Disgaea 6 Complete

This is definitely a bit of a twist on the normal disgaea formula, and while I enjoy it, it does have its flaws. The writing is not quite as good as other releases in the series, although the characters can be just as fun. I did not personally attach to the main character as well as I have in the past, but some of the side characters were great. It does lean fairly heavily into the auto battle aspect that they introduced in this game, and while you don't have to engage with it to complete the game, there is a lot of grinding that it can help you through. They tried a lot of changes for this game. Some worked, some didn't, and some still need some refining, but I still found it quite enjoyable.

Disgaea 6 is contentious among the fanbase for trying a lot of new things, and I don't think all of them worked well, but it's worth a try if you enjoy the series, and has a surprising amount going for it. I didn't really care for the cast at first, but in classic Disgaea series most of them develop well and become good characters later. Zed came out of nowhere to become one of my favorite MCs of the series, and several other characters came out quite well too. The story is decent, not the best ever but honestly none of the Disgaeas have *good* stories, just 'good enough.' Mechanically, it's a mixed bag, with massive number inflation that I absolutely hated, but a lot of cool ideas with trying to make every class unique, an economy that actually *works* unlike any other Disgaea, the Juice Bar was great, and I love a lot of systems like shared team XP and specials/basic attacks both being viable builds. The autobattle system is nice for grinding, but it feels like some things were balanced around spamming it, and I didn't like that. Map design, unfortunately, is awful. Just very flat. Messing with the Demonic Intelligence to set up autobattle parameters is surprisingly fun, and overall I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed the system - as well as how salty I was that 7 utterly ruined it, both breaking some of its functionality as well as making it far too limited. I think this game overpriced by default, but if it hits a decent sale, it's worth a try. Don't go into it expecting a better Disgaea 5, which is still the best of the series imo, but it's a fun experiment that doesn't overstay its welcome and has one of the better casts/stories of the series.