Review: Disgaea Mayhem Is a Clunky, Short, Bare-bones Musou

Disgaea Mayhem turned out to not only be a disappointment, but also something of a wonder. I’m amazed at how NIS could flub something that, on paper, sounds like a fantastic idea. A series known for big numbers and big grinds as a Warriors style Musou game where you beat up hordes with the sorts of weaponry and attacks the series is famous for should translate well to an action game! It should be exciting, fast-paced, and fluid! And think of how many characters you could pack in with different movesets! Yet somehow there’s none of that! All we get is a disappointing, clunky, halting, repetitive, ugly experience with one playable character that unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) lasts under six hours.

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Rather than Disgaea Mayhem being a situation in which we’re building up to take down an overlord and perhaps become ruler in their place, it’s about aiding big boss who’s just come into power. Following the death of her father Margraf, Tichelle became leader of Super Duper Netherworld with the Prinny Wurst attendant at her side in a prime minister role. The problem is, the six Psychlamates who used to serve Margraf rebelled. One of them stole and ate his Pristine Gleam Flan after doing so. Since that takes a while to digest, Tichelle hired the mercenary N.A. to find them, defeat them, and beat them until they cough up the flan so things can go back to normal in Super Duper. 

First of all, the Disgaea Mayhem story is extremely weak compared to past entries in the series and spin-offs, to the point that I think the Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero and its sequel featured stronger storylines. The dialogue between chapters is extremely short. When you’re in missions, there are no voiced lines during those story segments or with bosses. The idea that it’s all about flan isn’t terrible, but given other installments deal with strong overlord candidates or individuals and this features none of that means it falls completely flat. Especially given we just had a mainline entry like Disgaea 7 that was great and featured a similar relationship with Fuji and Pirilika, and it really stands out with how bad and short it all is.

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Next is that combat in Disgaea Mayhem feels absolutely awful. There are no fluid, natural movements. Nothing chains together in a natural combo that encourages different types of button presses. It’s all very halting and uncomfortable. Worse is that some weapon types can feel terrible to use. Specifically, the magic rods’ charged attack involves holding it to determine how far away that blast goes out, but the camera positioning means it’s near impossible to gauge if you’re going to hit the foes and successfully arrange that AOE attack. 

Not that it matters, since the more general enemy encounters are so lackluster and tedious that they don’t pose a major challenge. The general enemies from the series appear in large or small forms and attack. The CPU intelligence ranges from ignorant to passable, with the only danger stemming from larger foes with status effects. And, to further hammer home how disappointing Disgaea Mayhem is and how it strays from the “big numbers” mentality, there are typically around 15 or so in each area to “pulverize.” This is done a handful of times until the boss of the stage shows up, which can be a bit more challenging simply due to the fact that they’re likely a few levels ahead of you and are damage-sponges that don’t take meaningful hits to the HP bar until you break their guard. (That’s represented by skulls.) 

All the while, only N.A. is available as a playable character. In the name of adding some diversity, after a stage you might get an opportunity to “tame” certain enemies as battle buddies once you get back to the castle hub. (You start with a Prinny, appropriately enough.) However, I found I always tended to end up with allies that had so little HP and CPU smarts that they would almost immediately fall in any battle, negating any possible utility. 

Even the maps for each area are so disappointing and boring! We’re locked into certain areas for each chapter of Disgaea Mayhem. The minimap is ever-present in the upper right corner. Unfortunately, in Handheld mode on the Switch 2 it is near impossible to find N.A’s icon pin-pointing where he is unless you stop everything to search. But then, each “stage” actually locks you into a specific area and keeps you from progressing to unused parts of the map, so it isn’t all that difficult to move from cluster of enemy to cluster until you get the notification that you can move to the boss’ location. 

Other Disgaea staples like Rosen Queen and the Dark Assembly are present in Disgaea Mayhem. But since this is a situation where weapons and items drop after stages, shopping doesn’t feel totally necessary? Maybe if you need specific healing item restocks or particularly favor a certain type of weapon, it’s worth checking in. And with the Dark Assembly, there is the option to reincarnate N.A or his monster buddies to strengthen them. Given how short the game is and the fact that I didn’t find it terribly difficult, that felt unnecessary too. 

Everything about Disgaea Mayhem is disappointing, especially if you love Musou style beat’em ups. It is short. There’s no main character variety. There’s little enemy variety, and only small groups to cut through instead of hordes. The combat system feels clunky and doesn’t encourage smooth, satisfying combos. The story is bland. It’s all short. Fortunately, there’s a demo so you can at least test and see for yourself how far this spin-off has fallen.

Disgaea Mayhem is available on the Switch, Switch 2, PS5, and PC. A demo is out as well. 

Disgaea Mayhem

Everything about Disgaea Mayhem is disappointing, especially if you love Musou style beat’em ups. Switch 2 version reviewed. Review copy provided by company for testing purposes.