The emergence of a new God of Destruction, the strongest ever recorded, carried death and disaster in its wake.
It appears out of nowhere, with no discernable pattern or reason for its atrocities. Countless worlds and innumerable demons have been reduced to nothingness by its sheer power.
None can oppose this God of Destruction.
Nothing exists that it cannot destroy.
However, no one yet knows that this God of Destruction has already been defeated...
It appears out of nowhere, with no discernable pattern or reason for its atrocities. Countless worlds and innumerable demons have been reduced to nothingness by its sheer power.
None can oppose this God of Destruction.
Nothing exists that it cannot destroy.
However, no one yet knows that this God of Destruction has already been defeated...
Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny is the seventh game in the silly and over-the-top Turn-Based Strategy series Disgaea, developed by Nippon Ichi.
The story follows a zombie kid named Zed, who comes back to life stronger every time he dies. Accompanied by Cerberus, a talking zombie dog, Zed is launched between different worlds as he embarks on his quest for power to face an imminent threat posed by an entity known only as the "God of Destruction".
The game was released in Japan on January 28, 2021, while the international version came out on June 29, 2021. Notably, the game was made for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, but the latter is a Japan only release. Disgaea 6 Complete was announced on February 10, 2022. Similar to previous Disgaea Complete games, it features all previously released DLC. It was released on June 28, 2022 for the PS4, as well as PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam.
Trailers: Announcement Trailer
, Series Introduction Trailer, Story Trailer, System Trailer, Character Trailer, Release Date Announcement Trailer, Launch Trailer
This game provides examples of:
- A Taste of Power: Zed begins the game at Level 9999 with incredibly high stats and access to three out of his four skills, destroying all incoming enemies with relative ease. This is because the game begins In Medias Res, with Zed telling the story about how he eventually became so strong.
- Absurdly High Level Cap: While this trope has been a series staple since its inception, 6 takes it to its (il)logical extreme with the reveal trailer emphasizing that the level cap has been moved up to 99,999,999 (though it should be noted that the game caps you at Level 9,999 until post-game content, though this doesn't stop you from raising your character's stats well above the limit they were at in previous games)! And unlike previous games, you don't have to wait until the postgame for levels to get silly; you can easily reach level 100 in the first chapter, and the final boss has a level of 5000.
- Ascended Extra: Played with in regards to the Prism Rangers, whose involvement with the party steadily grew. Initially in Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, they could only be summoned as allies. In Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, the Red Ranger could be recruited into the party. In Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten, the Prism Rangers became a class all of their own. Disgaea 6 is the first time a Prism Ranger is a main character.
- The Battle Didn't Count:
- The God of Destruction is the boss of every chapter during act 1, and except for the final battle against it, it will always survive being defeated in the following cutscene despite its presented level and power during the actual fight.
- Laharl repeatedly tries to bring up an excuse any time he loses to Zed and company. At one point, he even pretends there was no second bout yet (it was the third).
- Big Brother Instinct: It's not just a major character theme for Zed, there are also Evilities that specifically grant bonuses between little sister and older sibling units. Some Evilities can assign these titles to units, too.
- Boss-Only Level: Or rather "Boss Only Chapter". Save for the first map, the other seven maps in the Battlegrounds during the Postlude is a series of back-to-back fights against Laharl, Etna, and Flonne, each time they become progressively harder and attack you together.
- The Bus Came Back: After being demoted to a visual gag in 5, the original Dragon class is one of the first classes to be shown in the reveal trailer.
- Call-Back: A bunch of 'em.
- Hero Yamarda is traumatized from repeatedly dying and being resurrected against his will, as sort of a Black Comedy version of Super Hero Aurum's Cynicism Catalyst in Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice.
- The Majin class from the older games returns, though not in the way you expect. The Gods of Destruction are made using the DNA of an ancient Majin.
- A number of generic classes that were Put on a Bus in Disgaea 6 make cameo appearances in the true end credits.
- One of Adell's unlockable evilities is "Prism Black", calling back to his encounter with the Prism Rangers in Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories.
- The Cameo: The main characters of The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince appear in the background of one of the victory CGs.
- Came Back Strong: Zed has a power known Super Reincarnation, which allows him to revive upon death and grow stronger each time he does so. In gameplay, this manifests as a 1% boost in damage dealt for every time Zed has Super Reincarnated, up to 200%.
- Contractual Boss Immunity: As is typical for the later titles of Disgaea after Evilities were introduced, all fights against bosses have them wearing the "Like a Boss" Evility, which nullifies Deathblows and weakens status effects. It cannot be obtained by the player, and takes up 0 slots, so it's simply slapped onto any boss.
- Contrived Coincidence: Averted, hard. Every strange fortunate connection happens because the Super Reincarnation spell calculates what weirdos will strengthen the protagonist on their quest. note And the reason why Zed happened to know someone who could cast Super Reincarnation on him just after the God of Destruction ruined his life is because Super Reincarnation led Cerberus to Zed and Bieko in his own quest involving the Gods of Destruction and unleashing them.
- Crossover: One of the DLC is a Crossover with the Vtuber agency hololive. The DLC grants the player five characters using pre-existing units, but with special colors and unique voice lines by the women they are modeled after. They also come with three unique legendary items which all reference them, their Vtuber careers, and injokes.
- Shirakami Fubuki: Fubuking the White Fox Ruler (Prinny)
- Uruhu Rushia: Ruusha the Seductive Succubus
- Shiranui Flare: Torte the Great Queen (Psychic)
- Tsunomaki Watame: Watameh the Ancient Horn Diva (Evil Eye)
- Omaru Polka: PolPol the Pirika Circus CEO (Mage)
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: And how. Any battle can immediately be retried, or the player can go back to the stage selection screen or base without penalty. Also unlike many previous Disgaea games, triggering a Bad Ending by losing a battle does not force a New Game Plus. If the battle is then won on the retry, the ending will still remain unlocked, speeding up the process of unlocking all the endings.
- Disc-One Final Boss: The God of Destruction is not the main villain of the game. Once you reach Act 2, you find out who's really been pulling the strings and causing the God of Destruction to exist.
- Fantastic Racism: While Prinnies have always been treated as total garbage (which makes sense since they're the souls of sinners reborn in their Prinny bodies), zombies are revealed to be treated almost as bad if not worse. Zed recounts multiple times throughout the story that he and Bieko were repeatedly bullied by the townsfolk just because they were zombies and no other reason. When Zed goes back in the final chapter of Act 1, he is attacked by the very same people who bullied Bieko, and pulls no punches.
- Fission Mailed: Zed dies and gets a Game Over screen at the end of every chapter fighting the God of Destruction, then revives thanks to Super Reincarnation at the start of the next. You even get a credit roll for it at the end of chapter ten even though you know the game isn't over.
- Gameplay and Story Integration
- Whenever Zed dies and gets Super Reincarnated in the story, his resurrection counter in-game also goes up by 1. That said, he doesn't start over from Level 1 like he would if he went through reincarnation in-game.
- Majin were the super class of the first few games, but got steadily weaker over time and eventually stopped appearing altogether. This game implies that they're either extinct outright or at least much less common than they used to be and possibly weaker as well given the emphasis on ancient Majins.
- Gentle Giant: The "Too Friendly" Dragon personality gives them a rather dopey voice that considers the allies his "buddies". They're still willing to utterly decimate enemy forces though.
- Gold-Colored Superiority:
- Played for Laughs with Misedor, the King of the Human World. He's obscenely wealthy and wears gold plated armor, and one of his unique skills seemingly has him appear atop a statue of himself made out of gold. He's also so intimidated by the God of Destruction that he thinks he can bribe it to get it to leave. It's eventually played straight when he starts to grow a backbone, thanks to Zed's influence.
- In a skit, when Piyori assigns everyone else a Prism Ranger color, she gives Misedor the Prism Yellow title instead of the obvious Prism Gold, because Gold is reserved for Super Mode and such.
- The top tier of the Mecha Girl class is plated in gold and navy blue.
- Guest Fighter: A free DLC pack called the hololive Collaboration Set contains five units based on five hololive Japan streamers.
- In Medias Res: The prologue opens with Zed knocking down Overlord Ivar's door to announce that he's already defeated the God of Destruction. Chapter 1 onward is Zed and Cerberus testifying how he did it, until it catches back up to the present.
- In Spite of a Nail: Cerberus points out that, while Super Reincarnation can go back in time, you cannot change the flow of time or alter history, as fate will always assure things turn out the same way. This is why Cerberus, aka "Misual", wants to destroy the world as he repeatedly failed to save his love, Releiza, so many times that he has become bitter and omnicidal. Of course, given the title and Zed's pure stubbornness, Zed ends up not only proving this wrong, but apparently creating an alternate timeline where he does what Misual failed to do simply because he is so stubborn. It changes from In Spite of a Nail to For Want Of A Nail as Zed and co. actively defy fate.
- This also seems to be the fate of Lemisera when the group travels back to Majolene's past and Majolene does everything to try and prevent Lemisera's death, only to fail and watch in horror as her pupil dies again. In the final chapter, Lemisera shows up alive and well, and mentions Majolene went back again but this time defied fate and managed to actually keep her alive, which allows her to travel to this particular timeline and save Majolene and co.
- Job System: Story characters can switch classes at any time, gaining Evilities as they level up the classes. Generic characters must reincarnate to switch classes. D-Merits are awarded for leveling up classes, and then mastering them.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: Averted. DLC bonus characters like Rozalin and Adell speak in ways that are vague in terms of their character arc or contradict spoiler points from their respective games. Adell doesn't correct people when referred to as a human, for example, while Rozalin introduces herself as the daughter of Overlord Zenon, which just isn't true and not something she should really be taking pride in anymore anyway.
- Later-Installment Weirdness:
- The first and most obvious one is that the game no longer uses a Sprite/Polygon Mix.
- EXP and Mana are now no longer awarded immediately upon a kill. Now, any gained EXP and Mana are put into a pool awarded at the end of battle to every character who participated, even if they died. note
- Weapon Skills are no longer in the game. Now, skills are specific to the character or class.
- Monster classes are nearly identical to Humanoid classes. They can finally Lift/Throw, but Monster weapons are gone and they now equip regular weapons, and Magichange is gone.
- A couple of the generic classes that have been in the series for a long time like Clerics, Skulls, and female Warriors were Put on the Bus.
- Every Disgaea game has a certain point in the story where you need to do the Item World to progress further. In this game, there is no such road block.
- The On the Next gag at the end of a chapter is now a Previously on… gag at the beginning of a chapter.
- The game also doesn't have an anime intro, which hasn't happened since the first game.
- In previous Disgaea games, killing allies was frowned-upon. Now, you must kill allies (and enemies at the same time) to get some of the D-Merits. This was perhaps changed due to the Gameplay Automation making accidentally attacking your allies inevitable at times.
- Leaked Experience: The Juice Bar lets you distribute stored EXP or Mana from battle or quests to any character or use it to level class or weapon masteries, or even character levels, for a fee.
- Long-Lived: Demons (and angels) do age for the most part, but seemingly only at roughly 1% the rate of humans. That makes it easy to calculate their equivalent age since all you need to do is take off the last two digits. Demons as old as Majolene at ten thousand years old are pretty rate just like hundred year old humans are rare. That being said, this doesn't seem to apply universally and there are exceptions throughout the series of demons who really do seem to have hit a point somewhere between physically young and middle aged and just stopped there forever.
- Metal Slime: Lucky Boards, which award a lot of EXP, Mana, or HL. The catch is that they must be hit with an attack strong enough to cause a One-Hit Kill, or they will take no damage.
- Mirror Boss: One of the final stages in the game During Act 2 has Zed facing off against a version of himself from a timeline where his Majin blood was unleashed. Majin Zed fights identically to the Zed you control.
- Money for Nothing: An aversion in a series that usually does end up here: While equipment from the shop is more worthless than ever, the juice bar runs largely on HL and is often the limiting factor in getting anything done using it.
- Money Mauling: One of Misedor's Evilities will power up his attacks, at the cost of some HL each time he attacks.
- Mythology Gag: The God of Destruction has elements of Valvolga's design, especially the dragon design on his armor and the halo behind his head. It becomes even more noticeable when Misual becomes a God of Destruction, possessing a similar facial structure, being Multi-Armed and Dangerous (though having six arms instead of Valvolga's four), and even his attacks bring to mind the Disgaea 2 version of Tera Star, in which Valvolga was summoned as part of the spell.
- Nerf:
- The Thief class has been hit hard with this thanks to their unique evility which doubled stealing's success rate being replaced with a vastly inferior evility that simply grants a 30% chance to generate a treasure chest when they kill an enemy. Stealing in general has been nerfed on top of that, such that even with a maxed out Cat Snatch skill and stats in the billions you won't reach the steal cap for anything but extremely low Ranked items. This makes it extremely difficult to obtain Rank 40 items, which are only available through stealing, since there's only a 25% chance for Steal to succeed. On the plus side, they eventually get the skill "Grand Theft", which lets them attempt to steal from every enemy on the map simultaneously.
- Towers, lifting and throwing were also nerfed; while you're now able to move around as a tower of units, there are no longer any Tower-based special skills, and there's no easy way of automating the process of building a huge tower with Demonic Intelligencenote and with the removal of Wrestlers and the Monster classes' mon-toss (both of whom could throw units without using up their action for the turn, depending on the situation) throw based strategies are severely scaled back.
- Never Trust a Trailer: Subverted. Despite being heavily featured in promotional material as being the driving force behind Zed's quest, Bieko turns out to be a Posthumous Character for most of the game. And then Chapter 9 reveals this was a lie and they become the driving force after all.
- Once per Episode: Every chapter ends with a face-off against the God of Destruction. This even extends to Act 2, where you keep fighting more Gods of Destruction until the game starts throwing multiple Gods of Destruction at you back-to-back.
- Previous Player-Character Cameo: Keeping with series' tradition, Disgaea 1's original Power Trio Laharl, Etna, and Flonne all appear as Superbosses in the base game. Adell, Rozalin, Mao, Raspberyl, Valvatorez, Fuka, Desco, Killia, Usalia and Asagi return as DLC.
- Product-Promotion Parade: Played for Laughs in the postlude; after being defeated, the Prinny Squad decides to use their remaining screentime to plug Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? and its sequel, which is then immediately lampshaded by Zed and company.
- Put on the Bus: Aside from a number of recurring generic classes, Priere, Axel, Fenrich, Emizel, Artina and Zetta are all absent in 6 despite previously having perfect attendance since their debuts.
- Despite the original Disgaea trio having gone through their Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness plot, Sicily (who could be recruited in Disgaea 5's DLC) is absent for the first time.
- Recurring Boss: The fights against the God of Destruction and the post-game fights against Laharl and co..
- Reduced-Downtime Features:
- Everyone heals to full after every stage. The Netherworld Hospital is still there, but it's only there for you to collect prizes. (The exemption is Item World, where the Item World Hospital appears every 10 stages and charges a significant amount to heal you.)
- Similarly to the Gambit System of Final Fantasy XII, Auto-Battle lets the AI control your party members, and you can customize it to use advanced conditional behaviors. Combine this with Auto-Repeat and you can AFK grind on stages.
- Disgaea 5 had a limit of 10 active quests. There is no such limit in this game.
- Since Chara World is gone, some of its features were moved to more convenient areas. Miscellaneous stats that can only be leveled at Chara World like Movement or Counters are now either increased via Super Reincarnation or completing D-Merits. You now create Evility Scrolls from the Skill Shop for some Mana, which is much less time-consuming than chaining Chara World runs.
- The two bumper buttons opens a shortcut menu that lets you quickly access each important facility from anywhere, without having to walk up to them or read through NPC dialogue.
- The player can buy increasingly faster speed multipliers to speed the game up to, from the Dark Assembly. After all the speed multipliers are bought, the final bill opens the option to turn off even the most rudimentary animations. Turns are resolved almost immediately, showing nothing but stacks of damage numbers on everyone who was attacked.
- Retcon: Majins were originally the ultimate non-unique class in Disgaea 1, nerfed in 2, significantly nerfed in 3, and then removed outright. In 6, they are an ancient precursor race of homicidal super-demons.
- Shout-Out: See here
- Stationary Boss: Misual can turn to attack you, but does not actually ever move during the entire boss fight.
- Superboss: True to series tradition the Super Overlord Baal returns. In any difficulty, you must defeat him twice to win the battle. Naturally, the rewards for beating him are mostly Bragging Rights Rewards - on Normal and Carnage difficulty, they'll be quickly outclassed and on the new Rakshasa you'll have just beaten the strongest opponent in the game, so there's nothing left to use it on.
- True Love's Kiss: In the final chapter when Zed's Majin blood starts to awaken, the group "focuses their energy" into Melodia as a conduit, which is a dramatic way of telling her to give Zed a kiss. Zed doesn't take it well, but it does successfully stop him from turning into a Majin. It even unlocks his second unique Evility!
- Video Game Delegation Penalty: The Item World Research will not be as fast or as lucrative as actually playing the Item World. Additionally, auto-sold items will only fetch 1/100 their normal value.
- Wham Line: Zed drops this bomb in Chapter 9:Zed: Bieko wasn't killed by the God of Destruction... Bieko IS the God of Destruction...
- Where It All Began: The setting for Chapter 10, "The Final Battle", is Zed and Bieko's original world.
- The Worf Effect: The games first level is a one sided fight in your favor against a level's worth of enemies at level 999 using only the protagonist. In comparison, other Disgaea games up to this point had their final boss not much higher than 100 at the most.
- Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: There are a few times when it seems that Zed is close to defeating the God of Destruction, only to fail at the last moment and reincarnate into the next World. However, the most notable case of this is Chapter 10. It's labeled "The Final Battle", it ends with Zed finally victorious, and the credits roll...which then leads to Act 2, consisting of another five chapters before the actual ending.
