Written by Anthony L. Cuaycong
Title: Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny
Developer: Nippon Ichi Software
Publisher: NIS America
Genre: Strategy
Price: $59.99
Nippon Ichi Software has been making Disgaea games for close to 20 years. Released in 2003, Disgaea: Hour of Darkness was a breath of fresh air, able to laugh at itself and its antics and whole-heartedly dipping into its sillier parts without a care in the world. While other Japanese role-playing games like Final Fantasy delved on serious matters with a serious tone, Disgaea was more than willing to go for extremes: its highly exaggerated damage numbers, its over-the-top comedy, and its light-hearted but still endearing plot.
Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny seeks to channel that same energy once more, mustering everything that the series has to offer in a bigger, more exciting, and more ridiculous scale. Its plot is still silly, its combat is still fun, and its tone is still as wacky as ever. All these, combined with some new quality-of-life features, prop up the game’s status as the most accessible game in the franchise yet.
Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny follows the tale of Zed the Zombie. This unlikely hero is off to challenge the God of Destruction. Each time, Zed is defeated, but each death he suffers makes him far stronger than before after reincarnation. His attempts and failures slowly empower him, and in his quest to take down his foe, he travels across the various Netherworlds and meets with new companions and new enemies, all while he attempts to bring down his mortal foe.
As far as stories go, Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny is nothing out of the ordinary. It's par for the course in terms of what you'd expect from a Disgaea game. What helps it along, though, is its self-awareness. Much of the latest release in the franchise tends to be silly and exaggerated, but it's not done in a malicious way. It's all for fun and games, and never offensive. Instead, it doubles down on its character tropes, and on the series' running jokes. It might not always make perfect sense, but it's charming nonetheless, especially for longtime followers of the intellectual property.
D Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny’s humor also extends to the gameplay. Being the latest Disgaea expansion, it has all the bells and whistles any good Disgaea game will have. Fun and colorful characters, plenty of interesting and challenging maps to play on, and a plethora of classes to use and abilities to manipulate. These are all standard fare for the series, and the solid turn-based gameplay it has makes it a good anchor for any newcomer to latch onto.
What really stands out are some of the new features Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny introduces. Chief among them is Demonic Intelligence, which helps cut down on the micromanagement previous titles in the series needed you to do to get your turns done. You won't always be inclined to use it, especially when you're trying to get the most out of your turns or need specific strategies to employ, but it offers you flexibility to streamline some of the tedium. By presetting how certain units you have can react, things like striking nearby foes or using skills when needed are automatically done, and these little plusses do go a long way.
That's because Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny, as with its predecessors, thrives on replay and repetition, and on your own willingness to "break" your characters. With an absurd level cap that can reach upwards into the thousands, it encourages you to go crazy with your characters. Go for bigger numbers, grind for better stats and gear, and keep the bar constantly rising by continually challenging tougher foes. The sky's the limit in Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny, and in a JRPG where stats are king, the bar can be as high as you want to set it.
This all comes down to Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny being an easy title that both veterans and newcomers to the series can enjoy. With a ton of replay value and a lot of post-game and downloadable content to bite down on, it offers plenty of options that allow you to have fun with your game. You're basically free to enjoy it as you please – that is, if you can get past some of its limitations. For instance, its graphics might turn some people off. While the game does still use two-dimensional art assets, the new 3D models that appear on the map can be jarring. The animations can be nice and entertaining, but they do feel a little chunky and fat when compared to the sprites used in the previous games.
In addition, Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny on the Nintendo Switch presents with some bad framerate issues when it is on anything but performance mode – a surprise considering that the game doesn’t seem to be a resource hog. While it’s a turn-based game and doesn't really need a smooth framerate to be playable, having a bad one during gameplay is quite off-putting, especially for those used to being treated to a smooth 60 frames per second.
On the whole, Disgaea 6 is a fun title that takes advantage of better QOL features to help reduce the tedium of grinding. For the more discriminating gamers, however, this becomes a moot point in the face of its poor optimization. It's a fun title to play, and will still hold your attention for hours on end, but it's a game that simply adds very little to the Disgaea formula, and plays things on the safe side. Bottom line, it’s a Disgaea title, and therefore still a must-buy – although it could have been better in the way that Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance was relative to the immediate past release.
THE GOOD
- Still a solid Disgaea game, with hundreds of hours of content to play through
- Enjoyable humor and writing, with expressive and memorable characters
- Flexible approach to gameplay allows for plenty of ways to experience it, while also streamlining a lot of the grind
THE BAD
- Dipping framerates on the Switch
- Not much "new" in the way of mechanics
- Missing features from the previous games
RATING: 9/10
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