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UPDATE: Disgaea 4 Coming To U.S. September 17, 2011
UPDATE: Nippon Ichi has confirmed via press release that Disgaea 4 is coming to the U.S. on September 17 of next year.
ORIGINAL STORY: Despite today being in the heart of the Tokyo Game Show beast, this might be the most Japanese thing you see today. Nippon Ichi Software announced Disgaea 4 at its TGS press conference by having the company's president walk onstage in a giant Prinny costume to show "how serious we are."
The strategy/RPG's official website is now live, where you can watch the announcement trailer and revel in the sheer weirdness of it all. The game uses a political theme that includes building your own cabinet of demons, and we know of the existence of an online mode where you can invade other players' worlds in some fashion. Aside from that vague information and the (finally!) higher-resolution sprites, a few details can be gleaned from the video itself, even if NIS hasn't explicitly said much yet.
The series' unique stacks of characters, which are created by lifting several heroes in series, seem to have a few new mechanics. There's some kind of gymnastic high bar swinging attack, and a slinky-like movement mode that can also be used to grab otherwise unapproachable treasure. We also saw a character walk up a stack to end up on top, giving players another option for creating stacks in the first place.
Unless I miss my guess, The Dark Adonis, Axel, appears in a character montage in the middle of the video. Based on the franchise's history, he won't be the only returning character.
Disgaea 4 comes out on PlayStation 3 on February 24, 2011 in Japan. Hopefully we won't have to wait long after that for a U.S. release.
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