After having made the heyday of the Nintendo Switch, Disgaea 6, Nippon Ichi's tactical RPG returns in a "Complete" edition on PlayStation 4, 5 and PC (available since June 28, 2022), it is a re-release that has the main selling point of including all DLC released to date with some improvements. If the Nintendo Switch version that released a year earlier suffered from a few performance and frame rate issues, the PS5 version (the one we tested) is relentless.
With Disgaea 6, the Nippon Ichi teams have been looking for a new starting point to reach a wider audience, primarily gamers new to the series. For this, the franchise has made a major change, moving from 2D graphics on isometric Maps to 3D like Cel Shading to give it a cartoon side. If we can regret this choice, we must admit that the general rendering (on PS5 for our case) is quite successful overall. If the combat animations of the different characters are really great to see on screen with this graphic style, the same cannot be said for the staging. There's a certain lack of control there and whenever you have something other than dialogs to read, you find yourself looking at very static 3D sprites. Of course, the change in artistic style is not enough to attract young audiences. The biggest difference with the previous games is in a series of simplifications of the game system and gameplay automation.
The story of Disgaea 6 essentially revolves around the Divine Death-Tructor, a kind of invincible God of destruction who annihilates all the dimensions where he appears. Zed, the main protagonist has every reason to be angry with him and tries by all means to kill him. And he will also cling to this idea throughout the adventure. Unfortunately, his many attempts end in failure causing him to lose his life. The Divine Death-Tructor is so powerful that poor Zed is dealt a total of 999 damage (the killing blow) each time...
Nevertheless, Zed has the "advantage" of being a zombie and of mastering ultra-reincarnation, allowing him to resurrect an infinite number of times. When Zed uses this process, he becomes stronger! For the player, ultra-reincarnation allows Zed to be brought back to level 1 while retaining all the techniques he has learned along the way and some of the statistics acquired.
Disgaea is a series that is known for not taking itself too seriously, the dialogues between the different characters are often absurd and seek to make the player smile behind his screen. Disgaea 6 fulfills its role rather well at this level by highlighting a good bunch of wacky and eccentric characters. Too bad, however, that during serious moments it ends with the power of love and friendship. When that happens, we don't really know if we're still in the humor aspect of the software or if the writers have a real desire to throw all this exhausting nonsense right in your face. This story is not the most brilliant of the series and the fact that the dialogues are exclusively presented in the manner of a Visual Novel does not help to raise the whole. Note, however, that the French location is excellent.
If the story of a super god of destruction is interesting at first, we also end up hating this idea because the Divine Death-Tructor is the only real boss of the adventure to fight. The software is divided into two chapters for a total of 15 episodes… Throughout the story, you find yourself fighting this opponent who just gets stronger. And when we say he's "more" strong, we only imply that he has more levels and therefore over-inflated stats. The combat always remains the same, the Divine Death-Tructor does not evolve visually, nor does it learn any new moves that might surprise you.
Where the software shines, however, is on its gameplay part with a fairly well-crafted loop that has the merit of managing to keep you in front of your screen for several hours without succeeding in making you drop out. Obviously, if you have played the previous installments of the license, you already know what to expect. Except that here we gain significantly in quality of life with an “automatic” mode and a system allowing to configure the AI of the auto mode like the gambits of Final Fantasy XII.
In other words, you can create a series of conditions and actions to allow your characters to act in a specific way whenever you want. A fairly advanced and complex system that can take some learning time to successfully create a fairly complicated AI routine for a character. To skip this learning phase a bit, you can vote in the parliament of the demonic assembly to acquire pieces of complete AI. It's useful for understanding how the system works and getting bits of functional logic.
Nevertheless, we think that this automatic mode should have been limited for the post-endgame, for the simple and good reason that if you found the trick to make your characters too powerful, you will be able to finish the majority of the maps of the game. story in automatic mode by placing the controller on the table… We would almost lose the tactical aspect that characterizes the Disgaea series. The higher stats of characters and enemies and the rapid increase in levels are a bit confusing at first, almost giving the impression that the software trivializes the power that emerges from attacks. You end up getting used to it over time and even trying to boost the numbers that appear on a character's sheet.
For this, the game highlights several methods, there are new mechanisms like the bar which stores a pool of exp / mana that you can transfer to the characters of your choice which gives you better control over the progress of your team and there is always the system of the world of the objects which makes it possible to improve the stats of the equipment. This story of stats to max can literally take you hundreds of hours when it normally takes 25 hours to complete the story.
Small mention for the post-game part which raises the somewhat wobbly story of the software. At the very end, you have the possibility of unlocking several new dimensions at the challenge taken up. You can take on spunky bosses and make your characters so powerful that even the strongest Overlord would tremble. And given that the "complete" edition includes all DLC released to date, there's a lot to see in Disgaea 6.
In the end, Disgaea 6 Complete Edition a good pick?
For our part, we had a good time on Disgaea 6. We are aware that this opus is less successful than Disgaea 5 and that the story will never be able to reach the greatness of the first with Laharl, Etna and Flonne, but in overall, the game is satisfactory in what it offers. If you haven't taken the step yet, Disgaea 6 Complete has the argument of offering all the DLCs guaranteeing you hours and hours of play. If you've never played a game in this series, this 6th opus will welcome you as it should with a game system designed for new players which greatly improves the quality of life of the title.
Disgaea 6 Complete Edition
Game rating
7.5 
