Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny / 魔界戦記ディスガイア6
Developer: NIS
Publisher: NIS America
Disgaea is a series I am very fond of. I’ve played all of them, most multiple times so I was very excited when Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny was announced for the Nintendo Switch. In the ‘brief’ amount of time I have spent with Disgaea 6, I have managed to pour in just over 100 hours of gameplay. So, is Disgaea 6 a good game? Is Disgaea 6 a good Disgaea game?
Before I get into it fully, I should probably give a brief overview of what a Disgaea game is. So, for the uninitiated, the Disgaea series games are Strategy RPGs with a strong emphasis on levelling up and maxing out stats. Each game in the series is usually set in a Netherworld, and you control a mix of humanoid type characters and Demons. The Netherworld acts as a hub world of sorts and allows access to each games Stage Select. Battles take place on a semi-isometric grid-based map and the usual goal is to move your units across the map, destroying enemy units as you go.
If you have ever played a game such as Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics Ogre, you will know exactly the type of game I am describing. You could even bring some parallels with the Fire Emblem or Advance Wars series. Where the Disgaea series differs from these titles is in two distinct ways, the humour and the Stat limit. Disgaea games have a strong ‘anime-esq’ aesthetic and never take themselves too seriously, special moves are flashy and very over the top with great sprite work for each character (more on this later!).
Each game often breaks the fourth wall and mocks the tropes of JRPGs and their systems especially the concept of character levelling. Most RPG’s have a unit cap of say level 99. By level 99 in other RPGs, you are usually so strong you can defeat any enemy, in fact, you’d have most likely spent countless hours grinding up exp to achieve such levels. For example, Final Fantasy VII can be beaten at around level 40 and grinding up to level 99 is only useful for attempting optional super bosses. Disgaea makes a complete mockery of these systems and allows you to level each unit up to level 9999. Along with the high-level cap, the series also allows you to achieve insanely high levels of stats for your units, well into the millions.
So, to answer my earlier questions, yes, Disgaea 6 is both a good game and a great entry in the Disgaea series. With that said, Disgaea 6 feels like both a step forward and a step back in some regards. It takes what made the previous games in the series great and builds on them slightly while simultaneously pruning out some of the ‘bloat’ from the previous titles.
Disgaea 6 starts you off in command of Zed, a Zombie along with his canine companion Cerberus. I will not spoil the main story here, but the Zed must defeat the God of Destruction at all costs. The God of Destruction roams between dimensions laying waste to everything in sight. Each encounter with the God of Destruction sadly results in Zed’s death, however, Cerberus has discovered a method to bring back the dead, Super Reincarnation. After each death, Zed is reborn and continues to pursue the God of Destruction across new lands until he can eventually defeat it.
Each of these individual worlds has a unique theme, such as the Human World where we first meet Misedor the king of the human world who seems all problems can be solved by throwing money at them. In the second world where we come across Melodia, a buxom lady with a proclivity for singing. She hails from the aptly named Musical World and is looking for love. In each of these worlds, you gain an ally and attempt to take down the God of Destruction.
The cast is a little mediocre for a Disgaea game, there was no character I outright disliked, yet I found the core cast to be a little lacklustre. Zed is a particularly good character with real motivations, but I did at time feel like I was watching a recycled version of Laharl from Disgaea 1. As is traditional for me, I chose to play through the game with the Japanese voice over and I must say, the voice acting is particularly good! The English voice-over is handled by some veteran video game and anime voice acting talent so nothing to fear there either. You can freely switch between English and Japanese at any time from the settings menu which is always a nice bonus.
Between missions, you will find yourself hanging out at the base along with any allies you have accrued. Like previous Disgaea games, there is a lot to do here. You have your Dimension Guide, who you approach to tackle missions along with the following: –
The General Store: All in one weapon, Armor and item shop. As you progress through the game you’ll be able to stock this store with more powerful items and equipment for your team.
The Netherworld Hospital: The hospital in Disgaea 6 is slightly revamped, you no longer actually get healed here, instead you only claim prizes. These prizes vary on several factors including how much HP and SP you have burnt through in total. It is a nice feature as I always used to enable the ‘automatic heal’ function in previous entries but now your characters are healed automatically. Perhaps they should rename this Prize Shop in future iterations.
Quest Shop: The quest shop returns and is just as important as ever. Each of these quests can be picked up and run alongside your standard game. Each quest has a different Goal, some require you to turn in certain items, in return you’ll be awarded items, special skills etc. Some of the requests are needed to unlock different character classes. For example, to unlock the Armor Knight class you’ll need to level up a Warrior and Martial Artist to level two. The quest shop is how you unlock most of the classes so be sure to check it out after every mission.
Squad Shop: The squad shop makes its return and allows you to put your party members into set groups. Boot Camp Squad, for example, allows people in the squad to gain extra exp from the squad leader. There are squads for mana boosts, learning skills etc and there’s the return of the Elite Four now named the Overlord’s Guard. In this group, your units level much slower, but their stats grow quicker.
The Item World: The Item world remains mainly unchanged from previous entries. Each item in the game, be it a sword, or a restorative item has a randomly generated dungeon inside it which is divided into floors. On each floor you descend, the item levels up by one level. You can use the item world to dive deep down inside your items and even snag a higher tiered version of the same item, but that is way outside the scope of this review.
The Juice Bar: The juice bar is new in Disgaea 6 and allows you to ‘bank’ stats when you super reincarnate. For the cost of some cash, you can then apply these stored stats to a new character. This means you can have a level 1 character with pretty beefy stats for the right price! The juice bar can also be used to increase Weapon Mastery and Class Proficiency which comes in very handy in the late game. The Juice bar is a welcome addition and I hope it’s something they stick to in future version of Disgaea.
The Cheat Shop: The cheat shop is great! From the outset, you can increase the level of enemies and tinker with the distribution of mana and exp. You can tweak the setting here anytime for free. As you progress through the main game and postgame you’ll unlock addition CP (Cheap Point), these can be applied as a percentage so for example 3000CP = +3000% EXP growth. Very handy stuff and I’m glad to see it here in Disgaea 6.
The Dark Assembly: The Dark Assembly allows you to pass bills for numerous things, the most important being the ability to super reincarnate. Passing bills costs mana and it’s a feature not to be ignored.
Apart from all those shops, your Netherworld base will be full of any generic class types that you have on in your party. You can interact with these characters, but they will only give you a throwaway line of dialogue each time.
Speaking of generic class types, Disgaea 6 seems to take a somewhat anaemic approach with only offering 22 classes, which may sound like a lot but previous entries have a lot more. Not only this, but they have done away with my favourite class the Skulls!
I did find the Netherworld bass a little small this time around, but I guess it was divided up into two separate areas. The chests that would appear between chapters in previous Disgaea games seem to be absent unless I somehow completely missed them which is a shame. Other than that, there’s not an awful lot to say about the base!
The models themselves are great and I do really like seeing the characters, especially the generic classes from previous games in full 3D but it seems to do this at the cost of performance. Mid-battle the cutaways seem to take just a bit longer, which can be easily fixed by turning off the effects in the option, but it is still a little jarring nonetheless. Back at the base, there seems to be the odd slowdown here and there accessing the menu etc, which you will be doing a lot so it’s a shame it doesn’t run as smooth as it should do. To combat this, NIS has included in the options 3 different modes, one that favours graphics at the cost of performance, one that is somewhat balanced and another mode which makes the game look like you’ve smeared your Switches screen with Vaseline giving a very soft and blurry image. I played through in balanced and that what I would recommend it as looks acceptable in both docked and handheld. I had my copy set to graphics mode for testing and I found my Switch started to get very hot over extended playtimes so I immediately knocked it back down to
The main unique function here in Disgaea 6 is the ability to Super Reincarnate, this essentially resets your character from saying the level cap of 9999 back to level 1, doing this will net you bonuses in your stats thus making that unit much stronger by the time you level back up 9999. Where Disgaea 6 differs from its predecessors is Karma, you gain Karma from completing various tasks, such as dealing a certain amount of damage, or from Super reincarnated. Karma is character specific and can be banked over numerous reincarnations. You can spend karma at the point of reincarnation for various abilities such as dealing 100% extra damage or increasing the number of spaces you can move per turn, but the biggest and arguably the most important is the ‘Limit break’ abilities. These Limit break abilities allow you to go FAR beyond the level cap of 9999. There are two versions of this to unlock on each character and it is ridiculously expensive, the first allows you to level up to 9,999,999 with the send allowing you to level all the up to 99,999,999! Ninety-nine million!! This may sound overkill, but for some of the postgame content, these limit breaks are going to prove essential.
Even with the questionable change from 2D to 3D, I have really enjoyed myself so far. Disgaea 6’s main story arc took me around 25 hours to complete. If you have ever played a Disgaea title before you will know that the main campaign merely exists as a tutorial of sorts for what comes next. With the main game beat, you will begin to unlock the postgame, this is where you’ll really be tested. It starts with your standard ‘harder’ maps, you be able to unlock Martial Training which is essentially a set of maps designed to grind on, which you will need as the Carnage Dimension also opens. The Carnage Dimension has insanely difficult enemies and the level design really steps up with each map becoming more and more like a puzzle, with different win conditions etc.
Once you manage to best the maps of the Carnage Dimension, you will unlock the Rakshasa Dimension, these maps are INSANE and will really put you to the test. You will be wanting to bring your units with levels well into the millions for this. I really do love these super-challenging levels but sadly this is as much as I can tell you as I have not finished many of these Rakshasa levels. I do intend to finish these levels, eventually and when I do, I shall update here if there is much content after.
Conclusion
Disgaea 6 is more Disgaea and that is never a bad thing! As of writing this review, I am 107 hours into the game and I could easily spend yet another 100 hours, there really is a lot of content here for your money. Performance issues aside, Disgaea 6 should be considered an essential purchase for anyone who likes stat-based grinding. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a Rakshasa Dimension to conquer!
8
Nintendo Switch review code kindly provided by NIS America
If you are interested, you can pick up a copy of Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny .
