2/5 ★ – Lammy's review of Disgaea PC.

Disgaea PC post-abandonment review: The trick with grindy games is that there needs to be something to draw you into the grinding, and this game DOES NOT HAVE THAT. Disgaea PC is the 2016 port of a 2002 PS2 strategy game, notable for its irreverent story and INSANE powerscaling. Disgaea games pride themselves on having essentially uncapped stats; with enough grinding and good items, you can hit attack values exceeding 2 million. The problem I ran into, at least with Disgaea PC, is how you do that. There are so many nested numbers and metrics that the game does not explain AT ALL, so in order to begin the snowball that the game expects you to do, you have to scour the world for fragmented 20 year old guides that each focus on one specific part and then sythesize it all into the understanding that "it's all RNG dude." Items have rarity ranges that greatly impact stats, so you aren't just grinding for an item, but for a specific VERSION of an item, and then you have to grind to level that item up, and that item needs specific other equipment you need to grind for, and there's an RNG requirement to even START this process and dude it's just messy. Here's the thing though, I've done stuff like that before without going insane, I just need my foot in the door. If a game wants to be grindy to this degree, it needs to have a way to get started so you aren't floating with low power for too long... and Disgaea PC does NOT do that. The initial story is too low powered to grind effectively, and the first real opportunities to do so are tedious and un-fun but are strictly required for progression. The later released Disgaea Complete for Switch and PS4, and then an additional now defunct release on mobile, add QoL updates that make it easier to get over this first hump, but the PC version does not have these. I may go back to Disgaea PC with mods installed to speed up some of the bullshit and get to the fun bit of the game, but that really shouldn't be a requirement for a video game, guys. 4/10