Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Hard to describe"

To start with, i've not finished Disgaea 4, i've played through story mode 3 times, and a player of the series will know that the story mode isn't even the beginning of these games. For a none player of the series, the highest level achieveable is 9999 and story mode will get you to level 150 maybe if you refight stages for experience.
I'll start with my dislikes of A promise forgotten, out of the 5 or 6 main characters you have through the plot, 2 of them have the worst script and most annoying voice acting i've seen in this series, and their only purpose in the plot appears to be to annoy the other characters and to pick up on plot points that the player is smart enough to have picked up way before, but their dialouge is skippable. Some levels do feel abit cheap in the way they present enemies, but those levels are achieveable. Some of the plot feels sloppier than previous games but this can be countered with "it's just the games sense of humour". Theres alot of features that have been added to the series which in some cases i have been able to use to improve my game, but there is now so many features in the game, that i think the series is becoming harder to access. There is also no option to use your save from Disgaea 3...
But all those points mean that i didnt enjoy the game, i did. The two leading characters, Valvatorez and Fenrich were brilliantly voiced and had a relationship i was genuinely interested in. The graphics on the sprites have had an polish up which initially shocked me, but if your not liking the new look, you can having two varieties of classic character sprites. The menu can be said to be old fashioned but it has a sense of familiarity to it, which is quite crucial to this game. The majority levels are cunningly planned which actually required me to move away from the tactic of "attack with my strongest and then heal them". The classroom has now been replaced with another interactive area for you to jump around in, and evility returns allowing you to level up your favourite moves or add a boost to your stats. Some monsters you can create make a return (I cant remember the slime being in 2 or 3, so thats why i say return) as well as some new classes to create as well.

All in all, if you are a fan of the series, this is an update of what youve seen before with nothing explosive being added to the formula but will offer you many many more hours of satisfaction. For newbies to the series, this is a hard one to start from, I'd suggest Dark Heo Days for the psp, or Disgaea 3.