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Been following this series since the first entry.
For a sequel to get a positive review, all it really needs to do is to be better than the previous entry, but being better than Disgaea 6 is far too low a bar, so I'd instead compare this to 5.
It is technically better than 5 in a lot of ways, the writing is a little snappier, it has multiple jokes that actually land, and at least some of the characters are not the most annoying/boring thing on the planet. Some concepts have been expanded, some have been streamlined, and it all comes off as a reasonably similar outing to 5, as long as you don't care to look much deeper.
I wouldn't usually complain about a game's presentation, but the fact that this game opens almost straight to the title screen after the logos with no obligatory anime OP at the start was odd, and then this lack of care continued into the rest of the game with it having no in-engine cutscenes whatsoever, literally none, it's all just back-and-forth VN conversations between the character busts - Which would be fine if it was Disgaea 1 or 2 and the writing was of any real quality, but though it's better than D5's writing, it isn't anywhere close to how things were back when the series had good plots that weren't constantly trying to rehash the first game.
The story feels like it once consisted of much fewer characters, an intimate story about generational harm passed down through a lack of empathy, but then they had to flesh it out to add in more trope characters. It follows the same route as D5 where you get introduced to a character in one chapter, and then they stick around until all characters are introduced, and then they get another chapter devoted to them to resolve whatever their arc is supposed to be - It feels so cheap and routine, and not nearly enough time is dedicated to any one character to make any of them feel real or engaging.
- Almost every chapter ends with a moral lesson of some sort being spouted by the main character, and though I'm all for preachy writing, it feels like I've just watched half a season of Star Trek: TNG but with each episode only lasting 10 minutes. It is really jarring to go from lame joke, to lame problem, to sudden moral quandary in the form of a hamfisted shonen protag speech. Perhaps it's my fault for expecting more from a dumb animu SRPG, if only because the first two entries managed it. -
The biting satire has almost returned, but it feels more confused in this game and struggles to take any stances on any issue, really. Most of the villains are redeemed by the end of it, because Baal forbid any of the fucking Demon characters be evil.
As much as I could whine about the downfall of Disgaea's writing, where this game REALLY starts to grate on me is its level design. I have no idea what happened at NIS, but the stages in this game are laughably boring, most are just a flat series of corridors with haphazard enemy placement, most of the environmental objects are just for show and are thus impassable, and they repeatedly have bosses that are just standing at one end of a room with 4 allies next to them casting buffs.
When the level design is getting outdone by the randomly generated Item World, something is really wrong.
That's to say nothing of the game's difficulty. The Jumbification mechanic allows you to - After filling up a bonus bar - Make one of your units giant. Functionally, this allows them to attack a 5x5 square anywhere on the map for a few turns, which adds insult to the ailing level design when some of the longer, more eventful stages can just be bypassed entirely by punching the boss to death from the opposite end of the stage. There were many midgame stages that I was able to beat solely through walking in some fodder units to get killed, and then going giant and winning on turn 2. It is bizarre how they managed to both copy an idea from Pokémon, as well as the exact same problem that it represented in that series. It's a braindead win-the-battle option that really should be reserved for use by the bosses or something...
Speaking of enemies using it, when they go giant, it lasts infinitely! So good luck trying to strategise around the enemy being able to target you anywhere, and with a 5x5 grid no less.
Even without that mechanic, some areas of the game's shortcuts to power have been shuffled around to be somehow even easier to accidentally become obscenely overpowered. The effect that the item world has on items is now negligible at early levels, at least until you're strong enough to already blitz through them at light speed, so that avenue has been somewhat removed. However, being able to pull items WAAAAY above your current rank from the Hospital (Which you can very easily cheese thanks to Image Change and Secret Recon) means you can quite easily get a weapon that allows you to one-shot anybody. This combined with the higher level enemies in those items and the jumbification means that one casual stroll through the item world could land you 40 levels higher than the current story mission - Which might not be so huge an issue if the story missions had anything interesting going on in them.
For every little thing it does better than 5, it does a bunch of things worse.
Music's okay, it fits the theme, reminds me of old Dynasty Warriors games.
The art direction is exactly the same as it's always been, though I'm convinced now that part of the reason they went from 2D to 3D is so they could add in jiggle physics - They are inescapable.
It is at least better than most of the others, so maybe NIS are on the path to improvement, but that doesn't make this game worth playing.
In truth, I sort of hope that NIS just stops. Just make something else at this point, you've had around 20 years to make a good Disgaea game and the best we've gotten this decade or last was 5, and that one has writing so bad that I can't even recommend that people play it.
If you're a fan of basic-tier anime jokes, shonen speeches, characters defined only by the trope they fill, moral lessons for babies, or yandere loli girls repeatedly trying to get daddy's attention (yes, this is a major plot point of the game) then go ahead, I guess?
Play 1 and 2 instead. If you like them, play 5 and skip all the cutscenes.
I fully expect Disgaea 8 to be yet another carbon copy of 1, with all the same character archetypes...
...Honestly, if you've never played the first one, you probably can't tell just how hard this series continues to self-cannibalise without any meaningful growth.