Since the introduction of video games, developers have looked to establish themselves and create fan-favorite franchises. Despite some franchises lasting decades, not every game within a franchise is beloved. Some games in a series are considered the Black Sheep, with developers wanting you to forget that they even exist. However, when gamers hold developers accountable, one of two things happens, either their next game is better or the franchise just goes downhill. Both of these sides are clearly seen with Halo after Halo 4, Call of Duty after Call of Duty Ghosts, Final Fantasy after Final Fantasy: All The Bravest, and most recently Disgaea after Disgaea 6. At Anime Expo 2023, we had the opportunity to meet with NIS America to preview Disgaea 7 and see if it has changed.
Before we dive too deep into this coverage, I will preface that I have never played Disgaea before; yes, I have played turn-based real-time strategy games in the past, but there is always a learning curve when jumping into a new franchise; this was easily the case with Disgaea 7. Although I have been following Disgaea since March, I still feel like I do not know enough about it to jump immediately in. When we met with NIS America at Anime Expo 2023, we had the chance to preview Disgaea 7, CRYMACHINA, Rhapsody, and a few other NIS titles.
The Demo
For Disgaea 7, attendees could jump into a combat situation against a boss. Now, as someone who hasn’t played any of the other Disgaea, this felt like a very weird jump in point. Guests who were already established Disgaea players probably understood what was going on, or at least knew the general mechanics but I was so out of the loop. At the start of the actual demo, we were able to place units within the starting area. Rather than a multi-menu to look at characters, we had to click on the starting square. Each character had their own class type but there felt like there were a lot of repeats; some characters felt like they were carbon copies of another just a different gender.
The main characters within the game seemed interesting but without context, every character felt empty. Hopefully, when the game releases there will be a better introduction to the characters or a recap of what took place in the previous games. We were able to place our allies anywhere we wanted within the base square but we had to figure out each character’s speed. The game introduced a combat ability that seemed similar to Pokemon‘s Gigantamax.
We only got a short time with Disgaea 7 due to our busy schedule but I can say it was intriguing. The combat was easy to control, but without knowing our characters we felt rather limited with our strategic planning. Graphically, the characters looked interesting, but there is only so much you can observe within a short amount of time. You can check out my hands on in the video provided below. Some of the Marooners’ Rock team however that weren’t able to make it to Anime Expo 2023 have been playing the Disgaea franchise since its conception and they are excited to see how Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless compares to its predecessors. We will be willing to check out Disgaea 7 when it releases on October 3rd on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.
