I did not beat the main story but with 60+ hours I can safely say this is the worst Disgaea I've played. The story and characters aren't engaging at all which is a shame because the artwork is always good. The designs are fine. On the surface this should be a decent Disgaea experience but it's not.

I have no issues with the 3D models but everything else is executed so poorly. Including the models! Not because they are 3D but because the animations for them are rehashed and they never have any unique ones. If they were going to nuke the game of so much character in place of the new look at least commit to it.

Speaking of 3D models, I'm assuming the change is why the Switch version nearly combusts when playing. I can;t speak for others bit the performance varied every time I loaded the game. A lot of overheating and stuttering just walking around the overworld. In battles it was worse.

Many of the staple Disgaea classes have been removed from this game for whatever reason. And they removed a lot of fun mechanics prior to Disgaea games just to add in a play itself feature. I don't mind the option but with everything else gutted what would be the point of it? The game seems to want to have f2p mobile mechanics but charge retail.

One positive is I like the reincarnation feature, I think this had potential to really be unique to this game but like everything else it feels bare bones and executed poorly.

Insult to injury, when it finally hit steam Nippon Ichi set it for $70. Same game with maybe a few dlc characters/color palletes. Not sure if they fixed anything because I wasn't paying that price.

No clue what Nippon Ichi was thinking with this one but this ain't it. Hope whenever Disgaea 7 releases that they learned from this one.

I actually like the 3D models since they remind me of a high quality 3DS game, but man this really feels like a mobile game. I know Disgaea's whole gimmick is watching big numbers become bigger numbers, but when said big numbers start out in the millions and just go higher from there, there's basically no feeling of actual progression. In the older games, you had to earn that kind of damage. It also makes it harder to tell how strong a character actually is but the game is so easy that doesn't really matter.

good god, this shit runs so terribly on switch. it's also systematically very much pared down from disgaea 5, and disgaea 5 runs perfectly on the switch, a platform where it really shines.

i am abandoning this switch version. when disgaea 6 complete comes out on steam, i may pick it up there because i'm stupid. it's rare for me to care that much about performance issues, but it's genuinely so bad that it makes me nauseous and/or causes eye strain, depending on how i have the graphics options tuned.

fingers crossed on that pc port, i would love to love this

not as invested in the characters this game around. The 3d isn't bad, but it did take away the charm of the battle animations. When you're grinding out a game for +50 hours, the little things like that can either slow or accelerate the burnout. In this case, I found myself missing the over the top funny battle animations of the sprite-like characters from disgaea 5. i found myself kind of burnt out on the disgaea gameplay even when i played 6 for 30 hours less than 5. It didn't change much of it's gameplay except some of the passive mechanics, but because it was already good it's not too much of a detriment. i'll still probably play the next game, or play the previous entries.

I’m probably going to rate and review this baby in the future but in the meantime, have a story:

I had a spinal tap yesterday. The procedure went well (thanks for asking) but last night my entire spine was super stiff and I was in ridiculous pain that wouldn’t allow me to fall asleep even though I was dead tired.

I had been playing the Disgaea 6 demo while laying in bed all day and I had a quest to complete 100 auto-battles. When I received the quest, I went “psh” because I’m not an auto-battle type of gal. I typically go “psh” or “pfff” at auto-battles. But I decided in a moment of desperation (as well as mild curiosity) to put the Switch where I could see it and let Zed and his crew go to town with auto-battle and auto-repeat while I watched. It turned out to be just the lullaby I needed and I fell asleep after they’d all gained a couple hundred levels.

Sooo, thank you, Disgaea 6. You now have a special place in my heart and I will never go “psh” at you again, even though I can already tell you aren’t as good as Disgaea 5.

I really don't know how I feel about this game. This is the Monster Hunter World of the Disgaea franchise: the one where the gameplay is dumbed down to painful levels so that anyone can play it, where the improvements made to the formula come at such a high cost that it might be too high to pay, because it fundamentally does not look or play the same as anything else, and subsequently doesn't feel like a proper entry in the franchise.

I'm not against making games more accessible to newcomers, I think everyone should be able to play anything: video games are not just for a specific group of people, etc. The inclusion of auto-battle and auto-repeat eliminates the need to spend hours doing the more repetitive part of grinding, and as a Disgaea veteran who has put thousands of hours into this series and doesn't have the time they used to when they were a teenager, I can't say I'm wholly displeased by this. I am definitely not sorry to see the Chara World go, either. I can see the merits of auto battle in this, and if it bothers you that much, you can just choose not to use it, so it shouldn't really be an issue.

But this game completely removes all concept of effort or rewarding that effort - right from the beginning you're doing ridiculously high damage numbers, to the point that accumulating billions in stats doesn't feel like much of an achievement. You might as well use auto-battle, because doing it the old fashioned way doesn't yield the same satisfaction that it used to. The game seems designed around the assumption that you will use auto-battle to get the grinding out of the way, in fact. Priorities have definitely shifted with this game, and not for the better.

It also feels distinctly bare-bones for a Disgaea title, with a microscopic number of classes. Even a few of the more recognisable ones from the series have not made the cut, and that's disappointing. There isn't much in the way of variety here, and whilst the new classes are very nice, they really should have been additions rather than replacements.

Visually this game is repellant. I'm sorry, but this is another Pokemon case: 2D sprites are much, MUCH better than 3D models. They have the cartoony vibe one would expect of the series, but this isn't even remotely as charming as the HD sprites the games have been using prior to this. Never mind that the perfomance on the Switch is so bad that even I notice the framerate dips, and I'm the kind of blind idiot who can't tell the difference between 60FPS and 30FPS unless I have a comparison video playing them side by side. I have never cared about framerates in video games. If I can see it and I'm bothered by it, then I know it's bad. This is the fault of the developer and not of the Switch itself: if The Witcher III can even just RUN on the Switch, something like this game has no excuse.

Story-wise this is better than Disgaea 5 - although considering how lacking that game was in the story department that is saying very little - and it has Sato's trademark score, so it certainly feels like a Disgaea game in this regard. But it's missing so much else that these are very small victories indeed, because anyone who has played Disgaea knows that the story is a very small part of the experience - in fact, it's usually just a hurdle to get out of the way as quickly as possible so you can open up the postgame.

Also, fuck off with your overpriced season pass, NISA. I'm not paying that kind of money for individual characters either, this is part of what made DD2 an abhorrent entry in the franchise, and it doesn't enamour me of this one either. The addition of boosters just adds insult to injury - we didn't need them then, and we don't need them now. No matter how much you're struggling for money try and have a little dignity, please.

tl;dr - if you're a newcomer to the series, this is a fantastic place for you to start, and if you've ever wanted to try the games but been put off due to the complexity and number of systems, this is a great place to dive in. For long-time series fans looking for a similar experience to previous titles, you might want to try the demo first and think long and hard about what you're prepared to put up with.

I'm still not sure how I feel about it all, personally.

Tall about dropping the ball like holy shit. This is the first game in this series that I've hated which, after over a decade of great games, was probably inevitable by this point.

The first thing this game asks you when you load it up is whether you want a good resolution or good frame rate. You only get one because the game can't run with both. Didn't realize I was playing a shitty Telltale game by having two insanely bad choices which both lead me to one grand dissapointing conclusion no matter what I do.

On top that, the amazing animations and 2D sprite work from the previous games is gone and replaced with "mobile game/new pokemon generation/bowling alley TV" level of newly added 3d graphics that also exclude the animations for any ability. Even if the skill is some Omega Flare Hyperbeam shit in name, the animation is equivalent to your braindead level 1 Wartortle you stole from your big brother's SD performing tackle.

Leveling itself is now just an accessory as your characters will level up from 1 to 200 in probably three battles, allowing you to do a mediocre 32k damage by chapter 1-1. There's not even an experience bar anymore since all the leveling is relegated to the post battle screen where you watch the numbers rapidly climb higher and higher in order to compensate for your ever dwindling IQ after seeing the congratulations screen.

The only good thing I can say to distract from the amount of classes being cut in half, special mechanics being removed, and a useless senate, is that the 2d art for the portraits is still wonderful and the dialogue/story is still just as cringingly ridiculous as ever.

You can really tell they rushed this game

-The characters and story are really lame even for Disgaea standards
-They removed like half of the classes from Disgaea 5
-They removed the different genders for the humanoid classes
-The leveling system is bloated
-Auto battle needs to be nerfed
-Xp share needs to be nerfed, the game is almost brain dead
- weak map design

I saw translated Japanese reviews for disgaea 7 and it was more positive so i guess they learn their lesson

Not there yet. The story's possibly the weakest in the series, it's literally missing more than half the classes from before (from 47 to just 22) and the game balance really needs some tuning.

I'm not that down on the game though. I'm interested in seeing how the season pass goes, and I like the idea behind the new system: tuning the AI is very fun and involved! They need to have a few more roadblocks and manage the system as you go through the game as it gets too trivial towards the end. I also think the graphics work well - on PS5, you can have it running well over 4K and the models appear to be mostly untextured, with a reasonably high polygon count and toon shader. All the 2D assets in 1080 look really poor, including all the artwork. On the other hand, it does mean that the entire thing comes in at well under 3 gigabytes, even with fully voiced story cutscenes (though no animated intro).

One worry though - I've had 4 crashes in the last day alone on my PS5. This is the least stable game I've played on the machine, and disappointing after a rock solid 120-plus hours on Galleria.

It's a solid entry in the series. The main character Zed stands out from the pack of Disgaea protags in both his personality and design. Most of the other Disgaea leads are born to authority or privilege, but he's just some zombie that wants revenge. A sort of revenant. His determination to get back up no matter how many times he's destroyed fits nicely with the reincarnation mechanics of the Disgaea series.

A lot of systems have been simplified in this, to the point that Disgaea 6 might have made more sense as a side-game. The distinction between monsters and humanoids, present in all the previous games, has been dropped.

The Disgaea games have always been designed to make you feel like you're getting away with something. From game one you were able to bribe or bully the senators that were there to constrain your power, and for several games now there's been a there's been a "cheat shop" that lets you directly manipulate multipliers for money, experience and other rewards.

Disgaea 6 adds to this with the Juice Bar, which allows you to directly purchase mana, experience, weapon and class levels for a character from a collective pool that gradually fills up as you finish battles. It works because it starts off as prohibitively expensive, but the money adds up and soon you notice that you can instantly master a weapon that was previously hovering at around level 8 of 100.

Disgaea is about making numbers larger, but more specifically it's about the slow climbs, plateaus and sudden orders-of-magnitude accelerations designed into it.

The game's other major innovation in making you feel like you're cheating despite playing the game as intended is its new user-programmable autobattle system. If you're not strong enough to clear a level on your first try, there's no need to manually plink away at lesser enemies till you're ready to go again. You can just auto-replay older levels until you're strong enough (or wealthy enough to purchase the strength) to continue.

You don't even have to manually win battles the first time you do them, either. There are a handful that are complex enough to require manual navigation, but it's largely up to you whether you want to focus on preplanning and AI programming or manually guiding your characters in order to do more with less.

This makes the game friendlier to players that may have an RSI, but that doesn't seem to be fully intentional. Other parts of the game fairly encourage repetitive stress, like the character-specific achievements (D-merits) for things that cannot be automated, like using the Juice Bar 255 times.