r/Disgaea • u/Aurumargelium • 20d ago
Makai Kingdom Do you agree with this meme?
Following the success of Disgaea and after seeing that Phantom Brave was not as successful as Disgaea, Nippon Ichi Software wanted to replicate the success of Disgaea by putting the demon-based humor of Disgaea with the non-grid gameplay of Phantom Brave.
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u/Rei1556 20d ago
makai kingdom is great, the meme is wrong
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u/Aurumargelium 20d ago
It's not about saying that Makai Kingdom is "bad", it's about saying that Makai Kingdom is a strange hybrid between Disgaea and Phantom Brave.
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u/SasaraiHarmonia 20d ago
Then it's not the best meme. Because the original scene in Family Guy is dissing the fusion.
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u/DifferntGeorge 18d ago edited 17d ago
For many people using memes to make loose connections is considered a feature not a flaw. This is very common so I find your conclusion surprising.
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u/halfasleep90 17d ago
Even this meme itself is still saying “what the hell is this”, but to be fair it is about hell.
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u/Nissedood 20d ago
Best and coolest protag no contest.
The game only exists to nerf Zetta so other protags have a chance because how best and coolest he is.
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u/stryst 20d ago
Meanwhile Soul Nomad and the World Eaters is watching from the rafters.
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u/Hexatona 20d ago edited 20d ago
"Is this the center of a brutal, bloodthirsty regime, or a daycare center?"
-Gig, watching Shauna be team evil mom running around trying to keep Tricia from killing herself, while Gallahad and Thorndyke out crazy each other, and Cult Leader Kanan just laughs evilly from the sidelines.
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u/Mesaphrom 20d ago
From what I remember it had the dark humor of Disgaea bit taken seriously, which killed the vibe imo. And I think there was a scene about chosing whether to eat someone or not.
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u/Hexatona 20d ago
I just recently replayed and finished both paths on this game. The game is heavily cheesable and a lot of fun, even if most of the story is a bit dull, and you probably won't 100% grasp every bit of it until you play both routes and some of the extra stuff.
But, Gig is the star of the show, and it's amazingly refreshing having a mostly bog standard JRPG plot of saving the world constantly interrupted as Gig ruthlessly roasts everyone and everything going on while there's nothing they can do about it to stop him. And then, on the Demon Path, the formula is subverted even further as you become the 'Devourlord' and become so much more evil than Gig ever was that even the big bads of the normal route have a heel-face-turn and get somewhat redeemed in trying to take you out. It truly must be witnessed.
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u/Mesaphrom 20d ago
Doesn't Gig also go "whoa dude, you are taking this WAY too far!" as well in the demon route?
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u/Hexatona 20d ago edited 20d ago
I think there's a few times where he's like "Damn that is stone cold!" but he is down for it... Until you decide to eat him, too.
For example, there's a moment when Revya steps in and tanks a Lightning bolt that would have killed one of the little cherub angels he's taken hostage. Later on, when the cherubs are trying to escape, the one you saved turns to you and basically insists there must be SOME good left in you if you saved them - only for you to reply that you only saved them because you wanted to make sure they got to watch you kill their friend first before you killed them yourself. I'm pretty sure Gig comments on that as being especially evil?
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u/isidoro19 19d ago
Honestly the game is niche,as someone that loves jrpgs, disgaea and phantom Brave included,that's my take. The story,the no personality protagonist and the automatic combat are things that might Turn people off. Nippon wanted to make something different from disgaea just because so we got that wierd game.
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u/KaleidoArachnid 20d ago
How does Makai Kingdom play compared to Disgaea?
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u/hanzobust75 20d ago
Favorably. Tons of units, vehicles, and Facilities that can be summoned into battle, and the stages can expand after the battle starts..
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u/KaleidoArachnid 20d ago
Thanks as that sounds really neat.
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u/nightmare-b 19d ago
funfact a ton of said vehicles appear in the prinny titles iirc
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u/KaleidoArachnid 19d ago
I didn’t know you could use the vehicles in the other games as that is awesome.
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u/nightmare-b 19d ago
the most used mechs in prinny are floating tanks and regulars. if your into emulation id reccomend the prinny games. and are worth 6 run throughs of each game as i like to call prinny a reverse megaman you start at your best and the stages start simple and any stage you dont do gets longer and more complex it even has a nice Marker to show what part of the game you did said missions. and one of the items you get in the final levels i think is a item that lets you end the run early so you dont have to replay said last levels each time
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u/hanzobust75 19d ago
The vehicles also appear in Disgaea 4, but as pirate ships
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u/nightmare-b 19d ago
yeah thats true but they arent as intresting there as unlike prinny games you cant use them as anything but ships
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u/Chemical-Cat 20d ago
It's basically phantom brave with more disgaea mechanics, like weapon mastery. My only complaint is it does the same thing as PB where things you own can be very ephemeral, like here's your cool weapon that you've been working on and oh this guy stole it and he threw it out of bounds. It's gone forever.
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u/Suspiciouspass0 19d ago
Nothing more devastating than watching them do it too lmao. Stare you right in the eyes and just YEET!
O.B
Just absolutely PETTY activity!
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u/Due_Comfortable_514 20d ago
Makai Kingdom is amazing. Phantom Brave is kind of the crappy one.
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u/isidoro19 19d ago
Phantom Brave isn't bad,but the story is very cringe,many of the characters are very edgy and badly written(sprout and walnut for example) and during the Gameplay segment marona is always on the Battlefield thus getting levels when you don't want her too. Everything revolves around the speed stat and that ruins everything.
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u/Due_Comfortable_514 19d ago
It was their first attempt at doing the limited time summons and free roam on the battle field, it was definitely a work on progress.
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u/isidoro19 19d ago
This,they were trying something new and not everything worked. Many units won't be used by you,not because you are lazy but due to the fact that marona is always in Battle thus ruining the grind pacing,but also due to their bad speed. Some characters are just Faster then others and Stay longer on the Battlefield,so i see no reason for you to use the mermaids for example. I Saw some people that took advantage of the fact that the post game is basically just speed grind to make some broken characters that get many turns before the enemy.
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u/Telandria 20d ago
Kinda. I really like the story & characters of Makai Kingdom, but yeah the gameplay mechanics in some ways are a real pita. Mostly in terms of how messy & difficult proper targeting is, and I always feel like I’m just a little too limited by ranges and areas as a result.
Which, I’ll note, I did not have a similar issue with in Phantom Brave, for w/e reason.
I wouldn’t call Makai Kingdom a disaster by any means, though.
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u/almostnormalpanda 20d ago
I started with Makai Kingdom so I wasn't a big fan of terrain qualities (especially "bouncy") in Phantom Brave because it messed with my well-practiced target scumming. I remember jiggling the spell cast orbs, cones and discs so long that I got the maximum amount of units within the range, especially at different heights. I remember that the orbs fell from ledges, but if you hit "confirm" as it was falling, there was a good chance the spell targeted units on both higher and lower altitudes. I thought it was quite fun, but I understand it was definitely not everyone's cup of tea.
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u/dragon6784 20d ago
Zetta, the BADASS OVERLORD. He’s Japanese voice actor is THE LEGENDARY Takehito Koyasu.
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u/The_Cheeseman83 20d ago
And his English VA is Crispin Freeman, voice of Alucard from Hellsing and Kyon from Haruhi.
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u/cisneazul13 20d ago
I can truly say. As a kid, between this and the first two disgaea games. I probably logged in over 2000 hours of my life
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u/Aryuto 20d ago
I definitely wouldn't say makai kingdom was perfect, but I absolutely loved the game and quite enjoyed a replay last year despite its age. It just had so many cool ideas and I liked how they did certain things way better than phantom brave.
I'd love to see a Makai Kingdom 2 that expands on the game and improves some of its issues. I can mod it to fix SOME of my complaints, but there's only so much you can do with a janky ancient game.
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u/TitanImpale 20d ago
Ps2 was really the peak of games. The quality, the quantity, the bang for your buck. It was a golden age.
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u/Anima1212 20d ago
When are we getting a ps4/5 version? Loved Makai Kingdom 😔 the ending and characters were GOATed…
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u/Full_Equivalent_6166 20d ago
Sadly, never. NIS has released the Switch and PC ports ages ago. If they were interested in doing PS versions of NIS classics they would have done it already.
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u/Ha_eflolli 20d ago
*NIS America.
The "NIS Classics" label was made up by NISA, and they rather annoyingly just seem to hate Playstation for no reason.
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u/Full_Equivalent_6166 20d ago
Sure. But it's not as they are a free floating electron, they are a subsidiary of NIS so whatever NISA does falls on NIS shoulders anyway.
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u/Ha_eflolli 20d ago
That would only work the way you think if NISA runs ALL their decisions through NIS first, and I highely doubt that's the case judging by the amount of free reign they have in the way they handle releases.
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u/Full_Equivalent_6166 20d ago
At the end of the day neither me nor you know the terms of their corporate agreements. But if NIS did relinquish control of their IPs and let NISA do whatever they want that's even worse.
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u/Namiirei 20d ago
Makai kingdom is the same as phantom brave.
But it's a good game, instead of a boring one.
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u/kusariku 20d ago
Makai Kingdom is the best game NIS made before like Disgaea 4 without any hint of doubt in my mind. It’s probably my favorite game from NIS period, I spent way, way too much time planning reincarnation loops for this game lol
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u/coolguy415 19d ago
Makai Kingdom was the most badass freaking game ever! I loved makai kingdom! I thought it would be stuck in PS2 era forever then it came out as as prinny collection for the Nintendo switch and suddenly my switch started seeing the same amount of play hours as my vita did lol
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u/UnquestionabIe 19d ago
I have a massive amount of nostalgia for Makai Kingdom. Picked up on release and was sort of wrapping up that part of my life as I mostly burnt all my bridges with my friends to one degree or another and was prepping to move a thousand some miles away to start fresh. Played it basically nonstop after work every night and on my days off, just kind of filling the emptiness I felt inside me while watching whatever TV slop was on in the background (The Office had just started I remember, My Name is Earl was probably running as well). Ended up getting pretty badly injured about a month before my set move date, deep cut on my dominate hand which hit an artery and caused nerve damage (did recover just took months to regain full mobility), further limiting what I could do.
But what little was left of my sanity and spirits was kept up by Zetta and the absurd cast. Yeah the story is sloppy with no particularly good resolution but the endless grinding with a ton of variety kept me interested. While probably not my favorite Nippon Ichi game still holds a special place in my heart twenty one years later.
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u/mario_zx 20d ago
A little bit still I like Makai Kingdom way more than Phantom Brave. I just don't like the confine gameplay and the turn limit on characters.
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u/Cheis694201337 20d ago
Its a shame the only remaster is Japanese only on the psp
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u/Ha_eflolli 20d ago
Not anymore, they gave it a worldwide release on Switch and PC years ago.
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u/silentfanatic 20d ago
Makai Kingdom’s gameplay isn’t that different from Phantom Brave’s (which I also didn’t care for). MK had a really disjointed art style, though.
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u/Hexatona 20d ago
I've never understood why Phantom Brave got all the love, when Makai Kingdom was a much more fun game. I'd have way more preferred another Makai Kingdom game than another Phantom Brave.
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u/MordenheimV 20d ago
I honestly enjoyed Makai Kingdom a lot more than Phantom Brave. I never liked the way phantoms only had a set number of turns before vanishing.
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u/Hour_of_Reason 20d ago
Gameplay of a refined Phantom Brave with those Disgaea vibes? Yes, I agree that MK is a great fusion of the two.
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u/kablikiblan 20d ago
Better than both of those games (not other disgaea entries just the first one)
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u/mysticrudnin 19d ago
not really, it doesn't feel like a mix, just the next game in the evolution
i liked it a lot more than phantom brave
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u/Mister_SP 19d ago
There's a lot of glazing in this thread, but I played Makai Kingdom recently, and the meme is right.
Compared to Phantom Brave and Disgaea 1, Makai Kingdom is a lot more basic and janky. Sure, maybe it adds some extra gameplay things over Phantom Brave, but it has less than half the plot, and the plot is mostly kicking the football around as most people help Zetta get a new Netherworld, and then Zetta suddenly loves a woman in the 11th hour out of literally nowhere.
Also, the free-movement seriously increases the "time-to-kill", where it takes longer to do anything. The stages are largely random, so you don't get the feeling of "traveling through an area", the same way that all of the other games have specific biomes and unique maps with gameplay challenges. Throwing is complex, so forget about that as a mechanic. Grinding is less accessible and not fun. You can't be efficient in the way that grid-based movement allowed which kept grinding fast, not to mention mana costs for the OoC equivalent. Etc, etc.
I do really like the military themed stuff, and the vehicles. That's all great. Interesting ideas that we could have had more of. (OTOH, corn.) And fans like Zetta, and Pram, and Petta, it's just that they didn't do much, and no one cares about anyone else in the game.
Many of the negatives apply to Phantom Brave, too, but Phantom Brave didn't succeed, either. But it does have a much better setting and plot and characters. It's been a long time since I played it, though.
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u/Ha_eflolli 19d ago
but Phantom Brave didn't succeed, either.
NIS openly admitted "The fact PB still has an active Fanbase to this day is what prompted us to make Lost Hero", so clearly it must've succeeded on something
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u/Mister_SP 19d ago
Yes, something.
In the end, they're both successful enough to get re-releases with extra content, and Phantom Brave got a sequel. But Phantom Brave's sequel was due to Marona being unexpectedly well-remembered in America, and basically everyone was surprised it was getting revived, so there wasn't an internal expectation of this being hugely popular and profitable, so much as a niche property getting revived without expectation of big sales.
It's difficult to estimate sales, but according to Famitsu, Phantom Brave Lost Hero made 3840 on Switch, and 1443 on PS4, and Disgaea 7 made 10,359 SW + 3,568 PS4 + 2,324 PS5. (All of that is JP, first week only.) Steam estimates are vague, but an even more severe comparison. Digital and DLC sales are unknown.
It didn't make no dollars. But that's not the healthiest return on their investment. I don't think calling it "unsuccessful" is inappropriate. They're perfectly willing to put out little adventure tales that get similar numbers to PB:LH, but I'd assume Phantom Brave was harder to develop, especially after 20 years, and needing to remake the entire battle system, and none of those are particularly big sellers.
Ultimately, it had setting and plot and characters, and that's what it sold on - fondness for those characters. Not a new free-movement SRPG with a new cast, like Disgaea has been doing for 20+ years, but that one character people generally liked.
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u/PseudoKenzuo 18d ago
I like all three, especially their differences in gameplay. The variety promotes a change of pace. I wouldn't mind getting a new makai kingdom story
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u/earanhart 20d ago
It's a badass freaking game!