[Steam] NISA Publisher 'Weekend' (Sept. 10 - Sept. 17): Get yourself some Disgaea and more

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/nisa

Firstly, it's only right to note that there's been another thread already touting the most obvious sales - Disgaea 1 and 2 are each 80% off. I figured I'd point out some other gems that might get less attention.

There are some very good RPGs on this sale that I'm not going to mention much - Ys VIII and the Trails of Cold Steel games are as a whole good games that I'd normally recommend. However, NISA's monstrously bad localization of Ys VIII, combined with a PC port so unsalvageable that they announced and then scrapped something like four different release dates, soured any possibility that Falcom's choice of NISA for its current-gen localizations could produce anything better than what XSEED was already doing. The games themselves are good and worth playing, but I won't link to them here.

Langrisser I & II is one of the newest titles of interest here, and also one of the oldest. It's a remake of a couple of classic Genesis strategy RPGs, not entirely dissimilar to Fire Emblem; if you owned a Genesis in the early 90's, you might remember Langrisser I better by its localized title of Warsong. Officially, Langrisser II never saw an English release (nor did anything else in the franchise but the poorly-received 3DS reimagining and the mobile gacha game released last year), but there was an impressive fan translation released some years ago for its SNES port, Der Langrisser. This PC remake hews closer to the mobile game in art style, and some of the gameplay changes make it feel somewhat dumbed down, but it adds branching story paths to the first game (the second already had them) and honestly is probably a lot more accessible to new players. Even with the current discount, it's still $30, so if you don't have an itch for classic SRPGs in the vein of Fire Emblem or Shining Force, it's probably safe to wait for a larger discount.

For anyone interested in classic Nippon Ichi Software games, Phantom Brave had its price permanently cut to $5 back at the beginning of the summer, and with the current sale it's all the way down to $3. It's definitely a bit dated, having been released between the first two Disgaea games, but it's got a lot of heart (as well as the bonus content from the Wii and PSP ports).

If you're after something more modern, Disgaea 5 Complete is pretty close to a steal at $16, being that it's the only current-gen Disgaea game, and includes all the DLC released for the PS4 version at no extra cost. It does lack network features (which was a point of contention, since this wasn't announced until after the game went on sale), but otherwise it's a solid enough port. Personally I find the main campaign to be tied with Disgaea 3's as the worst in the series, in terms of plot and characters, but there's plenty of content regardless.

And of course, while it's a new release on PC and not nearly as heavily discounted, Disgaea 4 remains the only game about sardines that's worth your time and money, and the Complete+ edition has all the content released for any version of the game in the past. If you're an Xbox Game Pass member, it's included with your membership - give it a spin and decide if the other games in the franchise might be up your alley.

There's also a handful of classically-styled dungeon crawlers under $5 during the sale, such as Stranger of Sword City and the New Tokyo Legacy games. While I've played enough of them on the Vita that I can at least say they're good enough if you want a decent RPG to keep you occupied, I haven't actually gotten deep enough in any of them to give them a wholehearted recommendation. It's also worth noting that the updated Revisited version of Sword City also appears to be releasing exclusively (on PC, anyways) as a bonus for anyone who orders Saviors of Sapphire Wings, another dungeon crawler by the same developers.

Honestly, there's a bunch more cool stuff here that I'm not going to get into because I'm tired of copy/pasting links or because I haven't played enough of them to recommend at the current price. Some more modern JRPGs like The Alliance Alive, Labyrinth of Refrain, or The Caligula Effect. There's some decent suspense/horror/unsettling stuff as we enter the Halloween season, like the Yomiwari franchise, htoL#NiQ, and A Rose in the Twilight. Also some real classics like Killer7 and The 25th Ward. Give the page a look and see if anything catches your eye.