Disgaea 6: Defiance of Justice (Nintendo Switch) Review

Disgaea 6 invites players back to the Underworld to play as Zed the zombie on a quest to become the most powerful being. The story begins in the middle and shows how powerful Zed can be while introducing the surrounding cast. After a short fight players are invited to see the beginning of the tale joining a somewhat less powerful Zed as he muses about what he wants to do. It is a nice underdog tale making sure to begin right at the bottom of the power pyramid and forcing players to work their way up to the top. This is not a unique setup in the Disgaea series but it feels nice to not be in control of a character directly related to or in cahoots with an Overlord.

The design methodology and styles are going to be instantly familiar to fans with a fantastically realised anime aesthetic from series veteran artist Takehito Harada. This time around the visuals have received a significant overhaul with them now being fully three-dimensional! This 3D approach is done very well and stays in tune with the style of previous entries in the series. Character models are detailed and have that same chibi/deformed art style as their predecessors. Shading is in keeping with the aesthetic of the cell-shaded characters that have a fairly low geometry. The 3D visuals, while keeping the character of the series, does in fact introduce some pretty awful settings of its own.

The game has three performance profiles on Nintendo Switch and each has positives and negatives. Graphics mode is what looks best; characters, stages and the user interface are all crisp and clear on the seven inch screen with a moderately bumpy 30fps framerate. Balanced mode offers a slightly better framerate with a smaller resolution sacrifice that is passable and when played on the TV this actually feels tangibly better to play. Performance mode, however, is not suitable for Nintendo Switch. Yes the framerate is much higher but the sacrifice to resolution is far too aggressive, the screen effectively becomes extremely blurred with the visuals smudging and the user interface being harder to read. Stick with graphics mode for the best-looking experience because in turn-based strategy frame rate is not as important as in action titles

Gameplay is instantly recognisable because it is almost entirely the same system as previous games in the Disgaea series. The whole system is taught through long and detailed tutorials split across lots of simple levels; dialogue can be skipped even though each level must be played. Disgaea 6 like its predecessors is an SRPG. The main gameplay loop is purely focused on positioning characters using a list of actions and then watching the battle unfold after ending the turn. The series has basically mastered this style of system that is similar to the Final Fantasy Tactics series, but with more anime-style modern plots. Turn-based strategic combat seems to be surviving in the mainstream with titles like Triangle Strategy coming soon, but unlike those other games Disgaea has always been a series focused on maximising damage and unleashing super attacks with long and explosive cutscenes. Speaking of attack cutscenes, this installment goes a bit over the top with cutaways for attacks. Every magic spell has a screen cutaway to show the effects hitting the enemies and while it is captivating to watch, it is also breaks the battle flow. In the older Disgaea games these attacks would just play out on the normal game screen keeping things that little bit faster.

There is a return of outstanding voice acting in both English and Japanese, and the much needed excellent soundtrack with all of the expected whimsy and demonic tones that help drive the setting of the game. They also have excellent battle music that is set to pump up players as they dive into some long and gruelling fights or an extreme boss battle.

As per usual there are hundreds of hours worth of gameplay. The career is very lengthy this time, with a plethora of levels with a smooth yet hard to surmount difficulty curve alongside a multitude of returning and revamped features, modes and more. First is the Demon Intelligence system which allows for a Final Fantasy XII like gambit setup which can preprogramme your team to act when certain criteria are met, adding a strategic depth to the gameplay that was absent in previous entries. Auto-repeat mode lets characters be assigned to essentially build exp while the player is busy with other things turning the game into somewhat of an idle RPG and helping smooth out the levelling experience. This really helps on the road to level 99,999,999. Yes, that is the genuine final level cap! These features help compliment returning modes like the Item World and Dark Assembly which offer hours of content focused on tooling up and getting the best from the experience