If you like NIS (or any other game where you need to grind a lot) you might want to steer clear of this thread. I have bought many of their games, so I know what I'm talking about. They are all the same. freaking. game. Except for 1, which is drastically different enough for me to think its a new game, which is Soul Nomad. After watching the trailer for Disgaea 3, I posted a comment saying: Is this comparable to saying Halo 1-3 is a rehash of the former? IN MY OPINION, NO, if you consider the following: Most NIS titles use the same engine. There are 1 or 2 MINOR tweaks to the gameplay mechanics, some new sprites are made, and there is a new story, and people consider it to be "An entirely different game" and then these people usually say that Halo is a crappy rehash, HOWEVER, it takes a lot more work to make a crappy 3-d FPS than a 2d JRPG (without making a new 2d engine). You see where I'm getting at? NIS makes a new game every year and people eat it right up, usually the type of Wapanese people who watch Naruto and think Pocky tastes better than Milky Ways. Ok, I know thats subjective, but Really! They proceed to praise it and then say its better than FPSs. I've heard them say they enjoy grinding, but I just don't know why. They said playing the same map over and over and over 2700 times to get enough experience to beat Baal is an "Accomplishment". Yeah games force you to do the same things over and over, and its the creators job to make it not boring, but I don't see how anyone could do that. Some guy on Youtube managed to get a Divine Maijin with 200,000 stored levels. He wasn't Asian, either. And speaking of which, these games are horribly balanced. The main character can beat the crap out of everything, making most classes useless. Since this is a STRATEGY role playing game, it kinda defeats the purpose. None of the NIS titles require Strategy. Its not really an SRPG, just an RPG with a grid based isometric battle system, but definitely not strategy. And speaking of Disgaea and many other NIS titles maps, they look really, really bad. Anyways, speaking of Halo again, even if you don't like the game, they have to do a ton of crap to the game to make it sell better. Like making the graphics better, making new worlds and areas, rebalancing the weapons, reworking weapons around ragdoll physics, etc. They need to do a ton of work. NIS just makes a few new sprites, tweak a few things on their engine, and they're ready to go. What they are doing would be comparable to Bungie releasing a tweaked version of the Halo 1 engine every year as a new "Game." They might sell, look at crap like GTA, almost every one of those has been the same experience through and through, but I doubt it would be as big as it is now. I just had to vent my frustrations on this, I posted this on a mostly Japanese oriented site, and most of them told me to go fuck myself and shove my "Wrong" opinions up my ass. A few people agreed with me, with one guy saying "lol most wapanese like cheap anime crap so they can get their anime fix....why do you think so many of them want to work around anime when they are grown ups?" The only reason I posted this anyway wasn't because I was upset people were buying it, but people buy it and then say its the greatest thing ever and anything under them that isn't Japanese, sucks. I then went on to post my honest opinion on it, and boy was there a shitstorm. So, uh, what do you think of their games?:icon_bigg EDIT: Oh yeah, the "humor" in the games is all 5th grade shit as well. HORSE WEINER LOLOL!
<opinion>After Disgaea, I started to see a lot more games from this company and just by looking at the screenshots I knew it was just the same gameplay mechanics, just different characters, new effects, different names, etc. They just simply took something that worked and rehashed it, over and over.</opinion>
Played a few NIS games..........MEH Still waiting for a US release of Spectral VS Generation. It's a bitch playing it on my PSP.
Speaking of which, Madhatter, your avatar reminds me of one of my personal favorite SRPG series.:nod: Well, I like Fire Emblem, too.
Yeah, I think NIS rather sucks. I remember when my roomate at the time got Disgaea, and was like, "Dude, if you level up all your characters to 99 99 times, then you get to go to this dungeon with 99 floors!" My only thought was: "The special dungeons in most RPGs that have like, 10 floors, cause my eyes to bleed from boredom, I don't want to even fathom 99 floors of such nonsense, let alone having to put in more hours into some shitty SRPG so that every character hit level 99 99 times." And then there was Disgea 2, and that other game they made that might as well be yet another Disgeae that I can't remember the name of. Ugh, misery abound! Them and Koei (see: Dynasty Warriors and its 10 billion yearly iterations) are like, the EAs of Japanese gaming or something.
After looking at the boxart, I can see why people buy them, but when people buy a game and think its Art style and story are the best parts of it AND they think it is a good game....something is seriously wrong.
Strongly agree. I just don't get why people keep buying these games. It's such an obscure genre to begin with and then their games aren't even that compelling. I wish these resources would get put into other Japanese game genres that never get distributed here in the States.
Personally, I really liked Disgaea. Bought it on a whim one day and really enjoyed it. Biggest problem I have is that Nippon-Ichi likes to re-use materials a bit too much. Disgaea 2 had very little relation to the first one, but used the same graphics and such. It wasn't too bad, but it was very boring and lost some of the first's charm. Then I tried Makai Kingdom, and hated it. But yeah, Disgaea 3 looks pretty shitty. I don't care if they are a obscure company that barely makes enough to keep afloat, they should at least upgrade the sprites to a higher quality if they are going to go next-gen. It doesn't help that the game was already pretty much a upscaled PS1 game.
I think the first NIS game you'll ever buy will be your favorite now that I think about it. After that they all feel the same. You can get really burnt out on just that one game too, because the level counter goes to 9999 and like Jp. said, there is a 100 floor dungeon, BUT its random generated and each item you own has one. If you beat all 100 floors, that item becomes super powerful. You can do this many many times, and the enemies near the end of the item worlds require you to be level 9999 anyway. Some guy actually managed to get a Divine Maijin (hard class to get), TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND stored levels (Thats due to a feature called transmigration, you level to 9999, then restart to level 1 with insane stat bonuses for your next leveled "set"), 3 fully leveled Super Robo suits (best armor in game), and one fully leveled Yoshitsuna, and he has a 255 in blade. 255 in blade by itself takes around 400 hours of nothing but using a sword to kill things. He went up to the hardest optional boss in the game, took 0 damage, and instantly killed him. Some guy told me "Some just love grinding" but what is the point of maxing out the clock on your game? A sense of accomplishment? The guy also said he still liked to play it. Let me put this into perspective: Even WITH a Gameshark, it would take 3 or 4 hours to get one of my characters 200,000 stored levels. And all that other stuff would require me to play through the whole games campaign at least once to get.
