Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny Review

Disgaea's real driving force, however, is its strategic battle and history, and it should be noted that Disgaea's combat system is 95% identical to that in previous entries. The basic gameplay has changed little since the first game, which was conceived as a less obvious version of Final Fantasy Tactics. The traditional staples return, with stacks of up to ten active warriors stacked on top of each other, throwing whole columns of lids across the room of the map to dodge and attack obstacles, aided by characters standing in a field.

This means that battles take place on an isometric grid-based map where you and your opponent have turns moving and attacking like an anime version of chess. On the one hand, it introduces an auto-battle system that reduces the time it takes to grind your way through levels and makes the endgame more aesthetically pleasing.

At the same time, it feels like Nippon Ichi wants to grind your way through the main story with a crazy leveling structure to the main mission. This is a more balanced game than in the past, where you could press a button and let the game go through you until you reached the desired level.

I stepped away a few times, but most of the time I actually spent playing the game consisted of pressing buttons, advancing dialogue in cutscenes, upgrading my characters "gear, discovering their grinding marks, and replenishing my inventory with new gear. But I didn't feel the game systems were in any way cheeky.

If you have never played the Disgaea series, you should jump right into this entry, as this game is a good game. This way, you will have more fun playing the game if you use the new auto-play feature wisely. There is not much more to say about the game, as I have already gone into the gameplay guide area and the mistakes I made in the review linked above.

Nippon Ichi has made some of the best 2D animations in the business in his previous games, but Disgaea 6 is at the other end of the spectrum when it comes to 3D graphics. One could argue that this is a necessary step for the developer to improve and iterate over time, but the fact that it is visually the least interesting and most lavishly crafted game to come out of it makes it all the more disappointing, especially given that it runs poorly on the Switch including frequent slowdowns and crashes. Fortunately, Super Reincarnation and Auto Battle work well in pairs, which means that they are designed to play themselves, so you won't get bored of level grinding.

I would say that Disgaea 6 is comparable to titles like Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire and Monster Hunter Tri, which were at the time Disgaea's own 3, made the leap to HD and made a big leap for their series, but ended up losing many fans who liked their predecessors. That's a lot of work, but it works more than it should, and feels more like a transitional base for future games in the series, regardless of what NIS makes of it. However, the game itself was ultimately the basis for several great and popular fan entries in their respective franchises that followed.

In 2003, the Disgaea series debuted as a whimsical anime-inspired parody of the tactical role-playing genre. The addictive level grinders and crazy characters took the world by storm and brought a bevy of sequels, spin-offs and remasters to the world.

Nippon Ichi Software has had a bankruptcy scare since the last major Disgaea series game, and it's hard to see how the series will recapture that spark. Over time, the series has incorporated new mechanics, gameplay features and quality-of-life improvements into older titles and re-releases, but there is no suggestion that the series would have been better off without them. The potential for change in the series makes me nervous when I look at what's new in the game store.

With every new development comes a little worry, but this time things are going in the wrong direction. Disgaea 6 has a new character class, some of the usual ones have been dropped, and there are fewer gear and items in the game, and the off-track character of the story means you have to rethink many card types. At the same time, many features and content from previous games have fallen by the wayside.

Uniting the entire party around a single goal is something rare in Disgaea games, and none of the Zeds allies joins them for a reason - they accidentally reincarnate them into the world, much to their chagrin, and drag themselves along to their next reincarnation. While some of these systems lead to a more rational experience, others feel like an oversight that longtime fans will miss. NIS's catastrophic brush with bankruptcy and the turbulence it has been through in recent years have affected the end product, and the new Disgaea game ends with diminishing results.

Despite this sense of being propped up in terms of their relationship with history, the Gameas story is far from great. It takes too long to discover the background of the cedars and the main plot of the game, such as why they initially hunt the god of destruction. It doesnat respect your time, and the lack of funny dialogue and jokes that made the story entertaining in past games in the franchise.

Longtime fans of the Nippon Ichi Disgaea series may need a little persuading to take the chance to work their way through the latest installment. Disgaeaea 6 is a turn-based tactical game that has all the features of previous editions of the series.

While the Nippon Ichi Software Disgaea series has carved out a deep niche for itself, it quickly becomes dull for casual gamers, newcomers and everyone in between and should be approached with a fair amount of caution. After waiting so long for a proper sequel to the series with a remaster, it is now six years since the last numbered entry was published.