Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless Review (cnote261)
Overall, I think Disgaea 7 represents an improvement in the series and makes a good entry point for people new to the franchise. It's good, colorful fun with an engaging gameplay loop, decent writing, and enough material to fill out 100+ hours of playtime. I definitely enjoyed Disgaea 7 and would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed previous Disgaea games or has an interest in the series. I bought it at full price near release and I don't regret the purchase at all.
However, at the time of this writing I just abandoned a third playthrough of the game with the realization that I'll probably never pick this game back up. This is pretty different from other games in the franchise that I've played numerous times and will play many more times -- including Disgaea 6. Disgaea 7 just has too many mobile-game design elements for me to really enjoy grinding up a decent team of characters. The Disgaea franchise really didn't need gacha, foil cards, RNG-based systems, and more useless collectibles; while cutting back on genre-defining mechanics like the Item World, innocents, and unit towers.
The writing has improved since Disgaea 6, stepping away from the "just misguided and misunderstood" themes that started with Disgaea 5 and seemed to be turning the franchise into sappy Circle-of-Friends episodes in a Saturday morning cartoon. "Bad people do bad things" is a pretty basic and trope-filled method of writing, but at least it's easier to do well than the emotional complexity and nuance that D5 and D6 attempted. Disgaea 7 still shoots for some deeper writing with nuance and complexity but it doesn't plaster its attempts all over the place; so when the more emotional writing fails to land, the work as a whole doesn't suffer.
Each Disgaea game comes with a special set of systems or mechanics that set it apart from other games in the series. Disgaea 7 introduces Hell Mode and Jumbification, both of which are fun to play with a few times and then you'll probably forget they're even there. Hell Mode suffers from the same flaw as most, if not all, ultimate-move systems: too good to use on trash mobs, not good enough to matter on bosses. Jumbification, on the other hand, is so good the designers made it a pain and a half to actually use except on certain key levels. This leaves Disgaea 7 in an odd place where it doesn't feel very unique as a Disgaea game.