The Disgaea franchise is one of my favorite RPG franchises of all time. That is mostly due to the fact that it is completely silly, ridiculous, and doesn’t take itself too seriously. Disgaea 6 takes the best parts of Disgaea and turns them up to 11 while adding some cool new tricks and ideas that really make things more user-friendly.

Before we get into the new content in Disgaea 6, let’s talk about the story this time around. In Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny, you play as Zed, a zombie with a unique power. Zed is on a quest to defeat the God of Destruction, who is destroying worlds with his immense power. Zed is able to utilize a powerful magic known as Super Reincarnation, to grow stronger each time he is defeated.

Ultimately, he plans to grow strong enough to defeat the God of Destruction, and along this journey, he makes some surprising allies. Zed’s Super Reincarnation ability extends to his allies as well, so you can voluntarily Super Reincarnate (at any level) and utilize the new Karma points to enhance your stats to grow even more powerful while starting back at level 1.

I know what you’re thinking though, “Ugh, this sounds like it adds a lot of grinding” and you would be half right. There is a decent amount of grinding, much like in any Disgaea game. However, they have added a few things to make progression easier. For starters, they have made it so that battle XP is distributed equally among all of the characters that participate in the battle. No longer do you have to try to grind up your healer in dangerous combat situations for hours.

No, the distribution of XP and Mana has grown much more fair and balanced. Additionally, they have added an auto-battle and repeat battle function. This, coupled with the new Demonic Intelligence (D.I) mechanic, allows you to set AI rules for your characters and then let them automatically battle a certain mission over and over to grind up levels autonomously.

I personally find that to be a very worthwhile endeavor, as it makes it easy for you to just set the grinding up while you’re doing other things. Alternately, you *can* utilize old-school Disgaea tricks like plundering the Item World or just grinding manually, but now there are a variety of options.

You can also utilize the new Juice Bar, to stock XP, Mana, and Stat extracts, and then give them to your characters to boost levels, class proficiency, weapon mastery, or just stats in general. It is a great way to give a character a boost without grinding for an hour.

The combat in Disgaea 6 is pretty similar to what you’d expect from the franchise if you’re familiar with it. The level cap has extended beyond 9,999 and can be extended several times over the course of the game if you so choose. Things like Geo Panels, breakable chests, lifting and throwing, and all sorts of other mechanics have made a return.

As a Tactical Turn-Based RPG, this is one that offers a lot of content and a lot of value. There aren’t as many classes this time around, and there are several mechanics that haven’t made a return as far as I can tell, such as Magichange. However, the characters are fun, the story is interesting, and there is a lot to do and explore. You can also passively send characters on Item World runs while you do other things, which is interesting.

I have noticed some framerate stuttering and graphical issues on the Switch, but they aren’t constant. In fact, I personally find that they only tend to give me an issue when I first start playing, and then after a few minutes things seem to even out. I can say for certain that it is way more stable as a game than other Switch releases I have played. There aren’t any crashes, there aren’t any bugs, the graphics just stutter occasionally.

If you haven’t played a Disgaea game before, this is a pretty great place to start. There are a lot of user-friendly tutorials, and each new mechanic is explained to you carefully unless you choose to skip the tutorial. There are a lot of side quests, and the game itself has a lot of content to it. If you really want to challenge yourself, you can also make use of the D.Merits system, which gives you goals and challenges (with rewards) to satisfy with each character.

If you have played the Disgaea franchise before, then I think you’ll really enjoy yourself. There are some things missing that hardcore players might find annoying, but I think that a lot of things they have added in Disgaea 6 are worthwhile additions.

All-in-all, Disgaea 6 is a fantastic evolution in the franchise. I hope we see more DLC coming soon, with fan-favorite characters that haven’t already been included in the Season Pass, etc. People may have some issues with the graphical problems, but as far as gameplay goes, it is a fun experience.

A Nintendo Switch review copy of Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny was provided by NIS America for this review.

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Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny

$59.99 USD

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Over 100 hours of Gameplay
• Quality of Life Additions for Grinding
• Fun Characters and Story
• Deep Progression Systems
• Lots of Customization

Cons

• Minor Framerate Issues
• Fewer Classes Than Previous Games