Hidden away in a corner of the massive PlayStation booth at TGS, Nippon Ichi's Makai Senki Disgea 5 had an exclusive TGS Demo showing off some of the gameplay that will be in the latest entry in the series when it launches in Japan next year. Marking the series' entry on current gen platforms, Disgaea 5 will be exclusive to the PS4 console, so we decided to take a look at how the game's shaping up so far.
This newest Disgaea title stars a demon named Killia as the main character, along with Usalia , an overlord of her own Netherworld (who is accompanied by her chubby yellow prinny) and Seraphina, a princess of another different Netherworld. As the latest game in the series, several new gameplay featuers and systems are expected to be included, some of which we were able to see during our time with the demo. As you may know if you'veplayed any of the previous games, building your army of characters is a big part of the game, from choosing what classes to make your character,t then training them up though dozens, if not hundreds of levels. Disgaea 5 introduces several new class types for you to create, 3 of which are the 'Maid' , 'Grizzly' and 'Pixie'
Maid ("Meido")
Grizzly ("Gurizurii")
Pixie ("Pikushii")
Another new addition is the 'Revenge' mechanic, which activates when a nearby ally is downed by an opponent. Going into Revenge mode will give the character certain skills or abilities only available in that mode and both the player characters and AI characters are capable of going into Revenge mode.
At the end of a battle, you'll still receive a range of bonuses depending on how much you've filled your bonus gague. In addition to that, a newly added MVP section will award additional experience bonuses to specific characters depending on their performance. This will hopefully help to boost your characters through the hundreds of levels you'd expect to go through while playing through the game, and could even let you plan your strategies around using particular characters to help them level up faster.
Judging by our short time with the game, Disgaea 5 looks like an incremental evolution of the tried and tested formula, with the revenge system being particularly intriguing, but from a graphical standpoint, it doesn't really look like anything that couldn't have been possible on the PS3, or even the PS Vita, judging from the quality of the most recent Disgaea releases (Disgaea 4 Return / Disgaea D2). We'll definitely be keeping an eye on this one as more details come out since it looks like it's on track to be something interesting, especially for fans of the series.