Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance

All Disgaea games play the same fundamentally but 5's new mechanics are cool enough to warrant playing. Namely you can now breed Innocents at a farm to increase their level up to a certain point. You can also choose different item world routes which emphasize enemies, treasure, Innocent spawning, etc. Theres's also a warehouse you can store Innocents in which is cool but it's a bit more menuing than I'd like. They streamlined the Item World itself which I was a bit mixed on, because it's cool you wont get super-fucked by the RNG but I do kind of miss having to improvise on insane procgen maps with shit all over the place. At least it gets a little more interesting at higher item levels.

Another new mechanic is the Squad system, where you assign units to particular squads that either power the units up or increase certain functionalities (more slots for the Innocent Farm, for instance). You can level up Squads and their effectiveness by sacrificing prisoners you capture, with the levels of the prisoners working as experience points. It's a little bloated but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Also you can make curry before each battle to temporarily buff your stats which I only messed with 2 or 3 times, it's really just an unnecessary step. The Chara World returns as a weird boardgame thing to power up individual units but it's pretty dull amd I only messed around with it on and off even though the rewards are pretty good. It just made me think of how cool a janky Disgaea party game would be.

I don't know if this is a new feature or not (last Disgaea game I played was 4+ in like 2018) but 5 has a research thing where you send units out to explore other Netherworlds while you fight real battles. This ended up getting super OP because the units gain pretty decent experience and pick up times and pick up prisoners while you aren't even doing anything. But in all honesty breaking Disgaea is half of its appeal (for me at least) so it was cool having another tool at my disposal.

I still have some postgame stuff to do, and it seems a little sparse compared to other entires but thats probably because I havent really dived into it (I beat it at 4AM this morning). The main game is around 55 hours depending on how hard you go in on grinding; I finished about 60 hours in. It's a nice little plot that hits all the right beats of a shonen anime, and the characters for the most part are likeable once you spend some time with them (never really liked Zeroken or the yellow Prinny girl tho), so it's a great package overall and probably the most fun I've had with Disgaea. Look forward to my writeup of 6 when I get around to playing it in 2024.

The grid-based RPG gameplay in this game is absolutely great. Setting up a sequence of attacks and cutting down demon after demon doesn't get old for the game's entire 50-hour runtime.
What does get old is the cast of characters. While some character development is present, the characters still retread the same sayings and jokes over and over. Red Magnus never stops using pro wrestling catchphrases, and Seraphina never stops shooting everyone who makes a joke at her expense. Usalia is the worst, because in addition to never shutting up about curry, she says "plip" in very nearly every single one of her lines. It's incredibly annoying. The reason why prinnies work so well despite having the same "need to say this word every line" gimmick is that "dood" sounds like an actual word. You might see it as "dood", but you hear it as "dude". If Usalia's gimmick word had been an actual word, it might not have been as annoying.
The plot is pretty standard with added incestuous undertones from the villain, but it's fine. That is, until near the end, where the party finally defeats demon general Majorita soundly, and Red Magnus is about to land the killing blow. Usalia jumps out and does the infuriating "if you kill her you'll be just like her!!!" bullshit, and they let her go. This, of course, backfires horrendously when the main bad guy steals her power and uses it to achieve his actual goals. Killing a mass-murderer is apparently the exact same thing as mass-murder and near-genocide, though, so it couldn't be avoided.

The main draw with Complete is that it includes all the extra DLC maps. These are easily the highlight of the game, though the levels of the enemies are so high that you probably won't be able to do them until post-game. The DLC maps are all just joke maps, and the humour lands really well, even as someone who didn't know any of the returning characters from past Disgaea games.
While the series is mainly known for being "the grinding game", it's very possible to beat the main story and DLC maps without very much grinding. I didn't even really touch the item world thing and got through just fine.
I also love the idea of seeing a cool enemy design, then being able to recruit a bunch of them for my team at the end of the chapter.

I would definitely recommend everyone with a Switch to try out the free demo version.