Pre-order, Prinny Please

Once again, I find myself falling prey to pre-order swag. The fourth reincarnation of Disgaea releases this September and I'm constantly reminded of the pre-order goodies from NIS America. A special "thank you" goes out to the email spam prinnies polluting may inbox with their Hades-spun advertising. Still. Art books and soundtracks are tempting treasures. Wait, what am I saying, after about a week the Disgaea game music gets annoying; I usually turn the BGM all the way down and grind through the item world to Rush or podcasts. So I'm really just interested in the art book. And where's the Disgaea 4 strategy guide (which is basically an art book with the walkthrough, character/weapon/spell/monster tables, and secrets)? Yeah, I'd rather have one of those.

Tempting though those goodies may be, the one thing that has me salivating about Disgaea 4 are the PlayStation network connectivity options. Every since popping the original Disgaea into my PS2 and delving into the item world, I have wanted to make my own item world maps. In fact, I'm sitting on three designs in a graph paper notebook that will be the first ones I churn out. I even did a geo panel pattern in the carpet of a Sims house. Okay, you get the picture. I really want to design levels in Disgaea 4. But this is just one of the functionalities spanning the PlayStation network, there's also Senator swapping, Pirate customization and battling, and game data comparisons. My Laharl can hit for 999k damage. Oh yeah, my Laharl can hit for more. It's about time we had some Disgaea dickwaving options in real time. I'm tired of all the youtube anyway.

It's exciting to see all these features promoting interaction in the world of Disgaea. I'm a fan of the series (this much should be obvious to you now), but I'm a little upset that it's taken this long to implement the interactivity. Sure, Afternoon of Darkness had the multi-player option, but it was way too little for such a large world as Disgaea's. I envision Little Big Planet style of interaction and cooperation for Disgaea's Netherverse. Call me crazy, but I think co-op levels, multi-army battles, and team-based objectives would open Disgaea up and launch an immersive gameplay experience. Picture a multi-player level riddled with Deathblow, Clone, and Warp geo panels and six blue pulsing base panels, three on each side of the map; a middle no man's land splits the sides, barren, save for geo symbols. Sprites file out of each base panel, turn by turn until the set unit number populates the map. Then the battle ensues, like some psychedelic, six person, spell-casting chess game.

Maybe the prinnies are listening. Maybe I'll get my wish. DLC?