and sits down and starts eating. This causes unrest for both armies. he gets confronted by Seraphina and after a relatively short dialogue, he decides to deal with the lost for her and be on his way. She then becomes infatuated with Killia and demands that he fight for her and her resistance.

Killia's character is the common overpowered and no care in the world character that you would find in many Anime, which made him an instant favorite because they always get stuck in the most ridiculous predicaments. He is then taken to Seraphina's Netherworld where he leads the army and teaches Seraphina how to fight because she's never had to actually fight before. This concludes the prologue and/or intro to the two main protagonists.

Once I arrived in the netherworld I was confused at first. What do I do? where do I go? So I investigated everything I could and found several item chests with some useful items for my characters. After about 15 minutes of looking around, I realized I had to talk to Seraphina and thus started the Netherworld tutorial for things such as healing characters and acquiring more followers.

The recruitment system is much like Tactics Ogre, where you can buy characters, but in this game everything is customizable. Everything from class to colour is open for customization which leads to having an army built around whatever play style you prefer. Whereas in other games, you searched for a class and certain abilities on people you could hire and hope that they were your level. So I recruited two Healers, one powerful Mage and two of the strongest characters I could find. There are 40 races and jobs combined, each with their own unique abilities, and you are able to dedicate their levels and disciplines. The stronger or higher level you are gives you access to higher level characters but at a much higher cost. So it pays off to save your money and train as much as you can.

Once you have your characters and you've kitted them up with items and gear from the vendors, you are ready to go to the combat tutorial. Here you learn about basic fighting in a tactics game such as attacking from the side deals more damage than a front on assault, but the opponent can counter and attacking from behind does the most and can't be counter attacked unless it is a miss. Something that I haven't really seen in these game is registering moves in order to combine attacks.

The way registering attacks works is, you select your character and move them to the position you want them at. Next you select attack (on your menu) and select your desired foe but once you press attack the attack does not start, it is now registered which allows you to maneuver more of your characters to also attack your desired foe or multiple foes. Once you have registered all the attacks you can go to the menu and select 'attack!' which commands all characters to attack at once, which can sometimes initiate special combos between certain characters. I found this opens up so many tactical options and ways to fight certain enemies.

Not too much happened in the next few hours of play though. Mainly setting story and developing characters so I decided to save and play later. Once I was ready to come back and play some more I was greeted with an error message which had told me my save file was corrupted and I'd have to start again. I wasn't the happiest chappy, but I have started another save and I am saving often but I still haven't gotten any further than I already was. So I haven't got much more to share with you guys.


Thank you for reading

-Reprimere-