Review: Disgaea mayhem

Transitions to new leadership are rarely simple. One moment everyone knows what's happening, the next everything has the potential to be different in unknown and unexpected ways. Kings or queens or corporate boardrooms, it doesn't really matter where the upheaval is seen, as the results are just about always the same.

Some people have been through this before and roll with it, while others see new opportunities opening up and react in ways that may not be quite so well thought through as they might have seemed. This is as true in the human world as the Netherworld, and the kingdom of Super Duper is having a rough leadership transition.

Young New Overlord, Grizzled Mercenary, and a Whole Netherworld To Fight To Keep Her In Power

The new overlord, Tichelle, has only been in power for a short while since her father died, and his former crew has stolen the Pristine Gleam Flan and run off. The Super Duper Netherworld has a weird obsession with this middling desert, and the former overlord's Pristine Gleam Flan was not only his crowning achievement but also a source of power. The six bosses, known as the Psychlomates, stole the flan and divided it up equally, but it's not too late to retrieve it. Tichelle hires a mercenary who her father considered a friend, but N.A. has no clue what's going on or why one of the Netherworlds would be obsessed with flan. What he does know, though, is how to fulfill a mission by beating on everything that moves using any type of weapon he can get his hands on.

Disgaea Mayhem is an action-RPG with a strong emphasis on the action part of that equation, adapting the power grind of the strategy series into something more similar to the Dynasty Warriors games. It's also a poster child for First Game In a Series Syndrome, where the foundation has been put down but the refinements that raise the series up from being something more than an interesting idea have yet to materialize. Disgaea Mayhem isn't technically a bad game, with a strong combat system and entertainingly goofy story, but there's a lot of potential that it's nowhere close to realizing.

The basic setup is that each level is a series of encounters against small hordes of enemies, with N.A. needing to complete the stage with the loadout you've chosen for him. There's no real consequence for failure, other than needing to restart the level while keeping all cash, experience, and item drops from the attempt, and past a certain point in the game there's also practically zero risk of failure if you don't manually increase the difficulty. Still, with seven different weapon types with their own sets of combos and special abilities, plus multiple upgrade options, there are a lot of ways to beat down the Netherworld residents and bosses.

N.A.'s basic abilities are jump, regular attack, heavy attack, run, and dash, with all other skills defined by what type of weapon you have him wield. A regular sword, for example, has quick strikes for normal attack and a broad sweep for heavy, while attacking during a jump or running provides new sets of worthwhile combat moves. Run into a freshly-spawned horde and hit heavy attack to land a hit on everything within the sword's sweep and odds are good the entire mini-mob goes down. Alternately, a horde of beam-firing prinnies is much easier to deal with in the air, their magic lasers firing under N.A.'s feet while he swings at them from above. All weapons, from spears to guns, wands, axes, magic staves, and more have their own combos to learn, and it's always a good time to switch between weapons with every new level.

Each weapon can also equip up to four skills, ranging from quick strikes to mega-summons, although at the start you'll only have one or two abilities to choose from. This changes after the first few areas have been cleared, as the Item Worlder becomes available, and the difficulty level soon drops from a fun ride if you're paying attention to practically nonexistent. Disgaea Mayhem's combat starts out as a good bit of brawling, not overly challenging, but you still need to pay attention to avoid your health getting whittled down before the boss of each level gets in a few hits to knock it out entirely. Circle-strafe dashing the boss, which is the only type of enemy that can be locked on to, avoids the worst of it, but even so you need to pay attention. Within each piece of equipment, though, whether that be weapon, armor, or accessory, is an arena you can enter to improve its stats dramatically.

Story Is Nice, Getting Lost Upgrading Weapons Forever Is Nicer

Equipment can be improved in several ways by fighting through the Item Worlder, starting from a basic level-up system and expanding quite a bit from there. Common rarity items have five levels of arena to fight through, and even if you get taken out before the final area, it will gain at least a few levels and a nice set of stat increases. Finishing each level lets you choose one of three bonuses, and it doesn't take long to realize that while attack or defense upgrades that last to the end of the current Item Worlder run are certainly helpful, the enhanced experience option or increasing the quality of dropped items is by far the better choice, seeing as those are both rewards that leave the arena with you. Fighting through the Item Worlder also rewards upgrade points for that weapon, and this is where things rapidly spiral out of control as the power of the improved equipment rapidly outstrips the enemies in what's supposed to be the main focus of the game.

Aside from Item Worlder, there are also monsters that may decide they want to tag along after each of the main quest levels, and they fight as companions beside you. There's only one type of monster weapon, but it can also be enhanced in the Item Worlder, and when combined with the same armor and accessories that N.A. can use, they can technically be just as strong, albeit not as aggressive in combat as the player will be. With a strong backup companion, all of which have a mega-attack N.A. can trigger where they work in unison to rain down a strike that can do millions of points of damage to enemies that usually have several thousand HP, it's harder not to win just by showing up than it is to get a good fight.

This can be adjusted a little at the cheat shop, which lets you tweak parameters including cranking the difficulty from the default zero stars all the way up to twenty. This doesn't do much for the story levels, though, and players can blow through the game and take out the final boss in a single shot before realizing the difference it can make. Story scene, boss attacks, dodge, trigger companion attack, roll credits. Even on the higher difficulties, most players won't have much trouble. That doesn't, however, remain true for the Item Worlder battles, which become a meat grinder after the first few arenas.

While Disgaea Mayhem's story is oddly short, but a lot of fun thanks to the strong voice acting and taking its silly flan-based power struggles just seriously enough, the meat of the game comes in the treadmill of the Item Worlder. It's very common to get a new, better weapon as a reward, and even if the path to power doesn't actually lead anywhere because the story is complete, it's still oddly compelling while in-game to see how ridiculously powerful N.A. can get. One weapon leads to another, different armor and accessories for both N.A. and his monster companions keep the small selection of stats creeping ever higher, and the levels of each expand into the thousands. And yet, at higher difficulty levels, the Item Worlder swarm can still stomp you flat if you're not careful.

Closing Comments:

Once the credits roll and the epilogue is complete, there's no reason to go back into its remaining challenges because there's nothing to use them for. No super-secret thousand floor dungeon, no bonus challenge, nothing but earning equipment to earn equipment to earn even more equipment, and that's not enough. Disgaea Mayhem has plenty of systems to play with (such as the previously mentioned Dark Chocolate Assembly, where you pass bills to add new features by either voting or, if they say Nay, beating everyone up) and a strong path from low-level scrub to dominating battlefield god, but it's like having a knife that could cleanly slice through the crust of a neutron star but only needing it to butter toast. What's the point of having all that power if the only thing you can earn is even more power that you've got no use for?