When you’re not actively taking part in strategic repetition of excellent tactical scuffles to secure powerful attacks and level-smashing annihilation, with fish, you are free to wander around Seraphina’s Pocket Netherworld. This miniature territory is your hub. It’s where you go to buy helpful items, weapons and armour. It’s where you can pick up extra quests, view previous cut scenes and recruit new party members. Recruiting people to fight alongside you is a wonderful part of Disgaea culture. You can pick from healers, witches, brawlers, gunner, clerics and many more, and depending on if they are male or female this will affect the abilities of your choses class. Depending on how much cash you’ve got stuffed inside Killia’s skin tight trouser pockets you can also choose how powerful your new party member will be. Also choose a name from a fabulously weird selection or pick your own and to some extent select hair and clothes colour. My party now includes SJ the Healer, Lizard the Warrior, NelMaNo the Mage and Northlander the Gunner who has been blasted off in a rocket (more about that later). Lastly do not forget to arm your new recruit, so it’s off to the shop for a rusty sword and a pot lid. As you level up and become rich, powerful and infamous, you’ll be able to recruit new and more powerful classes and the shops will sell better gear to protect your unmentionables than a saucepan lid.
Once you’ve found a weapon you like, it’s possible to level it up separately. Search out the entrance to the Item World within your hub and here every battle will make your chosen item more and more powerful. Yes that rusty sword could one day split the nostril hairs of Void Dark himself. Another wonderful little feature that is sure to please all the crazy statistic managers among us is the presence of Innocents. These little beauties are found in items all over the Netherwords and can be extracted and fitted to your weapons and armour to give them and you an extra boost. There’s a separate room for Innocent Management, and here you’ll lose countless hours extracting, fitting and swapping. Adding an extra layer of depth, it’s possible to visit the Item World and tame the Innocents in your chosen weapon, and once you’ve calmed them down, you can combine them. Go in with five Gladiator Innocents, all giving you various amounts of extra Attack points, subdue them, return, combine them into one slot, and now you have four free slots to fill up with more stat-boosting Innocents. It’s a long process, but if you’re in it for the long haul, it’s worth doing right. Yes, it’s fiddly, but once you’ve got into the swing of it, you’ll be managing those stats with your eyes shut and your upgrade slots wide open.
The Pocket Netherworld also has its own Parliament where you can pay Mana to pass bills to make life easier or more interesting or profitable. Pay up to present your bill and then make sure to bribe the attending senators to get yourself an AYE rather than a NAY. As you progress, the Assembly process will also upgrade. Use it to get better items in the shop, start with your bonus meter partly filled on the next map or grab more EXP. There are any number of fun and functional bills you can try to pass if you’ve got the Mana to spare.