Disgaea 4- Fin. So in chapter 10 there's this map with archers. Who sit on enemy boost panels, can borderline OHKO without the boost, and I had to grind a bit to kill them in two hits. So basically rush guys over there, toss them into a formation, hope like hell they all die before enemies from above start chipping me down (it's an enemy panel map, albeit just one panel, so over time there are just going to be lower level goons that can finish me off before I pelt down the upper level debuffer mages). That one map really smacked of Disgaea 1 in a way that really pissed me off, which is s shame because all through chapter 8 and 9 the game really had my attention. Fortunately the immediately following map was tricky in less stupid way (enemies who OHKO.. because they have a bunch of magichange weapons, so taking out the most dangerous set first and reducing the total monsters on the field in turn 1 means maybe one death machine to put down. Much more reasonable) and the final boss's gimmick is about crowd control, but the AI isn't super aggressive so you have a couple turns to bring the stats down to reasonable. Probably the most interesting disgaea final boss really, faint praise though that is.
Game tends to recycle it's gags a bit, but not really offensively. It has a basic structure for most of them and comes up with new things to mad lib in, which the game is just short enough to use effectively. Probably the strongest ensemble among the four games, juggling six main characters and making them all actually relevant, compared to the trio in the original and duos (Adell/Rozy, Mao/Almaz) in the other two.
Still weaker than Disgaea 2 overall, but lacks some of the issues 3 had. Probably hangs around the level of the first, so 8/10 it is.