Pre-order Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited

At this rate, a portable version of a Disgaea game is almost inevitable. Every game in the series thus far has received a portable upgrade. What sets apart the portable Disgaea titles is that they are almost universally large improvements over the original games. They take advantage of new features and content introduced in later Disgaea titles and add them to the original game. Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited is an updated port of the PlayStation 3 version of Disgaea 4, but there's a host of new features and content that looks to make this the best version of the game to date.

Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited tells the story of Valvatorez, a powerful vampire who once ruled as a tyrant. His pride became his weakness, and a promise he made to never drink human blood led to his sudden fall from power. Now he spends his days in Hades as an instructor for Prinnies, the souls of humans who were sent to the underworld to work off karmic debt. His duty is interrupted when the Corruptment, the underworld government, decides that the overabundance of Prinnies is too big a problem and sets out to exterminate them. As Valvatorez made a promise to give sardines to the Prinnies, he must overthrow the Corruptment and reform the underworld.

Those who've played the Disgaea franchise know what to expect from Disgaea 4. While it may have some familiar strategy-RPG gameplay, Disgaea really shines in the mechanics because it offers a number of ways to customize and power up your characters. You can level up a character, weapons and skills. As you advance, you unlock plenty of other ways to customize your characters. You can combine characters in various ways. Monster characters can "Magichange" into weapons for human characters or combine to form giant enemies. You can reincarnate or class-change your characters to give them new skills or passive abilities or simply power them up. You can even power up items by going inside them with the randomly generated "Item World" feature. There are also a nearly infinite number of possible dungeons to explore and conquer.

All of this is necessary because Disgaea 4, likes its predecessors, doesn't stop once you've finished the main story. The game contains an amazing amount of content: multiple endings, scores of post-game bosses, special hidden levels that pump up the difficulty, the ability to customize levels to make the game harder, and numerous collectibles. Players can reach level 9999 with stats in the millions, and you'll need it if you want to take on some of the game's hardest challenges.

Those who come to A Promise Revisited from the original version of Disgaea 4 will find a number of changes. For one thing, the mechanics have been revised to take advantage of changes and additions to the series in Disgaea D2, which was released after the original Disgaea 4. For example, the Cheat Shop from Disgaea D2 has been added; it's is a special customization option that allows you to alter certain aspects of the game. You can increase or decrease the experience points, money and mana you get from enemies, and you can alter the enemy's levels without passing a bill in the Corruptment.

In addition, features from other games in the series, like the Peta-level magic spells from Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days, have also been added to the game. A number of new features appear fairly late in the game, including mechanical tweaks to skills and weapons. There are also lengthier amounts of new content. As usual for portable releases of Disgaea titles, there is a new scenario involving Nagi Clockwork, a new character whose plot involves a convoluted time-travel scheme. There are other new scenarios in addition to the DLC content for the original game.

Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited is shaping up to be the definitive version of the game. All of the content from the original game is augmented by a ton of new content. Fans of the original game will enjoy the additional scenarios, new characters and features. Those who passed on Disgaea 4 the first time will have an entire game's worth of content to explore. With hundreds of hours of gameplay packed into a portable package, Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited has the potential to be a must-buy for any Vita owner. Disgaea 4: A Promise Revisited is due out exclusively for the PlayStation Vita on Aug. 12, 2014.