Disgaea Mayhem manages to bring the Disgaea formula into the action RPG format successfully, but by the slimmest margin and missing many of the key features that make Disgaea soar.

For background's sake, I'm a long-time Disgaea enjoyer. Not to age myself too much, but I bought a physical copy of the first Disgaea on PS2 from my local Circuit City (which was the style at the time) and fell in love with the series immediately. The irreverent humor, the colorful characters, the depth of systems, outrageous level design - it was beautiful. I would sink countless hours into the first game, and then hoover up any new release from NIS, whether it was from the mainline series or its various offshoots like Phantom Brave and Soul Nomad. I adore these games, and I will admit up front my bias that I want NIS to succeed and continue to bring its unique titles out for future generations.

Which is to say that I was initially quite curious about Disgaea Mayhem. The NIS team venturing into novel territory and developing an action RPG holds promise to me. Technically, they have succeeded! For a first foray into the space, it feels… fine. It's fine.

All of the essentials are here. You have light and heavy attacks, guarding, running, jumping, a selection of skills limited by cooldowns, the whole nine yards. Your hero can equip any gear feasible within the standard Disgaea confines (1 weapon + 3 others of any description), with each weapon type having its own unique attack ranges, cooldown abilities, and so on. Typical Disgaea structure where each chapter has a series of isolated episodes, with each one being a field or level that you clear before moving on. Toss in a few cutscenes between chapters, lather, rinse, repeat.

There are a few interesting wrinkles in the mix, to be sure. Outside of the obligatory block/guard button you can hold, there is the defensive mechanic of Countering. Essentially, if you use one of your cooldown-based abilities at precisely the moment an enemy attacks you, you negate the attack's damage completely, and your attack goes through. It's a very simple take on the " best defense is a good offense " idiom that fits nicely into Disgaea's over-the-top ethos. It also nicely weaves in the traditional counter system from the mainline titles in a novel way, as those were built for turn-based combat. This goes for average enemies and bosses alike, allowing you to be aggressive from the jump and steamroll opposition once you learn their attack telegraphs.

Amongst the more pedestrian cooldown skills are Ultimates. These are what they sound like: gigantic attacks on substantial cooldowns that involve a big, showy cutscene. N.A. jumps in the air, you place the AOE on whatever zip code you want deleted, and proceed to hit every enemy in that region with an unskippable cutscene to the tune of four quadrillion damage.

Additionally, you've got the buddy and Magichange system. As you head into battle, you can bring along a little monster companion gathered from the game's bestiary (and customized to the nines as you would expect) and use it in the levels. They provide additional damage and draw some aggro while also allowing you to shift into a new weapon mode with its own set of cooldowns and big Ultimate attacks. It gives you another set of options to play with and another avenue for advancement and customization.

For the out-of-combat considerations, I could just say “It's Disgaea." Those who know will understand, but I'll elaborate if you're new here. Disgaea Mayhem has a hub world with various vendors and activities to pursue. Shopping for more gear and consumables, levelling up customer rank to access better stuff. Hop into the Item World where you can delve into an instanced dungeon within each item in the game to battle through waves of enemies and level them up (yes, you heard right, every sword and cape and piece of gum has a dungeon within it that you teleport into to battle monsters and level up the item back in the “real world”). There's the Dark Assembly where you can pass laws that increase your powerful item access, boost XP or monetary payout from levels, and more - and if you don't like the look of how the assemblymen will vote, you can bribe them or pummel them into submission to get your way.

Why, some would say it's even more humane than most current political systems…

Those systems are tried and true Disgaea staples. The NIS team has been iterating on these ideas for over twenty years now, and they work just as brilliantly as they always have. There is no end to the joy of playing a goofball scenario, teleporting into the pocket dimension that exists within a pair of pants to battle hordes of demons and level up the stats of the pants, then bullying the political monsters at the assembly to do my bidding. I fell into the steady rhythm without missing a beat.

And there is a simple novelty in seeing these characters realized in a 3D battle space. Seeing a giant Prinny penguin leap through the air and circle strafing around it to do a big anime super move on its flank is fun. It's fun! I like seeing my favorite tactical blorbos in this new way.

First, let's address some of the structural issues.

The game is just painfully short. I know that's an odd thing to say for something that has theoretically infinite content, but it's rather light on anything beyond the procedural generation and number-go-up mechanics. Main stories have never been the only draw for Disgaea, but I rolled credits on the finale in under six hours. That's… nothing. Literally nothing for these games, which even at the short end usually take a few dozen hours to complete.

The characters are razor thin. N.A. is affable enough, and Tichelle is a cutie pie. But their entire dynamic is: Tichelle yells about flan, N.A. shrugs and goes “what have I gotten into?!” and we queue the laugh track. There aren't even that many other characters to speak of in the tale, which means a lot is riding on these two, and they aren't given much to work with. Sure, the series has always been zany and off-kilter, but at its best, it also had a lot of heart. Big rosters of interesting characters with enough charm and depth to make for memorable laughs and a few touching moments. Maybe it wasn't Hemingway, but it wasn't completely forgettable either.

The combat is just okay. I was not expecting Devil May Cry or anything, but this was even simpler than a lot of musou/Warriors titles. The levels are just empty corridors where you walk up and smash a set number of enemies, the rest disappear in a poof, then you move on to the next zone and clear a set number of enemies all over again. At the end of the level, there's a boss who is 95% of the time just an oversized version of another enemy model, they say a few lines of dialogue, then you bonk them, and that's it. There are a handful of maps that have a minor jumping puzzle or environmental hazard to navigate, though those too are minor annoyances at best.

The nicest thing I can say about the visuals is that they are… acceptable. They make a bad first impression - particularly N.A.'s run and walk cycles, which look and feel incredibly stiff. But they do grow over time, and the actual cooldown-based attacks look really good. Still, the drab, repetitive battlefields and small handful of enemies do little to inspire (and often can't be seen due to all the stuff happening on screen).

The real Achilles' heel of this title is the lack of a true party dynamic. A major part of Disgaea has always been managing the absurd roster of characters. The real secret sauce all along was that Disgaea was about the battles, sure, but it was just as much about the back-end optimization. You were always looking for a new way to crack the game wide open, to get a particular skill set or ability baseline on a given character, to eke out another iota of power from gear, etc. Spread across the dozens of characters you would end up making, Disgaea was often more of an RPG party management sim that just happened to have a tactical layer bolted on. You were always thinking of new strategies, finding new activities, fiddling with gear across two dozen characters, and it was way more fun than it had any right to be.

Disgaea Mayhem has N.A. and only N.A. Sure, the monster buddy is there, but it's more like having 1.5 characters rather than 2 on the field. It's fun to watch big attacks and watch numbers go up, sure. Yet there's something hollow about only doing that with one character, especially from a series that has excelled at this choose-your-own-sicko-mode level of complexity.

The lack of geo-squares and unique objectives is also quite telling. Disgaea was never a terribly challenging game, but story missions would often have unique conditions put in place by colored tiles that would alter things in ways mere numbers couldn't account for. No matter how powerful your characters were, you couldn't do much if the entire map was covered in an “Enemies are invulnerable” condition that could only be switched off if you ran the gauntlet and busted the pylon making the rule. Disgaea Mayhem lacks that entirely, opting for the same “Kill X enemies in this area” objective over and over again.

All of these caveats for a (at the time of writing) US$60 asking price are a bit steep. While that's no longer full price in the current industry norms, it's not a budget title either. Calling it a tech demo seems dismissive. But it's hard not to think of Disgaea 6's rocky start for the 3D era of the company, which blazed a trail for Disgaea 7's far more fully featured arrival. Disgaea Mayhem is not a bad title, and it's a game you could theoretically spend infinity hours in getting your attack skills to do damage totals only expressible in scientific notation. Yet it's hard not to feel as though buying this is more about funding a promising sequel down the road than it is about enjoying Disgaea Mayhem on its own merits.