In a lot of ways, its business as usual for Disgaea 6; once again, the series conjures up a ridiculous, comedic yarn to frame its strategy action - this time focusing on new protagonist Zed, a teenage zombie on a quest to defeat the God of Destruction - all in service to the series’ wonderfully compelling turn-based battling and drive for ever-higher numbers. Indeed, Disgaea 6 goes bigger than ever before on that front, giving players a new level cap of 99,999,999, meaning characters will eventually be able to deal over 10,000,000,000,000,000 damage in battle. Driving those intimidating figures is a new system that sees Zed Super Reincarnate every time he’s defeated by the God of Destruction, sending his level back to 1 but, crucially, enabling hm to retain his strength and earn karma to spend on improving states and skills - including those that don’t normally increase, such as movement and counter attacks. There’re plenty more welcome tweaks to Disgaea’s long-running, much-loved formula too, including the introduction of oversized units, EXP sharing, a new Auto-Battle system, plus a new Auto-Repeat feature that combines with new High-Speed Modes so that players can speed through the same level over and over as they grind toward that gargantuan level cap. Disgaea 6’s most immediately notable change, however, comes in its art style, which sees the game trading the appealing 2D character sprites of previous series entries for 3D models. The move has been divisive from a purely aesthetic perspective, but the influx of additional polygons also proved pretty calamitous on Switch, where the game struggled to find a comfortable performance spot despite multiple performance modes - a particular problem given that the more technically tolerable PS4 version remained limited to Japan. Come this summer, though, Disgaea fans in the west will finally have the opportunity to experience the game without its many presentational rough spots when it arrives on Steam, PlayStation 4, and PS5. Additionally, purchasers of Disgaea 6’s new Complete edition will receive all the character and cosmetic DLC released for Switch post-launch, plus new colour DLC, bundled together in one single package.
