I shall be quite honest with you all: I did not want to stop playing the game to write this review. Over the past few days, sleep has become an annoyance and food has become an inconvenience. That is the power of this game. You think Oblivion or Skyrim will steal your social life? Well, yes they will, but so will Nippon Ichi Software’s latest strategy RPG, Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten.

The story of this happy trip down demonic lane focuses on Valvatorez, a vampire and former tyrant. He has two obsessions: keeping promises and sardines. When one of these suddenly robbed him of all his powers, he finds himself stuck as a Prinny Instructor in the bowels of the Netherworld’s maximum security prison, Hades. With only his faithful werewolf servant, Fenrich, left at his side, he does his best to instruct the lowly prinnies on how to perform their servant duties well so they may one day reincarnate back into humans. But, the evil Corruptiment, eager for a scapegoat to distract the Netherworld from all its problems, has decided to eliminate every single prinny, blaming them for everything from falling test scores to overpopulation. This angers Valvatorez (primarily because he was unable to keep his promise to give each of the prinnies a sardine) and so he sets off to overthrow the Corruptiment and install himself in the seat of power. Along the way he finds unlikely allies in characters such as the semi-dead Fuka, the prison warden Axel and the president’s only son, Death Emizel.

Now, if that description convinced you that this is a serious game, I profoundly apologize. There is not a single part of this story that isn’t played for comedy, with constant self-referential humor, poking fun at other RPGs and game companies, and even parodying real life events, especially political tropes. Heck, pretty much all the characters are huge jokes in and of themselves, from Fuka’s insistence that everything happening in the game is just part of a dream she’s having, to Valvatorez’s complete obsession with sardines, and Fenrich’s extreme man-crush on his lord. Even the character creation system has some great laugh-out-loud moments, as with every newly created character, you get a short cutscene introducing them. These are rife with parodies, from movie references (the Beast Tamer’s intro is a censored version of the Drill Sergeant’s speech in Full Metal Jacket) to mirroring actual political events (the Mothman intro makes fun of the incident where George W. Bush had a shoe thrown at him). All of this combines to create one of the funniest stories you will ever see.

Two on one: The most basic of demon techniques

For those of you who have played at least one of the past Disgaea games, not a whole lot has changed in terms of core gameplay. The game is still a turn-based grid-style RPG, where you can remove up to ten characters from your base panel of human or monster classes and move them around the board to attack your enemies. The lift-and-throw system used in every game also returns in which you can lift and stack your characters and have them throw each other and enemies around the board, which is still used to great effect in more puzzle-centric stages. The AI doesn’t seem to possess enough knowledge to use this ability, though, as their main strategy is always to attack your weakest character that is within their immediate movement range.

Other battle tactics include the return of the magi-change system, which is unfortunately just as useless here as it was in the third game. Magi-change is not a bad idea in concept, where a monster temporarily transforms into a weapon and equips itself to a human to give them access to a few special abilities. However, the cons when using it far outweigh the pros. It only lasts three turns, and they still count as separate units, so if they both die, you’re down two units. Even worse, when the three turns are up, the monster disappears from the map and is counted as a knocked out unit, meaning you can’t bring out another unit to replace it. But this is countered with the infinitely more useful, and much cooler, fusion system. Two monsters, even of differing species, can stand next to each other and fuse to make one giant demon with an extended range, combined stats, and shared abilities.

Cam-pain HQ, where all the important stuff goes down

Outside of combat, you’ll spend your time buying weapons, armor and items or learning and upgrading your skills and abilities. Most of your time will be spent arranging your party at the Cam-Pain HQ where you can decide who stands next to who, lay down evil symbols to gain special bonuses or features, create or reincarnate characters, or pass bills in the senate. The game keeps the same mana system from Disgaea 3, and I had a lot of problems with it in that game. Mana is gained by defeating enemies and the amount a character gets is equal to the level of an enemy. This was fine in the first two games, where mana was only used to character creation and passing bills in the Dark Assembly, but in the third game, mana was more precious than money. You used mana for everything; learning skills, boosting the power of those skills, learning new passive abilities, creating characters, and passing bills. It was a nightmare and I often found myself having to stop what I was doing and go harvesting mana, which was not fun early in the game, where enemies wouldn’t offer much in the way of the stuff.

The fourth game, while keeping the same system, does a lot to correct it. The biggest improvement is that you’ll always have a pretty strict limit on how many characters you can have in your party at one time. In the Cam-Pain HQ, the map you’re standing on will only expand if you beat more maps in the story. Every time you complete a map, a new square opens up where you can then place either a new character or a new symbol. Because of this, you never overwhelm yourself and it’s easier to prioritize what you want to use your Mana for. So, Kudos NIS, you effectively eliminated the largest problem I had with the third game in the series!