Disgaea Mayhem Review

Disgaea Mayhem arrives on PS5, Steam, Switch, and Switch 2, the series's first full leap from grid-based tactics to action combat. In Japan, the game goes by a different title, "Kyouran Makaism", and the renaming for the West wasn't just a marketing decision. According to the development team, the goal was to pull in action RPG fans who might never have touched a Nippon Ichi Software game before.

Still, the team made sure longtime fans would recognize the series' DNA, the setting, humor, and core systems remain rooted in what Disgaea has built over the years. Nippon Ichi has described the wordplay behind the original Japanese title as something that doesn't translate cleanly, and "Mayhem" was picked as the closest equivalent in tone.

The company has never shied away from spinning its properties into new genres, and internally the team defines Disgaea less by its strategy roots than by a looser set of ideas: massive character growth, absurd stories and settings, and the freedom to bend the rules if you know how.

The tension carries directly into the story itself, where the same push and pull between chaos and heart plays out through its characters.

By that measure, an action RPG still counts as a true entry rather than a gimmick, even though this marks the studio's first real attempt at a Warriors-style game. Developers admit the shift was tougher than expected, since the team lacked deep experience in action games and had to find ways to preserve that unmistakable Disgaea feel within a totally different combat framework. That tension is felt throughout, for better and for worse.

You play as N.A., a mercenary making his money doing dangerous tasks while concealing his sentimental side behind an abrasive personality. N.A. gets involved in the Netherworld, where its new ruler, Tichelle, has ascended to power following the death of her father and is having trouble maintaining her claim to power.

Some of her father's former vassals have revolted against her, and she faces not only this but also the loss of the royal flan her deceased father created. She hires N.A. to find it for her, although the real reason is that he is being paid to do so. Everything revolves around the absurdity of this flan problem and the serious struggle for power.

As you hack your way through the rebel ranks on behalf of Tichelle, you'll come to realize how intertwined politics in the Netherworld and personal loyalties have become with the concept of flan. Throughout all this, the relationship between N.A. and Tichelle will shift from being solely business-based to something much more genuine and sincere.

The relationship dynamic is one of the most appreciated elements throughout the entire game.

This might relate to those who aren't entirely satisfied with what Disgaea Mayhem has done overall. However, not all interpretations of the story are similar. The talks between N.A. and the rebels prove genuinely funny at points; the storyline feels more like anime than a typical JRPG plot.

Others read the first few chapters, thought that the writing was not going anywhere new from previous installments of the game series, and simply read the remaining parts. Both approaches can be correct, as the mood is very comical and does not dwell on developing complex lore; hence, the degree of enjoyment likely will depend on what kind of audience one has.

On the other hand, the story itself doesn't drag on. It's expected to take around ten to eleven hours to complete the story mode, provided that you do some leveling, but it's entirely possible to complete the story mode in six to seven hours if you don't stop to grind. As the developers claim, the story is connected to how Tichelle became the Overlord and what happened to the flan, so there is definitely something deeper in the plot.

After the credits have finished, you will then be presented with the main gameplay of Disgaea Mayhem, and you will find out that this game still has a lot in common with the tactical games in the series despite the combat having changed. You will be repeating several different types of missions throughout the course of the game, as most stages will require you to kill some enemies before moving on to the boss stage.

Level progression in Disgaea Mayhem can only be done through missions.

You will have to replay the missions to improve your stats, strengthen your weapons via the Item World, recruit more monsters to help you in battle, and eventually reset your progress to reincarnate yourself in order to achieve better progress.

Combat itself plays out like a stripped-down version of a Warriors game. You've got a standard attack string, a stronger charged or special attack, a dash you can use to cancel out of animations, and a guard for when things get overwhelming. N.A. can equip seven different weapon types, including swords, spears, axes, fists, bows, guns, and staves, and each one changes how you approach a fight.

Skills are attached directly to the weapon you're carrying rather than to your character, and you unlock new ones by finding and owning gear that already has that skill attached, then teaching it to whatever piece of equipment you actually want to use going forward.

There are only a handful of skills per weapon type, and the strongest versions are locked behind the highest-ranked gear, so figuring out which weapon suits your playstyle actually matters if you want to push into harder content later. That is where opinions might sharply diverge.

The loop turns out to be fun for some once it clicks, while for others it might seem like a waste of time.

It might be criticized for a lack of enemies, the ease of completing most fights without effort, and the lack of impact from hitting anything. Regardless, the staff-type weapon is ridiculously overpowered, possessing homing lock-on capabilities that make clearing entire waves possible with virtually no effort, while the gun-type weapon is the most broken choice available in Disgaea Mayhem.

This allows for the trivialization of all story content after mastering its most powerful skill. When playing for challenge, there is one place where you will have to pay attention and use dodging – boss fights. The counter mechanic, timed skills used right as an attack lands, is a genuine combat highlight, even for those otherwise let down by the fighting over a full playthrough.

On the downside, the enemy strength toggle available in the options menu doesn't add any real risk-versus-reward tension, since cranking it up doesn't unlock anything extra; it just makes fights take longer. Nevertheless, the concept of leveling up in Disgaea Mayhem relies on the same number-crunching system of Disgaea games, just through different mechanics.

Players earn experience points not through grinding but by passing through levels, and Disgaea Mayhem encourages the player to do levels fast. The Item World returns as the main way to strengthen your equipment, letting you delve into a piece of gear and fight through floors inside it, with common items offering five waves, rare items eight, and legendary or epic items a full ten.

You earn item points just by clearing floors, and a full run through a legendary piece of gear can net you several million points to pour into stat growth.

Temporary perks appear as you clear each wave, too, offering short-term boosts to things like critical rate, attack, or experience gain for the rest of that specific Item World run, though none of those bonuses carry over once you leave. Mystery rooms occasionally appear as an option after clearing a wave, and they're a genuine gamble.

Some are barely worth entering, while others, like the rare duplication room, can be extremely valuable but show up so infrequently that many players may go twenty-plus hours without encountering one. Other equipment pieces have the same stats but with different purposes – movement means the actual speed of movement, not the range on the board, while critical is a stackable chance of landing critical hits.

Given how easily critical can be stacked, most builds strive for 100% critical hit chance from the start. Weapon choice matters a lot in comparison. Axes are widely seen as the weakest, strong on paper but slow, single-hit weapons that fall behind once faster options unlock.

Fists perform much better thanks to combo-based damage scaling, and swords offer solid reach and power at the cost of longer cooldowns. Spears lean toward top-tier with a wide attack radius and fast follow-ups, while bows, despite piercing multiple enemies in a line, fall a bit short of the best picks.

Guns and staff stand out as the clear top performers in Disgaea Mayhem.

Guns are strong enough that a dedicated player can blitz through the entire main story in a couple of hours once their best skill unlocks. Aside from equipment, you can capture monsters as familiars within the stages, but there is no certainty in achieving this. By bonding with mana, they are added to your buddy list and can accompany you in battle or merge with N.A. as a weapon using magichange, based on their respective types.

Reincarnation resets your level to one while keeping bonus stat growth, the grind needed to eventually reach the level cap of 9,999. The late-game Carnage Dimension returns, introducing specialized Carnage stats earned by hunting marked elite targets. The Dark Assembly is back for proposing bills, complete with a voting system you can bypass by fighting council members directly if a vote goes against you.

There's also a board-game-style Chara World for moving monsters and Tichelle across tiles for boosts, mana, or battles, plus a Cheat Shop to adjust EXP, drops, money, and mana gain. Not everyone's thrilled with the familiar rework, though.

Only a limited roster of monster types exists, and unlike past entries, where monsters leveled and ranked up naturally, here you must capture a higher-ranked version of a monster before upgrading it, meaning a level 9,000 monster can still be locked out of its next tier simply due to bad luck.

Mana also accumulates slowly early on, adding friction, and while selling familiars for quick mana is possible, it's rarely worth it long-term.

Grinding in Disgaea Mayhem is, unsurprisingly, still the backbone of the whole experience once the story wraps up. Item World runs are the fastest way to pour raw points into your gear, since floors reward item points directly now instead of requiring you to sell off unwanted equipment, and clearing a full legendary-ranked item can hand you several million points in a single run.

Rarity and pop level both cap out at fixed limits, but how far you can push individual stats past that point isn't entirely clear, since reaching those late-game ceilings takes a serious time investment most players won't hit early on. Reincarnation, weapon mastery, and Carnage stat farming all layer on top of that same loop, and together they're what stretch Disgaea Mayhem's actual playtime well past the length of its story alone.

Together, all of these systems still add up to a very familiar Disgaea structure, even if the presentation around them looks completely different. Visually, Disgaea Mayhem represents a real shift for the series. The pixel-art tactical maps longtime fans know are gone, replaced with a fully 3D, stylized anime look that extends into dialogue scenes as well.

Whereas previously only fixed character models would cycle through a set number of facial expressions, nowadays you can enjoy the more physically comedic effect of having 3D models moving around while they talk to you. That said, Disgaea Mayhem doesn't commit to fully animated cutscenes across the board, mixing in more static 3D shots alongside the animated ones, likely as a cost-saving measure.

The interface remains pretty tidy during missions, with skills on one side of the screen and health/items on the other.

However, there does become quite a lot going on visually as the damage numbers stack up during big battles. Of course, that is the whole point of such an approach, if you like that sort of thing. Regarding audio, the voice actors in this title receive constant compliments for fully embracing the game's crazy nature and playing along with all jokes and reactions to ensure they are delivered correctly.

It's always good when the game features a fully dubbed cast, because it lets you feel the anime comedy spirit this story is trying to convey. But there is one problem that needs to be noted: some of the dialogue that unfolds during gameplay is presented just by text, and players can easily overlook it since it is not spoken at all and occurs while they are dealing with hordes of enemies.

For those who have tried the classic turn-based strategy game series but found that the mechanics made them feel like they were up against a wall, this is definitely a better place to start, as it combines a much more accessible approach with the same sense of humor and character development alongside the trademark massive number crunching.

If you're coming in expecting the depth of a full tactical Disgaea experience, or hoping the action combat holds up to a dedicated Warriors-style game on its own merits, you're more likely to walk away disappointed by the shallow enemy variety and the lack of real challenge outside of boss fights.

The story is short enough that it won't overstay its welcome either way.

The post-game content, while present, isn't quite as expansive or rewarding as what longtime fans are used to in the series, with Carnage mode in particular taking noticeably longer to access and progress through than in older entries.

It's also worth going in with reasonable price expectations, since the amount of content here doesn't quite match a full-price mainline release, and a lot of the best character options may end up locked behind post-launch DLC anyway.

Considering the sheer amount of time required, it should be possible to complete only the main storyline campaign in just two to three hours, provided that you are aware of what you are doing and utilize the best possible weapon load-outs for yourself, although the first run would probably take around ten hours.

Unlocking Carnage mode, the game's toughest post-game difficulty tier, generally takes another four to eight hours on top of that, depending on how efficiently you farm the mana and gear requirements involved. The attempt to complete everything requires close to thirty hours.

This can be considered a rather good estimate for a game focused on small, repeatable missions, even though it is very far from the 100 hours required by some Disgaea titles. Given that shorter overall scope, Disgaea Mayhem feels better suited to a mid-range price point than a full premium release, and it wouldn't be surprising to see it discounted fairly quickly after launch.