For more than 20 years, the Disgaea franchise has enjoyed much success as a strategy RPG series, but in 2026, Nippon Ichi Software tackles a different genre with Disgaea Mayhem. Like any other Disgaea game, Disgaea Mayhem is set in the same universe and sends players to another absurd Netherworld full of hilarity. This time, you’re battling hordes of enemies in 3D environments in a Musou-like action RPG. Despite the change in genre, Disgaea Mayhem retains much of what keeps Disgaea fans coming back for more.
The story of Disgaea Mayhem sees you in the shoes of N.A. (Not Applicable), a sweet-toothed mercenary who lands in the Super Duper Netherworld for his next job. While there, N.A. meets Princess Tichelle, who wants to enlist the mercenary to get her family’s precious flan back. With N.A. as her only hope, Tichelle hopes to bring unite the kingdom once and stop a rebellion of former allies that are holding pieces of the flan for themselves. Over the course of various story “Episodes,” you’ll be fulfilling mission for Tichelle and satisfying her whims in a light-hearted story befitting of the Disgaea title.
If you’re worried about the change to a 3D action RPG gameplay system, worry not. From the very first minute, Disgaea Mayhem is a tried-and-true Disgaea game with its sense of humor, overall presentation, and many of its core features. On top of this, Disgaea Mayhem’s gameplay feels really good for Disgaea’s debut in this particular combat system.
Disgaea Mayhem Brings Beat ‘Em Up Madness
With the direct control of N.A., you’ll be slashing, shooting, punching, and exploding enemies across various areas and locations in the Netherworld. You can equip all seven different weapon classes, including swords, spears, axes, fists, guns, bows, and staffs—all of which have the same traits, Innocents, and other modifiers that were seen in Disgaea 7 Complete. All of the weapons feel really good to use with each having their own combos, and you can also use Magichange to turn your Battle Buddy—a recruited ally—into a powered up weapon for a limited time.
Outside of the change in combat system, the leveling and gear systems of Disgaea Mayhem are virtually the same as the main series counterparts. As loot gets rarer and more powerful, you’ll also have access to more skills on the fly in combat for that equipped weapon. As a result, you can experiment with all sorts of weapons and playstyles against many of the series’ staple enemies, Prinnies included. However, one downside I ran into early on involves the game’s lock-on system, which only works with big boss enemies. The lock-on feature works good enough, but it can’t be used on smaller enemies, so you can miss out on damage at times if your skills aren’t completely on target.
Princess Tichelle’s castle is where you’ll prepare your gear, team up with a monster buddy, and gain access to various facilities and features, which are all returning features from the main Disgaea series. Item World is back to give players an avenue for repeatable item and level grinding, and the Assembly feature is back as Dark Chocolate Assembly, allowing you to persuade, bribe, or fight some of the castle’s inhabitants to enact policies, unlock features and cheats, and earn bonuses. One of the many returning features you can unlock is Reincarnation, which lets you revert N.A. and/or a buddy’s level back to 1 to retain key stats and level up further to become stronger.
Mayhem on the Go
Disgaea Mayhem is a strictly single-player action RPG, so it’s right at home on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. For this review, I really enjoyed the Nintendo Switch 2 version, which has Quality and Performance Modes. I don’t have exact performance metrics for resolution, but these modes let you prioritize 30 FPS or 60 FPS on the fly without needing to restart the game.
I definitely chose Performance Mode for the smoother FPS, but there are some notable visual drawbacks in some areas. In Performance Mode, there’s a blurry and washed out effect at times, and it was most visible in the princess’ castle. It’s a little distracting, but in actual combat in missions and Item World, the game looks and runs really well. As for Quality Mode, it’s a notable jump in visual stability, but the lower frame rate just don’t feel right to me. This is something that can be adjusted and improved in updates, however.
Overall, Disgaea Mayhem plays very similarly to Koei Tecmo’s long lineage of Musou games, so you’ll likely enjoy the combat system if you’re into those games. The weapon variety between all seven classes feels good enough to make you want to try them all, and the gear and leveling systems make Disgaea Mayhem a very approachable game for returning fans. In short, you will feel right at home if you’re a Disgaea fan, and newcomers also have another onboarding point to the series, since a lot of the systems still translate well to prior games.
Disgaea Mayhem is a Solid Entry in the Disgaea Series
Disgaea Mayhem may be a spin-off game, but it’s truly a Disgaea game at its core—just with a different take on combat. If there’s one gripe that I have with Disgaea Mayhem though, it’s that the game is quite short from a story perspective. If you focus on the main story, you’ll likely beat the game in about 8 hours or so. For $59.99, that might be a little steep compared to other RPGs out there right now.
That being said, you can absolutely find replay value in Disgaea Mayhem if you like grinding for the best gear possible. Since the core systems of Disgaea are maintained, you can get more hours out of grinding Item World and unlocking some cool bonuses from Dark Chocolate Assembly, just like you could in Disgaea 7 Complete. In that sense, Disgaea Mayhem does what it sets out to do, but if you want more depth and content out of a game, the most recent entries in the Disgaea series are calling.
Disgaea Mayhem launches on July 23 for Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, and PC via Steam.
Disclaimer: NIS America provided a Nintendo Switch 2 copy of Disgaea Mayhem for review purposes.
