PAX East 2026 – Disgaea Mayhem Hands-On: Frenetic Fan Service

One of my highlights at PAX East 2026 was stopping by the NIS America booth and getting some hands-on time with Disgaea Mayhem and Brigandine Abyss. More on the latter in another article, but if you’re curious how Disgaea‘s first foray into action RPG territory fares, you’re in the right place!

Disgaea Mayhem‘s PAX East demo was brief — I had my choice of three stages selected from a menu and a simple staging area to plan my loadout before jumping into the fray. So while I didn’t get a deep dive into the actual game, it was a good taste of what to expect. The demo let me pick from many different weapons, each with their own playstyle and selection of special moves, but since you can’t change weapons during the levels (at least in this demo version; I’m unsure how it will work in the final game), I spent time with three of them, one for each stage.

While it’s easy to call the game an action RPG, Disgaea Mayhem shares more than a little DNA with musou games, as within seconds, I found myself swarmed by colorful, cute, and “I want to be menacing but I’m still pretty cute” monsters. Defeating waves of them would let me progress to another map area, and so on. I haven’t played a ton of musou games, but even based on my time with Hyrule Warriors, I’m familiar with how sprawling the maps can be in some of those games, and one look at the minimaps in Disgaea Mayhem made each area feel similarly vast. There seemed to be a lot of variety in scenery, too, with winding paths connecting areas and rooms, and nothing felt samey or like it was just another pasted field or room after another. How much sightseeing there will really be in normal gameplay remains to be seen, but the stage designs were nice, and more varied than NIS has shown off in most of their screenshots.

Combat is the crux of Disgaea Mayhem‘s gameplay, and if your combat and movement doesn’t feel good in an action RPG or musou, you may as well just go home. Thankfully, even though the game doesn’t even have a release date yet, it felt great to play. Controls were responsive, hits connected in a satisfying manner, and even just the three weapons I tried — sword, gun, and fists — all felt unique enough that they changed how I approached each battle. The sword was probably the most “standard” way to play, with fancy swings and medium-range melee attacks. The gun was the most out of my comfort zone, as someone who rarely plays ranged classes in games, but it was a fun challenge to remember to hang back and hit enemies at a distance. Lastly, I tried the fist/knuckles, and was delighted to see it felt very different from the sword, despite both being close range melee. And much of that is due to each weapon’s special attack lineup.

Each weapon had four special attacks, mapped to the four face buttons plus L1. I found some common elements across weapons, like attacks that hit a wide area one or more times, but plenty of differentiation, too. Activating one of the sword’s special moves displayed a blue-tinted area of effect in front of me that I had to position to maximize the amount of enemies I could get inside it. The other weapons also had AoE moves, but with different ranges and requirements; I mistakenly tried using the gun’s AoE move right in front of a group of enemies, but the range indicator has to be out a set distance from you. There are also some skills that persist and modify others; one special move with the fists created a shadow copy on either side of my protagonist who mimicked my moves, effectively tripling my range. Even better, while they were active, I could still use other special moves, like a multi-hit thousand (hundred?) kick attack. This one seemed to lay waste to anything in front of me anyway, so having it deploy in triplicate felt like a real power move, and one that makes perfect sense in Disgaea‘s world of excess.

The three areas I played in were, apparently, meant to be in order of difficulty, even if the last one — set in or around a volcano with lava everywhere — ended up feeling the easiest. Then again, I didn’t ever feel I was in any danger. I only noticed I HAD a healing item on my last run, since I never really took much damage. And that’s no bragging on my part! I imagine for demo purposes, and based on my gear, that this build was probably (hopefully) far easier than the final game will be.

While much of Disgaea Mayhem‘s standard combat was heavy on button mashing, and I made a point to try out every special move, the bosses at least suggested at some more strategic elements. Weirdly, and this could also be a case of just the current state of the game, two of the three bosses were the same female demon (albeit in different color schemes). Her outfit and physics were uh… Well, I don’t want to say pandering or that NIS knows their audience, she may look somewhat familiar to Darkstalkers fans. But anyway, this bouncy lady was fond of huge laser-like beams that required some quick footwork to both dodge and then close in to attack. This is also where I learned, accidentally, that properly timed special moves can counter enemies’ special moves. I’d have to imagine that will be a regular occurrence, if not a required tactic, as you get deeper into the game. I have no recollection of what this boss’ volcano rendition form did, because I defeated her more quickly than any swarm of Prinnies up to that point. But hey, it was a demo build, and the difficulty balancing doesn’t necessarily reflect that of the final game.

All in all, my time with Disgaea Mayhem was over in a flash, with the same speed as my character could blaze around each stage. While it’s too soon to know how lengthy or deep the final game will be, and what kind of strategic gameplay and challenge it will offer, even this brief window into Disgaea Mayhem shows a lot of promise. The different weapons offer meaningfully distinct gameplay, and the visuals and animations are as vibrant and over-the-top as you would want from a game in the Disgaea universe. That it runs so smoothly and feels good to play even at this stage is encouraging as well.

Fans of Disgaea, action RPGs, and musou games should keep an eye on Disgaea Mayhem when it comes to PS5, PC, Switch, and Switch 2 later this summer. Learn more on the game’s official website.