Disgaea 5’s Innocent Farm, custom HQ, online features, more detailed.

I'll give a short rundown of each entry, if you'd like?

  • Disgaea 1 was surprisingly more defensively oriented than later entries. I feel it was the best balanced through the main game as well. Late game, if you ignored Majins and Ninjas, I'd still say that. Numbers are lower all around though. The PSP port was fantastic.

  • Disgaea 2 was an upgrade in most ways to the gameplay, but not many liked the story as much. Things were more damage oriented, but introduced mechanics that helped differentiate classes more. Item world had more tedious mechanics added. I wasn't a fan, but some people disagree.

  • Disgaea 3 was very poorly balanced, and I have seen very few people praise it's story. I listed the reasons above. But, I wouldn't recommend it.

  • Disgaea 4 refined all of the systems added by Disgaea 3, while returning to a more Disgaea 2 like style of balance. Damage became manageable again. It also had some very memorable characters. Character customization was at an all time high, and added a lot of options like giant magichange that were just very rewarding to use. I only have three bad things to say about it. Pre-order DLC that never became buyable. A kind of tedious time getting to Land of Carnage if you are unlucky (it can take a REALLY long time). Lastly, character world is just, not fun. But you have to do it. It's a lot of spamming AOE attacks on huge numbers of objects that aren't fighting back.

  • Disgaea D2 was in a lot of ways a return to the fundamentals. It has less substance than Disgaea 4, but while it removed some cool things, like magichange, it also removed a lot of small things that seemed to only be present in the series to be time consuming. Character world, and the land of carnage quest for example. While also adding a lot of more interesting content. I wasn't impressed with the story, but I'd say it's probably mechanically the best game right now, with Disgaea 4 being a very close second.

Overall, I think that Disgaea 1 was the most balanced game, if you're willing to ignore two classes. Otherwise, Disgaea D2 takes that title. If I had to rate them altogether, I'd give it a Disgaea 1 (PSP) > Disgaea D2 = Disgaea 4 > Disgaea 2 > Disgaea 3. But I'd strongly suggest playing all of them but Disgaea 3. They're all memorable and good games in their own way.

/r/Games Thread Link - gematsu.com