Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless

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You ever hear that saying about everything being good in moderation? Yeah, me either. Excess all the way, baby! Take more than you need, eat more than you can stomach, just go nuts! That’s the way to go about life, and I plan on putting that to the test with some tasty, tasty cocaine next. While I get my straw ready, let’s take a look at Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless, Nippon Ichi Software’s latest strategy-RPG that’s all about going to extremes.

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The Hinomoto Netherworlds are a set of mini-Hells themed after Asian culture, recently revealed to the rest of the universe’s demonic population after they were overtaken by Demmodore Opener. Hinomoto is known for its culture of bushido, the honorable samurai way of life, but since Opener came, bushido’s gone into decline. Hinomoto fangirl Pirilika has come to bring bushido back, and she’s recruited local ronin Fuji to help her. With the assistance of a wacky cast of allies, they’ll work to bring Opener to justice and return honor to Hinomoto.

Disgaea 7 is more of what you’ve come to expect from Nippon Ichi’s long-running strategy-RPG series: endless amounts of comedic combat where you can grind to your heart’s content. And then some! Basic gameplay is pretty simple, with grid-based movement and turn-based combat; much of Disgaea’s depth comes from its intricate character development and customization.

Characters can learn tons of spells, switch classes as needed, reincarnate into new characters entirely to power up…the works. It’s more than a little overwhelming. Beyond that, even your gear can be leveled and customized to ensure you’re getting the absolute maximum performance out of everything equipped to your army. It’s all in service of finding what other games might consider a limit and then smashing it to pieces.

This new entry walks back a lot of the less popular changes from its predecessor Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny, including that game’s ubiquitous autobattle system. While autobattle is still present, Disgaea 7 limits the feature and places more emphasis on completing maps manually. Grinding’s still a key focus, but if you want to reach level 9,999, you’ll likely focus on stacking experience multipliers and such just as much as programming the perfect Demonic Intelligence bot. Likewise, features like weapon skills that weren’t present in Disgaea 6 make a triumphant return here, and new features like item reincarnation make the endgame even more engrossing.

Disgaea 7 also brings back 6’s graphical style, so characters are rendered in a cel-shaded 3D form rather than the sprites we saw from prior games. It works a lot better here, particularly since Disgaea 7 isn’t trapped on the Switch like 6 originally was. Slap this thing on a next-gen console or PC and you’re bound to be pleased with the results. Likewise, the series’ typical high-quality voice acting and music are all present, so by and large we seem to be back in form for this series.

While it’s not quite as good as the superlative fifth entry in the series, Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless is a great return to form after Disgaea 6’s iffy release. There’s enough content here to keep fans playing for about as long as they can stand it. That’s what Disgaea stands for, after all, and it’s great to see Nippon Ichi swinging for the fences again. Those who’ve enjoyed this series in the past (you know who you are) are bound to love this one, and newcomers will find Disgaea 7 to be a welcome starting point.