Disgaea Mayhem Review – Disgaea Musou

When it comes to game genres that I simply love, two genres stand out the most to me; RPGs and Musou games. I have played the ever-living heck out of all the Dynasty Warriors games and have tried pretty much every Musou game that I can get my hands on. That’s why I was super excited about playing through Disgaea Mayhem, which happens to be the best of both worlds.

Game Name: Disgaea Mayhem
Platform(s): PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PC
Reviewed On: PC
Developer(s): Nippon Ichi Software
Publisher(s): NIS America
Release Date: July 23rd, 2026
Price: $59.99

Disgaea Mayhem puts you in the shoes of N.A., a mercenary who will do anything for the right price. He is hired by Tichelle, an Overlord of a Netherworld, who is obsessed with the confections of Flan. Tichelle’s pristine gleam flan was taken by six leaders of the Netherworld who used to be in her employ. It is up to N.A. to get that flan back.

Musou Combat

Disgaea Mayhem‘s combat is inspired by the Musou genre. It has a light attack and a heavy attack. You can jump, dash, guard, or activate a skill as well. You can only play as N.A. in the game, but you have access to a variety of weapon types. The weapon they start you on is the sword. Once you get past the tutorial, though, you are able to use spears, fists, axes, magical staves, or guns.

Each weapon has a different range, speed, and damage. After trying all of the weapons, the one I fell upon, being the one I loved using, was the spear. It had a good agile moveset that also had good range. You can combo using light and heavy attacks. Similar to the warriors’ games of old, it has a combo based on which attack string you are on when you use a heavy attack.

There is more than just skills in combat, as you also have access to a battle buddy. These are any of the monsters you were able to beat down enough that one of them wanted to join you. You can only bring one battle buddy with you, but you will have a decent-sized arsenal of monsters to choose from. You unfortunately can’t control or even heal them, but you can use them for Magichange.

Magichange turns your battle buddy into a weapon that will increase your stats by theirs and change the weapon you use. Each battle buddy will be different in the weapons you can use, but they have a skill list you will have access to while wielding them. You can change back to your normal weapon by using the special Magichange skill that is unique to the battle buddy. The skill will have you and your battle buddy combine forces to do a giant skill to do massive damage.

Disgaea Action

The combat and gameplay may be Musou, but the connective tissue surrounding that is rooted in Disgaea. You are in a netherworld, and there is an overlord you are working for. With that also comes the hub area. The hub area has access to the general store, the item world, the chara world, the dark assembly, the cheat shop, and other locations you remember from Disgaea. Though instead of recruiting warriors at a recruiter, you build bonds at the buddy base. There is also the dimensional gate where you choose missions to undertake.

The place you will likely spend most of your time, as I did, is the Item World. You can go inside the world of your items, such as armor, weapons, or anything else you can find to equip your to character. When you are in that world, you will have to face an onslaught of monsters that pop up in increments of 12 until the final boss of the item level appears.

Normal items have five floors to undertake. Rare items give you eight floors, and everything rarer than rare, like epic or legendary, has ten floors. You will need to keep defeating the waves of enemies that get stronger and stronger after every floor. After each floor is done, you will be given three randomized cards to choose from to take with you to the next floor. These cards can be a buff to any of your stats, they can heal your HP, or they can be a mystery room. Mystery rooms can give you a random buff or debuff. Sometimes the buff is nice, like multiplying the level of the item for you.

When you are done leveling up your items and weapons, you can undertake the story missions in the dimensional gate. In each of these missions, you are told to defeat 15 monsters at each interval of the map. Once the 15 monsters are defeated, a new section of the map opens up for you to defeat another wave of 15 monsters. This continues until the map opens up to a yellow light that signifies the boss. Once you step into the yellow light, you will defeat the boss.

The Dark Assembly is how you unlock other facilities in the hub area. You can also use it to add more features to unlocked facilities or even reincarnate N.A. You will have to pass bills in the Dark Assembly for anything to unlock. Some monsters will like you more than others, and you can tell by talking to them. You can use your items to bribe certain monsters to agree with you. If the bill fails to pass, you can also bribe the judge with a lot of money to pass it anyway. If all else fails, you can also try to take down everyone who opposes your bill.

Is This Disgaea Warriors?

The main crux of my question to myself as I played Disgaea Mayhem was, is this Disgaea Warriors? Unfortunately, I would say probably not. That said, I don’t think it was meant to. I think Nippon Ichi Software wanted to use a different gameplay type to add some more variety to the Disgaea series. It just happened to be the Musou gameplay type to be added. What would you need to have a Disgaea Warriors?

I won’t go too far into the details, but one big feature of Warriors titles is the large roster of playable characters. Dynasty Warriors: Origins is the only title that doens’t take this into account. It also needs large maps full of enemies and allies. Disgaea Mayhem has a good chunk of enemies, but not the one-vs-one thousand that the Warriors games have popularized. It, however, only has the one ally with your battle buddy. Otherwise, Disgaea Mayhem intended to use the Musou-type gameplay to add to having an action RPG to the Disgaea series. This makes sense since all the press materials only refer to this game as an action RPG, not as a Musou.

Ultimately, I still love this gameplay type and will likely still play many more hours of Disgaea Mayhem as I strive to reach level 9999. I do think one problem I have is the endgame. As I stated before, most of the game time will be in the Item World. That is basically most of the endgame. You reach a hard stage, and you need to level yourself up another 200 levels, and your items as well. I already beat all the endgame stages and am only level 1100. There are still almost 8000 levels to go before I max my character level and need to reincarnate.

That is just going to be playing the Item World over and over to get better and better items to level up those items more and more and find stronger enemies and innocents inside. I bet I will need to wait a bit until there is some DLC to add for harder stages.

Is This Worth It?

I would be lying if I said this wasn’t a game targeting me directly. I love Musou games, and I love the bombastic craziness that comes from overpowering yourself in a Disgaea game. If you fit in that same boat, then I don’t even need to recommend this game to you; it’s already pre-ordered. If you are wondering if this is the Disgaea Warriors game you are wishing for, then no. This, however, is still a fun and addicting gameplay loop in a Disgaea game. Constantly raising your stats and item stats to get even better and stronger weapons to level up as well.

I honestly don’t think the demo is the best at showcasing the game and combos you can perform. There is a lot of fun to be had in this game. Do note that I was able to finish most everything before the 20-hour mark, so if you were hoping for an endless experience, you certainly can make it endless, but it doesn’t get as satisfying once you finish the endgame quests. Use your best judgement based on your interest level and your desire for more Musou games. I still loved this game to pieces and will be putting more and more hours into it.

Disgaea Mayhem will release on July 23rd, 2026, for PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

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Review Disclosure Statement: Disgaea Mayhem was provided to us by NIS America for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy.