You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/8bitdo-retro-mechanical-keyboard.2436/

We’ve covered 8BitDo a fair bit on this site. Offering a decent assortment of retro-themed controllers and gaming accessories, they’ve earned a name for themselves as a brand worth watching for that sweet nostalgia hit. Where we’re going today is new territory though, and a realm I’m always excited to see newcomers stumble into: mechanical keyboards.

Box Contents & Early Impressions

Out of the box you’re getting all the basics you need to get you going. There’s the keyboard itself, along with a 2.4GHz dongle hidden within. On top of that you can expect to find a 1.8m USB A to USB C cable, a manual, and undoubtedly the biggest oddity, a giant set of buttons. Visually 8BitDo have stayed true to form and delivered on something captivatingly nostalgic, with the model I have on hand featuring the maroon and off-white colours of the Famicom. There is also a more western NES-themed design available if that’s more to your taste.

On the keyboard itself we see a fairly familiar tenkeyless layout, sacrificing only the number pad for the sake of a bit of desk space. The body is entirely plastic, with the bottom half being the maroon red of the accented keycaps and the top being the off-white of the main keys. Along the top of the board we also see two knobs, three buttons, and three lights. The knobs will let you move between the wireless modes and altering the volume, while the buttons will allow you to sync the keyboard, quickly remap special keys and buttons, and switch into a custom profile. Outside of the usual lights, we also see a really fun red power indicator to show whether the device is low on power, charging, and fully charged. On the bottom of the board we have a handy place to store the 2.4GHz dongle, complete with magnets to hold it in place, and a notable lack of adjustable feet. The keyboard is naturally slanted so this likely won’t be an issue for most, but if you are one for more subtle adjustments it’s worth taking note. The plastic body does feel a little lighter than some of my other boards, quite naturally, but it does all come together for a relatively premium finish.

Under the hood we see Kailh’s clicky Box White v2 switches supported by a sturdy aluminium plate for a really rigid typing experience. The clickyness of these switches might be obnoxious to some, but there’s a real sense of satisfaction that comes from hammering these keys. It definitely feels in character with the board, but it should be noted that these are your only option when buying. If you do prefer something a little more subtle, you can at least swap out the switches yourself after buying with thanks to their hot-swappable nature. With this being a bit more of a mass-appeal keyboard, I can somewhat understand the lack of a barebones option, with the target audience likely just wanting something they can pick up and use. Despite that it is a shame to not see even any linear or tactile representation in the lineup.

Giant Buttons!?

Outside of the design, the most unique feature of this keyboard would undoubtedly be the set of two giant buttons that come packed with it. Connecting via one of four available 3.5mm jacks on the top side of the board, these buttons are entirely remappable and can be customised on the fly to press not only single keys, but up to a combination of six keys at a time. I can’t really fathom a situation where I’d need six keys being pressed in one, but I did appreciate the flexibility in being able to customise them so easily. As you can imagine, it’s pretty satisfying to slap them down for a particularly magnificent return press or similar, and thanks to them also utilising standard hot-swappable keyboard switches to drive them, you can really customise them to meet your needs. They come with a really pleasant clicky green switch in them, and the buttons themselves are stabilised well to get a really deep sound when they’re hit.

My major criticism of them is that the cable is just somewhat in the way, no matter how you try to hide it. I’m not certain how you could really engineer this to not be an issue, but I feel like most people grab a wireless keyboard to reduce desk clutter. For those folks, I just can’t see the buttons leaving the box. If you are happy to have your wires crossed, you may be happy to hear that the keyboard supports not just one set of buttons, but four. Though these are sold separately via 8BitDo’s official store (at $20 a pop if you’re curious) I really would be interested in seeing how having multiple would hold up for something like a PC rhythm game. It’s something I may yet try for myself.

As is fairly standard with modern 8BitDo products, we have their Ultimate Software V2 available to support the Retro Keyboard, though it is worth mentioning that most of the base functionality can be accessed entirely without it. This includes remapping the both B and A buttons you can see on the keyboard and the additional giant buttons, which is really great to see. If you do decide to delve into the software you have a fairly standard assortment of tools at your disposal. Each key can be remapped or given a macro, with macros being easy to record. The way these changes make it to the keyboard is via the profile button on the board, with it basically acting as a function layer toggle. When it’s lit up, all the edits you’ve made to the current profile will be enabled, and when you hit it again, you’ll go back to the standard mappings. Though you can only save one profile to the keyboard at a time, you can store as many as you want in the Ultimate Software itself, and swap them onto the keyboard as you please. These profiles will persist even without the profile running, with is something I always look for in this kind of software.

Closing Thoughts

Is 8BitDo’s Retro Keyboard worth a look? At the £85 I can see it being sold for at the moment, I think it’s a really compelling package for somebody wanting something stylish to dip their toe into the world of mechanical keyboards with. Though you only have one switch available to you at checkout, it remains remarkably satisfying to type on, and can be customised if you decide the feel isn’t what you’re looking for. As a first attempt in the world of mechanical keyboards, I think they’ve done a great job.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/geekom-mini-air12-mini-pc.2433/

Just last week I covered one of Geekom’s 12th generation Intel Mini PCs in the IT12. A relative powerhouse packing an i7 12650H CPU along with 32GB of RAM and a bunch of storage options, it stood as a great all rounder for people wanting performance in a tight package. This power did come at a price though, with the specific model I covered coming in at £509 at the time of writing. Today looking at one of their more budget offerings, we see just what kind of performance you can expect at more than half the price of the IT12. Can the Air12’s N100 CPU pull its weight for £249?

What’s in the Box?

For those of you that had a look at the IT12 review last week, you might be seeing a lot of similarities. Geekom have a fairly clear design philosophy and they’ve done a good job sticking to it here; if the Air12 wasn’t a little shorter you might have some trouble distinguishing between the two at a glance. You have an identical length and width, with the height coming in at 37mm as opposed to the 45mm of the IT12. For IO there is a good bit different though despite them looking quite close.

Starting once more from the front, we see two USB 3.2 ports, one type A and one type C, along with a 3.5mm jack and power button. The left and right side are identical to the IT12 with a full-sized SD card port and Kensington lock. Naturally it’s the back where the most has changed. Though we have the same barrel plug, pretty much everything else is different to some degree. From left to right we have a Mini DisplayPort 1.4, a 1G ethernet port, two USB 3.2 type A ports, a single USB 3.2 type C port (supporting DP 1.4 alt mode), and a solitary HDMI 2.0. While all your essentials are covered, with a relatively decent three USB A and two USB C ports, notably all generation 3.2 for better speeds, this isn’t going to be winning any awards for its IO. Any kind of “mini” port is also a sticking point for me as somebody who never has an appropriate cable. It’s always an adapter I have to buy and it’s always an adapter I lose due to only needing it for one thing.

Under the hood is even more basic. Here we can see the single 16GB stick of DDR5 RAM alongside the 512GB 3×4 NVMe SSD. While both of these can technically be swapped out, there’s really no reason you’d want to touch the RAM thanks to the N100 only supporting a maximum of 16GB anyway. The SSD is a simple replacement if you do want to upgrade it at least, with a thermal pad sitting on the case to keep it cool. I really wish they could’ve fit some other storage here. Even if a 2.5inch drive might have been too big for this case, it’s a shame there was no way to get another M.2 in there.

Modern, but Limited

After putting it all back together, I get the system powered up to work my way through the standard Windows 11 setup and crack on with a bit of day to day usage. It is to my eye a completely stock Windows 11 OS, which is always a positive on cheaper devices for me. This does unfortunately still come with its own assortment of junk, but none of it is particularly persistent.

Out of the gate things did feel fine. I opened up Edge with the express intent of installing Firefox and the N100 was coping. For a bit of fun I left Task Manager open while using this PC, and boy does that little CPU try its best. Almost the entire time I had the Air12 running it was pushing 100% utilisation, with Windows’ background processes like its modules installer worker and search indexer making it give all it’s got when they needed to run. This isn’t a PC for multitasking in the slightest, and you may well get better performance out of this running on something that isn’t Windows (this unfortunately isn’t my area of expertise however). Much to my surprise it was capable of outputting 4K video with no dropped frames while YouTube was the only thing running. It scrapes by on the bare minimum, but that minimum is quite impressive to me given its tiny footprint, lack fan noise, and most importantly, low power draw. For those wanting some numbers to throw at this kind of performance, we’re looking at 1220 for single-core, and 3230 for multi-core on Geekbench 6. Heading over to Cinebench R23, we see an average of 915 and 2973 for single and multi-core respectively. While these scores aren’t necessarily unexpected, I do feel it’s a little bold of Geekom to be claiming this device can run up to three 8K monitors in their marketing materials. I have no doubt it could connect to them sure, but expecting any kind of quality experience while utilising them is an entirely different matter. If you are interested in this, it’s definitely best experienced on a single 1080p display, though can certainly be pushed to a single 4K display if you want some nicer-looking YouTube videos. If you have your expectations tempered you’ll probably get on fine.

It Can Emulate?

Emulation is a fairly interesting affair on something like this. After booting up Dolphin to try Wind Waker, I was pleasantly surprised to see it not only running at native resolution with no issues, but able to run at 720p. Hitting 1080p was mostly fine, but did introduce a few stutters from time to time. Seeing decent performance here, I wanted to push things a little with an emulator I know is fairly well optimised for weaker hardware: Cemu. I’m not going to pretend any miracles were performed here, but it certainly exceeded my expectations.

Starting small I went with Captain Toad. This is a really lightweight game with small levels to load in, and at the native 720p it ran almost flawlessly. There was an odd dip into the mid 50s but by in large it stuck to the prescribed 60fps. Moving up slightly I next turned to Mario Kart 8. With larger levels to load in you get quite the surreal image when you first load in, but this generally clears up by the time you actually start the race and won’t impact you when playing that track again. Even when everything has been loaded, the N100 isn’t quite capable of hitting 60fps at a native 720p. With thanks to the community graphics packs on Cemu though, you are able to lower the resolution to 540p, where you’ll find it almost locked at that sweet 60 after things are loaded in. The game still looks great, and I’d be perfectly happy playing it through like this. I gave it a full cup and saw no slowdowns after the race had started.

Going for a slightly more demanding game next, I decided to boot up Smash Bros for Wii U. This one was much more of a struggle, with the GPU usage hitting 98% on the menus alone for just 40fps of Smash. I really couldn’t say why, but this improved to around 55fps when actually going into a game at the Wii U’s native 720p. Much like with Mario Kart, lowering the game to 540p smoothed things out to a really consistent 60fps. I do think this game comes off worse visually for the resolution drop, but I’m still really impressed. You get the same dips in performance the first time an effect comes out, but once it’s cached you’re really good to go.

There is always one final boss when it comes to Wii U emulation though, and it is naturally Breath of the Wild. The intro was miserable. There were huge delays while getting all the shaders together with the game averaging 12fps at the native 720p, but it did run. That gave me some hope for improvement, but it was unfortunately short-lived. 540p to the rescue once again? We claw a few extra frames but it’s just not enough. I think this is just the limit of the N100, and even pushing the graphics all the way down to a gloriously clear 180p I was barely scraping 20fps. It definitely gave it its all.

Having a brief look at PC gaming, you can also expect to play some PS3-era titles like the original Skyrim release and Grand Theft Auto 5, admittedly both on low settings and with very little else happening in the background. It’s really a surprising PC if you’re happy to stick to one thing at a time.

Power for the Price?

At the £249 price point the Air12 is slightly more expensive than its like for like counterparts, with Beelink’s EQ12 currently available for £228 at the time of writing. If you’re happy to drop down to a single stick of DDR4 RAM, the price can go as low as £179 from my brief searching session. This Mini PC has been a strange experience for me, and I can definitely see there being a place for something like this on the market. If you want something on the cheaper side and perhaps don’t mind only having a few Firefox tabs open, or emulating with a single monitor, there could be something really neat here for you. I can also see this being a good fit for those wanting a standalone box to throw something like Batocera on, and I’ve seen the N100 being a part of a surprising number of home servers thanks to its low power consumption. I’ll be open in saying this isn’t something I would go out and buy myself, but I can certainly see the appeal.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/geekom-mini-it12-mini-pc.2427/

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a Mini PC to play with, with Minisforum’s X35G being the last one I looked at all the way back in 2020. Sporting a 10th generation i3 under the hood, it stood as a capable low-powered device suitable for light tasks and a surprising amount of emulation. Now turning things up with a now slightly-aged 12th generation i7, how how far can we push this tiny form factor?

What’s in the Box?

Opening the box up you get a relatively standard assortment of cables and extras for a Mini PC. Naturally you have the PC itself and a power cable, but you also get a HDMI cable, VESA mounting kit, and a surprisingly useful fold-out manual. If you’ve never seen a Mini PC before, the VESA mounting kit might be something that sounds a little odd, but thanks to the compact size a lot of people do choose to pop them onto the back of their monitor for a cleaner desk space. A little unfortunately for me, all of my monitors are already mounted to arms or stands of some kind, occupying that spot. With the PC being as small as it is though, its desktop footprint is still relatively compact. The power cable that was sent to me was unfortunately a US plug due to the review sample coming from China and not a local distributor, but with the plug being in two parts, I could just swap out the standard three-circle-bit part (if somebody can tell me what this is called it will really put my mind at ease) with one I had on hand.

Looking at the PC itself, it’s actually a good bit bigger than what I was expecting; not necessarily in length and width, but in height. It still very much falls into the size category of a Mini PC, but I assume they just needed that extra space for cooling to keep the system running at its best. In terms of IO I doubt you’ll be wanting for much. On the front you get two USB 3.2 gen 2 type A ports, with one of them capable of power delivery, as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack. Following it around to the left side we see a full-sized SD card reader, and on the other side you have an anti-theft keyhole. The back is where you’ll find most of your ports, with another two USB type As, with one being 2.0 and the other being 3.2 gen 2. After that you get a 2.5G ethernet port, two HDMI 2.0 ports, two USB4 ports, and finally a DC barrel connector for power. Each port is marked with a symbol for you to easily differentiate between things like the power delivery-enabled USB A on the front of the system, but I really am grateful that there’s a full two page spread dedicated to saying what each of these symbols actually mean in the manual. It’s a great selection of IO all things considered, with the only notable omission being a DisplayPort connection. It’s not that big of a deal though with HDMI likely being the preferred connector for most, and the USB4s being capable of outputting to DisplayPort if that is a requirement.

With a spare 2.5 inch drive lying around, I figured I’d get the PC opened before I did anything else to install it into the relevant vacant slot. It was a really easy experience. Each of the four rubber feet house an attached screw, and removing those is enough to make prying the bottom of the case easy. Beneath here you get instant access to not just the aforementioned connector, but also the board that houses the two M.2 slots (one 2280 PCIe Gen 4 x4 and one 2242 SATA), and the two SODIMM DDR4 RAM slots. The variant I’m looking at comes with a 1TB 2280 SSD installed, as well as 32GB of RAM via two 16GB sticks. I love how easy it is to open and upgrade these, especially if you’re opting to grab a model that comes with less RAM and storage to make use of what you have lying around. I feel like there was a missed opportunity to sell a barebones model that lets users save a bit more by providing everything, but it’s not the end of the world. It’s also a bit of a shame for me personally that it’s running with DDR4 RAM. If it did support the faster DDR5, I’d have been able to have a bit of fun and load it up with two 32GB sticks I have on hand and see how many Chrome tabs I could have open.

Starting Out and Opening Up

With no spare DDR4 sticks and no 2242 M.2 SSDs on hand, I closed the system back up after throwing in a 2.5 inch drive. After that I got it turned on and set it up as you would any other Windows 11 PC. A fun workaround for people not fond of setting up an online account is to use the email address “no@thankyou.com” with any password. Apparently people have failed to log into the account enough times that Microsoft just gave up, and the system moves you onto making a local profile. I personally don’t have an issue signing in though, so went with that option instead. With all the checkboxes unticked and a short wait, Windows was ready.

I was pretty happy to see that it was a stock experience waiting for me. With Windows 11 you do unfortunately get some pre-installed bloat regardless, but that was all gone within ten minutes. The IT12 booted fast and was responsive out of the gate; you probably would expect that for a fresh setup though. After using it for a few weeks, the only real oddity I picked up on was the fact that some standard Microsoft apps like Notepad and Paint uses the Japanese locale when saving. The rest of the UI is all in English which makes it all the more strange. In all likelihood this is less something this PC is doing as much as something I’ve done myself without realising, but it’s worth pointing out all the same. I was also pretty aware of the fan noise coming from the small box. It’s definitely audible, even on the “Balanced” power plan. If it keeps things cool it’s not so much of an issue to me, but I do understand some people struggle to tune it out.

Power in a Small Profile

In terms of performance, the i7 12650H is definitely a solid CPU. Running it through Geekbench 6 it averaged 2370 on single-core and 9818 on multi-core performance, with scores of 1742 and 9218 on average for Cinebench R23’s single and multi-core tests respectively. The single core performance is pretty close to the i9 12900H in my ROG Flow Z13, with it testing slightly better in Geekbench and slightly worse in Cinebench. It is around 20% worse when comparing multi-core scores though. Test numbers are one thing, but the reality of it is that this is basically that kind of CPU you would be seeing in a 2022 ultrabook. At this point it is slightly older, but it definitely does hold up to your day to day tasks. I hear you though, what about gaming?

Now my tests aren’t exactly scientific, but I downloaded a few favourites of mine on Steam that demand a varying amount of power: Monster Hunter Rise, Monster Hunter World, Armored Core 6, and Elden Ring. Of these, it probably won’t be a surprise to find out that Rise runs pretty well. It’s a game developed for the Switch after all. Running around on the DLC Citadel map I saw framerates hovering between 40 and 50fps on medium settings, and going between 80 and 100 when on low. It’s worth noting all the games here were played at 1080p. Low settings on PC are around what you would expect the Switch version to look like; personally I’d be really happy playing this on medium settings with a 30fps cap on to keep things stable.

Moving onto Monster Hunter World, things are understandably a bit less consistent. The title screen booted to a blistering 10fps as it loaded my regular PC’s settings. Getting past that though and sticking it onto low, it surprised me to see a very respectable 35 to 45fps on the Coral Highlands. If you’re happy to turn down the resolution a touch, you could definitely push it higher too. Again this is something I’d have no issues slapping a 30fps cap onto and just playing normally. I did play this game for 50 or so hours at 360p on the integrated graphics of an i7 8565U laptop, so this kind of performance is something that does make me happy.

Armored Core 6 got a very respectable 30fps on low settings, and I was quite surprised at how nice it looked. Pushing it up to medium was a similar experience, but did introduce the occasional dip into the mid-20s. The biggest challenge of these was definitely Elden Ring, with it offering a slightly less stable picture when compared to Armored Core. It still hit that 30fps mark the majority of the time on low settings, but you do find hiccups happening at the worst time when it does choose to dip below. For this one I did see how it would run on a lower resolution, and found a more respectable 40 to 45fps at 720p. If you wanted to push it a little higher, you could probably get a locked 30fps at around 900p. For integrated graphics it definitely gets the job done.

Emulation is a similarly-positive story. For everything up to N64 it should go without saying that it runs flawlessly on a system like this, but I was also really happy to see GameCube running at full speed when upscaled to 1080p. Both Wind Waker and Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness ran entirely smoothly and I can really see this as a solid option for that generation of gaming. The Wii U games I tried also ran really well with Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate and Wind Waker HD being seemingly-flawless experiences, though this shouldn’t be much of a surprise with how good Wii U performance has been on handhelds for the past few years. I wasn’t able to test much beyond this due to a few issues external to the PC itself, but I will note that we’re currently looking into a more universal way of profiling emulation performance across different systems. Assuming we get something in place in the near-future, you can expect this PC to be revisited with a more thorough breakdown. As it stands though, I can certainly say it’s capable.

To Go Further Beyond

You can of course push it further, and it’s thanks to the two USB4 ports that sit on the back of the IT12. With these ports you have the option to connect the PC not only to other monitors, but to an entire external GPU. Now I’m not out here saying you should be buying an eGPU with one of these Mini PCs; at that point you’re probably paying enough to warrant building something more powerful. For that very niche use case of people who use an eGPU as a dock and move between devices frequently though, I can see some merit. To be completely open I just have an eGPU sitting around and wanted an excuse to put it to use for once. Shucking the definitely-overkill 3070 Ti from my main PC and hooking it up, the results were… Not quite as good as I was hoping.

Running Monster Hunter Rise to start with, I saw my fps locked around 55. This was regardless of whether I’m playing on high, medium, or low (remember I was getting 80 to 100fps on integrated graphics prior on low settings). World saw vast improvements at least, jumping all the way past 100fps on low settings, and hovering around 60 on medium. Elden Ring unfortunately appeared to be bottlenecked by the CPU, with it running between 90 and 100% utilisation. Even on low settings it struggled to hit a solid 60fps even at low, with 45 to 55 on medium. You can at least get a prettier 30fps lock here, but I’m still disappointed. It’s not a setup I really expect anybody to be running who might pickup the IT12, but I really thought I’d see some better numbers.

Closing Words

Geekom’s Mini IT12 is getting on in age now with an IT13 also available and Intel’s latest generation just coming to market, but manages to remain a perfectly viable package for anybody looking to pick up a performant Mini PC. Though the flavour featured in this review retails for £749, it’s currently on sale for £509 on both Geekom’s official site and Amazon via a voucher; given the age of the system I don’t expect this sale to be particularly limited. You can also knock a bit of money off if you’re happy with a 512GB SSD and 16GB of RAM, currently going for £479. Comparing it against similarly systems on the market, it’s pretty much an even playing field. If you do want to save a bit of cash and still bag a Mini PC with the 12650H, Minisforum’s UN1265 does come in at around £100 cheaper, albeit lacking the USB4 ports and coming with a two year warranty as opposed to Geekom’s more generous three year offering.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/naheulbeuks-dungeon-master.2411/

The setting of Naheulbeuk’s Dungeon Master may be a familiar one if you’ve played the game before it, the aptly titled Dungeon of Naheulbeuk. Setting itself up as a prequel, it tasks you with building the twice-titular dungeon as the steward to an incompetent dungeon master. With a comedic cast and a satirical take on the genre, how does Naheulbeuk stack up against the rest?

Welcome to the Dungeon

Serving as a tutorial on how to play as well as a brief storyline, the campaign is the natural way to jump into the game. With just a small tavern, a kitchen, and a dungeon master to please, you enter the tower as the unemployed half-goblin Reivax to get things moving. Your goal? To get this dungeon off the ground and on the map, and you’ve surely got a long way to go.

Unlike other dungeons, Naheulbeuk manages to get a stable stream of income not just from defeating adventurers that wander in, but from a slightly more healthy tavern that’s accessible to the general public. I do think this is a really neat concept as a means of dividing your attention and giving you a way to recover should the worst happen and your treasures be plundered. With its own set of costs and an amusingly-named Tripe Adviser rating to maintain, there are the makings of a really fun subset of the larger game here. And as a whole I did enjoy it. As time went on though, I noticed it to be my primary source of revenue, seeing me pivot to having almost the entirety of my dungeon’s first floor be a tavern to hold and serve as many customers as possible. With how big a part it ended up playing in the success of my dungeon, I really would’ve liked to see more depth in this area of the game.

While the Tripe Adviser score is a nice idea, it really does nothing more than the prestige system associated with other rooms in the tower, with it being increased by placing decorations down. I learned quite early on that you can just max these out quickly by placing wall decorations all the way around the room, and that was that. I have a fundamental feeling that there should be more to this and that I’m playing it wrong, but with the game constantly rewarding my actions I’m left with mixed messages.

When it comes to building the dungeon itself, it really feels like there’s a lot missing for what I would consider to be satisfying. To start, while your dungeon does have a set entrance point, there’s no actual guarantee adventurers will use it. Instead they can crop up at any number of doorways in your dungeon, and sometimes just appear out of nowhere. This entirely removes any idea of planning you could have put into an effective design. I want to build mazes, have rooms with set enemies, boss battles. I want to craft something fun and watch people come and get stomped down at varying points, letting me tweak and evolve. With raids on your tower targeting different rooms each time around, you can’t really put much thought into making a meaningful path for adventurers, and with your own staff walking the same corridors and susceptible to the same traps, you aren’t really encouraged to rig much up either. I do understand that this game is something of a parody of the genre, and I want to cut it some slack for letting me down on what I would consider the traditional aspects of the genre, but it just doesn’t pick it up elsewhere.

Staffing Nightmares

Despite this being a dungeon management game, you’ll likely find the majority of your time being spent on the staff more than the dungeon itself. To assist in running the place, you’ll have a selection of 11 occupations, each with an associated origin. Some of these are entirely set, with your domestic staff always being elves, and your bankers being dwarves. For others you might get a selection of origins, like how chefs can be either human, elf, or orc to cater to different needs. It’s all supposed to be a bit of a balancing act to get things running just right, with staff striking and quitting if you don’t meet their needs.

Within your staff you’ll have to overcome clashes in ideology, with some races preferring cleanliness, and others filth, among other things. On top of this, races like dwarves will need special beds to sleep in and tables to sit at due to their small stature. I like all of this on paper, even if it isn’t exactly what I thought the game would be. There’s a lot going on, and with up to 210 minions on the payroll at the end of the game, there really is a lot to be thinking about. The real issue with having this as your focus is that it shines such a light onto the balancing of all these needs, and I really don’t think the game is where it needs to be at for it to be satisfying.

After five or six hours of trying to meet everybody’s needs I just gave up, and what’s weirder is that I wasn’t really punished for it. You can think of minions really falling into one of three categories. You have guards who’s sole purpose is to stave off adventurers and raiders coming down on your grand dungeon. After that you have minions who produce something that’ll be useful. These are your artisans making tools and weapons, your spies collecting intelligence and the like. Finally you have what I’d describe as the meta staff, who don’t necessarily provide you with anything directly, but whose work in the dungeon keeps other staff happy. The domestic minions are the biggest part of this category, tasked with keeping things clean. You also have have cooks and medics here too though.

Where all of this staffing falls somewhat into shambles is the fact that you really don’t care if they walk out on you, and this is true for all three of these major categories. Guards are summoned to the dungeon weekly based on a specific item being placed in the Guard’s Room. One Human Guard Locker equates to one, as you might have guessed it, human guard. An elf guard locker grants you an elf guard, and you can probably figure out the rest. The way these work is that if the guard that was assigned to the locker has died or, God forbid, quit, another will be hired as soon as the next week begins. You can probably see where I’m going with this. It feels like the game expects you to value your guards and train them for a strong fighting force, but there really isn’t any need if you just have a bunch of guards and are happy to throw them at a problem. Even if an incursion is particularly strong, if it happens to roll into the next in-game week, your defeated guards will be replaced all the same, and the new hires are more than happy to finish the job.

The production staff is where you would imagine more care is needed. They’re actively producing a resource that will be helpful to the larger running of the dungeon, and you should naturally want that continuous stream of resources. It just doesn’t work out that way though. You have so much space in the dungeon that it’s possible to setup massive workstations for each of these production types. You can worry about keeping them around if you really care about that passive income, but in reality you can keep your staff list light and just hire a hundred of the minion type you want as and when you need the resource. This is something I did quite heavily in my playthrough with Spies thanks to the intel they produce allowing me to go out on raids and get bonus rewards for my troubles. I ended up with a huge room that sat empty most of the time, but it really didn’t negatively affect anything.

The last of our staff type is probably the most laughable, because if we don’t care about maintaining our staff at all, they’re entirely useless out of the gate. Looking at the HR sheet in my game, my tower really just consists of a hundred or so guards, a handful of bankers… And that’s it. It remains profitable and it’s perfectly capable of keeping invaders at bay. To some extent I do have to commend the game for allowing such a degree of freedom as to enable this kind of playstyle, but it really does feel counterintuitive to what the game wants from you.

An Idle Dream

For all my issues with the game, I do actually think it does well as what I would call a second monitor game once you’re past the initial setup phase. That phase in itself isn’t necessarily short either, and getting it optimally does involve engaging with the staffing balance more than I felt encouraged to. If you do find that though, it’s something you can leave running and check back in on while doing other things. It’s the kind of game I really appreciate when working from home that can just provide me with a micro break to take my mind off a task to see how a raid went down. If you’re working on a separate PC to the game this does work well, but I do feel the need to highlight that it didn’t quite go that way for me.

If you’re limited to a single PC, you’ll be exposed to more than a few quite nasty bugs. The most prevalent of these is a simple crash that seems to happen randomly when tabbing back into the game, even when it’s left running as a borderless window. The audio distorts slightly, and a few moments later it’s all just gone. Even when it does all work though, being left alone seems to cause the AI to randomly stop on occasion, with my 200k of savings also disappearing in an instant. Nothing happened in the game after that, it was quite odd. To give credit where due, the developers are actively looking into bugs, with the staff AI being under a particular microscope in terms of both bugs and balance. I would like to believe this will improve over time, but as it now it can be a tough sell.

Closing Thoughts

All in all Naheulbeuk’s Dungeon Master is a game that has the makings of something fun, but just falls short for me to be able to recommend it to most people. For a game about managing a dungeon, there’s really not much dungeon management at play, with the actual core of the gameplay being unbalanced to the point of being able to ignore it at the time of writing. I want to see this game do better, but even properly balanced I’d likely feel shortchanged.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/super-mario-bros-wonder.2406/

A series many of us will have grown up with, Super Mario Bros is the absolute titan of the 2D platforming space. With huge releases on all but two of Nintendo’s major platforms, it had previously struck some as odd that the Switch hasn’t seen any new content since its launch in 2017. At last however the dry spell has ended, and an astonishing 11 years after the debut of New Super Mario Bros U as a launch title for the Wii U, we rejoin the peerless plumber himself to see whether it was really worth the wait.

A New Beginning

The story this time opens to Mario and our colourful cast heading to the Flower Kingdom on the invitation of its prince Florian. Much to nobody’s surprise, the festivities are interrupted a certain reptilian monarch, kicking off the quest to once again thwart his evil schemes. So what’s the plan this time? To use the Wonder Flower and, hear me out, merge with a castle to… Frankly I’m not even sure what the end goal was here. Regardless he does need to be stopped, and you have one heck of a crew assembled to stand in his way.

Outside of the series staples Mario and Luigi, and New Super Mario Bros staples of Toad and less good Toad, we’re joined by princesses Peach and Daisy, Toadette, an assortment of Yoshis, and Nabbit. It’s quite refreshing to have a story start out with the princess not being capturing, and it’s great to finally have both Peach and Daisy as a playable characters in a 2D Mario game. This diverse cast does come with a bit of a caveat in that most of them play exactly the same, with Yoshi and Nabbit basically functioning as an easy mode. While Nabbit just walks through any potential source of damage and is a great choice for the younger siblings of the world, it is neat to see Yoshi getting some unique moves in their signature flutter jump and eating abilities. You also won’t take damage as Yoshi, but you will at least be knocked back. It’s a decent middle ground, and also just a really fun character to use if you want some variety later into the game.

Jumping right into the first level gives you a great taste of what’s to come, and believe me there’s a lot to like. Movement feels snappy and responsive, and the larger art style is a real breath of fresh air after seeing much of the same from the New Super Mario Bros games for the past 17 years. The music especially stands out, and this is something you’ll notice throughout the game with the game’s style and flair really shining in the audio. From this early stage it’s small details like the music emphasising brass once you’ve picked up the new Elephant Fruit power up, but as you progress the soundtrack does more and more to stand out. This isn’t just something that just sits in the background, it really goes a long way in supporting the unique and interesting visuals.

Out of the gate you’re given the new Elephant Fruit, which is fairly typical for a 2D Mario game. Mario 3 gave you the Raccoon Suit, New Super Mario Bros gave you the giant mushroom, Wii gave you the Propeller Suit, and U gave you the Squirrel Suit. It follows tradition to show you this shiny new power from the start but I couldn’t help feeling underwhelmed. It set me off on the game with a bit of a sour taste for just how minor the power-up felt compared to its predecessors. You can break blocks and spray water from your trunk, but it lacks the same freedom given to you by the various flight-enabling power-ups that came before it. As I played more though, I did start to understand. It sets a tone that you won’t break a level so easily with power-ups by just avoiding all of its dangers and flying above. Instead, the levels are designed to be broken on their own terms with thanks to the Wonder Flowers, and this is where the game really comes into its own.

Flower Power

At the core of any Mario game is of course its level design, and it’s here we’ve seen the majority of the series development since New Super Mario Bros hit the scene in 2006. We’ve seen new levels, we’ve seen fresh power-ups, but that’s really been it. Thanks to the addition of Wonder Flowers, this game steps things up to another level. With one in each traditional level, these flowers warp and contort your surroundings in any number of unexpected and bizarre ways. Ranging from altered graphics and twisting scenery to a sky raining stars, a singing entourage of plants and ghosts to the game transforming into a top-down Zelda-style dungeon, the Wonder Flowers are an absolute treat in crafting an entirely unique and fresh experience from start to end.

Where I really found myself impressed though is the fact that almost all of them are entirely optional. You see when you beat a level you’ll be rewarded with a Wonder Seed. You’ll need a certain number of these seeds to access key levels to progress in the game, and you can get an extra one from any level with a Wonder Flower by just finding it and playing through the section. You’re rewarded for that exploration and discovery, but you’re also not punished for missing them. With each level you often find yourself with two entirely differing environments, two ways to play. On my first playthrough I had so much fun just running through some levels and getting to the end, and I love that I was entirely able to do so. I think the Wonder Flowers are one of the best things to happen for the 2D Mario series, but it’s fantastic to see the core gameplay hasn’t been neglected for their inclusion. Pick and choose, play how you’d like. If you want to see all there is, you basically have double the levels at your disposal in choosing to or not to take the flower.

Badge of Honour

Beyond new power-ups and the Wonder Flowers though are something far simpler, yet just as impactful on your larger experience as you go from level to level. A first for 2D Mario, badges are additional unlockable abilities that can be equipped prior to entering a level. These abilities range from minor bonuses like getting coins for defeating enemies, to fundamentally changing core mechanics like movement speed and jump height. There’s a lot to like even on a surface level, with these badges enabling really fun mechanics to come back into the game in a much more granular form than something like Toadette’s Crown power-up in the Switch version of New Super Mario Bros U. They’re well-designed where nothing feels particularly broken, and even taking what might be seen as an easy mode option like saving yourself from falling into a pit is a meaningful choice you have to make in depriving yourself of something that may be either more fun or overall more useful in the level. I found myself switching up badges pretty often, even outside of levels that are largely designed for one badge over another (think water levels as a key example here, where one badge lets you dash in water).

Really my only fault with badges is in the linearity of obtaining them. I will admit a lot of this disappointment comes from the fact I was looking forward to playing with the Grappling Vine badge since its inclusion in an early trailer, only to go through the majority of the game with it nowhere in sight. This just comes down to how badges are unlocked, and it’s something I’m not really sure there would be an easy fix for. Badges are either tied to beating specific levels, usually a short challenge to act as a tutorial for the badge in question, or specific shops in the overworld. Because these levels and shops are locations you progress to, you can naturally only have certain badges at certain points in the game. A reasonable middle-ground may have been to pace badge obtaining to the first half of the game, and then spend the second half really ramping up their usage as you’ve had some time to get used to them. It just feels a shame to have these really fun powers and not all that much time to get the most out of some of them.

A Vast World

Between the levels designed for specific badges and levels that just fit them well, you do at least get a glimpse of what each badge can do at its best, and it does take us quite nicely onto talking about the larger topic of level variety. You obviously have your traditional levels. These follow a fairly standard formula that you’ll be familiar with if you’ve played any 2D Mario game before this one, and that’s not a bad thing. Each of these levels has three collectable large coins, a Wonder Seed to be collected by getting to the flagpole, and an additional Wonder Seed to be collected by finding the Wonder Flower in the level and completing its section. You might also find a secret exit here or there to reward you with an additional seed and an alternate path on the world map. Outside of your staples though, it is nice to see something more. I’ve already touched on badge challenges, providing a space to teach you how to use unique badges, and then later going onto test you with them. On top of these, you also have Wiggler races, which are a straight dash to the goal against a roller-blading Wiggler, KO Arenas, which pit you against several rooms of enemies on a timer, and finally Break Times, which are short and often one-screen levels to break up the action a touch.

I really had a great time moving between the level types, and the variety on offer did a good job in keeping the game interesting. There was one type of level in particular though that I felt could just be frustrating if playing alone, these being the Search Parties. These levels take what is potentially the most annoying aspect of user-generated Mario Maker levels, invisible blocks, and decides to run with it several times over through the game. Your goal here is to collect five fragments to form a complete seed to beat the level. These fragments are, as I mentioned, either hidden in invisible blocks, or are accessible by hitting invisible blocks. On paper this is absolutely awful design, and if you’ve played the game entirely offline, I can see very little in the way of redemption for some of these levels, the first one in particular. I do understand what they were going for though, and I can if nothing else appreciate the vision.

A Wonderful Community

Multiplayer in Mario Wonder works a touch differently to its predecessors, in no small part due to the inclusion of an online mode. While this online mode does let you host a lobby with your friends, its primary function serves to put you into a world of random people playing the game at the same time as you, and you’re able to see them in both the overworld and level. Whether playing with friends or random people, you won’t be able to throw them and you can’t mess with them, but you do get a real sense of togetherness as you venture on. This togetherness is the core of the Search Party levels, and it’s only because of it I was able to get through them without just looking up a guide. Seeing other people run around, or standing mysteriously midair ended up being a genuinely fun time. People stopped to help me, and I felt compelled to do the same in pointing the way. This togetherness really does go beyond these specifically-tailored levels and spills into the game as a whole.

My strongest memory of Wonder was playing an auto-scrolling airship level a few days after launch. I had a few people in there with me making progress at their own pace, and I happened to get hit on a section that required using a cloud to navigate it. Thanks to a helpful person nearby I managed to revive myself, and for that I was treated to a surprisingly difficult platforming problem of manoeuvring rotating canons you were really meant to be flying around. I came to enjoy these small interactions, and did my part in return on some of the later levels as I guided two poor souls while they fell into lava comically often. I didn’t expect much from the multiplayer as somebody who usually plays these games alone, but the seamless nature of it connecting automatically once you’ve been online once and the community itself made it a surprise standout. In a way it reminds me of a Dark Souls game though, where I can imagine much of this activity and magic will die down within the weeks and months following release.

I will also mention here that local multiplayer has seen some changes, with the biggest being that players can’t interact with each other anymore. There is one exception here with somebody playing as Yoshi being able to carry another player per the classic mechanic, but that’s really it. I’m personally torn as to whether this is an issue. On one hand we all have our fond memories of dumping a family member or friend into a lava pit when playing New Super Mario Bros Wii, only for them to throw the Wiimote onto the ground and leave the room. We all cherish those memories I’m sure. Is it what Nintendo want these games to be remembered for though? Probably not. Wonder puts a much higher emphasis on players supporting each other, and its version of multiplayer certainly meets this vision. It’s not necessarily worse off for it, but I can understand some degree of disappointment.

The Difficulty of a Mario Game

In terms of difficulty you really have a mixed bag in Wonder. The series as a whole has often put more of an emphasis on accessibility and creativity, and this game really sticks to that principle. It’s marvellously fun, and I feel there’s something to be had here regardless of whether you’re a child joining the series for the first time or somebody like me who’s grown up with it. I will stress there are some challenges, with the Special World in particular standing out in this respect, not to mention the very final level of the game should you choose to seek it out. The key here though is that these challenges are entirely out of the way, and you find that being common among the majority of the game’s major hurdles. They’re optional, and that’s just really good design.

The world map is central to this, and though it’s just a hub to move between levels, it’s certainly the best iteration we’ve seen to date. You can think of it as being made of three parts: linear sections where you have to beat a single level to unlock the next, an open selection of levels to pick between, and locked levels that require a set number of Wonder Seeds to open. Generally speaking the first category are your simpler traditional levels, introducing you to the larger style of a world and the themes at play, and acting as go-betweens for the larger open sections. These open sections are the meat of the game, featuring the assortment of levels available I mentioned earlier. Where this system shines is in the optional Wonder Seeds available to pick up in most traditional levels. With these, you’re open to avoid levels if you do find yourself hitting a wall, allowing for a few solid trials to be scattered around, even as early as the first world. Finally you have your locked stages, these often being castles or other minor hurdles. I did often find these less difficult than some of the stages available in the open areas, but they do strike a good balance for being stages that can’t be avoided. It’s a satisfying step up, if only a minor one, to test you on your journey.

I do also want to say how much I enjoyed the variety in terms of actual world design. In what is to my knowledge a series first, worlds don’t always end in a castle. This sounds like a small change, but it really is refreshing to see new ideas being tossed around. One world sees you tested for your worthiness to obtain the Royal Seed you’re hunting, and another sees you delve deep underground to rescue a group of Toads after a cave-in. They’re small details, but they really do add up to avoid the game feeling stale as it progresses. The castles themselves still managed to feel creative with enemies appearing around you as you make your way through them. One area that really fell short though was the bosses.

The Obligation of Bosses

Disappointing. There’s really no other word for them. In a game that screams creativity and variety, they for some reason decided to make every castle boss into the exact same fight. I hope you like Bowser Jr because you’ll be seeing him a lot! Now these fights have some interesting elements. The core idea is that they start out normal, you jump on the child Koopa’s head, and then things start to spice up with some Wonder power. This might warp the room, it might affect you, or it might affect Bowser Jr. If this were just one fight I think it’d be a fine idea, but it isn’t. It’s especially frustrating when you realise they already had a winning formula for this in 1995 with Yoshi’s Island on the SNES.

In that game, you see Kamek turn completely normal enemies into wildly creative and fun bosses by throwing some magic on them. That’s all we really needed. Enemies have so much personality in this game thanks to their revamped graphics and animations, and I’d have loved to have seen this turned up to 11 and thrown into a spotlight. The bosses here feel more like an obligation than something to look forward to, and that really shouldn’t be the case. To some extent the game redeems itself with a surprisingly fun end to the story, but it just doesn’t do enough for me.

Closing Thoughts

When all is said and done, I can absolutely recommend Mario Wonder to anybody wanting a great platformer on their Switch. Though certainly not without flaws, it stands as my favourite 2D Mario experience thanks to its overwhelming creativity and style. It’s an absolute breath of fresh air to what many have viewed as a stagnating franchise, and it has me excited to see what’s coming next.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/disgaea-7-vows-of-the-virtueless.2396/

Disgaea as a series holds a special place in my heart. Discovering it in the early days of the Switch when portable content was far more limited than it is today, Disgaea 5 Complete completely changed my perception of what a Tactical RPG can be. Campy comedic storylines paired with a gameplay loop that laughs at the Fire Emblem games of old with their limited resources, Disgaea sees the peoples’ desire for big stats and big damage and challenges them to turn it up to 11 through hard work and grinding. This is a series that isn’t for everybody, but for those chosen few each new game offers hundreds of hours of min-maxing and discovery. After a lull with the mixed reception of Disgaea 6, we rejoin the series with a new unlikely duo in a new set of stylish Netherworlds to see whether Nippon Ichi Software can put things back on track.

Welcome to the Hinomoto Netherworlds

Though Netherworlds are often known for violence and destruction, ruled over by powerful demons, Hinomoto was different. Unlike the rest of this dark society, its residents valued honour and empathy, following tradition and a long-standing bushido code. All of this changed when the leader of the Netherarmy, Demmodore Opener invaded. Stomping out Hinomoto’s mightiest warriors, he united the warring Netherworlds with a puppet Shogunate under his mighty fist. We join the story many years after this historic event with a starry-eyed Hinomoto otaku Pirilika and her unlikely partner in the bushido-hating Fuji.

Now an unlikely partnership forming the core of your party isn’t new to the series, with staples like Laharl and Etna of the first Disgaea game, and Killia and Seraphina of Disgaea 5 really coming to mind. It’s a good dynamic that’s tried and tested, but I do think this iteration is my favourite out of the games I’ve played. Pirilika’s ditzy and ever-positive outlook is used well throughout the plot to setup jokes, with Fuji falling into the role of the straight man. More characters are added to the mix as the game goes on, but they do a great job in building on what’s established right from the start. Though Fuji takes centre stage in the marketing of the game as its protagonist, it’s fun to see Pirilika really be the guiding force as you progress, with her good will and misunderstandings not quite matching up to the modern-day morals of the Hinomoto Netherworlds.

The game really does find strength in its writing, and I’m not sure why that was such a surprise to me. The series as a whole has never disappointed me with its often-nonsensical antics and over-the-top progression. While it’s the endgame grind that stays in my memory, the writing that gets you there really is something to be appreciated. From start to end you have puns and references fitting with the larger feudal Japanese theme. From character names to maps and locations you really get the impression the writing team, and by extension the localisation team, had a lot of fun. And it doesn’t go unnoticed. I won’t go into too much detail on individual lines, but I will say I did a double-take when I saw a line from Bill Wurtz’s History of Japan video thrown in there. Much like the first time I played Disgaea, I found this such a contrast to the more serious Fire Emblem games I’ve been enjoying again lately. Disgaea 7 doesn’t at all take itself seriously, and yet does so with a straight face acting as though this is just the norm. It’s something so fundamental to the series that I somehow managed to forget prior to coming back now.

The Prologue to Grinding

With 15 chapters of story to play through you have a good chunk of content to get you started before you need to really think about maxing out any stats on your characters. After Disgaea 6, the progression of the story was something I was particularly interested in, with bloated level scaling and inflation of damage numbers being one of my big criticisms of the previous title. I don’t want to be dealing thousands of damage out of the gate; I want to earn it. And Disgaea 7 really met my expectations here.

You start the game in the double digits of damage, and that’s just great. It feels incredibly traditional and though it can feel a little slow at the start, you soon find a sense of momentum as you get back into the swing of things. The start is definitely made a little more cumbersome thanks to some lengthy tutorials (the first one in particular standing out as a colossal 17 page info dump!) but these swiftly clear up after the first few maps.

One area that definitely deserves commendation is the larger design of the maps you’re playing through. Each chapter features five maps that stay within a the confines of the respective Netherworld. Where I’ve found some games can fall into the habit of throwing the same map at you a bunch of times in a row, or fall into the trap of tedium in the name of longevity, Disgaea 7 manages to pull together something really quite enjoyable from start to end. You also see Geo Tiles used well from quite early on, these being colourful panels on the floor that take on the effect of any Geo Crystals placed onto them. My only real complaint in this department is how a number of the boss characters end up being of the same class, resulting in maps that can end up feeling samey despite their otherwise-interesting design. There is a reason for this in terms of the story, so I won’t dwell on it too much, but it’s definitely something that stayed on my mind during the later chapters.

As you progress you’ll come across a few new features to the series to spice up the map, and they’ll have varying impact on you while you’re just working through the story. These are Hell Mode and Jumbification. Hell Mode becomes available quite early on, and is a chargeable meter for any character in possession of an Infernal Treasure. These treasures are unique to certain characters, and with them come both unique trigger conditions and unique effects on activation. All of this is packed together similar to the Revenge system of Disgaea 5 with a meter to track how close you are to being able to pull the trigger. Hell Mode can be incredibly powerful, but I did find myself disappointed to see it limited to a select few. I can understand this to some extent for the story portion, but it feels as though there should have been a way to put these treasures onto generic characters in the postgame. I largely ended up ignoring it with how much I enjoy playing with the generic characters, which is a bit of a shame.

Jumbification is a different story though. Available on every character, it charges using a meter of its own that fills based on the whole team attacking and being attacked. Once full, you can pick any member of your team to Jumbify, supersizing them with a Kaiju-themed scene and placing them at a cardinal side of the board of your choice. This supersizing lasts three turns for you, but is unlimited for AI opponents. Despite this it manages to feel surprisingly balanced. Your actions while Jumbified are limited, but it’s not to say these limits make it bad. On the contrary you become ridiculously strong, fully healing your HP and SP, and granting you access to a 5×5 attack that can be aimed anywhere on the board. As well as this, you can engage in some giant vs giant fighting and take a more powerful swing at another Jumbified character. There’s a lot to enjoy with this one, and there’s some fun strategy in holding onto your Jumbification until you need to heal, or making use of the placement of your Jumbified character to move across the map, with your character reverting to their normal size next to where they were giant, in oppose to where they started.

Moving On and Scaling Back from Disgaea 6

With Disgaea 6 leaving a sour taste in its wake for many long-time fans, it is interesting to see just how many of its systems feature here in one way or another. Starting with what is probably its most egregious sin, I was over the moon to see 17 generic classes available out of the gate, with more than 40 in total to pick between and master. By comparison, Disgaea 6 had just 22. A part of the reason could have been that Disgaea 6 was the first 3D entry to the series, but for what these games cost at launch and just how many classes were cut, it’s not much of a leg to stand on.

Those same 3D graphics return for Disgaea 7 though they do appear to polished up a fair bit. The environments of each world you travel to feel distinct and frankly just look great, this carrying into the hub world where you’ll undoubtedly spend much of your time. Outside of its looks, I really appreciate how compact this hub is. On top of the shortcut radial wheels returning from Disgaea 6, everything is on a single map within a small area. This makes moving from place to place much smoother, and keeps everything within reach. You’re only really slowed down by loading screens, which will vary from platform to platform, and PC to PC.

The Juice Bar is back and serves as a way to pump up your units with stats, experience, and mana you’ve accumulated on your journeys. Notably you cannot use the bar to increase your class or weapon mastery, and perhaps more notable is the fact it no longer costs HL to use. The trade-off is that your stat increases are limited to a billion for HP and SP, and ten million for other stats, per character of course. It’s still an important part of building a strong character, but now it’s more just one piece of a larger puzzle than the core area you should be putting all your attention.

Finally we have what was probably Disgaea 6’s most controversial change in the evolution of auto battling: Demonic Intelligence. Though I came to appreciate the depth of the system, its impact was inevitable in changing the very fabric of the postgame experience. It became a problem of optimisation and figuring out the best way to not play the game. It’s surely interesting, and perhaps something worth an in-depth look of its own, but many saw it as a step too far; it seems NIS was paying attention. Demonic Intelligence does return, but it’s a shadow of what it was in the previous game.

Instead of being able to automate any map, you’re limited to those you’ve already cleared once. That in itself already has serious implications, removing the series staple Item World from the equation completely (we’ll come back to the Item World in more detail later!). On top of this though each automated turn will now use up a new currency, Poltergas, which you earn by clearing maps manually. In essence you still have the same problem of optimised automation, but on a much smaller scale. You need to make sure you clear whatever map you’re farming in one turn, and if you can, you’re rewarded quite handsomely for it. After you’ve cleared a map using DI, you’re given the option to repeat that clear as many times as you want, assuming you’ve got the currency for it, instantly claiming the cumulative reward. This means you can repeat a map up to 300 times once you’ve got your DI down. It’s well-balanced, but I do feel the system’s flexibility is wasted now. I’ve yet to find a situation were I’m not just telling a character to move to a specific place and use a specific attack. There’s no reason for conditions, checks, or any real embellishments. You make one DI to clear one map for grinding, and that’s its use.

There is a new mode on offer that could have offered some redemption for DI, but it ultimately falls on its face for the same reason as stated above. Demonic Shogi sees you controlling set pieces on a map and giving them a set of instructions to be able to clear them. You have a number of stages to clear of increasing difficulty, and I really do like the idea here. Because these are a list of single set maps however, you really just need to pretend you’re controlling the characters and issue direct instructions. There’s nothing complex or varied, and nothing that really requires you use DI to its fullest. This could’ve been fixed in a number of ways. Having multiple maps chained together would’ve been great to see, forcing you to create a single set of instructions that was flexible to adapt. Even giving you a chain of random maps akin to the Item World and grading you based on how far your instructions carried you would’ve been really interesting. The maps that were picked for Demonic Shogi are fun puzzles, but the inclusion of Demonic Intelligence just feels shoehorned in to give it a distinct reason to be in the game.

The Postgame Grind Loop

In terms of building a perfect character, there’s a decent combination of the old and new at play. For series veterans, you’ll be happy to know the Martial Dimension is available pretty early on here. And for those not in the know, the Martial Dimension is a series of five optional maps that are setup to give you a real challenge when you first clear them. For managing this feat however, you get access to some of the best maps to play on repeat to grind experience and mana. Though it’s entirely not necessary, and certainly not optimal, you’re able to start grinding as early as a few chapters into the game. If you want to power level to enable you to rush through the story you’re completely able to, and the Cheat Shop further supports you.

Available from Chapter 2, the Cheat Shop again returns to allow you to fine-tune the Disgaea experience to your liking. Chief among this tuning is the ability to redistribute the percentage of experience, mana, money, weapon mastery, special skill experience, and class proficiency received as you play through the game. The way this works is by giving you a pool of Cheat Points (CP), with each point being a percentage point you’re able to put into each of these rates. At the start of the game you’ll have 600 CP, representing the default 100% rate in each field. You’re also limited to how low each of these can go from the start, with this limit decreasing and eventually disappearing as you progress. What this means is that if you’re just focused on experience for example, you can reduce the rate in which you receive everything else to be able to get more. As you play more, you’ll be able to push this further and further, optimising your grind in a really natural way.

Once you hit the endgame is when things really start to ramp up though. With the story finished you’re free to start planning just how you’re going to get your favourite characters from the pits of mediocrity to taking down the biggest titans the game has to offer. To me it feels as though there’s less to do than usual here, but I will confess I’m not yet finished with the game, so there may be some depth that’s gone a little over my head.

Much of making a unit great can be split between two areas: buffing the unit, and buffing the equipment. Buffing units has been grossly oversimplified in Disgaea 7. Where before you might have had to grind maps to collect essences, play an entire board game to unlock the best of what your unit is capable of (nobody liked Chara World… I just want it back!), here things really aren’t so complex, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. The game feels far more streamlined than my experience with Disgaea 5 Complete, but I do think something was lost in this. Much of the game’s grinding come from two areas: the hospital’s Evil Gacha, and the revamped Item World.

Evil Gacha is a quick one to explain, with you healing at the hospital now giving you Hospital Points in place of static rewards for healing so much. This HP can then be spent on a series of increasingly-expensive gacha machines, each with better and better rewards. At the top end, you’ll be earning stacks of stats that go directly into the Juice Bar. What this ultimately means though is that to cap out those ten million per stat, you’ll need to be spending a lot of time standing in front of an NPC mashing the A button.

The Item World is at least a bit more involved, and the revamps here are actually mostly positive. Instead of an endless stream of random levels as in previous games, the Item World is now broken down into chunks based on your item’s rarity, giving you either 10, 20, or 30 floors before facing down a powerful boss character. When you reach the end, the item can then be reincarnated to become stronger while maintaining some of the strength it’s already gained. These more bitesized excursions feel much more manageable to me than just jumping into an indefinite number of floors until I felt like stopping. On top of buffing your weapons there are also a few quirks in the Item World that’ll contribute to your larger stat development, but with these being at the very end of the endgame I’ll leave them somewhat vague.

What amuses me about all this grinding is that, more than ever, it really isn’t necessary if all you want to do is beat the game. Even if you want to get all achievements, it’s actually not really required you spend hours upon hours buffing weapons and pumping stats. You’ll need to get to a certain baseline sure, but already fans have found ways to take down even the toughest enemies with some really cool and unique strategies. The community is one really big part of Disgaea as a series, and while I do think it’s something to be celebrated, I feel like it’s important to bring up that such a community almost seems like a requirement for a common player to get the most out of the game. As a series it could certainly do better in signposting players towards means of growth instead of just giving them a wall upon completing the story and expecting them to climb over it one way or another. The occasional item or skill having an awkward translation from time to time certainly doesn’t help either, though it does seem the localisation team at NISA have been updating the game since launch to fix these.

A £100 Game?

It’s about now that it’s probably worth mentioning the DLC available to buy at launch. This has become something of a series staple, and it’s not a positive one; if you’re a PC player you might not even be aware of it with the PC release usually being a “Complete” package. On offer is seven sets of three-map DLC that each offer you three characters to add to your forces from previous titles, priced at £6.69 apiece. There’s also an art book, cosmetic set, and special weapons at varying prices, but they’re not quite as important. I actually sold my special weapons by accident, doh!

Now the idea of paying an additional £45 on top of a full-price £55 game is already bad enough, but it only gets worse when you learn these DLC characters contain skills that’ll significantly speed up your grind. It’s a degree of pay to win that’s really unfortunate especially in a game that has an online arena mode to fight other peoples’ AI-controlled teams. I will clarify that you don’t need the DLC to beat the game, or get all achievements, by any stretch. Regardless, having this amount of additional content at launch and locking some fantastic skills behind it just doesn’t sit right with me. It gets worse mind. If £45 of launch day DLC wasn’t bad enough, you also have a delightful assortment of microtransactions to choose from, this giving your experience, mana, and HL gains a x2, x5, or x10 multiplier on top of whatever skills you have active in-game. These were added first in the Complete+ release of Disgaea 4, and were later seen in Disgaea 6, and I will make my stance on them clear again: use Cheat Engine if you really want to speed things up. Don’t support this. This is a £100 game if you’re buying what would have parity with the “Complete” releases; this shouldn’t continue, and NIS should be called out for it.

Closing Thoughts

When all is said and done, is Disgaea 7 worth your time? Undoubtedly. This is a fantastic entry to the series and one I can really recommend to any fan of Tactical RPG games, or just folks who enjoy a fun and lighthearted story to follow. Having said that, can I recommend you buying it now? If you’re new to the series, absolutely not; and that’s not to say it’s particularly unfriendly to newcomers. It’s a great game to start with, but where it finds fault is in its complete lack of value when compared to older titles like Disgaea 5 Complete. If you happen to be a series veteran and wanted to check in to see if things were looking up after Disgaea 6, you’ll have a blast. Otherwise, check out the cheaper entries to the series and wait for a sale. It’s a good game, but I feel gross for having supported a company who feel £45 of launch day DLC and microtransactions are reasonable for a £55 game. Do better NIS.