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Now we know why Disgaea is such a grindfest |
Listed in: Interviews, Titles, Games Tags: interviews, Nippon Ichi
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There's nothing like coming out of the Item World holding a shiny new
overpowered piece of equipment. Anyone who's ever played Disgaea is
well aware of the grinding that you have to invest in fully leveling an
item, as well as the satisfaction of slaughtering tough baddies with
one blow.Ever wondered how and why Nippon Ichi let those insane grindfests fly? The answer, my friends, is right here.
Speaking to Gamasutra about their RPG style, Nippon Ichi COO Souhei Niikawa and Disgaea team development lead Masahiro Yamamoto let us in on what goes on behind the scenes. "Well, RPGs remain a popular genre for the hardcore audience, so I think that RPGs will still be a central part of our strategy," Niikawa said about their primarily RPG market.
Despite being known mostly for Disgaea, Niikawa also pointed out that they won't depend on that franchise alone. "Placing our fortunes on nothing but Disgaea wouldn't be right at all," he said. "We want to make games that are different from Disgaea, of course, but sell just as well as that." Their next project, Zettai Hero Kaizou Keikaku (Absolute Hero Modding Project) is expected to follow the Disgaea gameplay, minus the Disgaea name.
Asked about why the Item World goes so far down, the Nippon Ichi execs spill the beans. "I guess you could say it's when we feel like there's nothing left to add to the gameplay," Niikawa said. And after you've spend about a hundred hours up and down the Item World, you'll realize that they kinda put that much in.
Yamamoto adds:
Oh, we never really stop. (laughs) We put so much stuff into each project, and eventually we get to a point where we ask ourselves, "Do we really need all this?"
When a majority of staffers start answering, "I'm not sure" to that question, that's when we stop. (laughs) That's pretty much how it works.
When you've got a creative team brainstorming on one concept, it's gonna take a while before you start going dry with ideas. That seems to be Nippon Ichi's secret to making the grindfests, which really works, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who clocked in at least a hundred hours on those games.
Nippon Ichi's next project:
Via Gamasutra
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Comments
Add to this. La Pucelle and Phantom Brave. La Pucelle is Disgaea's template, Phantom Brave is just another version of Disgaea with slightly different gameplay.
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Reminds me that I still have to beat Etna mode.
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Uh, ya.
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but still in terms of strategy, nothing beats final fantasy tactics. that's pretty good for a 10 year old game.
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Notice I said after that. If you want to, you can play the game normally, leveling up on the storyline only (I did it in Disgaea 1/2/3), and it has a very strong strategy element to most maps.
Of course, that all totally flies out the window once you do major Item World runs and use the quick-leveling stages to reach ungodly levels after the main storyline.
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That being said, Tactics is still a classic and great for its time. Just as Street Fighter 2 is. However, SF2 just doesn't cut it anymore for me. I just find myself wanting to play a newer SF.
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