The NIS America Thread

[Scarlett Johansson]

How are the NIS Classics?

There are two volumes out already, with a third one coming soon.

Vol 1: Phantom Brave/Soul Nomad

Vol 2: Makai Kingdom/ZHP: Unlosing Ranger VS Darkdeath Evilman

And now Vol 3 is coming out and looks to be the best one yet.

Vol 3: La Pucelle Ragnarok/Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure

 

[Becomemysoulreaver]

They are just like the pc ports of the disgaea games in terms of quality, so terrible filters some weird small framerate issuas at some areas, and the grapgics are for the most part unchanged, but they are good enough

 

[Ruin]

La Pucelle Ragnarock? That's actually pretty cool since it never got an English release.

 

[Local Degenerate]

Soul Nomad is a pretty solid port, no idea about Phantom Brave. I hadn't heard about the other two collections though.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Idk about the ports themselves, but PS2 era NISA is a good chunk of the golden age of gaming. Can't go too wrong with any of the games.

 

[Ruin]

Idk about the ports themselves, but PS2 era NISA is a good chunk of the golden age of gaming. Can't go too wrong with any of the games.

I'll never understand how they crashed and burned so hard after the ps2 era. They got a little worker but not like collapse level woke.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

What is Digasea like? I never played one but I saw some are on switch. Which one is best one? Which is best to start with?

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I'll never understand how they crashed and burned so hard after the ps2 era. They got a little worker but not like collapse level woke.

My guess is that the game development cost got too high, plus they burned out on TRPG and wanted to branch out to other genres, which worked poorly (though even the worst the company did is usually still worth it for the plot and art).

What is Digasea like? I never played one but I saw some are on switch. Which one is best one? Which is best to start with?

4 is the best, but playing chronologically is still recommended. As for gameplay it's like Final Fantasy Tactics but with wackier mechanics.

 

[Becomemysoulreaver]

What is Digasea like? I never played one but I saw some are on switch. Which one is best one? Which is best to start with?

On the switch you can play 1, 4, 5 and 6
1 would be an obvious place to start, but ganeplay wise its very slow and kind of outdated, still pretty fun.
4 is my favorite, I think it has some very good awesome stages and the gameplay is pretty good.
5s gameplay is by far the best of the series, and has the most characters and classes, but I think the stages in the game are some of the weakest in the series.
6 is overall my least favorite, gameplay is a step down from 5, d2 and 4, stages are ok, but content wise it is very poor, even with dlc
The only new thing I really liked was the programable characters.

 

[BananaSplit]

Idk about the ports themselves, but PS2 era NISA is a good chunk of the golden age of gaming. Can't go too wrong with any of the games.

Nippon Ichi Software has some other cool games that never got translated in english & else such as the horror detective games Hayarigami (and the more gruesome reboot Shin Hayarigami), the countryside-travelling simulator Fuuraiki (technically developed by FOG but they're owned by NIS since last decade).

I'll never understand how they crashed and burned so hard after the ps2 era. They got a little worker but not like collapse level woke.

NIS of America always sucked dicks for all the localization hijinks such as censorship, poor translations, bugged ports, gameplay contents outright removed, etc
The parent company, Nippon Ichi Software, suffered a lot with the development and launch of the mobile Disgaea gacha and had a significant brain drain of talented people

What is Digasea like? I never played one but I saw some are on switch. Which one is best one? Which is best to start with?

turn-based tactical rpg where you watch your party members grow stronger and pulling NUMBERS NUMBERS NUMBERS especially post-game. It can be very grindy but the game is built around finding ways to get over-powered in a short time. It's also a pretty cool cartoonish universe of demons, angels and (sinful) humans with a mix of drama and comedy.

The Disgaea games are pretty much self-contained if you're worried about story continuation. 2 has characters from the first game appearing as guest stars in the main story. 4 has Flonne and Axel/Akutare appearing but they have no relevance to the ones portrayed in previous games and thus are entirely different characters. Past main characters appear as secret bosses and party members in the following sequels otherwise.

 

[augment]

Disgaea games are some of the grindiest of grindfests imaginable and it's a toss up if you like them or not. Soul Nomad is really good.

 

[Dom Cruise]

What are the differences between La Pucelle Ragnarok and the PS2 original and what might this mean for the PS2's English dub?

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

What is Digasea like? I never played one but I saw some are on switch. Which one is best one? Which is best to start with?

Newer is better more or less I'd never play anything older then at least 3 or 4 for solely the gameplay. The only reason to play an older one is because 1's plot is pretty decent although I only fully played the first 3 as I fell out of the series after 4 because I wasn't liking the gameplay style anymore. I actually like 1 a good amount, but the game itself kind of sucks because item world is horrendous in 1 and Item world is a major system in every game, so it being bad reeeally sucks after you finish the story unless you just want the main story. I find 1 (out of the first 3) did the best with being funny, having off the wall characters, but not being so absolutely stupid that you can't relate to anything at all.

I find this is a problem with 3 and especially 2 where I feel they try too hard to be "lul random" or "Here's my stupid anime based character gag for the 50th time" far too much and too long that it takes away from whatever the scene possibly has. The Red Moon chapter in one still makes me at least a little sad to this day and 1's main character is a ultra tryhard demon prince who's balls haven't dropped who will threaten to blow up the Earth with meteors (and can actually back up that threat if he wants). I feel nothing like that with 2 or 3 (I actually hate 2's characters, but that's besides the point). 4 had some of that too, but I've been told by people who played it that it eventually gets better and it is mostly the first half that is super off the wall stupid.

Disgaea is effectively what happens if you take anime demons (as most games have "evil" demons as the protagonist), anime/manga/jrpg memes, make a plot out of it that can be off the wall stupid and try to be serious almost at random sometimes, then make a grindy SRPG with a mixture of story unique and generic units that you can make intentionally overpowered for fun while having extremely off the wall animations. By extremely off the wall I mean you can have aoe attacks where the enemies play flaming jump rope until they miss the jump and get incinerated levels of off the wall. It is "Big numbers heehee" the SRPG, you can get shit like this for example in newer games:




Is it fun? Ehhhh it is an acquired taste imo, it isn't for everyone and it is super grindy until you learn how to exploit the game (which usually involves slowly grinding to level 999 the hard way) then you can grind to max level in like 3 hours (in a game where 9999 is max level). The postgame takes a bit too long to really get to imo, the story is too easy 90% of the time, and the post game tends to be just cameos from other NIS games (especially other Disgaea games), maybe a secondary plot, and usually some big over the top stupid fight like in my second picture. Which wasn't really for me so I got maybe 50-70 hours and dropped it.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Newer is better more or less I'd never play anything older then at least 3 or 4 for solely the gameplay. The only reason to play an older one is because 1's plot is pretty decent although I only fully played the first 3 as I fell out of the series after 4 because I wasn't liking the gameplay style anymore. I actually like 1 a good amount, but the game itself kind of sucks because item world is horrendous in 1 and Item world is a major system in every game, so it being bad reeeally sucks after you finish the story unless you just want the main story. I find 1 (out of the first 3) did the best with being funny, having off the wall characters, but not being so absolutely stupid that you can't relate to anything at all.

I find this is a problem with 3 and especially 2 where I feel they try too hard to be "lul random" or "Here's my stupid anime based character gag for the 50th time" far too much and too long that it takes away from whatever the scene possibly has. The Red Moon chapter in one still makes me at least a little sad to this day and 1's main character is a ultra tryhard demon prince who's balls haven't dropped who will threaten to blow up the Earth with meteors (and can actually back up that threat if he wants). I feel nothing like that with 2 or 3 (I actually hate 2's characters, but that's besides the point). 4 had some of that too, but I've been told by people who played it that it eventually gets better and it is mostly the first half that is super off the wall stupid.

Disgaea is effectively what happens if you take anime demons (as most games have "evil" demons as the protagonist), anime/manga/jrpg memes, make a plot out of it that can be off the wall stupid and try to be serious almost at random sometimes, then make a grindy SRPG with a mixture of story unique and generic units that you can make intentionally overpowered for fun while having extremely off the wall animations. By extremely off the wall I mean you can have aoe attacks where the enemies play flaming jump rope until they miss the jump and get incinerated levels of off the wall. It is "Big numbers heehee" the SRPG, you can get shit like this for example in newer games:

View attachment 3131496
View attachment 3131497

Is it fun? Ehhhh it is an acquired taste imo, it isn't for everyone and it is super grindy until you learn how to exploit the game (which usually involves slowly grinding to level 999 the hard way) then you can grind to max level in like 3 hours (in a game where 9999 is max level). The postgame takes a bit too long to really get to imo, the story is too easy 90% of the time, and the post game tends to be just cameos from other NIS games (especially other Disgaea games), maybe a secondary plot, and usually some big over the top stupid fight like in my second picture. Which wasn't really for me so I got maybe 50-70 hours and dropped it.

So there's no towns or things then?

 

[Raiken]

So there's no towns or things then?

You usualy get one central hub with shops and NPCs. Two if you get lucky for plot reasons.

 

[Pissmaster]

So there's no towns or things then?

Nope. Every Disgaea game consists of a single hub you run around in, with shops and a hospital and stuff. So you go back to it to heal and buy new equipment all the time.

Speaking of which, Disgaea 3 had especially annoying hub world music. It restarts from the beginning every time you close out of a shop menu or come back from a stage, so you end up hearing the beginning of this grandiose, out-of-place song a lot.

Though then again, I think Disgaea 3's considered the black sheep of the series, and it's the only one to not be on Steam.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

How about the 1st classics collection. I saw a trailer. It looks interesting. Sprites are quite nice looking. The Phantom Brave looks extremely humorous. I heard Soul Nomad is very dark.

My understanding is that all of these games have extremely funny dialogue and scenes. (Hopefully Vol 3 in particular)

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

How about the 1st classics collection. I saw a trailer. It looks interesting. Sprites are quite nice looking. The Phantom Brave looks extremely humorous. I heard Soul Nomad is very dark.

My understanding is that all of these games have extremely funny dialogue and scenes. (Hopefully Vol 3 in particular)

I've played both of those none Disgaea games. The tl;dr is: Interesting ideas, the somewhat required grind (especially for post game) makes them terrible imo. Their plots are decent, though I prefer Phantom Brave of those two and I wish NIS would try to make an actual story straight faced like it again instead of going for LAWL RANDOM MEME tier humor like they do so often in most their projects.

Spoiler: Phantom Brave

Is an extremely interesting idea with a somewhat problematic flaw given how NIS makes SRPGs. It is a none-grid SRPG, think of it like a sort of psuedo RTS type movement of units with turn based mechanics and attack ranges are also free form circles instead of tiles which makes positioning crucial in a fresh way. You summon all units except the one MC character by using specific items on the field (including weapons on the ground that you can chuck out if you want), this augments the unit with specific stat changes (negative and positive) based on the item type and units only stay active for a set amount of time based on their class and maps are decently large. So the name of the game is knowing what units you want to summon, when, and where while having more intricate movement then the ye old grid system.

The problem is, this process dramatically slows down combat and makes grinding an absolutely terrible chore and you will grind a lot in a NIS SRPG at some point especially if you want to do postgame content. Very cool idea, but I feel it ultimately ruins the games pacing in a grindy NIS game. If you can live with that, or you just git gudder then me and learn to grind faster then have at it. It is a very novel idea and one worth exploring in a non-grindy SRPG.
The plot isn't the best thing ever, but its cute and emotional in a sort of basic way (for a JRPG-esque game) once you accept the initial premise. The simple gist is, the MC can see literal ghosts and bring them briefly back to the physical world. She works as a mercenary because her parents died and had seemingly passed on and an old friend of her parents is the only one who's spirit lingers during their death, and he acts as her guardian in their stead.

People fear the shit out of her and their is literal hate mail you can read (it is implied her guardian throws it all away or hides it from her) where people tell a 10 year old girl to literally kill herself to join her spirit friends. I wouldn't call it super funny personally (for NIS anyway), but it does have its moments for sure. The first time the MC makes a real friend is quite heart warming given the context of both of their stories, it feels like the most "straight man" of the ps2 era NIS games imo but that isn't a bad thing as I think NIS can tell a "straight man" stories competently they just want to be so ZANNY and LUL MEME XD too much for their own good imo.

The game can be really cheesy and corny and it does feel like something that came out 2 decades ago, but I feel at least a little bit for these people especially the rival character Walnut who gets an absolutely shit hand in life. Many character's have these really over the top anime chants where they "power up" in a cutscene before a major battle. Shit like: "Fires of battle, reveal my heart! Psycho Burgundy!" that will probably make your inner 12 year old super hyped.

Spoiler: Soul Nomad

This has a very similar problem to Phantom Brave, interesting idea, but grinding in it sucks ass and ruins the pacing that I couldn't even fully finish it and just looked up the plot online to not go through the grind myself. Basically your "units" are SQUADS of units and each unit has a specific type of action it can take depending on if its the front, middle, or backline in a 3x3 grid and you assign a leader who grants certain special abilities (like buffing the squad for a number of turns). A squad dies when all units it in are dead or the leader dies (I forget which). The problem is, this means you have to kill so many more units to remove a unit on the map and the game doesn't adequately compensate for this imo. Disgaea maps can take me a minute at most when I knew where to grind,

Soul Nomad/Phantom Brave could take me multiple minutes and that really adds up as you're trying to level newer generic unit types as you unlock them (who are always initially underleveled). Basically think of FFTactics, only FFTactics takes about 3 times longer to train your new recruits, you need more units overall, AND you will likely make newer units as you get new class types. That's PB/SN in a nutshell when it comes to how their grind feels, cool if albeit autistic systems, but extremely annoying to go through unless you have to autistic stomach for it.

Also you have to make a squad in a "room", a room is effectively an rng 3x3 block that can give you 4 slots or around 7-8 (I don't know if 9 is possible), and each room iirc has its own little additional effect while also having the tiles be random. So if you want bigger squads you need 7-8 tile rooms, but that takes a good amount of rerolling rooms which is repetitive. The game has a cool idea, but its design choices just fuck with the pacing.

Plot wise: Soul Nomad is more "out there". Basically your sword is possessed by a sealed but extremely powerful dark god, and he is an absolutely cocky asshole who says shit like this.

He is very entertaining, but the rest of the plot is just...okay it is 100% carried by Gig's antics and mouth among a few other gags here and there. You can be very very legitimately evil in a route split early on, BUT you need very high levels to complete that route so you're pigeonholed to be good on your first playthrough which is the canonical route that actually explains what's going on, the demon route is effectively a big "what-if" where you very legitimately fuck everything up.

tl;dr recommendation: If you can put up with repetitive grinding. try them they're very interesting within the SRPG genre and are only held back by NIS' desire to make every game like Disgaea where the level cap is 9999 and they want you to really feel that level cap.

Soul Nomad has one really funny character who I can actually stand for the entire game unlike a lot of NIS' gags, and the plot is just okay I think but Gig is entertaining enough if you can stand the grind that it is worth seeing.

Phantom Brave is actually a very cutesy story about a little girl who very earnestly tries to be happy despite everything going wrong in her life and it is really sad sometimes to see her get treated like trash for no good reason. It is a little cheesy sometimes, but it isn't that relatively cringe unless you hate cutesy anime shit.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Though then again, I think Disgaea 3's considered the black sheep of the series, and it's the only one to not be on Steam.

It was until Disgaea D2 was released and had $60 worth of character DLC tied to it leaving it at half a roster, and this was later usurped by Disgaea 6 who doubled down on parceling out DLC on a bare bones unit roster.

NIS Apparently is porting Ys8 to the PS5 and the Special Edition stuff is the same as the original launch version on the PS4. People don't know if there will be any major differences or additions. But all the Extras right down to the same CE Box is the exact same as the PS4. Xseed at least didn't bother charging full price of the PS4 Memories of Celceta port and gave it a new outer box to differentiate it from the vita version.

 

[Overcast]

On the switch you can play 1, 4, 5 and 6
1 would be an obvious place to start, but ganeplay wise its very slow and kind of outdated, still pretty fun.
4 is my favorite, I think it has some very good awesome stages and the gameplay is pretty good.
5s gameplay is by far the best of the series, and has the most characters and classes, but I think the stages in the game are some of the weakest in the series.
6 is overall my least favorite, gameplay is a step down from 5, d2 and 4, stages are ok, but content wise it is very poor, even with dlc
The only new thing I really liked was the programable characters.

I don't know, I kinda prefer 5's stages. 4's are a bit too small and cramped for my liking. Would have been nice to have more geo panel stages though.

But yeah, 1 has the best story and characters. Although the other games have their moments as well.

Soul Nomad was decent, had a unique battle and character creation system, but you can tell the game is incredibly low budget and as @Zeke Von Genbu pointed out, the room system rng is tedious to deal with. Still worth checking out though if you can look past its issues.