Disgaea Mayhem Review – Incredible Combat, Surprisingly Short Adventure

Disgaea Mayhem Review

I love Musou games and I love Disgaea. To that end, Disgaea Mayhem feels like it was made for me specifically. These are two great tastes that go so great together, it’s wild that we took this long to get here. The resulting fusion is a fantastic time, albeit a weirdly short one. The action is intense, the character models look amazing, and every weapon feels unique. And yet, if you’re a Disgaea fan of any caliber, you might find this an unsatisfying experience.

You play as N.A., a mercenary summoned to the Super Duper netherworld to retrieve some missing desserts. Flan, to be precise. Look, the plot isn’t compelling or especially clever. Musou games just need a story skeleton for the meat -the gameplay- to hang off of. We’re here for the high velocity action, the thrilling act of mowing down hundreds of monsters with relentless precision. In that respect, Disgaea Mayhem is an amazing time.

Mass Monster Murder

Combat in this game is geared towards intense satisfaction from the jump. Every weapon’s default moves are punchy, powerful, and unique. Fists use jabs, spinning kicks, and massive strikes to wipe out your opponents. Spear moves cut giant arcs through the battlefield, carving out a circle of death in every direction. Even the humble handgun lays down a wide swath of suppressing fire with a touch. The specials are even cooler. You have so many ways to slice through the map, murdering monsters as you go. It all feels extremely cool, and I can’t get enough.

And of course you can cheat like crazy. This is still a Disgaea game, after all. You can pass bills in the Dark Assembly, boost your stats in the Chara World, and max out your gear in the Item World. It’s a simple matter to make N.A. into an absolute engine of violence. But if you do so, you will utterly break the game’s difficulty curve.

Sand-Blasting a Soup Cracker

I’m accustomed to a certain degree of challenge in Disgaea games. Disgaea Mayhem did not meet these expectations. I spent maybe two hours boosting my character’s stats. This made me strong enough to kill most bosses in ten seconds or less. Oops! It feels like the two systems (Musou, Disgaea) have no immunity for one another. I might as well have brought an AR-15 to a medieval battlefield. You can manually adjust the enemy strength using the chest shop. If I cranked their power to max it made little difference. Without even meaning to, I became an unstoppable juggernaut.

Disgaea Mayhem also feels a bit too short. If you’re familiar with other Disgaea games, the end credits are a distant thing hidden behind dozens of hours. 100 percent completion is a laughable dream for madmen and the unemployed. On the other hand, I ran out things to do in this game in less than 20 hours.

All Too Brief

To be fair, I am totally open to being wrong here. If some DLC, future update, or detailed walkthrough puts the lie to my claims, I would be overjoyed. But at this moment I am aghast at the runtime of this game. To make a Disgaea game this short feels like a mortal sin. Perhaps if you had more than one playable character, more main story content, or a lot more endgame stuff to do, Disgaea Mayhem wouldn’t feel so painfully brief. As it stands, I’ve been left wanting a lot more.

The worst part is, I love what I’ve played. The combat is excellent, the characters all look amazing, and there are so many systems you can tinker with. The potential for growth and power scaling is pretty robust. But then the game fizzles out and ends, seemingly out of nowhere. There’s no point in building up your power so much, it’s all total overkill. You can cruise through the game even on the highest difficulty available. I wanted to love this game so much more, but it just feels like something is missing. Something quite significant, to be honest. Disgaea Mayhem is an excellent Musou game, no question. But as a Disgaea title, this game falls pretty flat.

***A PS5 code was provided by the publisher***