Review – Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny (PS5)

Hitting the big numbers!

Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny is the newest entry into the Strategy-Role Playing series that debuted on PlayStation 2. We’ve seen many new features in each game entry throughout the years. With many of these implemented features continuing along with the wacky story, Disgaea can’t do any wrong, can it?

I would say the first alarm was bringing the game to the Switch only back in June 2021 when it saw some bad performance issues causing it to receive quite a bit of criticism. The game has now since been released on PS4 and PS5 and these performance issues have all but disappeared. Disgaea 6 runs as smooth as a Prinny’s body, there is even a graphical over-performance option which I will say is pretty much not needed as I have never seen a difference. The frame rate and performance are perfect.

Disgaea 6 follows the story of Zed a Zombie and a talking Zombie-Pug Dog named Cerberus talking about defeating the God of Destruction, an almighty superbeing who is focused on, well Destruction and it is up to Zed to stop him. From the beginning, I did not expect too much more in terms of the story and what the goal is, the Disgaea series is renowned for its structurally simple stories all of which tell the tale of an Overlord or otherwise powerful being. While simple one thing Disgaea does great is in its execution of the story and even in Disgaea 6 we see some dialogue from the beginning about how Zed needs to level up to take down more powerful foes, which in itself is quite funny as levels and stats play a huge part in the game even more so now as things got even more insane since the last time we left.

Disgaea 6 looks great and the character models look better than ever, battles are fluid and quick and the animations for certain attacks seem even more thought out than before. I have been enjoying what I have played through the story and unlocking all the features which I have become accustomed to in the series; however, something did feel off and it did become noticeable straight away. When I had finished the first map, my characters had levelled up to level 7 from level 1 which was quite the jump from what I was used to. I instantly felt like I was missing something, I felt overpowered and I checked to see if my characters were equipped with some sort of EXP booster. They weren’t and it turns out that level up was intended, it does make sense though. The maximum level in Disgaea 6 is the biggest we have seen and is the biggest I have seen in a video game. Nine hundred ninety-nine million nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine is the current maximum level and actual character stats are even bigger and seem to pass the 10 quadrillion mark for Hit points and 100 billion for other stats such as Strength. Taking this into account it makes sense characters level up so quick in comparison to past games as reaching the max level will take a lot more time.

My issue is that I felt a lack of building of my characters because they were so powerful from the beginning. After a few more rounds and going into the next chapter my level was in the hundreds. Disgaea 6 also comes with a couple of new quality-of-life features that play into this. Auto-battle and Auto-replay are two new features which allow you to automatically play out the battle with your characters and then repeat the current stage endlessly until it is turned off. This means you can leave the game on to auto farm just about anything you want, now I do not think this is a bad feature by any means but I do think it could have been implemented better such as a late-game feature to grind to max level for the end game content. Having it available straight away makes it easy to switch on and take the fun away unless you enjoy being overpowered, essentially the game is too easy and you only then find yourself immersed in the story, the gameplay is just a filler. You may argue that previous games are easy as you can break the game early on which is correct as you can, but that was a part of what made it fun, Disgaea 6 is already broken, not in a bad way but the game doesn’t have the same feel as unlocking a powerful Item early on. The very first Disgaea game is still tough as nails as it ever has been and having a cast of powerful characters early on is a difficult achievement.

The cast of Disgaea 6 is good but I definitely did not have the connection that I did with past entries, it was enough to keep me compelled throughout but overall it is okay. Zed is quite tame as a character in comparison to past main characters and doesn’t really have any quirks, except for his interactions with Cerberus who quite frankly is more entertaining. Disgaea 6 does have a roster of past characters from previous games with their own stories and by doing a small story segment you can unlock them to be playable in the rest of the game.

The combat is still great as it ever has been with stacking characters and throwing them across the map, Geo-Panels and All-out attacks but again most of this is mitigated by the fact the game is very unbalanced and you find yourself just auto-attacking early on. My biggest gripe is the lack of classes in the game, many have been removed or just don’t make an appearance here which is a shame, by now I would like to have every character in the game and every class with even more options in the mix, instead there has been a couple of newly added classes while many have not made the cut, the total amount of classes now is now a very minuscule amount in comparison to past games.