Title	Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless
Developer	Nippon Ichi Software, Inc.
Publisher	NIS America, Inc.
Release Date	October 3rd, 2023
Genre	Strategy RPG
Platform	PC, Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5
Age Rating	Teen
Official Website

I’ve finally finished my playthrough of Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless and it’s time to share my thoughts on it. I had mixed feelings about the last entry due to way too many features being automated, the lacking difficulty, and the damage numbers being pumped up for no reason, which was very annoying. I was really hoping this latest entry would fix some of these issues, so let’s dig in and see if this was the case.

The story here follows a young rich otaku girl named Pirilika. She is obsessed with the Bushido life style, so she travels to a group of Netherworlds called Hinomoto in order to experience this culture first hand. To her dismay when she arrives, the Bushido culture has been long suppressed due to the rise of the evil shogun, Demmodore Opener, and his magistrates. She soon encounters a young samurai named Fuji who agrees to help her, if she pays him a large sum of cash. His daughter, Ao, has caused much destruction in this Netherworld, and he has to foot the bill. He agrees to help her recover the legendary Seven Founding Weapons and overthrow Opener in order to restore Bushido to these lands.

I have to say, I enjoyed the story in Disgaea 7 quite a bit. It had a lot of that Disgaea humor and charm I’ve come to expect after many years of playing these titles. The new cast of characters were interesting, and their interactions with each other were a pure joy to watch. I felt this crew just had a much better vibe than the one from the previous title. This felt like a return to form for the franchise, and that’s a great thing.

Graphically, Disgaea 7 retains the 3D art style found in the last game. While I know this is divisive for some long time fans, I’ve liked it quite a bit since the last game. I think the models here look a bit cleaner with a few more details, so they look better than ever. The environmental details look great like they always do, and the character portraits and CG work is top tier as well. I didn’t run into any issues while reviewing the PC version for well over 40 hours. I got 120 FPS pretty consistently across both my machines with some dips here and there that really had no effect on gameplay. This is a quality PC port from NIS America.

Not much really changes in the sound department in these games. The characters do have some new quirky voice lines as they go into battle. The Signboards are still my favorite with their monotone “Oh.. I died.” The music here is mostly that whimsical Disgaea music we have all grown to love over the many years of the franchise, but there are few more somber tracks thrown in for those emotional moments. Overall, everything here still works great, and there really was no need for them to mess with a working formula. My only real complaint is they never voice the the lines for the DLC stories. I feel like at around 60 bucks for all the character pack stories, NIS should foot the bill to bring back some of the old actors for these. It would add a bit more value to them for the money.

The gameplay in Disgaea 7 is very much a back to basics approach. This is exactly what the game’s director, Shunsuke Minowa, said was one of the main goals, and they certainly achieved this. I feel like this was the right call as this felt much more like a Disgaea title than the last game did. Lots of the features from Disgaea 6 do return here such as the Juice Bar, Auto Battles and more, but they all feel much more refined this time around. The random item worlds return, and there are a tons of ways to customize the over 40 classes at your disposal with weapons, accessories, armor and passive Evilities skills.

This doesn’t mean new stuff hasn’t been added here, as well. Two new classes have been added: the Maiko and the Zombie Maiden. The Maiko will put all of the male enemies at a great disadvantage with her variety of skills, while the Zombie Maiden will power up all your other units on the field when dying. The other big new addition is Jumbify. This will become available once the meter is filled, and one of your party members will grow huge for three turns, allowing them to do massive damage to enemy units. Each of the unique characters and classes give different bonuses to the rest of the field when they are Jumbifed as well. These can range from stat boosts, to being able to avoid attacks from higher ground. The enemy units can use this skill as well, so you have to keep a balance. Do I deploy my big unit now and try to wipe them out, or save in it in case they decide to use one of theirs against me? This adds a new layer of strategy to the game and I felt it was a great addition. Unique characters in the game will also have a Hell Mode. This is a unique skill linked to their weapon that will give them access to overpowered attacks and other buffs. The DLC characters get some really crazy ones. These won’t be needed for the main game, but they are very helpful when taking on some of the much more challenging post game content.

Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless is very much a return to form for the franchise. It improves on the last game in almost every way possible. The story is great, the characters are some of the best the series has seen in a long time, the combat is fun with some new classes and features that add a lot to the experience, and the overall feel here is just better. It took me around 40 hours to finish the main story and some of the extras. If you want to explore everything this title has to offer, it will easily take 80 hours by the time you min-max your stats and get everything ready to take on the post game challenges. The DLC pack for the characters and their extra stories is a bit pricey, but honestly unless you are a huge fan of the franchise, they don’t add much to the overall package here. You get plenty of bang for your buck at the base price of $60. If you’re an old fan of the series questioning whether or not to purchase after the dicey release of Disgaea 6, don’t hold back here as this is a much better series entry. This one is also very welcoming to newcomers, so if you ever wanted to try out a Disgaea title, this is the perfect place to jump in.

Review Score
Overall

 

Game was provided by the publisher for review, but the extra character and story DLC was purchased by the reviewer.