Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny is a brilliant, silly, and heartfelt SRPG that nails almost everything it tries. It has some frustrating performance issues, but the story, characters, breadth of content, and atmosphere are all excellent. If you’re looking for a laugh, this is the game to grab.
Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny
Developer: Nippon Ichi Software
Price: $60
Platforms: Nintendo Switch (reviewed)
MonsterVine was provided with a Switch code for review
Disgaea is a really great series. It’s hilarious, has memorable characters (and Prinnies,) and each game has enough content to choke a horse. Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny is no exception here, as it has some of the most likable characters in the franchise, a ton of stuff to do, and dumb jokes out the wazoo. It’s also very accessible if you’re new to the series, Disgaea 6 has something for you no matter who you are.
In Disgaea 6 you play as Zed, a once-weak zombie who, alongside Cerberus the dog, plans to take out the God of Destruction. Zed can barely damage the God before it obliterates him, but thanks to the magic of “Super Reincarnation,” Zed is revived in a new world to train upon every “death.” In these worlds, Zed meets a ragtag group of ne’er-do-wells that range from a rich king who bribes everyone he sees to a Power Ranger, sorry, Prism Ranger, who yearns to discover her own definition of justice. Zed himself carries on the tradition of being a somewhat unhinged main character (in a good way,) though he has a lot of heart as the game goes on.
The story has quite a few surprising turns, and I found myself engaged with the narrative for its entirety. The characters are as goofy as it gets, but slowly, you feel them start to connect and grow as individuals throughout the story. In the end, they feel like a real team that sticks together through thick and thin, which made me quite happy. They’re one of the stronger Disgaea groups, in my eyes, which is certainly saying something. Disgaea is known for its strong characters after all, but I’d put Zed and co. near the likes of even Disgaea 1’s crew.
“There are so, so many ways to make your characters as overpowered as possible, and it will keep even the most masochistic player occupied for a good long while, as you min-max units to the extreme.“
If you’ve never played a Disgaea game before, you’ll find all the series fundamentals here in Disgaea 6. You use story characters and units that you create of various classes to defeat all the enemies in a stage through grid-based combat. Unlike most SRPGs, Disgaea’s numbers are ridiculously high. In Disgaea 6’s story content alone, you can reach level 9999 and do millions of damage to foes. It’s the epitome of over-the-top anime stats, and it makes you feel like a god as you get better and better.
There are plenty of mechanics with which to grow your characters, to ensure things are always interesting in Disgaea 6. You can use Super Reincarnation to move a character back to level one while improving your stats, which gives you continued incentive to grind. You can learn new Evilities from the Skill Shop to make your characters even crazier, or you can adjust things like EXP gain rate and Job Proficiency rate at the Cheat Shop. That’s without going into getting better items through the Dark Assembly, using the Juice Bar to boost allies to a higher level without fighting, putting units in Squads to give them latent bonuses, and more. There are so, so many ways to make your characters as overpowered as possible, and it will keep even the most masochistic player occupied for a good long while, as you min-max units to the extreme.
Finishing the story certainly isn’t the end of Disgaea 6 though. No, you’ve got lots left to do. From additional story content featuring some legendary characters of games past to the never-ending Item World, there’s always more to be done in Disgaea 6. Item World is as crazy as ever, as it allows you to enter randomly-generated dungeons that are made from an item in your possession. Depending on the item and it’s rarity, what you get and enemy strength differ wildly. This allows for a nigh-endless gameplay experience, as you can grind stages for items, enter the Item World for those items, and repeat the cycle until you have the most powered-up and decked-out characters and items ever.
Grinding, one of the main features of Disgaea, has been made easier than ever in one of the best additions to all of Disgaea. With the auto-battle and auto-repeat features, you can let your characters grind away while you do chores, eat food, or do pretty much anything other than playing the game. Feel like you’re underleveled? Hang around for an hour while the AI grinds for you. Want to be ridiculously overpowered? Just auto-grind away overnight. This feature lets you access the meat of the postgame experience in a much more efficient manner, which I deeply appreciate.
“The earnest delivery of goofy lines really sells me on these performers, which is coming from someone who typically prefers Japanese voice-overs in this sort of game.“
The visuals of Disgaea 6 are decidedly mixed. The new 3D models still retain the charm of Disgaea’s art style, but they don’t quite measure up to the incredible sprites of previous games. The 2D art used in cutscenes is still expressive and well-illustrated, it’s just the 3D models that feel a bit underwhelming. Plus, the change seems to have brought about some odd technical issues.
You can play Disgaea 6 in Performance, Graphics, or Balanced mode. The problem is that anything other than Performance mode makes the framerate drop like crazy, and even in Performance mode, the game will occasionally drop frames or freeze for a couple of seconds here and there. It even crashed a couple of times, meaning I had to restart whatever stage I was on. I hope these issues can be fixed at some point, as this game doesn’t seem as though it should be struggling to run on the Switch.
On the other hand, the music of Disgaea 6 is delightfully manic. A lot of the tracks are energetic and fun, while others are more subdued and serious. No matter the tone, they all retain that feeling of mischief in some way or another, which makes them feel perfect for this game. The voice acting is also fantastic, as every actor and actress felt well-suited for their character. The earnest delivery of goofy lines really sells me on these performers, which is coming from someone who typically prefers Japanese voice-overs in this sort of game. Disgaea just continues to nail its voice-casting, which is worthy of praise.
The Final Word
Outside of some strange technical issues, Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny is an excellent, hilarious, and heartfelt SRPG. You’ll never run out of things to do, even when the surprisingly touching story is finished, and you’ll remember these ridiculous characters for a good while to come. If you’re looking for an SRPG that’ll make you laugh and keep you busy, then Disgaea 6 is for you.
MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
Andrew
August 20, 2022 at 3:58 am
I do love Disgaea. Mainly for the fantastic writing of the characters. I always wonder why they price these games so high especially as NIS has had some financial troubles over the last few years. I like that they always managed to add some nice QoL upgrades to each destiny game, not just reskinning the new game based on older stuff. Thanks for the review.