Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless has all the hallmarks of a Disgaea game. You can lift teammates (and enemies) up, creating a hilarious but highly mobile tower and proceed to throw people willy nilly all over the place. Prinnies still explode when thrown, as they should. You still have item worlds and other familiar mechanics carrying over and topping it all off is the gorgeous artwork, excellent voice acting, and catchy music. The dubs are always fantastic for NIS games in my opinion, they hit the perfect balance of being somewhat close to the original Japanese and just enough corniness to make it charming.
To be quite honest, while I am by no means a stranger to games from Nippon Ichi Software, I only remember playing the first Disgaea game way back on the Playstation 2. I also remember enjoying Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? on the PSP but that’s not the same type of game. My perspective is from a person who hasn’t played a lot of Disgaea games so it may differ quite a bit from a fan of the franchise.
I’ll do my best to sum up some of the opinions I’ve read from the Steam reviews as an estimate of perception from more seasoned players first and then proceed with my own feelings about the game.
For starters, there seems to be enough of a consensus that Disgaea 6 is probably the worst ranked Disgaea game out of all the Disgaea games. Not everyone will think this obviously but I’ve seen enough of this sentiment online. For the most part, most reviews seem to rank Disgaea 7 as definitely better than the previous entry. The majority of complaints seem to stem from the monetization of the game.
The base game launched with the standard MSRP of $59.99 in the US but on top of this were a series of cosmetic and story dlcs making the total cost $100.00 and that’s with thirty percent off at launch. I personally don’t like any sort of microtransactions or dlcs available in a game at launch but to each their own. At first glance, I don’t really feel like content is missing from the game. While the pricing structure does feel scummy, it doesn’t seem like it will impact the game too much in a negative way if you don’t purchase the dlc. It sure doesn’t feel pleasant though.
The auto battle system, which was the focus of a lot of complaints in Disgaea 6, seems to much improved in 7. Overall, most gamers seem to perceive Vows of the Virtueless to be a return to form.
From my perspective, I find the game to be highly enjoyable. The gameplay is a very smooth mix of narrative delivery and turn based goodness. There’s usually a cutscene to progress the story and set up the battle and these are quite enjoyable. The writing is full of puns and lighthearted humor. The game is set in a place in the underworld that seems very similar to Japan and they have a lot of fun with puns and names here, from Ewwdo to sushy in the English dialogue. The Japanese dialogue seems to reverse the characters so sushi would be shisu and so forth.
All the lines of dialogue in these sequences are voice acted and both the original Japanese and English voice acting is superb as mentioned above, along with whoever translated the script. The English translation does miss out on a few nuances here and there (these are impossible to capture in another language to being with) but the translation in NIS games is quite possibly some of the best I’ve personally seen. It manages to capture the spirit of the original dialogue and portray it in a way that would be the most easily understood to a western audience.
Proceeding the cutscenes are the battles and these are standard turn based goodness. Each map is a small bite sized battle, with optional objectives granting random rewards. The optional objectives in the beginning of the game are related to map layout and basic mechanics in order to help the player get acclimated. For example, one map you encounter in the very beginning has a lot of verticality in order to help the player get used to stacking and throwing squad mates around. The optional objectives require you to throw three or more times and clear the level within four turns. These are aimed at gently pushing the player towards experimenting with mechanics and getting used to them.
As a side note, I’m playing Disgaea 7 with keyboard and mouse and the controls are quite decent for the most part but I am starting the feel the shortcomings of a 60% keyboard layout. The more I play, the more I miss having a more full layout. I play almost every game with keyboard and mouse, it’s a disease at this point.
Moving on, the sequence of cutscenes and combat are separated into stages, and the stages are grouped together into acts. There seem to be a total of fifteen acts judging from the achievements and the game should take anywhere from thirty five to forty five hours to complete just the main story. There’s tens to hundreds of hours that can be spent grinding optional things like in most Disgaea games.
I also enjoy the quirky way the mechanics are abstracted. For example, if you deconstruct the Dark Assembly mechanic, it’s essentially a way to spend money to purchase passive upgrades. The way it’s presented is by a hilarious show of prinnies and other entities voting on proposed bills via sumo wrestling and the only way to guarantee victory is through bribing the voting members, much like how most governments work I suppose. Each member has items they like and you can buy those items with money or grind enough battles to earn them through drops. It’s essentially a way to purchase upgrades but the presentation is hilarious and helps to create the unique feeling that identifies a Disgaea game as a Disgaea game.
The story and characters are likeable so far as well.
I’ve only spent about six hours so far and that’s only enough to touch the tip of the iceberg for this game. While the game doesn’t require you to grind too much, I’m actually having fun replaying levels and playing around with different characters, abilities, and tactics. Apparently, the auto battle system can be used for already cleared levels and has a cost to use but I personally have not engaged with it yet.
Overall, Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless is another fantastic entry in the long line up of games from NIS. It’s a masterful assemblage of addictive combat with an incredibly charming veneer. It also can’t be Disgaea without an obligatory insertion of “dood!”
Additional Info
Steam Store Page : https://store.steampowered.com/app/2250600/Disgaea_7_Vows_of_the_Virtueless/
Review Score: 79% positive with a total of 316 reviews as of this writing (10/11/23)
Developer: Nippon Ichi Software, Inc.
Publisher: NIS America, Inc.
Release Date: Oct 3, 2023
MSRP: $59.99
Time spent: 6.1 hours
Achievement Score: 2/50 achievements (I’m having fun just grinding the beginning levels over and over again)
Ducky Obrien 