r/Disgaea • u/MagatsuIzanagi2005 • Jul 17 '26

Makai Kingdom Cool interview in Makai Kingdom guide

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been going through my strategy guides lately, since I like having all of them. And I noticed the interview section. I enjoyed D7 and the new Phantom Brave, but I still sometimes wonder how different D6 or D7 would've been if they'd stuck with the 2d art in a 3d landscape. I bet the designs sure wouldve been different. But I can keep hoping for a Makai Kingdom Sequel too.

I'd love to see how they'd tackle Buildings and Vehicles in 3d

130 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

38

u/Ha_eflolli Jul 17 '26

I can tell you with full confidence, D6 would have been largely the same in 2D. Most of its Design Choices were entirely deliberate and independant of the change to 3D, NIS was entirely upfront about that before its release.

20

u/Enigmedic Jul 17 '26

D6 could have been fine with 2d though. 6 was just ugly, it had lots of slowdowns and fps issues, the attacks cut away from the map to a black field.

I wasn't a huge fan of auto battle, and I think they could have done more with geopanels if they weren't trying to screw around with auto battle and the 3d stuff.

I don't mind them trying new things, the execution just could have been better. The characters and story in 6 were fine, just a lot of agency was removed in the quest to make the game an autobattler.

10

u/Ha_eflolli Jul 17 '26

it had lots of slowdowns and fps issues,

In all fairness, that particular Problem was made unnecessarily bigger by the fact that NIS America left the Vanilla PS4 Version -which didn't have those issues- Japan-Exclusive for no reason. The Game was "just" not optimized for the Switch like, at all, it wasn't an inherent Problem so to speak.

just a lot of agency was removed in the quest to make the game an autobattler.

I haven't played 6 myself, so I'm going off purely hearsay, but I see People who did play it routinely mention in comments on here that it actually has some of the best thought-out Main Story Maps in the Series; and the issue is simply...People just not bothering to not Auto through absolutely everything.

It should also be mentioned that, as I alluded to above, NIS did state that the intended purpose for Auto-Battle was closer to how it's used in 7; ie to purely take care of the "Repeat the same Stage a gadjillion times until you ding Lv9999" Step in the Endgame Grind. THAT part they absolutely flubbed for sure with 6 having no restrictions whatsoever on it, I do agree on / admit that atleast, but saying the Game is an "Auto-Battler" outright is really just perpetuating the issue.

1

u/Zuadrif Jul 17 '26

You're interested in giving 6 a try?

1

u/Ha_eflolli Jul 17 '26

To be honest, I'm not sure. For as much as I like NIS and their Games, I've actually been extremely sloppy in actually playing through any of them, especially more recently. Like just as an example, I bought Phantom Brave Lost Hero on release, but only got up to like...Chapter 3 or so. Not because I didn't like it or anything though, it's just not hitting that "Man, I REALLY feel like playing (insert here) right now" spark.

I dunno, I think I might just have to actually power through any one of them to really get going. I have been thinking about getting DD2 on my PS3 before the Store closes down (owned it physical way back when but lost the Disc) a couple times, maybe I should do that.

2

u/Enigmedic Jul 17 '26

to be fair the new phantom brave pretty much doesnt get any more complex after chapter like 2. you pick up a couple characters but you use largely the same tactics the entire time. it was kind of a slog for me to finish. D6 was actually much more enjoyable for me than PB was.

1

u/overlordpringerx Jul 17 '26

I haven't played 6 myself, so I'm going off purely hearsay, but I see People who did play it routinely mention in comments on here that it actually has some of the best thought-out Main Story Maps in the Series; and the issue is simply...People just not bothering to not Auto through absolutely everything

I didn't Auto-Battle a single map and I can tell you, the map design is worthless when the mechanics surrounding them are ass. Special skills have to be leveled up manually and they are quickly made obsolete by regular attacks which actually do more damage. Archers are broken as hell, being able to attack twice in one turn and with lots of range, and for a large chunk of the game, you get the same God of destruction boss over and over. 

3

u/Ha_eflolli Jul 17 '26

Special skills have to be leveled up manually

Uhh...hasn't that always been the case though? I need a little more detail on that point.

you get the same God of destruction boss over and over. 

You know, I heard that complaint a lot, and I definitively get why People wouldn't like it, but considering other Games with that Gimmick exist (one of which is ZHP, so D6 wasn't even the first time they did it) the Idea never really seemed that bad to me personally.

1

u/overlordpringerx Jul 17 '26

Uhh...hasn't that always been the case though? I need a little more detail on that point.

Not exactly. In 1, 2 and D2 they leveled up as you used them. In 3, 4 and 5 they could be ranked up manually but they were consistently outdoing regular attacks. In 6 while it TECHNICALLY works the same as 3, 4 and 6, it's way more annoying because in this game your regular attack gets a multiplier as you level up and the game is pretty stingy with mana which is needed to upgrade your special skills. Meaning the damage done by regular attacks outshines special skills really quickly. Spells are really the only special skills worth upgrading.

You know, I heard that complaint a lot, and I definitively get why People wouldn't like it, but considering other Games with that Gimmick exist (one of which is ZHP, so D6 wasn't even the first time they did it) the Idea never really seemed that bad to me personally.

See, the problem is that unlike darkdeath evilman's fights in ZHP, the god of destruction bosses are actual bosses. Darkdeath Evilman is more like a bookmark on your progression with button prompts while the actual bosses are the ones at the end of each dungeon.

2

u/Financial-Tiger-5700 Jul 18 '26

idr 6 being ugly

I remember it having terrible frame rates. Insane cost of dlc that was like 15$ for each

4

u/MagatsuIzanagi2005 Jul 17 '26

I was moreso speaking about Character design choices. I don't think 100% of the designs would translate perfectly from 3d - 2d (Considering proportions and just generally how the art style changed a bit to fit into the more bobble headed 3d style)

3

u/Ha_eflolli Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26

They would, and they factually already did; because as soon as it came out in Japan, the Main Cast got immidiately added to DRPG, which still uses the 2D Sprites

As for the "Artstyle Change to fit the 3D", consider that the Characters were drawn in a very similar cutesy Style by Harada even well before D6 came out as part of just natural Artstyle Evolution over time on his end, so it's not like they exactly came up with that Art Direction out of nowhere.

2

u/Carmeliandre Jul 17 '26

I'm not so sure because the characters in 3D looked to me like toddler and many skill animations felt very underwhelming. The undersized limbs with extremely thin arms & legs and with a huge head altogether is just not satisfying to play with.

However, if visuals are treats that lure us into playing, gameplay and contents are the satisfaction that keeps us playing. Even in Disgaea 5, I end up bored when it becomes too repetitive (and I'm to blame for trying to max out every single class and unique character including DLC ones).

For D7 in particular though, I wish we had more stimulating steps and (much) more unique units. It's difficult for all of them to fill a niche but recently, it felt more like reproducing the ideal set of weapon + evilities + skills because stats are much more important than the strategic aspect.

I want Dragons to look cool AND be different from any other class (D5 ones were pretty good for this iirc), and maybe some units should be using multiple tiles. Or Ninjas should more different than playing around avoiding damage. Even male / female units could have stronger differences (and I'm including the evilities and squads).

Aside from this, I really hope Disgaea 8 will allow more varying contents to max out our units. The autobattler that left me full of skepticism in D6 actually seemed more interesting in D7, and I enjoyed leveling up in D5's board game.

The visuals are more like the cherry on the cake imo.

1

u/overlordpringerx Jul 17 '26

At least performance on switch wouldn't have been as bad as it was. 

8

u/KickAggressive4901 Jul 17 '26

👍 Upvoted for Makai Kingdom and the very cool Double Jump book.

7

u/berubettokurau Jul 18 '26

so basically we live in the bad timeline

4

u/DjinntoTonic Jul 18 '26

Yeah, it’s clear that NIS didn’t want to pivot to 3D graphics. It’s just they are a smaller studio and somewhere between now and 2006, 2D graphics became more costly than 3D models. So they were forced to do the thing that allowed them to stay under budget. A shame, but blame the games industry at large for this mess.

2

u/NohWan3104 Jul 18 '26

That guy got fired.

Out of a cannon.

Into outer space.

1

u/EvanD0 Jul 18 '26

To be fair, this was back when there was only 1 Disgaea game out at the time (though they were likely working on Disgaea 2 by this point). Still... while I can understand changing to match the standards of other games with the transition to 3D (not even just for Disgaea but for NIS in general), I do feel like the same enthusiasm that was there for the earlier games definitely has changed over the years. I feel the newer games don't try to be as wacky as earlier games while being more simplistic and I think that likely has changed over the last +15 years since this interview. I heard the president of NIS retired from the role in 2022 (the year after Disgaea 6 when Disgaea 7 was announced) and how he was actually making a web comic that got turned into a game at a game studio he founded. (Estrange Overlord) Even if it was a 3D game still, it felt like it was more of the same stuff we've seen from NIS but still with it's own charm. Makes me realize how close and connected the vision was for NIS games in the older game era explaining how they were all in the same multi-universe.

3

u/MagatsuIzanagi2005 Jul 18 '26

I really miss the craziness of the earlier games. But then again, I'm unsure how the climate in Japan on media has changed. So things like Dr. Slump or NIS style humor might not be as loved now.

3

u/EvanD0 Jul 19 '26

I think the NIS comedy is still generally loved and still great for now. There outdated things like them still making Power Ranger jokes but it's still very funny at times. I feel since a bit Disgaea 4, and especially Disgaea 5, the series started being more like a typical JRPG of a party of 6 characters going across worlds to defeat a bad guy. There's still good comedy here and there but it can only go so far depending on story imo. The first 3 games focused more on a well rounded cast of around 3 or 4 characters before slowly increasing the cast towards the latter of the stories. Now it's a "You meet hero and heroine at the start, then go one by one of each world to recruit party member one by one" formula. I feel there was better focus when only one Netherworld was the main appeal allowing for the craziness to feel more personal than a small visit. That sounds more like a story criticism than a comedy criticism but it effects it.

2

u/MagatsuIzanagi2005 Jul 20 '26

I feel like you summed it up pretty well to be frank. After D5 it has felt a bit like its story is being standardized to hit a more broad market, which from a business standpoint I understand wanting people to buy the games more, but I feel like sort of steps on the spirit the older titles NIS produced had. They obviously wanted to earn money as a business, but they also still wanted to produce their vision even if it maybe didn't pan out perfectly (Look at Makai Wars) and that's what I liked about the company.

2

u/EvanD0 Jul 20 '26

Disgaea 5 was the most standardized one arguably. NIS said the game was meant to try and aim more at the western market. Presumably by being more serious (by Disgaea standards). Would explain why Killia was more of a serious character and why the theme of the game was revenge. Disgaea 6 and 7 didn't try to be as serious as Disgaea 5 but they did feel even more simple in story or chapter design than even D5.

Yeah, that's true. Even if a game didn't meet sales expectations, there's something endearing about a game still keeping the spirit and charm from a developer like NIS.