Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny

Genre: Turn-Based Strategy-RPG / Idle Game

Players: 1

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Review:

Disgaea 6, while released on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in Japan, was released in 2021 only on the Nintendo Switch in the US. Like prior games in the series, this is a Turn-Based Strategy-RPG, but as you’ll notice above, I also deem this game to be an Idle Game. Suffice it to say that this time around, things are pretty different.

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Super Reincarnated?

At its core, much of the standard Disgaea experience remains the same here – this is still an incredibly deep Strategy-RPG with enough depth to last hundreds or even thousands of hours if you really want to pour yourself into the game. And players see a return of many of the series’ hallmarks – it still all starts with a grid-based Tactics-style Strategy-RPG with class-based characters and elemental attacks. There’s still color-coded geo symbols that grant special effects onto geo panels and can be destroyed to create a screen-wiping chain reaction. There’s the ability to grab and toss characters or make multi-character stacks. There’s still the dark assembly where you can persuade, bribe, or bully senators into enacting laws that favor your crew. There’s the returning “cheat shop” where players can tweak the game’s rules to their favor. There’s a returning cast of species, including the franchise mascots, the penguin-like Prinnies. And of course, there’s the return of the Item World, where players can hop “into” any item or piece of equipment in their inventory to fight through randomly-generated levels to power up the item (and of course, get in some grinding).

However, Disgaea 6 adds a bunch of new concepts to this formula, some of which completely transform the series usual gameplay into something else entirely. Some, like the new “Super Reincarnation”, are overblown and don’t amount to much – this ability lets you get a small permanent upgrade to the main character every time you use the series’ standard “reincarnation” option to reboot the character to level one. Given the relatively high cost of doing this and the small gains made by doing so, this addition seems largely pointless, even if the game’s story tries to make a big deal out of it.

Then there’s the game’s expanded stats, with characters now having stats well into the billions (one post-game boss has nearly 26 billion HP, nearly 26 billion MP, over 26 billion attack, and so on…). However, these aren’t bigger caps, as you might think of them. Rather, it seems like this game just took the prior games in the series and moved the decimal place over to the right, so level-1 attacks that might have done damage in the double-digits in prior games now do thousands or tens of thousands in damage in Disgaea 6, and players will easily gain dozens of levels in the game’s earliest battles.

In theory, this allows for more subtle nuances in these stats, but in practice it makes everything in the game take longer to parse. Here, let me give you an idea what I mean – quick, which is bigger, 476 or 623? Okay, now let’s try another – quick, which is bigger, 476328918 or 6238174912? Now, which of those two questions took you longer to answer? Now picture making these comparisons hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of times over the course of the game. The bigger numbers may be more impressive, but they just make playing effectively more tedious. What’s more, at some point, they get big enough to lose all meaning. If you’re impressed by an attack that does 100,000 damage, you may find yourself more impressed when you cross the 1 million mark, but at some point, the bigger numbers just end up seeming like so much noise rather than noteworthy character growth.

There are a few other tweaks to the interface and options that I’m not quite thrilled about here. It seems harder to organize your “Innocents” (personified stats that live in items) than it was in Disgaea 5. There’s no option to have your characters teach their skills to other characters in the party. Classes that previously had two gendered versions have now been halved to only use one of those two (usually the male).

On the other hand, there are plenty of other elements here that are streamlined in ways I like, such as characters automatically getting healed after each non Item World level, no limits to quests you can accept, all participants in battle receiving experience, and so on. Don’t get me wrong, Disgaea 6 is still an extremely deep and complex game, but this is the most accessible the series has been in quite some time.

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Idle Hands Are Literally the Demons’ Playground

While I’m a bit iffy on many of Disgaea 6’s changes, I have to say I’m impressed with the biggest change – the introduction of Auto-Battle and Demonic Intelligence. Auto-Battle is an option players can turn on or off at any time, allowing the AI to take over for the player and fight for you. While this isn’t the sort of thing you’ll want to use in more pivotal battles in the game, it streamlines the grinding process that’s so integral to the Disgaea series, allowing you to grow your characters while overseeing them as a manager, not a micromanager. What’s more, you can instruct the AI to continue replaying a level after it’s completed, and as your characters’ health and MP are replenished after each battle, this means you can literally play Disgaea 6 for hours without ever touching the controller. In other words, it can now be played as an Idle Game.

However, that’s not to say this process is mindless. In fact, Disgaea 6 is quite possibly the deepest Idle Game ever made, giving players the ability to craft character-specific macros (Called “Demonic Intelligence”, or D.I.) to customize the way each character reacts to situations they may encounter. This D.I. creation is fairly straightforward and user-friendly, using a visual interface that makes sense. Yet it allows for a massive amount of adaptability.

Right now, as I type this review, my characters are battling for me, and my healer knows that if he is below 60% health, he should heal himself. And if not, if another characters’ health drops below 60%, he should heal them (prioritizing the character with the lowest health), else if any character has a status effect he should heal that. If no one has status effects, he should wait until all other characters have moved, and then check those things again, and if everyone is still healthy, he should attack, using special moves so I can build his experience with them. Meanwhile, I have other characters set to prioritize some enemy targets over others, or focus on using specific attack types.

Make no mistake, this system is going to be divisive, as it is essentially streamlining a lot of the core gameplay out of the game – grinding is the reason why the Disgaea games are so good, and so to many it will seem like sacrilege that Disgaea 6 introduces gameplay that essentially has the AI do this for you. However, I’ll note that this does not “dumb down” the game – players will still have to wade through all their equipment once they want to proceed, decide how to upgrade their characters, and so on. And actually creating Demonic Intelligence macros that fit your desired outcome takes a bit of skill (and a little trial and error) even with it being so user-friendly.

Having said that, clearly this mechanic isn’t going to be for everyone. Thankfully, it is completely optional, and players who want a more traditional Disgaea experience will find it here. However, it seems clear that most players who give this mechanic a try find it to be a great addition to the game – there’s a reason the game currently tops the eShop’s new Most-Played Section, and while I’m sure that being a deep and enjoyable game is a large part of it, likely the biggest factor is that this is a game many players are turning on ro play itself while they do other things… like writing this review.

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Cel Shady

The other big change in Disgaea 6, and the one that’s the most immediately noticeable, is the change from hard-drawn 2D characters to cel-shaded characters. In theory, this change opens up a lot of opportunity for the series – now the 3D levels should actually be able to be rotated freely at any angle… except Disgaea 6 still doesn’t let players do that outside of some extremely limited instances throughout the game. At the very least, the new 3D character models look good, if a bit simple and chibi-ified. However, this move to 3D characters seems to have introduced another issue into Disgaea that wasn’t really present before – performance issues.

By default, Disgaea 6’s framerates will shudder annoyingly at times, particularly as you move around your home base. Thankfully, there is an option in the game’s menus to switch to a performance mode, which completely eliminates this problem… but instead, players will have to contend with some really blurry low resolutions and nasty aliasing. It’s nothing that renders the game unplayable, but it does make one wonder why they would go to the completely unnecessary effort of bringing the series into full 3D, only to not take advantage of the benefits of this move while suffering from its drawbacks?

When it comes to the music in Disgaea 6… well, this is a Disgaea game, and I don’t think the series has ever had particularly great music past maybe the first game, and Disgaea 6 is no exception. Combining bizarre and discordant synthesized music, odd Jazz-style music with terrible Engrish vocals, and themes that have stuck with the series since the beginning. I suppose I can at least say it’s not terrible, but by this point I would hope that this series would have improved in this area.

Similarly, players will still have to contend with the annoying character voices in battle, although this time around I think the story and characters are far more likable than in Disgaea 5. Main character Zed the zombie is somewhat one-note, with his single-minded quest to take down the God of Destruction, but supporting cast members are a delight, particularly Cerberus the zombie dog, who speaks with a deadpan tone and is quick to make a sly comment at Zed’s expense, which usually flies right over Zed’s head

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Ideal Idle, or Strained Strategy?

In the end, I’m a bit torn on Disgaea 6, which feels like both a step forward and a step back for the series. While some may be disgusted by this series dipping its toe in the Idle Game genre, I think it’s an absolutely inspired addition to the series, and being optional means it’s one players needn’t even indulge in if they opt not to. On the other hand, many of the other changes here are either ineffectual or outright bad, such as the change to bigger numbers for everything, or the 3D character models which create new performance issues. On balance, this is still a phenomenal Strategy-RPG, and one of the most wildly creative games the genre has ever seen, but its best features are going to upset just as many people as it delights. If you’re a fan of the genre, I’d still suggest you give it a try, but on balance I’d still say that this game’s predecessor, Disgaea 5, is the most well-rounded and overall best game in the series (terrible characters notwithstanding).

tl;dr – Disgaea 6 is a game that takes the zany, deep, grind-heavy Strategy-RPG series and adds in a slew of new elements, including optional Idle Game mechanics. These mechanics are a fantastic new addition to the series, albeit a divisive one. Less successful are many of the other changes this game makes, like its “bigger numbers for everything” philosophy or its new cel-shaded characters, which seems to have led to performance issues. On balance, this is still an outstanding Strategy-RPG, and unquestionably the most wildly creative game in the series, but it can’t top the well-rounded experience of Disgaea 5.

Grade: B+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2021 Game Awards:

Winner:

Best Strategy Game/Simulation – The Nintendo Switch has plenty of Strategy-RPG games at this point, including three prior entries in the Disgaea series, but Disgaea 6 nevertheless manages to do something truly unique and original with its series’ formula, transforming the game into one that can (optionally) be played as an Idle Game. As strange as it sounds, it works quite well, making for a game that is both fun to play and, oddly, one that’s fun to not play. While the Strategy-RPG half of the game isn’t quite up to par with Disgaea 5 for numerous reasons, this is nevertheless an exceptional entry in the genre, and while it may be divisive, it’s still a game I highly recommend.

Runner-Up: Most Original, Best New Character (Cerberus), Best RPG

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