Nippon Ichi did not manage the supposed relaunch of its flagship series very well: Disgaea 6 was supposed to break with the past, represent a soft reboot with a new graphic design to make way for new players and instead, as we saw in the review of the game, It was no laughing matter. Opposite order, let's take a step back, they must have said in Kakamigahara, and meanwhile they began to frustrate the main supporters of the previous technical disaster. In this sense, it could be said that Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless It is a restorative title in several aspects.
If you love Disgaea, this is probably the question on your mind right now: is it better than Disgaea 5, which many consider the pinnacle of the series? If you want to know more just keep reading ours. Disgaea 7 review, which we tested in the Nintendo Switch version, but keep in mind that we will also and above all target new players, those who approach Disgaea for the first time and want to know whether or not to invest their money in one of the best games of strategic roles in circulation.
Stories of demons and Bushido
Not that it makes much sense to talk about fiction in a game like Disgaea, which is practically a set of repeated gags and double meanings, dialogues dubbed into English or Japanese - subtitles only in English - between static illustrations that follow a brief common thread. Some Disgaea have taken themselves more seriously than others, but that's not the case with Vows of the Virtueless, which is, in fact, one of the craziest episodes we've played in these twenty years.
Now it doesn't even make sense to talk about chronology; This time we find ourselves in Hinomoto, a universe made up of several Underworlds where demons followed the code of honor of Bushido until the Demmodoro Opener arrived to impose a sadistic regime, things like that, those who don't pay taxes have to be killed to death (sic!). Oh well, it's not as terrible as it seems and the demons generally took it well, especially Fuji, our protagonist, who hates Bushido, but also hates Demodoro for reasons that will be discovered during the adventure.
Therefore Fuji and Pirilika form a strange couple: she, on the other hand, is obsessed with Bushido, practically a first-class otaku who aims to restore it by bringing together the sects. legendary weapons of the Founders, extremely powerful artifacts that grant extraordinary powers to those who wield them. And that's essentially the whole story. Divided into episodes, with advertising breaks between each one, it follows the adventures of the protagonists and the strange allies who join their cause between one mission and another. The dynamic is the same as always: there is a headquarters and from there you access the campaign or all the different functionalities that are unlocked little by little.
Making a sterile list of what Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless adds or subtracts from the series would make little sense, just as it would be a waste of time to focus on the parameters, statistics, percentages and the countless possibilities and synergies that the new Strategic role-playing game by Nippon Ichi. If you're a die-hard fan of the series, used to building the perfect team over hundreds of hours that can deal billions of damage in one go, you probably don't need any prior knowledge.
The basics of Disgaea 7 combat
We are also addressing those who have never touched Disgaea, and the first question they will ask us is: can we start with the votes of the virtueless? Absolutely yes, and at a narrative level there are no connections with the other games other than vague references, while at a playable level the issue is more complicated. Disgaea 7 explains each blessed mechanic with clear and complete tutorials. You have to read the subtitles, digest them, and then put the pieces together to get the most out of them. It's not an easy game, certainly not as easy as Disgaea 6 was, and overall it felt easier. demanding compared to the average of the series, for a series of reasons that we will explain to you.
In particular, the combat system asynchronous could give beginners a hard time. The player can deploy a certain number of characters on the chessboard battlefield, and during his turn he can move them and make them act without following a logical or precise order. He can, for example, move a character near a healer, have them heal, move them somewhere else, and have them attack a target. As long as the Execute command is not used, it is possible to cancel any decision, and the turn ends only when the player decides. At that point it's the enemy's turn, then we start again.
The basics are easy enough to understand, but Disgaea 7 is a title that overwhelms the player with statistics, percentages, parameters, numbers and features from the first minutes. New recruits may have some difficulty getting their heads around all this information and descriptions, especially since the game doesn't clearly explain the core loop, which depends more than anything on how you approach battles and how you get back to Pirilika's headquarters. Unlike the previous title, for example, you will now have to manually heal the characters after each battle, going throughPaid hospital: Fluid missions are scarce with HL, Disgaea's main currency, and to accumulate them you have to resort to various solutions that in the first hours of play are quite limited.
This means that after some unfortunate battle where you might have preferred to experiment rather than play it safe, you might find yourself with less HL than you need to heal the entire team, and thus might be forced to do so. repeat the first missions just to accumulate the money needed to get the characters back on track.
It's a rather unfortunate solution, it must be said, but the currency has a drawback: each paid cure translates into another currency with which you can participate in a kind of prize draw that rewards the player with useful consumables, interesting equipment, HL. and Manna. And this loop serves to pass the first hours, at least until the secondary tasks, repeatable or not, or theWorld of the article. At that point, Disgaea 7 really starts to take shape. Many more possibilities for customization and experimentation open up, especially now that Nippon Ichi has redesigned the Item World and the usefulness of equipment is coming back to the fore. By putting together the different functions offered by the headquarters, you will be able to plan real strategies with which to accumulate resources in abundance.
Is all this really necessary? Not really, unless you want to delve deeper into what Disgaea 7 can offer you. The campaign develops without too much paranoia, although from time to time you have to stop to work on the characters to overcome certain obstacles difficulty peaks, but we must admit that it doesn't make much sense to play Disgaea just for the story which, as we said, is hilarious but not exactly memorable, also because the new cast, with the exception of certain main characters, is quite stereotyped. .
Much or too much?
Sinking your claws into Disgaea 7 means calmly studying every opportunity and making mistakes and trying again, sometimes investing more time than necessary. One aspect of this seventh chapter that left a bad taste in our mouths, for example, is the excessive number of elements locked behind the usual. dark assembly: We have to pay in Mana - a currency that the characters earn individually - and it is not certain that the council will vote in favor of our request. You can always reload the game, of course, but that's not the point. To unlock certain content you must necessarily invest additional time and effort, especially now that, unlike what happened in Disgaea 6, theexperience What is earned in combat is no longer shared or assigned at the end of the mission, but is instead awarded individually each time a character performs certain actions.
On the one hand, this means that you can manipulate the dynamics of the game to exploit it to your advantage. If you want to grow a certain character quickly, you can go to the Dark Assembly to make him gain triple experience points in the next mission and have him absorb the experience gained by his teammates: at that point you can corner him. , send the strongest ones and let them get all their experience.
On the other hand, Disgaea 7 offers shortcuts such as juice bar, in which extra experience points are accumulated that can then be distributed as desired, and Reincarnation, which allows a character's level to be reset, maintaining a percentage of the values achieved. All things that Disgaea fans have already done in the past. There is a lack of innovation, in this sense, because some mechanics have changed, others have been cancelled, but in general we have reached the seventh iteration of a series that has remained the same for twenty years, and fatigue is beginning to appear. ...becomes too important to ignore.
Naturally, there are some new features that liven up the gameplay a bit. Unique characters who obtain the Founders' weapons can meet certain requirements to activate a temporary upgrade, called hell mode, which makes them much stronger and grants them additional abilities and special moves. In this sense, Nippon Ichi worked better on the unique characters, which seemed more balanced and versatile than in the past: super enthusiasts will probably still prefer customizable units, which can draw on a large number of different classes, but gamers of the At the last minute they will be able to safely line up Fuji, Pirilika, Ceefore and company to finish the story.
Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless is still a title where you can reach ridiculous levels like 9.999, deal damage in the billions, and witness chains of counterattacks that never end. The Japanese developer has also reviewed and fixed the master's degree in weapons - now each category unlocks a certain number of skills - and monsters, which have been diversified better than before and now have their own reason. Mechanics such as lifting and throwing or the system of Geographic panel - parts of the map that can be influenced with advantages or disadvantages conferred by small moving pyramids - return in the same sizes as in previous episodes, but the level design of the maps seemed significantly more thoughtful, especially in the campaign, while In the world Procedural Item, we preferred to opt for maps that were completed in pieces.
Nippon Ichi also changed the demonic intelligence, that is, the functionality that allows you to establish a series of logical parameters - like Final Fantasy XII's Gambits, so to speak - to automate battles. Not only does it now consume a limited resource that must be accumulated by fighting, but combat cannot be automated except on already completed campaign maps. Maps that we can also visit later as in a normal RPG to find collectibles and special secondary missions.
The most innovative gameplay of Disgaea 7 is the call Jumbification. Once certain conditions are met, it is possible to expand a team character who will remain on the map for three turns like a real kaiju, with an introductory scene reminiscent of disaster movies. The jumbified character can attack in two ways: he can attack a large area of the map, dealing tons of damage (which is also increased) to all units caught in the middle, or he can target an enemy character who has been jumbified. .
At first, we weren't particularly excited about Jumbification. Used to close missions quickly; Once the gauge fills, you grow a character and destroy the remaining enemies in the blink of an eye. But continuing the game, as the difficulty increases and theAI becomes bitter, Jumbification takes on more and more strategic contours: our kaiju serve to attract the attention of enemies, who would prefer to attack them than our normal units, and at the same time we have to race against time because the duration is limited and He cannot remain helpless at the mercy of an enemy Godzilla.
Technical improvements
We are omitting several particularities in our examination, such as the Equipment in which it is possible to gather characters to obtain specific bonuses, the redesign of Innocence in the Item World, the random attributes that influence weapons and accessories... There is a lot to say, but it is all information that will be especially interesting to a certain niche of players, those who at this point have already understood whether or not they want to play this new version of Disgaea and who will find what they are looking for.
The strategic Nippon Ichi can last about thirty hours Like three hundred, it all depends on how you approach it, and the extra content is significant: side quests, unique secret characters to unlock, super bosses to defeat, etc. The Item World itself, now that items can also be reincarnated, represents practically infinite content, and the multiplayer mode, scarce as it is, deserves a mention.
Of course the problem lies in overcoming the obstacle of repetitiveness, not only in terms of gameplay, but also in the similarities between this Disgaea 7 and the previous ones. Numerous options allow you to customize the game, speed up animations and movements, automatically delete cutscenes during combat, completely skip story interludes - you can play as you like, but the truth is that the series started from time to time to also consolidate in a technical sense.
Compared to Disgaea 6, which was a disaster, fortunately progress has been made. The engine is still the same, but i. Models 3D They are much sharper and more detailed, this time, with more fluid and refined animations, both in the intermediate scenes of spells and special attacks, and on the actual battlefield. Disgaea 7 is overall a very colorful title, reflecting the brilliant liveliness of Hinomoto's settings, especially on the OLED screen, with crisp character design that will drive Japanese animation lovers crazy.
with performance of Disgaea 6 at the launch of the Nintendo Switch version there is not even a comparison: the two graphic modes guarantee greater fluidity and the other a better image definition, with visible slowdowns only in the busiest maps which, in any case, also do not they bother Everything is better, and so are the Música de Takeshi Matsumoto y Tomohiro Horihata., which replace the historic Tenpei Sato, hold their own well, but perhaps we are beginning to really feel the need for a generational leap that projects Disgaea into the future without distorting it.
Conclusions
Tested version Nintendo Switch digital delivery Nintendo eShop Price 59,99 € Holygamerz.com 8.0 Readers (1) 8.2 your voteWhile not a triumph of originality and innovation, Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless is a return to the complexity that made the Nippon Ichi series one of the most beloved in the turn-based strategy genre. The Japanese developer has put all its heart into this iteration which, despite its technical limitations, will guarantee a lot of satisfaction to die-hard Disgaea fans. We also recommend it to fans of the genre who are approaching this brand for the first time, but we must warn them that the climb is steep and the game takes its time, even somewhat clumsily, before really getting going.
PRO
- Perhaps the best and most complete iteration of Disgaea.
- Greater possibility of customization and experimentation.
AGAINST
- The progression is not exactly balanced
- Constant feeling of déjà vu for series veterans
