Most recently I've been going back to 'penguins in videogames', for featuring more of them from my collection. Let's start with the obvious one.
Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless, by Nippon Ichi and published in the west by NISA, is obviously the 7th game set in the Netherworlds.
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Disgaea 7's story is one of the series' best. Set in Hinomoto Netherworlds heavily inspired by feudal Japan, the tale centres on two unlikely allies.
The first is Fuji, a demon rogue samurai who has rejected the bushido code. More than that, he is literally allergic to empathy and compassion, so he revels underhanded tactics.
The other is Pirilika, a teenage heiress billionaire who is in Hinomoto to see the place for herself. Pirilika is, you see, a text-book 'otaku' obsessed with Hinomoto culture – or more precisely, the version of the culture she has consumed through manga and movies. It is more than a culture shock when she finds out Hinomoto of her fiction doesn't exist, everyone's given up bushido and in general, everything has gone to hell.
The two soon find themselves in a middle of a battle for Hinomoto's survival, more or less accidentally becoming the leading revolutionary figures. Naturally, they attract a huge cast of characters to surround them, including Fuji's seemingly super-powered daughter Ao and a weapons-obsessed thief Ceefore.
As mentioned, the story is great I don't want to spoil it for you, in case you wish to experience it yourself.
Again, this being Weekly Penguin, we have to talk about Prinnies, dood! Prinnies themselves are pretty much as we saw them in Disgaea 6 – and that is perfect the way it is.
Though Prinnies are very much background characters in this story, Pirilika's personal secretary Prinny Pii-chan is a central one – almost like 'an Alfred' to
There is also one section where the whole teams magically disguise themselves as Prinnies for a covert mission, which naturally results in delightfully comedic bits.
Finally, the 'getting new decisions passed' mechanic of this one is based on... Sumo. Sumo performed by Prinnies. Nippon Ichi, if you ever accidentally see this post, I want it on record: I want Prinny Sumo as a screensaver on my PC.
I've been going through this series quite a lot in the past, so I won't cover it all here, instead focusing on it as a sequel.
Though I liked Disgaea 6 for what it is – and even praised some of its controversial streamlining – it was the most divisive game in the series for multitude of reasons. Thus it is no surprise that the follow-up pivots back almost all those changes. So, if you felt like Disgaea 6 did some mechanic of the series a disservice, Disgaea 7 most likely has that back the way it was (i.e. monsters and humanoids have their separate weapons again).
The only thing I do find myself missing from the part 6 was its doing away with having to visit the hospital between missions. Well, at least the reward system for it is more involved.
Interestingly, one of the streamlinings that I didn't use in Disgaea 6 – the ability to script your characters to autobattle – does return. However, instead of being just a 'make the game play itself' toggle, there now are optional combat scenarios you have to solve with the autobattle systems. They are basically puzzles you solve by figuring out which behaviour chains solve the fights. For what it was, I think it was a fun way to utilise a system I guess majority of folks totally ignored previously.
The new big feature of the game is Jumbification, pun intended. We've had that before, but not to this scale – okay, I stop. When what amounts to an 'aggro-meter' fills, you can jumbify a character to a Kaiju size, to the point they don't fit to the map and instead loom over it from the side of your choosing. This lasts a limited number of turns, but during that time you can attack anywhere on the map with large AOE attacks.
Some enemies can do this, too, and you can defeat them by reaching the map side the loom from to attack them. At first it can feel a bit jarring, but I found it a fun 'wrench in the works' kind of mechanic that keeps you on your toes.
The are also a couple of new weapon-bound mechanics. Hell Mode is similar to the Overlord powers from the past games, but bound to Infernal Weapons of the key characters. Think of it as kind of like 'the ultimate attack' for each weapon that needs special conditions to charge. Lastly, you can now reincarnate weapons. It works like it works with characters – the weapon is reverted back to Level 1, but carries over some inherit buffs it gained all the way. This way you can boost weapons in the Item World way beyond their limits, if you have the patience and time for it.
Disgaea 7 looks and sounds great. On the visual side, the feudal era Japanese flair blends really well with the Netherworld designs we've grown to love, resulting in striking character designs and memorable environments. The animations are a lot more plentiful than in Disgaea 6, so if the lack of animation variety was among your grievances, the sequel alleviates that.
Much like I suspected, with the new 3D engine, the old classic giga-roster of characters and units keeps getting added back in. Disgaea 7 doesn't have the insane roster of 5, but is about double the size of 6. All humanoid characters also come in man and woman varieties, including unit types previously gender-locked, so there's a lot tweak when it comes to building your army to look they way you want.
On the sound front, the cast is great as usual and Tenpei Sato again delivers a banger score. The music is delightful mix of modern game electronica and classic Samurai movie motifs, fitting the setting of Hinomoto perfectly.
I would wholeheartedly recommend Disgaea 7. It's not my favourite of the series but not too far behind, either. The setting and characters are great, mechanics are polished and the presentation is a brilliant showcase to why move to 3D isn't the trainwreck some longtime fans feared. It also has tons of content to sink your teeth into, even without the Complete upgrade that NISA decided to make a Switch 2 exclusive in the West (it isn't so in Japan).
At the time of writing this, I'm now up to speed with Disgaea releases. I know I haven't covered parts 2 and 3, but they are locked into PlayStations past which I no longer have. Later this year we will be getting Disgaea Mayhem – an action-slasher spin-off – so you can look forward to that.
And if that isn't enough, the team behind Disgaea has a new game coming out this week (March 26th, 2026) called Etrange Overlord. Though it does seem to lack Prinnies, it does involve Overlords battling over the Netherworld with the power of whimsy, so I guess it still counts.
