Disgaea is what I would call my guilty pleasure franchise. I feel like the games very often 'go through the motions' and don't make a lot of significant changes. I don't think I used actual strategy in this strategy RPG until it came time to take on chaos Baal.

But...I still love it. Seeing my numbers steadily climb is a very soothing experience. The grind in this game feels very rewarding. I kinda wish the absurd level cap of Disgaea 6 returned here but this ends up being a more balanced experience (and way less emphasis on auto battles too) so I will take it.

Just glad this game didn't hold back on classes. Excited to see if 8 can reach the heights of 5.

This is one of my first Disgaea game's I've completed in terms of finishing the main story and... I actually quite like this one a lot! I like the jumbo and hell mode mechanics, the main cast that quickly grew on me and the story that played out. I still haven’t finished Disgaea 3’s main story, but now that I understand more how to play and break the game like this one I will definitely go back to it and finish that other game’s main story. That’s all I really have to say about this game so no deep, personals thoughts on this one. Perhaps one day I will be invest myself in one of the games’ post game.

Game's pretty damn good actually. Better story than 5, less random unnecessary mechanics than 5... but there's a catch. See, the post-game is the catch this time. It's not too bad, except the first 10 million in stats (this is Disgaea, get used to it) are obtained by class mastery or through the new Hospital Gacha system. At first the system is fine, but once you get a unit to 9999 you can quite easily abuse it, and once you do that you can keep abusing it more and more. This would be great, but I'm just mashing some buttons, there's no real "grind" to that. And the other 10 million is through class mastery. That wouldn't be a problem if classes automatically switched once you mastered one... but they don't.

I'll keep it brief with the Item World this time: It is not at all necessary. I managed to OHKO the flagship superboss without a good piece of equipment. Unlike in 5, evilities have no stat increase cap in this game, which rewards figuring out the best ones to use, but you're best off using a guide for that which kind of trivializes it all. It's a shame too because they spent a lot of time reworking how items work, but I couldn't even tell you all of the changes. The Item World has 30 floors max now, rather than endless, and you gain item levels through doing certain things in any of these levels, this also means levels are (assumably) limited to each run you do, and with item reincarnation you can do some wacky stuff. Unfortunately only movement and jump matter all that much in an item and so this is all kind of a waste of time; Disgaea tends to have some of that though (extracts in 5 are way too tedious for the 10 million to matter that much when items actually ARE useful).

3.5/5 anyway because I actually thought the story was neat and I can respect the grind not taking that long. I hope 8 does what 4 did with 3 and improves on this game in every way, including cameos because I miss those, please give me Prier, Gig and Marona back.

EDIT: Sure, I'll give it a 4 why not. That'd make it an 8 and that's good enough.

Story (1/3) - This is one of my least liked entries in terms of story. The plot went where the writers wanted it to, utilizing Deus Ex Machinas or characters that were never introduced or foreshadowed to move the story along. While the characters were fun, going from comedic to serious just doesn't work. Felt like a typical shonen style manga.

Gameplay (4/4) - Honestly, a perfect stepup from the previous entry. Reincarnation is fun again, no ridiculous stats like in D6, game is as fast or slow as you want it to be. Carnage stages added new elements which really made me think. Great job.

Performance (3/3) - Everything worked perfectly. No frame drops. No large errors. Trophies were bugged, but easy fix when you go to D-merits. Visuals were nice and clean. The Voice Actors did such a good job, especially Pirilika and Fuji.

This is probably the best Disgaea game in the series from a QoL and mechanics standpoint. Maybe the best full-stop, depending on how you feel about the story. The thing is, I don’t think this franchise works for me anymore. I’m a longtime fan of the series. I used to gobble this stuff up. I would spend hours engaging with the different menus, doing anything but advancing the story. Maybe its because I’m getting older, but it just didn’t hook me this time around. Fully realizing that excessiveness is something Disgaea has always embraced, it finally started to feel cumbersome for me as I found myself managing over 20 units and their equipment, abilities, and skill levels. On top of that, your equipment has equipment. And your skills have ranks that you can choose to improve. It’s a lot. Too much for me at this stage in my gaming career.

So in order to enjoy Disgaea 7 enough to get to the finish line, I ignored a few of its features. I still spent some time in the Item World, leveling up my equipment and even re-did a few stages to grind levels. But really just the bare minimum required to breeze through the main story.

A highlight for me was the unique checklist of objectives the game gives you for each map (limits on the number/type of deployed units, for example). This made each map far more interesting than if I just used brute force and the maximum number of units. It was very satisfying to start each stage by comparing the map layout to the list of objectives. It’s very easy to restart the stage if you mess up, but the “undo button” is also very forgiving. You can get away with a lot before you’re forced to restart a stage entirely.

The writing in this game also made me dread picking up the controller sometimes. Again, it’s the same sense of humor this series has always had, but I think I’ve outgrown it. Every so often a joke would land, but it was more common for every sentence to feel like a vehicle for a childish gag. Often the same joke repeated numerous times. Just an absolutely ridiculous script and plot. The English voice actors did an excellent job with it though. I liked Pirilika in particular. Both her characterization and the performance by her voice actor.

If I were awarding stars based on how good of a Disgaea game this is, it'd be an easy five. But for me, I couldn't wait to be done.

Having skipped D6 because I didn't like many of the changes to that title, I ended up enjoying D7 quite a bit. It feels like it took many good parts of D5 and D6 and made it into a fun game.

The main takeaway from D6 is the Juice Bar that can store and distribute excess EXP, Mana and some stats to anybody you want. This makes it easy to get low leveled allies up to speed and it's very important for the post game. D6's auto battle function is still here, but it's now a limited function. I didn't use it much, but it's nice that it's there.

Class proficiency and stat extracts are still here from D5. With the use of the juice bar and the new hospital gacha mechanic, farming stat extracts is a lot quicker and easier to do than in D5.

What's now gone are Chara World which is a positive for me. Transferring evilities, skills and getting standard upgrades like Movement up are now delegated to the Dark Assembly. This saves a ton of time compared to what D5 had going on.

The biggest addition and change is the Item World. This has left me with mixed feelings. One one hand, Item World is a mere 30 floor place now compared to 100+ in previous titles. On the other hand, perfecting or just making great items feels more like a convoluted and confusing process than anything else before. Fortunately, Item World isn't even really needed to advance.

The main story can be cleared without the Item World. Most shocking though to veteran players is that Item World isn't even needed to clear the post game including Baal and his harder Carnage version stages.

The overall simplified and streamlined mechanics does make it feel like a beginner friendly Disgaea title (for a Disgaea game anyway).

As for the negatives, I just have some minor ones. There aren't really any recurring NIS character seen in the post game or even as DLC.

The story starts off interesting and remains consistent throughout. Entertaining and with some touching moments. Even though it doesn't really have any really high moments, it was still a good story.

Comedy is frequent and on point. I never felt particularly annoyed at the comedy moments here unlike in D4.

The main cast is solid. Fuji is interesting as a MC and despite how he's portrayed early on, he plays the role of the straight man in the group filled with weirdos. His backstory is also interesting and has good depth.

Long time veteran composer Tenpei Sato did not composed the OST. Instead, the ones that did the Cruel King and the Great Hero were called to do the new OST. It doesn't sound like Disgaea overall, but I enjoyed the new OST regardless. It's probably my favorite in the series.

Overall, D7 is a great title in the series which simplifies and streamlines a lot of excess padding. It took me about 20 hours to clear the main story and 61 hours to get the Platinum so it's short for a Disgaea game. My biggest issue is that the new 3D models don't look as appealing as the HD sprites. Fortunately, I got used to them at this point and they do look okay now.

This game is a prime example of why criticism is important and why people need to stop simping companies. Disgaea 6 was an unfinished mess that didn't do a single thing right and they actually listened to the fans that told them that, as mentioned in interviews with staff. At the same time, it's not just "better than D6", it's a genuine great game.

The story and its characters are excellent, the narrative and the plot structure are the best Disgaea's had in quite a while. There's never a wasted moment or a bad/boring character in the main cast. Pirilililika is a fantastic main character while also being hilarious in the way she acts regarding some story events, and yet it's never in a way where it feels like it's "too much", such as Disgaea4. And it's never a slow generic thing like Disgaea 5.

The plot is a lot better than what we got in 5, and I'd go as far as saying it's the best one since 2 which is my absolute favorite entry. The post-game story, while short, is also great, and the DLC from previous games is mostly funny.

The rest of the cast is great and distinct, and none of them are uninteresting. This is worth mentioning because even the best Disgaea games will have 1-3 boring characters, yet here they're all great. Genuinely surprising to me.

I'm not going to waste too many words talking about the 3D, but it's good. Disgaea 6 was awful and visibly unfinished, but here it's been polished and refined. It's still not "amazing" but it's better visually and animated far better. The skill animations look like they should, the new ones are great, and most characters look perfect now that they fixed the proportions.
Being 3D also gives them a lot of freedom to make goofier animations for some units, and they've made some extremely funny stuff. I honestly really love it.

The soundtrack is sadly a step down, but it still has some great tracks. The difficulty is right on point, and they don't even let you grind or use auto-battle until almost halfway in, which makes it quite engaging.

I'm not going to go hard in on the gameplay section and the grind styles because I don't bother with LoC, 9999, Baal, etc but I've cleared all the other postgame side content. I think this is two steps forward but two steps back. Some of the new additions and class reworks make it really fun to play, while not being as bloated as D5 was.

...However, some of the core features that have been in since D1-2 were removed. Combo attacks are gone (reworked) and tower attacks are out. Magichange isn't coming back, and there's a few other things I didn't use which are also absent. A newcomer won't miss or notice it's missing, but those were some of the things I felt were at the core of what made it Disgaea, so it hurts a little.

I'm sneaking this bit in the end but NISA's actually done a good job translating it this time. Their Ys, Trails and Disgaea6 releases are chock full of typos and editing mistakes, but I did not notice any here. Not saying there weren't any, but at least nothing that jumped out at me.

Overall, this game rules. Mostly because I feel NIS banked everything on this to win back the reputation they lost by rushing 6 out the door. I'm beyond satisfied and I sincerely hope people will hold them to this standard for the next entries as well.

Disgaea 7 is my second attempt at digesting this series. Last time I tried it, it was 5, and I bounced off of it for the reasons I don't really remember.
This one is pretty good though.

It's a tactical JRPG that goes more or less how any tactical JRPG goes: the stages are relatively small, separated into squares with different elevation, you move your units around and try to squash enemy units. It has a few unique gimmicks on top of the usual tactical JRPG combat, but for the most part it will feel familiar if you've played Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics Ogre or Fire Emblem before.

The actual fun happens outside of combat.

The game is completely fucking broken, and I mean it in the best way possible. The feeling of getting a weapon that has stats an order of magnitude better than anything else you could possibly have at this stage of the game from the in-game faux gacha is incredible. Realising you can equip three pairs of slippers onto one character and make them move over half the map in one turn is incredible. Finding an infinite action loop within a battle and setting up an overnight farm to get your character to level 9999 is incredible.

And not only the game is completely fucking broken, it knows it is and encourages breaking it. As an example, there is a boon you can get that triples the exp the character receives, but only for the next map, which puts an incentive on finding an aforementioned infinite loop and sticking to it.

As far as I'm concerned, the real game here is not the frankly kind of mediocre TRPG combat, it's figuring out how to snap the game in half with the loudest pop it can possibly make, and it's a ton of fun.

I couldn't tell you a thing about the story. It's something about a band of wacky characters collecting mcguffins throwing around the jokes that mostly don't land. Sometimes there are attempts at drama which feel wholly out of place, and don't last for long. The writing in this game feels very extra, and it seems like the game itself knows this - it offers the player to skip the following VN-esque scene every time they enter the new stage.

The visuals are good. The game has something like a hundred unique animations for the various skills and magic both your and enemy units can use, which I find very impressive. I liked the OST at first, but by the end it got a bit grating - it feels like there's not enough unique tracks for the duration of the game.

I will probably go back and give Disgaea 5 another attempt. I had a lot of fun with 7, and I would be interested to compare the two.

I recommend this game to anyone who enjoys breaking games that are meant to be broken, as long as they don't mind the tactical JRPG kind of combat. There's probably some value for the enjoyers of the lighthearted anime plots as well.
I highly advise any and all completionists to never ever play this game. By the end of it, my item completion was at maybe 10% and I've still got no idea where I was supposed to find the rest - hunting for all of them seems like a complete disaster.

disgaea is like. my ultimate junk food series. it's a strategy RPG where you often times employ literally zero strategy, its convoluted and unbalanced as fuck on purpose, and prides itself on saying "you literally need to no-life this fucking game to get anywhere, fuck you and die". and i STILL eat this shit up, cause disgaea is fire as hell!!!

i was hurting BAD after disgaea 6 came out, bro. that shit was horrible, and seeing the massive improvements they've made over that grease fire makes me very happy. it's not just a return to baseline, though - there's plenty of funny new shit like hell mode, jumbofication, item reincarnation, and more that i just loved. i wasn't able to sink my teeth into every big gimmick mechanic since i've only thus far finished the main story, but i'll have more than enough time to grind for evilities and shit on my way to the platinum.

honestly, i wasn't expecting to like the story as much as i did! like disgaea has always had insanely funny dialogue, long-running bits and hilarious characters, but the story has always been like. alright this is cool but once i hit the post game i don't give a shit anymore. it might be because after the shitfest of 6's story and the lame-o slog that was 5's story, my expectations were pretty low. but it was a good time! there was more character development than i was expecting (other than higan sometimes idk why she was there), and fuji is a fire ass protagonist. it's not High Art, but i was pretty invested in what it was laying down for me!

it's not perfect, but most of my complaints are kinda stupid. i still am not a huge fan of the 3D models (personally, i still can't get over how beautiful 5's spritework is so that's probably why), the attack animations still feel a bit boring sometimes, and i still kinda miss magichange? i think my biggest complaint is that there's no fire ass music in the hub world that i'm gonna jam out to for 200 hours. like even 6 had a good hub theme come the fuck on.

i anticipate my opinions will change once i get that plat, but unlike 6 i'm actually excited to get started on it. pray for me fellas

Really fun return to form for the series after how tech demo-like 6 felt.

Presentation wise the game does genuinely look and sound great. The 3D sprites had a lot more going on and the old Japanese aesthetic felt refreshing and appealed to me quite a bit.

Story wise if you've played a disgaea game you kinda know what to expect but it's a large step up from 5 and I'd easily put it at 1/4's level if only because Fuji and Pirilika are very entertaining as a duo - The other party members weren't half bad either.

Gameplay wise I can't comment too much on because the real systems come into play at postgame but it felt solid to play throughout the story at least. With features like Jumbification and hell mode you do gotta think tactically about when to use them or the enemy could do the same and destroy your party which kept things interesting.

I also appreciate QoL like the juice bar being kept and even though I didn't play around with it too much D.I seems to be balanced better than 6 and encourages more active play.

Uhhh yeah tl;dr game is good and even if NIS has some... let's say wildly inconsistent output (comparing D6 and Monster Menu to Galleria and D7) it's nice that they can put the effort in where it counts and I'm more than looking forward to digging into the postgame.