Trying to Learn Disgaea 4

First: a little bit of background. Tactical RPG's have always interested me, and I've dabbled with the genre here and there, but haven't ever become truly invested in any particular game. Most of the time, I find an abundance of dialogue to be extremely off-putting in these types of games. I prefer gameplay over story, which I've devoted entire blogs to in the past, and I also tend to prefer gameplay experiences where I have free reign to do what I want. Disgaea then, seemed like a great choice, what with it's intricate systems and dizzying amount of content: the series always seemed straight up my alley. I wanted to wait however, until I had a portable system to play the game on, as this seemed the best option for me. So yesterday, I bought Disgaea 4, and have spent a good amount of time today trying to wrap my head around it's many gameplay systems. There are a few aspects I can say for sure that I love, but with every few battles a multitude of questions pop in to my head. It was probably a bad idea to jump into one of the most feature-heavy entries in the series, but there you have it. I'll go over my experience in as much detail as possible, while touching on a few of the most prominent questions I have about the game.

Right off the bat, I LOVE the open-ended nature of Disgaea 4. While there are a set order of story missions that need to be progressed through, revisiting certain ones to try out new strategies was greatly appreciated. Most of the time, my first run of a map was fairly rusty, and successive tries offered up opportunities to try new tactics. I love the hub world structure as well, which reminds me of something like Demon's Souls, with an easy way to buy and sell items and abilities between battles. But even though I'm enjoying the core combat and gameplay loop, new concepts were heaped on at such a rate that I quickly became confused. Lifting and throwing units, while fairly self-explanatory, is very difficult to get a hang of, at least for me. There have been a few situations where I've used the system successfully, but many times I felt like I was using it for the sake of using it. Of course, this will likely be solved with more practice, and as such isn't really a big problem right now.

I'm not entirely clear however, on whether I should be making new characters. The ones I started with are well-rounded enough that I don't really feel the need, but neglecting the option seems dangerous. Should I wait until I have enough Mana to make very powerful characters, or simply spam lower level ones? Right now I'm content with leveling up my existing team, but I can't imagine this will be effective for the majority of the game. I've also been wondering where the best maps are for grinding, and if I even need to grind at all (I'm currently at the second episode). Also, what happens once the story missions are over? I'm assuming there is some kind of MMO-esque endgame that involves leveling characters, and that is when the majority of grinding will take place, but I'm not entirely sure.

But perhaps the biggest puzzle to face right now is the Cam-pain HQ. The tutorial for this aspect of gameplay was very short, and didn't really give much insight to the benefits of it. How does populating tiles on the map help me, and should I be prioritizing making characters to fill said tiles? I'm starting to understand the benefits of senate requests, but since they cost Mana, should I be prioritizing them or learning new abilities and Evilities? I've held one senate hearing so far which was successful and allowed me to buy higher level items from the shop, a big help. Maybe all I really need is more time to get a hang of all of the systems, but right now the entertainment and confusion levels are about equal for me. Aside from the questions I've already asked, do you have any tips for a newcomer? How important is fusing monsters and making them into weapons (another system which confused me to no end)? In any case, I'm going to keep on trucking and hopefully post about my progress in the future, so stay tuned.

Hey! Glad you've drunk the NIS Kool-aid. I've been playing the Disgaea games off an on for a while now. I've beaten the story missions for them, but I certainly have not unlocked anything in a lot of them. Hopefully though, I can help answer some of your questions.

Cam-Pain HQ: The best think I've found is the Mana Pyramid (I forget what the real name is). With it, the dudes you put into those spaces get a whole lot more mana then they would normally. Since Mana not only dictates stats when you reincarnate, but also allows you to power up your abilities. Which leads to...

Mana: Mana is important. I would say that it's more important than levels, as it allows you to reincarnate and create stronger characters. The main thing about the Disgaea series is that the power is always in the stats of the character. Equipment can help somewhat, but what you really want to do is get enough mana to make stronger characters.

Beyond the story: So, as I've said before, I've beaten most of the disgaea series' story modes, but that doesn't even scratch the surface of the games. Really, the games are a path towards being able to do billions and billions of damage in one swing. I always lose interest once I beat the game or unlock a class I really like, so I've never really tried it (it is also really grind), but if that's your jam, there are worse ways to spend your time.

Hope this was helpful. I'm sure somebody who is more into the series than I am will elaborate, but hopefully this should help. If you have any more questions, let me know!

The wiki is your friend.

There's no point making a ton of useless dudes, you can only use 10 characters on a single map. The story characters are more powerful than anything you can currently create though due to their unique special moves, evilities and inherently higher base stats.

You will definitely have to grind but not that much until the post game. The Item World is best for that.

One really cool thing about the Lift/Throw mechanic is that you can make a tower of characters that can attack as one and as you use the Tower more they will learn to move, throw and do ranged attacks all without breaking formation. Also if you kill an enemy as a tower everybody in the tower gets full XP for the kill.

You should always have the highest tier of items unlocked that you can afford. There's no downside to it.

Really though, you're only in the second episode, you don't need to worry about any of this stuff for a while.

@zalrus9: Thanks for the tips, my only question now would be should I be reincarnating characters instead of making entirely new ones? @corevi is probably right in saying I don't need to worry about this stuff at this early stage, but what exactly is reincarnation for?

@noahtheboa999: Reincarnation resets a character at level 1 but with higher stats.

@corevi: @noahtheboa999: It also lets you transfer some skills that the class might otherwise not learn (fire magic on an ice mage for example) and can also be used to upgrade to the next tier of a class with better stats.

Don't worry about it too much early on though. You can potentially make it through the whole main story with just the low-tier classes, although I usually like to reincarnate once I find a decent grinding spot that lets you power level back up to the rest of the team quickly. (Which tends to be somwhere around level 30-ish IIRC.)

Generally it is better to reincarnate than make new characters though, unless you're only going to use the character to unlock a new class.