Disgaea 6 Complete

There’s something to be said for perseverance! Y’know, getting up and trying again when the going gets rough, that kind of thing. Zed the zombie knows the value of stick-to-it-iveness better than just about anyone thanks to his quest to defeat the God of Destruction. He’s just a pathetic zombie, after all, and who’s ever heard of a zombie killing a god? Well, every time Zed tries and fails, he’s able to Super Reincarnate and try again…and again…and again. Eventually he’ll be strong enough to make it happen. All it’ll take is a little perseverance.

If that’s the most Disgaea-sounding plot you’ve ever heard, you’re right! Disgaea 6 is all about becoming the most overpowered you that you can be. Even the numbers have all had an additional digit slapped on the end to really emphasize OP-ness of everything; this is, for the record, a little more annoying than impressive, so it’s probably best to just disregard the final digit of any given stat and level. Damage and healing numbers are represented in thousands and millions. Forget about anything smaller than that. Who cares? We’re thinking big.

The key to maximizing your gains is Super Reincarnation, which allows you to start your characters over at level 1 (where they’ll quickly launch back up to the hundreds after a single kill) and improve their base stats, growth and other characteristics via the accumulation of Karma. It’s a neat system that makes for a great loop of level, Super Reincarnate, repeat. Combine this with the Evility passive buff system and the various skills you can teach your characters and you can start to see the possibilities spread out before you. The earlier Disgaea titles had a similar concept that served as the foundation of their endgames, but 6 really pushes things to the limit.

What will you do with all this power, though? Along with the plot maps, there’s the traditional Item World to explore, allowing you to take both characters and items to exponentially greater heights of insanity. If that’s still not enough, you can finish the game and play new loops with new gear, more powerful characters and ever-greater numbers. If you’ve ever dreamed of levelling a character up to the tens of millions, Disgaea 6 is happy to accommodate you. Dive in!

Indeed, you don’t even have to be present while you dive in, as Disgaea 6 boasts a very competent auto-battle mode that will happily grind forever while you do something else. It might be a little too competent, in fact, and I actually suggest using it on a first playthrough as it sucks out a lot of potential gameplay.

That’s not to say this is the greatest the series has ever been. There’s definitely some issues, namely with the amount of content that presumably had to get snipped to make up for the fancy new 3D character models. Weapon skills are gone, for instance, replaced with character-specific abilities that feel like they shoehorn classes into specific roles. There’s also not as many classes as there used to be, with, for instance, female Healers and male Mages having disappeared into the ether. That’s not to say this one’s not worth playing, but it does feel a little more constrained than something like Disgaea 5.

Indeed, the biggest complaint about Disgaea 6 was its atrocious technical performance. On the Switch, well, it’s a little shocking this game ran at all. We’re not on the Switch anymore, and playing Disgaea 6 on more powerful hardware is a whole new experience. The framerate consistently remains in the double digits! It’s possible to tell what characters are supposed to be! No longer will your eyes be shredded by endlessly aliased jaggies! Behold and be amazed!

Disgaea 6 Complete definitely shows some growing pains for the series thanks to the new engine and art style necessitating a little bit of corner-cutting here and there, but the sheer addictive replayability characteristic to the series makes up for this in spades. Now it’s better than ever, thanks to a new home on better hardware. If you were hesitating on trying this one before due to the entirely-reasonable complaints about how it looked and ran, well, hesitate no longer. Sure, it’s not portable…but that’s what the Steam Deck is for, right?