Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny was initially announced back in September 2020; it was a surprise that many fans of Strategy RPGs were really excited about given the franchise’s initial success and summarily its sequels. With a great sense of expansiveness and seemingly endless road of building up characters to be more and more powerful, it seems like there’s little to no stopping the train of Reincarnation that Disgaea totes as one of its best features.
A bit of a personal note here; I was originally drawn into the Disgaea series through a few of my friends who suggested it after I showed them other Strategy RPGs such as Vandal Hearts and Final Fantasy Tactics; I always found the depths and customizable elements of Disgaea to be one of the most appealing elements of the game; if I wanted to have a Warrior use Swords instead of Axes, I could do that. Later on it felt that other Disgaea titles would allow you to continue to build on this customizable trek that it was taking by introducing passive effects called “Evilities” which would benefit your character with the traits of other classes; it was fun to for example have a Ninja learn Thief Skills so he could also steal items from people. Further, Disgaea has always been known to push the envelope with its various Geo Puzzles and tricky maps.
Sadly, Disgaea 6 has begun to take a direction that turns away from many of the elements that drew me into it in the first place; I am assuming much of the focus was on making the game “look good” and “run well” in its push for Auto-Battle and the like, but it seems to have come at a great sacrifice to the deep-down spirit of the game; many of the cross-over abilities and tricks of the trade you could use in previous titles have been siloed into the individual classes; I’ll get to that later in my review:
Initial Analysis: When I first got my hands on the demo, I was already concerned about a few things that I had both heard and read about when it came to Disgaea 6; I had hoped that I would be pleasantly surprised by some of the new features and elements the game had to introduce, but it came down to a point where the removal of so many features outweighed the new, useful features. To give a summary, here are a few things I want to highlight:
- Very small Class/Monster List: Disgaea has been known for its deep roster of generics and various unique characters; Disgaea 6 however has trimmed that roster to almost one-third of what it usually is; many classes are no longer in the game series (Which to be fair makes sense going between each entry in the series; classes and monsters tend to reflect the story), however there were class and monster removals that did not at all make sense; further it also removed many Evilities that those removed classes used to change the flow of battle. The problem with such a small roster is that it not only affected gameplay, but it also affected level design with what units you would encounter; there were so many stages I found where a wider diversity of enemies would have really helped a level become more enjoyable.
- All can use weapons, but Weapon Skills?: One of the things I loved in the Disgaea series was being able to train up Weapon Mastery to eventually learn new Special Attacks and Spells; while Weapon Mastery still exists to give your characters a percentage bonus to their stats based on the weapons they are using, it no longer provides access to Special Attacks; in fact, the only way you can get Special Attacks is to level up your characters. That’s right, the Weapon Skills have now been assigned to each of the classes as opposed to the weapon type you are using. While in the short term this makes a little sense in regards to getting players to start using each class, there is the problem of how weapons are now being used for both Humanoids and Monsters; now that Monsters can use weapons, what purpose does giving them the ability to use those weapons serve aside from just the stats of the weapon? I feel like this change in using weapons was never really thought out entirely, and as a result it has led to a much weaker Disgaea experience.
- Skills/Stats/Levels - Just Juice it Up!: The whole idea of building a character through hard work and effort seems to have been thrown out the window with the advent of the Auto-Battle System, and also with the introduction of the Juice Bar. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why the Juice Bar was created; with how Disgaea 5 inadvertently filled up your Inventory with Magic Extracts and Stat Shards, it made sense that there should be a separate avenue to save those stats to be given to your characters. What bothers me however, is that in combination with the Auto-Battle System, those extract numbers can reach ridiculous levels and effectively break the way the game functions. Disgaea is not unfamiliar with “breaking the game” so to speak, but when it also includes EXP and Mana which can be used to max out your characters over and over again, it feels like the game doesn’t even intend for you to actually try and do anything in combat, and simply reap the rewards of whatever you can squeeze out of the Juice Bar. You can even max out your Class Mastery and Weapon Mastery this way.
- Skills/Stats/Levels - Too Juicy For You?: As nice as the idea of expanding your levels and stats are, from the first chapter onwards, you can easily tell the numbers that you are presented with are inflated to a point where it hardly seems to matter. I know that Disgaea is very much a game about high numbers, but when you’re literally starting the game doing thousands of damage even right from the start, you start to feel like the numbers really don’t have as much value anymore. What once was 5 is now 50,000. It feels arbitrary, and it reflects on both the characters and the equipment you get. Item World for example feels much less useful now that you can focus on stats directly via the Juice Bar, as gear will take you significantly longer to level up.
- Reduce/Re-Use/Recycle Old Assets!: This is probably the first time I’ve ever run into a Disgaea game that reuses its assets so much; I know that Disgaea has had its share of reusing sprites and just recoloring them, but when you begin to start also doing that with entire levels and chapters of the game, I feel like it takes a lot of the expansiveness of the Netherworld the game totes out of the equation; is the world supposed to be small, and the characters huge? I don’t understand it.
- I’d give this game a D-Merit, But-: D-Merits are a method the game uses to reward characters for individual achievements of their stats and accomplishments; if anyone is familiar with Disgaea 2, this is in a sense a much more streamlined version of the Felony System, with much more accessible rewards. D-Merits reward your character with Stat Extracts, Karma for Reincarnation; Evilities you can apply to your character for later use, even equipment commemorating your character’s achievement of certain Weapon Mastery goals. All in all, the D-Merit System I feel was well-designed and actually introduces an avenue in which a player can work on multiple characters and have them be rewarded, depicting their ever-increasing strength through their accomplishments.
- AUTO-MATE! AUTO-MATE!: The main selling point of Disgaea 6 is quite obviously its focus on making the “grind” that Disgaea suffers from into something of the past. Early on you don’t get much in regards to automating your characters, but as you unlock new features in the Dark Assembly (The game’s method for unlocking new gameplay features) you can start using higher speeds and new automation commands called “Demonic Intelligence (D.I.)” which allow you to more precisely automate your characters in combat. I find that the Auto-Battle and Demonic Intelligence features are a double-edged sword as far as Disgaea goes; while it’s nice to be able to have your characters automatically fight and handle their own training while you’re not there, it also tends to make the game that much more dull; if you’re not there to spend your time really ironing out the details of your character, then why are you playing the game in the first place?
Now that we’re passed the hot topic items, I’d like to go into each aspect of the game and summarize my observations on each of them:
Music/Sound:
Considering that the musical scores have been done and done again by the original composer, Tenpei Sato; I already had high hopes for the music track for Disgaea 6. Thankfully out of all the material that the game has demonstrated to me, the music of the game continues where Disgaea 5 left off. Disgaea 6’s music has a few arranged versions of previous favorites, along with a few new tracks to set the mood for each area of the game you are in. I’ve known Disgaea for always having a strong soundtrack, and I can easily give praise to it again in this entry.
Graphics:
This is where every other user’s reviews have sunk the game’s scores; I probably won’t be the first to say that the jump to 3D/CGI was inevitable for Disgaea, but I will say that the game did decently when it came to the rendering of each model, keeping it as true as it could to their original sprite designs. What I like the most about 3D models in Disgaea is that I am not having to view character’s as a mirror image of one another; it gives more of a sense of identity to the characters, rather than having them right-handed one moment then left-handed the next.
I do however have to knock the game’s handling and performance a few points; while the game does have three “performance” modes that you can select, considering that other games that were more heavily graphics intensive run faster and more efficiently than Disgaea 6 does, I feel this was an unfortunate growing pain of making the jump to 3D. What I will not forgive is that the game had multiple years to get this sorted out, and yet it did not. I can only hope that some patching and performance updates are in the pipeline, as even with the features such as Auto-Battle and such available, the game’s framerate and choppiness are easily apparent regardless of what performance mode you put it into.
Gameplay:
As you would expect of a Disgaea game, it is a Strategy Role-Playing Game. While the core elements and foundations of a classic Disgaea game remain intact within Disgaea 6, (with some features even being improved for Quality of Life, such as even canceling throwing actions) the freedom to expand your character’s horizons with multiple weapon skills has been removed, which renders the advent of anyone being able to use any weapon (Monsters included) virtually pointless. Aside from a few intricacies involving weapon damage versus specific damage resistances, equipment has virtually been rendered down to just “stat buffs” which really harms the game’s image to mix and match your own character builds. I feel like I’m beating a dead horse here by stating that many of the design changes that Disgaea 6 made to its mechanics were a step forward, and two steps back. Whether they were made due to time constraints or business decisions I do not know, but I feel like the game has ended up suffering for it.
Story:
Story in Disgaea 6 is pretty straightforward; you join Zed the Zombie in his quest to defeat the strongest God of Destruction who has been terrorizing all of the Netherworld. There are a couple of twists and turns as far as the later parts of the story go, but if I had to, I would compare it very much to Disgaea 5’s cookie-cutter story format; what’s more is that I think the character scripts within Disgaea 6 were kind of aware of the fact they were already being lumped into a designated storyline, with lines such as “It’s my turn now, huh?” (Paraphrasing of course.)
The storyline and “next episode” segments kind of read off like a classic comic book; you have segments of the story that are narrative, whereas others that are more filler-like or meant to just make you laugh rather than push the story onwards to make you want to continue it. You’ll get a sort of origin story arc in the beginning, then a development arc, then a short bit where the story actually moves on. I feel like it takes too long to get to the root of the storytelling, and as a whole the entire structure suffers as a result.
Personal Touch:
One thing Disgaea 6 does not lack on is charm, though I feel like in Disgaea 6 with the limited amount of resources that were available to it, it ended up being harmed overall due to the story format, as well as the constant re-use of 3D models and in fact overall “levels.” This is clearly evident in not only the main story mid-way through, but also even in the post-game.
As far as character personalities and individualizing how the characters act and such goes, I do feel that the characters were colorful and had decent personality, but their base personality designs did seem to start falling into stagnation later on when it felt that there wasn’t as much character development per each character than I would have expected. I would have liked to have seen characters start working together more constructively with their personalities rather than just stating their personality quirks repeatedly, for example.
Final Thoughts:
As much as I was excited for Disgaea 6 when it was announced back in September, I have to admit my enthusiasm and hope for the series has chilled significantly with this release. The game does indeed have a few mechanical elements that take older ideas and apply them more directly towards your characters (D-Merits for example) and quicker, more efficient ways to make your characters stronger (Juice Bar and Super Reincarnation), but it suffers from performance slowdown, removed classes and features, and a cookie-cutter storyline that we’ve already seen from Disgaea 5. I’m hoping that Disgaea 6 will serve as a learning experience for Nippon Ichi Software that drastic changes, while they can certainly shake up the playing field, can also be a double-edged sword that can harm initial opinions of their flagship series. If you’re a new player to the Disgaea series, Disgaea 6 may serve as a decent starting-off point as far as its mechanics and gameplay go; however if you’ve played any of the other Disgaea games and already have exposure to how the games play, I fear you’ll feel like you’re playing a game that is half finished.