About a year after its original Released on Nintendo Switchlocalized version of Disgaea 6 Complete Now available on PS4, PS5 and Windows PC worldwide. I had a chance to play the PS4 version, and although it’s pretty much everywhere these days, it still feels like a handheld game.
The first thing I noticed about Disgaea 6 on PS4, it feels a lot like a Switch game. The 3D effect looks pretty raw. Also, something about the font makes it look pretty vintage. This combination makes the game look a lot older than the one released in 2021. At first I really thought it was from the Nintendo 3DS! The 3D animations in combat when you use special attacks are rather lackluster when compared to other original Switch games released around the same time.
However, that said, the game definitely feel like a PS4 game. Everything is smooth, from moving the cursor to watching the characters move on the map. The graphics aren’t spectacular by any means, but it never feels laggy. Now my PS4 is pretty old and has occasional glitches with games like The Genshin effect or 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. But no matter how many enemies on the map in Disgaea 6it does not affect performance.
The second thing I noticed about the game is that it feels geared towards the veterans of the series. At first I spent a lot of time wondering if I should recognize and know the protagonist Zed. While the game provides explanations for systems like Super Reincarnation, Dark Guild, and Item World, they suddenly unlock between levels of the story. The way Cerberus casually tells Zed that these functions are now available, without fanfare, certainly seems like these are mechanics that players should be familiar with and would love to have access to.
There are several aspects of Disgaea 6 that might feel easier to handle on Switch than on PS4. And this could be where my status is Disgaea the novice raised its head. The game is very heavy and requires a lot of repetitive maps. This is really good, due to the auto-battle and auto-repeat functions. (Why auto-battle keeps sending my most expensive characters to the front lines and killing them, I don’t understand, though!) Disgaea 6 in particular, the automatic functions for grinding are a lifesaver considering the limit of monstrosity.
But this part of the game looks like it would work better on a portable console like the Switch, since you could theoretically let it run while you go and do something else. Manual grinding is an attraction for Disgaea series. After all, previous entries in the franchise were on consoles like PS2 or PS3. However, making it automatically raises the question of what the player should do while the characters zoom in. It’s not uncommon to play two games at the same time these days. But I usually think of mobile games as games that you can just let go of. While the grinding itself isn’t an issue, something about being able to enable auto-battle and auto-repeat on the PS4 gave me a weird cognitive dissonance.
Disgaea 6: Completed available on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. Disgaea 6: Regardless of fate available on Nintendo Switch.
