to pass if you’ve got the Mana to spare.
Just when you think the Pocket Netherworld can’t possibly offer any more sardine-slapping goodness, there’s suddenly more. The Skills Shop will let you spend Mana to upgrade special skills and learn Evilities, and the Interrogation room will allow you to torture captured enemies. Once you’ve broken their spirit by whatever means necessary (starvation, violence, tickling) you can chose to extract their power, make them a citizen or, if you’ve unlocked that particular class, make them into an ally that you can bring into battle. Opening up later in the game is the Research Room where you can blast off your recruits in a rocket ship to lands unknown to recruit more people, discover lost Netherworlds and bring back goodies.
Whether you are converting allies or hiring them from the Recruitment Room, it makes sense to level up as many different classes and skills as possible because you may now have a tough, hard-as-nails Fire Mage but what happens when you find yourself in need of a Mage with powerful wind? That’s a scenario nobody wants. Later on in the game you’ll gain the Squad Room where you can assign individual characters to specific squads to give them particular advantages than can help out characters who are struggling in battle or those you want to give an extra edge to. Squad Leaders will acquire the Squad Attack skill which, in a fraught battle, can seriously turn the tide. One of my favourite rooms that opens up roughly halfway through the game is the Chara World where you can pay Mana to play a board game with a chosen character. Spin the wheel and off you trot. Here you can earn lots of extra HL, items and upgrades. Make it to the Goal within so many turns and choose a very special upgrade. Don’t make it and there will be consequences. It’s a simplistic but addictive little subgame that, if you’ve got the Mana and a mild gambling habit, it will occupy you for many guilty hours.
There’s an awful lot to do in the Pocket Netherworld, but everything is introduced at a pace that allows you to grasp it easily and move forward. Many of the facilities will not open up until you are at least a gazillion hours into the game. Disgaea’s beautifully charming and childish appearance is a facade that hides one of the most deep and complex SRPGs PlayStation has ever seen. And yet this complexity is extremely user friendly. Any RPG, if you’ve not played it before, takes a while to get the old noggin’ round, but considering the intricacies of Disgaea, it’s an amazing feat that it is so easy to get into. It’s all in the pacing and the way it’s presented.
As Disgaea regulars will, I am sure, tell you, it’s the game’s distinctive charm that sets this SRPG apart from any other. Disgaea 5’s plot is outrageously bizarre. Prepare yourself for some very oddball characters, whacky and whimsical scenarios and the sort of logic only a Disgaea game can manage. I won’t spoil any part of the plot, but rest assured it’s strangely gripping. The Disgaea series has never been one to take itself too seriously and Disgaea 5 carries on that tradition. Ironic, overly dramatic, odd, hilarious and, on occasion, weirdly touching, this