The first few hours ofDisgaea 7are worryingly familiar. We’re introduced to a protagonist demon (Fuji) with a hazy backstory and over-the-top evil traits that seem to be a facade for a heroic interior, a heroine (Pirilika) with an over-the-top bubbly personality, and a non-human sidekick. We’ve seen it all before. Stick with it, though, because Disgaea 7 is possibly the best entry in the series yet.
As you’d expect of a modern Disgaea game, the first few hours are spent travelling to oddly specific worlds - you have the overly-generic town, world of sardine fishing, warehouse world of product resellers, et cetera. Along the way, you pick up allies and encounter a cavalcade of comedic villains. Inevitably, the jokes are slowly traded (yet never lost entirely) for serious plot developments and a heady mix of both obvious and surprising twists. Disgaea 2 captured lightning in a bottle with a story that balanced the zany with the dark without straying too far into either camp, and Disgaea has been chasing that level of quality ever since. This entry definitely snatched some of those sparks. That said, this entry hasn’t managed to shake off some of the grosser trappings of the series. We’re still dealing with obnoxiously distracting jiggle physics, perversion used as a central personality trait, and an entire running joke where a spear-wielding character only targets the rear ends of her enemies.
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The story here is set in a parodic Japan-themed Netherworld called Hinomoto, explored through Pirilika’s eyes. She’s a weeaboo who knows Hinomoto from manga and anime, and idolises the concept of bushido. It makes for an interesting dynamic when she’s contrasted with Fuji, a jaded warrior who appears to have a legitimate anaphylactic reaction to empathy. Rounding out the cast are a thief with soul perception, a party boy mage, Fuji’s old master, and a robotic weapon who looks like a kid. While they initially come across as tired clichés in the same vein as a group of modern Fire Emblem characters, the narrower cast allows for some great character development, and while they tread closely to the ‘power of friendship’ tropes that Disgaea has unironically employed in the past, they never cross the line into sickly boredom.
Gameplay is largely what you’d expect from Disgaea, but refined. Every character, unique or generic, is a viable addition to the team. Battle stages are built in ways that encourage you to try different strategies, and difficult bosses and puzzle stages make for great speed bumps. A standout stage has you playing volleyball with explosive barrels, thanks to an impassable wall in the middle of the stage, while another has you surrounded by tough foes and allows you to take them all on at once or take the time to paralyse one side of the field while you take care of the other. Disgaea has been doing this for years, but the sheer variety of quirky challenges put before you here is impressive. Stages are rarely just empty squares, and when they are, you’re asked to play chess with stand-in units named after the pieces. The level design at work here is innovative and fresh.
The old bonus system where you gain points for dealing damage and creating geo chains is gone, replaced with objectives specific to each battlefield. These objectives are often tied to the narrative, such as a fight following a cutscene that sets up a duel rewarding you for only using one character to win. Whenever a character gains access to a new ability, expect an objective to require you to use it. This is more successful at getting you to go out of your way to earn rewards and change up your strategy. It reminds me of the law system from the Final Fantasy Tactics Advance games, only less punishing.
The stars of the show are two new mechanics, Hell Mode and Jumbification. The former allows the holders of special weapons to undergo temporary power-ups that have startlingly powerful effects, such as being able to act three times in one turn or fully control enemy units. The latter is Disgaea 7’s big new gimmick - Jumbification allows a character to grow so large that they don’t even fit on the battlefield. This enables them to attack anywhere in a large radius, fight other Jumbified units in kaiju-style battles, and alter every single unit on the field with special Jumbilities.
While it’s easy to see Jumbify as a ‘win battle quickly’ button, your enemies can also Jumbify, and more difficult encounters can neuter Jumbification entirely. Twice I’ve been caught unawares by an enemy Prinny becoming massive - suddenly, every unit on the battlefield exploded when thrown. This mechanic puts a wrench into your plans but adds a satisfyingly reactive element to combat, which traditionally trains you to think methodically. It’s a brand of chaos that suits Disgaea well and results in some incredibly memorable moments.
Everything is streamlined in Disgaea 7. Most notably, you don’t even use the dark assembly and mana to recruit allies anymore, instead hiring them from NPCs in exchange for HL. Disgaea has always placed importance on grinding and growing stronger, but the individual parts are made so much quicker and easier here, and I’m all for it. The measured improvements to the various character development systems without making anything altogether too easy show respect for the player’s time investment while also understanding that gradual growth and earned satisfaction are some of the hallmarks that Disgaea is renowned for.
The Evility system is also at its best here - you’re encouraged to look closer at your stats, classes, and abilities than ever before during the main game, especially as their effects can be so game-changing. Optimisation is not just for the post-game anymore, kids. At one point, Yeyasu (the aforementioned party boy) learns an Evility that boosts his spells’ range by two tiles in exchange for a higher SP cost. Well, SP is easily restored and mages tend to be slow movers, so I made Yeyasu drink a ton of Mana juice from the stockpile I’d reserved and used that to create four copies of that beautiful skill to dole out to my mages. Suddenly, I had five mages flinging spells about from the backline and managing to keep up with my speedier frontliners. It’s an incredibly rewarding system that feels great to bend to your whim.
That’s not to say that this entry doesn’t have its issues. Auto-battle in the form of Demonic Intelligence is back and is limited by a supply of fuel that you gain by completing optional battles (such as in the item world), but you’re severely limited in where you can actually use this function, making it more an afterthought than and not a fun or tactical way to speed up your gameplay. The hospital gacha system is an interesting replacement for the usual hospital rewards but is overpowered to the point of taking all difficulty out of the main game with a tiny bit of luck. You can acquire weapons far stronger than you should be able to so early, and then use these to grind to ridiculous levels in the item world, thus gaining more money than you can feed back into the gacha system. It’s a vicious cycle that feels sorely unbalanced. But then, that also feels very Disgaea.
Disgaea 7 is a course correction from some of the mistakes made in Disgaea 6. Gone is the slimmed-down character roster that saw many series staples disappear - instead, Disgaea 7 has more class options than any previous game, with entirely new classes and monsters to boot. Gone are the overinflated stat values and the game-breaking unrestricted auto-battle mechanics. The result is a game that feels more ‘Disgaea’ and less experimental, making it a more fitting modern follow-up to the crowning glory that was Disgaea 5 as a result.
