Disgaea 6

A big thank you to user Syranth for gifting us with a copy of the game!

As the newest entry in the long running series, Disgaea 6 continues the trend of being the ultimate grinder's paradise. In this turn-based JRPG, you will follow Zed and comrades in a quest to destroy the God of Destruction. The story, while basic, does the job, but the real meat is the gameplay systems that make this game feel endless. With the ability to level up your characters to 99,999,999, enhance skills in multitudes of ways, attach bonuses, and even level up your items, you will be able to go overkill with your heroes and have them doing damage in the quadrillions. There is also reincarnating, as well as autoplay and AI features so you can configure battles to go automatically for easy grinding!

This is the Disgaea franchise's first time going into the full 3D space and they took a lot of chances here. I love the increased level cap, creating your own characters, and Demon Intelligence. If you like grinding in RPGs to make the strongest character possible, this is the game for you. Compared to other entries into the series, it does feel a bit stripped down. Compared to Disgaea 5, there are less classes, no team-attack special animations, removed character world, and some assets not looking as great. Overall, this is still a competent and fun experience, and it is even moreso on the Steam Deck!

Disgaea 6: Performance

Booting up Disgaea 6 there were absolutely no issues and ran perfectly fine without any changes needed! The game can run at 60 FPS and hold it fairly well, though it isn't perfect. While it will be at 60 FPS 95% of the time, there are a couple of areas that will drop it for a moment. They don't last long, but they are there. Because of how playable it is though, I would consider this a Best on Deck game due to how it can run just fine with no changes, but there are some you can make for optimal play!

By changing your framerate and refresh rate to 50, you can not only eliminate any drops and keep a smooth feeling, you will also save a little bit of battery. With this single change, I noticed a 45-60 minute increase to battery life overall, which can help significantly for portable play. Temps don't change as much with this, but it does go down 1c - 2c.

I also want to make special mention of the Nintendo Switch version. The Switch has different performance modes due to the hardware, so you can either have 30 FPS with great looking visuals or 60 FPS with blurry ones. On the Steam Deck, you can have 60 FPS with great visuals, which immediately will make this version the better portable one. And with the reduction to 50 FPS, battery life will be even better.

Controller Icons and Reported Issues

The one thing that I would recommend changing is the Display Guide. This is the setting that shows which buttons do what on your screen. When starting the game, it is set to auto, which will show keyboard+mouse keybindings until you use your controller, which will then immediately switch to the controller bindings. To fix this, go to your settings and change the Display Guide option to the colored X, A, B, Y option. Now it will only show the gamepad buttons!

There were also reports of Disgaea 6 crashing frequently, but in my playtime with it, I didn't experience a single crash. The game played as intended and I didn't change Proton layers. If you experience any crashes and have updated SteamOS, the Deck Client, and Proton, please let us know so we can investigate!

Conclusion

Disgaea is one of the more addicting franchises I have played and number 6 continues that trend. With a bold direction to 3D and auto-battling mechanics, I enjoyed my playthrough all the same. And on Steam Deck, I had 0 issues playing and could easily recommend it as a Best on Deck game. While it has its shortcomings, I had a great time playing and it gives me hope that Nippon Ichi Software will learn and improve for their already announced sequel, Disgaea 7.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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