Disgaea 6 is a good game. It brings the Disgaea formula to a new audience, it simplifies to make it more accessible, and it trims a lot of fat that was starting to bog the series down. Here’s the thing though, Disgaea 6 might have gone a bit overboard, and this has held the game back somewhat.

Related: Beginner Tips For Disgaea 6

Being good isn’t good enough to get by nowadays. That being said, Disgaea 6 is so close to being great, and the secret lies in the series’ past. A few tweaks here or there, and Disgaea 6 could be elevated to one of the best the series has ever seen. Whether or not that happens - well, that’s not up to us.

7 More Classes

Disgaea 6 Super Reincarnating a Warrior

One of the biggest losses the game suffered was the complete neutering of the roster. We aren’t talking about small cuts here and there - no, we are talking about losing more than 50% of the previous game's classes. This is a huge shift and one that can be felt almost immediately.

You don’t start with many classes, it takes a while to unlock new ones, and the ones you do get, are pretty standard all things considered. Not all classes were “viable” in earlier games, but part of the fun was to experiment with the wacky character roster. That is missing here, and trust us when we say that everyone’s team will look the same.

6 Return Of Monster Classes

Disgaea 6 Sea Angel unit screen

Another travesty in design changes. Monsters have always been in Disgaea, and they have always had a unique set of mechanics to differentiate them from their humanoid counterparts. Each game since the original has expanded upon that to further increase the viability of Monsters and to make them stand out further.

Disgaea 6 backtracks on this design philosophy to the point where Monsters are nothing more than humanoids in practice. They have nothing unique going for them, and as a series veteran, this hurts. The only monsters worth taking are Horsemen and Dragons, simply because they have unique size-based mechanics. Not a great look.

5 Bring Back Tower Attacks

Disgaea 6 making a tower of characters

Lifting and throwing have been a staple of Disgaea since its inception. Later games allowed players to use their allies as a weapon using Tower Attacks. These were fun special attacks that let you take advantage of various mechanics to deal massive damage. They weren’t always viable, but they’ve been there since Disgaea 3.

They are completely gone in Disgaea 6 - for reasons we can’t understand. The mechanic had loads of utility and strategic application, and its removal harms the game. There is very little reason to form a tower unless you want to throw people across gaps, and that’s just not interesting. We’ve had better.

4 Team Attacks Animations

Disgaea 6 Team Attack screen

Another earth-shattering removal from Disgaea 6 is the removal of Team Attacks - or at least the over-the-top animations that Team Attacks had. These were bombastic, silly, and downright satisfying to watch. They added to Disgaea’s identity because no other series - even by NISA - used them. It was specific to Disgaea.

Related: Disgaea 6 - Complete Combat Guide

They are gone now, and the game feels hollow as a result. Team Attacks are just a numerical advantage now, and not this event. Sure, we all turned them off after a while to save time when grinding, but that’s not the point. The option to turn them off should be there - the option shouldn’t be removed.

3 Smaller Numbers

Disgaea 6 Zed Stat screen

Big numbers are fun. Hitting from trillions of damage is satisfying from a Unga Bunga perspective. In reality, it’s just messy. Disgaea already had big numbers, and making them bigger doesn’t make the game better - it just makes it hard to read, and even harder to process.

Have 1,783,646,294,755, health looks fancy, but what does that even mean? How do you process that? I bet most of you can’t read that without having to pause and figure it out. It feels cheap - and it is cheap. It’s nothing more than a way of making you feel like there is more content when in reality, that content has been bloated and made harder to understand.

2 Legacy Systems

Disgaea 6 completed quests

Disgaea 6 has plenty of systems. It is rocking Innocents, Item World, the Juice Bar, and more. The thing is, we lost a lot of systems in the transition. I don’t want them all back - I agree with NISA that Disgaea had gotten too bloated, and some cuts were needed. That doesn’t mean I wanted them all gone.

Character World was great, the Curry Shop was fun, and Monster Transformations were a blast to experiment with. It’s all gone, and what we are left with is a good number of well-implemented systems that all feed into Disgaea 6’s biggest issue…

1 Reason To Play

Disgaea 6 art of God of Destruction

Disgaea 6 doesn’t want to be played, it wants to be an idle game. On the surface, this can be seen as a natural evolution of the formula. Disgaea was always very grind-heavy in the post-game. They took it too far, and now there is no game to be played because it is way more effective to just hit Auto-Battle on every fight.

This not only makes levels go by faster but because Disgaea 6 is lacking so many key elements (as mentioned), playing the game is less enticing. There is less enemy variety, the level design is not as complex, and there are fewer ways to fight. So why not just have the game do it for you. There is a universe where Disgaea 6 balances its idle loop with actual gameplay, and we hope that NISA figures out how to steal that universe's idea.

Next: Disgaea 6 - Complete Guide