Video Game / Makai Kingdom

aka: Makai Kingdom Chronicles Of The Sacred Tome

The mighty overlords... and corn.^note  Plus the Badass Freakin' Overlord's Daughter

"There is, of course, more than one universe. In one such world, in the corner of a backwater galaxy, humans rule over a senseless planet. However, that's about as important as a speck of dust in this pluralistic cosmos. Well, here in the netherworld, things work in the same way. I wanted to tell him that... But he had enough problems with my prophecy already..."

"Disperse, loyal battle monkeys! Do my bidding and BUST A CAP!"

Continuing the tradition of wacky Turn-Based Strategy RPGs started by Disgaea and Phantom Brave, Nippon Ichi Software released Makai Kingdom in 2005. It's the story of 'Badass Freakin' Overlord' Zetta, who accidentally destroys his own Netherworld by torching a Cosmic Keystone called the Sacred Tome. In order to save himself, he seals himself inside the book before it's completely ruined. Reduced to a sentient tome with no home, no resources, and no body, Zetta is forced to enlist the help of his fellow Overlords in a bid to get his netherworld back.

A PSP port was released in 2011 that includes an alternate storyline involving a new character, Petta. However, this version did not get a western release until 2022, as part of the NIS Classics Vol. 2 Compilation Re-release for consoles with a simultaneous PC release as Makai Kingdom: Reclaimed and Rebound.

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Provides examples of:

• Aggressive Play Incentive: With few exceptions, Nippon Ichi games favor the bold players that pump their own stats and cruise past Mooks. In fact, Makai Kingdom is probably the brand's most blatant example - Enemies (particularly casters) almost always have the ability advantage over the player and can wreck even a well-planned party if they unleash the right attacks, particularly if Cosmic Keystone Zetta is caught in the crossfire. Between that and the inability to block enemy units or influence their movement, it's much safer to pump stats as high as possible and demolish high-Point enemies for easy map-clears than it is to participate in long, drawn-out sieges that give enemies attack opportunities. Hitting "End Turn" with enemies around almost always guarantees a party pulverized with Herd-Hitting Attack combos.
• Alternate Timeline: The PSP Petta storyline. The Petta storyline takes place in a universe where Zetta bites his tongue when he tries to confine himself into the Sacred Tome. Salome ends up saving him, but it takes Zetta 1000 years to recover...and he still gets stuck in the Sacred Tome. When Zetta finally wakes up, he finds that Alex has taken over all the other Netherworlds as the "Great Overlord". Oh and he has a daughter.
• Anti-Gravity Clothing: Then again, most of the characters featuring this are practically forces of nature themselves. Presumably gravity is hiding in a corner to avoid attracting attention.
• Anti-Villain:
  • Alexander conquered all of the known Netherworlds in the Petta Mode timeline. He did this to prevent the other Overlords from killing Zetta during his 1000-year hiatus.
  • Micky. Micky himself is a Nice Guy and is only a villain by virtue of being an Overlord. Well that and his less-savory Cognizant Limbs.
  • Salome. She sees the other Overlords as "disgusting piles of sin" and is downright gentle towards Zetta. Even her brief Face–Heel Turn is her wanting Zetta to put her out of her slowly-dying misery.
• Anti-Wastage Features: Attempting to delete a unit/vehicle/facility equipped with items (or holding characters) will yield an error message, preventing the player from deleting the items they're holding too. This also applies to trying to delete equippable items - a confirmation pop-up will remind you that someone's using it then sending you back to choose another item, if you want.
• Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: There are loads and loads of weapon types. There are modern weapons like rifles, bazookas, or flamethrowers available, but also classical weapons like swords and spears. Or silly weapons like UFOs, Pies, Syringes, or Paper Fans. Heck, there are even giant mechs available to ride.
• Armored But Frail: Mimics have insanely high DEF and RES but horrible HP. A stray paper-cut is enough to take them down.
• Artificial Stupidity: Buildings have an odd habit of borking the AI, as they may drop everything to take them over even if it means wading through your army as they get slaughtered. If the building isn't particularly strong in the first place you can potentially kill everyone who overtakes it inside by destroying it. Enemies will sometimes attempt to take over even if they have no hope of doing this. Healer classes are especially prone to this.
  • Pie Wielding enemies will simply stand there and take hits (or confusingly, even heal the people killing them) instead of throwing the pie away and fighting unarmed. It's not like the AI doesn't know HOW to do this either, but...
  • Prinny AI usually consists of the Prinny throwing whatever weapon or item it's carrying in a random direction. If it has no item, it will pick up the nearest one and throw it. If there is no item in walking distance, it stands there until killed. On rare occasions Prinnies may move towards or even attack your units, but KEY Prinnies usually mean you can move in position for the next area. This also makes Petta mode's 1-2 a surprising kick to the pants, as the (almost entirely Prinny) army is significantly more competent than average.
• Art Shift: The beginning and ending of the game features a different pool of sprites for the characters; they're highly detailed and proportional to their official art, very different from how they appear in the main game, looking like something straight out of Odin Sphere.
• Ascended Meme: Zetta's nickname for Alex, "Asshat."
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: "Slash his throat! Eat his eyes!! STEAL HIS SHOES!!!"
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Balloons. They use the game's easiest-to-increase stat (SP) to attack, but fling the character using it out-of-bounds just for using it once; ignoring the fact that using their special attacks take SP away, thus making them weaker with every use. And if the enemies use Balloon attacks, they level their friends up upon being thrown Out-Of-Bounds. Unique units mitigate the Out of Bounds penalty, but since it still relies on SP it will still go down in damage unless you stick to its basic attack. Even worse, the only Unique unit that can learn balloon skills is King Drake the Third.
  • Remotes. They increase both INT and TEC, but only two (three in the ports) Squishy Wizard units in the game can use them at all, learning their only skill requires a whopping ten levels of Weapon Mastery and both attacks require the user to be at close-range; guaranteeing that character's death if their targets aren't gone when it pops.
  • The Hammer weapons also count. Not only are they the weakest weapon type in the game, but an allied character hit with a Hammer gets a full Level Down as well as losing any pending experience they've acquired during the battle. Of course, Player Mooks using Hammers on enemies don't have this effect.
  • Most of the Warrior-type classes can learn special skills for use when they don't have a weapon in their hands. Most of these are ironically Multi-target skills, too. Unfortunately, no unit in the game, Generic or Unique, has the stat growth needed to rock such a style unless max Reincarnation levels are achieved; and if one can achieve max levels, then why would you be using Unarmed skills at all?
• Ax-Crazy: Dryzen.
• Badass Boast: Combined with Mundane Made Awesome with Zetta's threats against the corn people.
  "I, the mighty Overlord Zetta, do not fear corn, kettle or otherwise!"
• Battle Butler: The thunder god Raiden is Alexander's right-hand man. You face him three times during the game: once during the intro, and again at the end of chapters 4 and 6.
  • In the PSP port's new story, Petta's working for Alex and you fight her more than a few times.
• Bishōnen Line: The larger overlords like Babylon and Valvolga condense themselves into humanoid form before fighting. They don't get any more powerful from this, though.
• Book Ends: The game begins and ends with Zetta consulting the Sacred Tome. The difference is that while he's using the Sacred Tome at the beginning to confirm the prophecy of his Netherworld's destruction, the Normal Ending has him using the Sacred Tome to bring Salome back to life.
• Buffy Speak!
  "Sacred Tome? More like...sucky...dumb...thing!"
• Card-Carrying Villain:
  "Evil is actually in my job description."
  • If this isn't a one-off gag (probably not, since Zetta was being rather blunt here), then this line applies to all Overlords.
• Changing Gameplay Priorities: The main story is manageable solely through maintaining character equipment and adding to your ranks. Once the post-game hits and Reincarnation and Random Dungeon-spelunking become more important, raw damage output becomes the typical player's priority; as enemies that can one-shot you become the norm, rendering DEF into a Dump Stat.
• Can't Catch Up:
  • TEC-users are gimped by this. Post-Game bosses and high-level Dungeon characters tend to have above-average defenses. Unless over-levelled, Support spells will usually come into play to assist. However, there are no spells for buffing the TEC stat. What doesn't help is that Makai Kingdom chose to do away with item-leveling, which makes Accessories static. Long story short, a TEC-user with 3000 TEC and three Glasses is nothing compared to a Mage with 3000 INT that's been boosted by five Magic Boost spells, turning that 3000 into 5000.
  • Downplayed once you start recruiting post-game characters. Post-Game characters have astounding stat-growth compared to even the Elite Mooks, making them ideal for (more of) the Post-Game. Generic characters can come close to this level of power if the time is dedicated to them, but they'll require way more work than just boosting up the secret units.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Outside of a few moments with Salome, the story has generally been comedic, with episode 7, involving Monty Python and the Holy Grail-inspired corn, easily being the funniest. Then, that episode ends with Zetta, upon meeting with the other Overlords, roasts a nearby corn with a Zetta Beam, said corn having been implied to be The One. While the laughs continue for a bit with King Drake trying to use the dead The One as a puppet, all comedy is sucked dry as Zetta has to contend with the fact that he might die or lose all his mana.
• Chew Toy: Asagi, who debuted in this game and has been wandering around the Nippon Ichi-verse ever since.
• Cognizant Limbs: Spoofed. The demon lord Valvoga is made up of three parts — the four-armed Ambiguously Gay Micky, the Manipulative Bastard Ophelia, and the Ax-Crazy Dryzen — but they function as one person in battle.
• Combat Medic: A playable class, one of the Soldier classes, functioning as a healer with gun proficiency. Healers are also surprisingly powerful in this game if you put a syringe into their hands.
• Cool Starship: The battleship Yoshitsuna, piloted by Optional Boss Prinny Baal, which can be yours if you can defeat it.
• Crippling Overspecialization:
  • Gobblers and Evil Eyes have pitiful stats in every category except HP and SP, respectively. Their weapon proficiencies are either suited to better classes with the stats to use them or work against their one strength.
  • Idols and Heaven's Blisses are amazing healer-types with an overabundance of RES, MV, and SP. They're also amazingly useless at every form of combat. Unless you happen upon a Syringe and have some Mana to spare...
  • Guardians and Iron Golems are immensely tough to hurt but can't really deal any damage. This is especially bad since the game prevents units from blocking one another, turning the heavily-armored tanks into paperweights. Guardians are however one of the two generic classes that can use a Beam Sword - Something to consider for Reincarnation.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: Zetta, even in book form, is still the most powerful overlord in the cosmos. In his appearances as a Superboss in later games, as well as in one cutscene here, he still has the power to obliterate things with tremendously powerful eye beams. He does not use this power in this game's gameplay, however.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Pram's attempts to defeat Alex in Petta Mode go sour when the titular character displays her restored Mana power, which rivals even Zetta's. The only clue as to Pram's fate is an explosion sound.
  • Most of the post-game bosses are designed around this; the simplest strategy being to put a few characters in a Fortress, buff them with Healers and Combo the boss before they get a single turn in.
• Decoy Protagonist: Played with. While Zetta is indisputably the main character of the game's storyline, the player never directly controls him (save in one fight where you get A Taste of Power). This is even lampshaded in one of the random lines your troops can say, when they point out that the real main character is whichever random soldier the player has chosen to control.
• Defeat Means Friendship: How all the optional characters join your team.
• Demon Lords and Archdevils: Literally everybody.
• Dimension Lord: All of the main characters are rulers of a Netherworld (or the Underworld in Seedle's case). Trenia is the only exception and she's the spirit of the Sacred Tome, which may qualify her as one anyway.
• Dirty Coward: King Drake III.
• The Ditz: Trenia. Zetta wakes up early in one chapter to find that Trenia has set him on fire and is using it to roast a marshmallow. This borders on Fridge Brilliance when you find out that she's the spirit of the Sacred Tome and is actually practicing Obfuscating Stupidity... REVENGE!!!!
• Double Entendre: In an optional boss battle, King Drake claims that the only reason he snuck up on Zetta in his sleep was to steal his "junk". King Drake meant money and valuables. Zetta thought differently.
  Zetta: You sick bastard... I didn't know you swung that way.
• Drill Tank: Driller-G tanks function like this.
• Dump Stat: DEF, upon hitting the Post-Game. Per the norm for Nippon Ichi titles, post-game battles are made excessively easy by grinding for the best weapons and achieving levels that are at least half of the target bosses'. This turns most post-game bosses into One-Hit KO affairs, especially if one has enough Support Spell-casters.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The wolf-like Mystic Beasts appear in Asagi's pre-fight cut scene before they make their proper debut in Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories.
• Epic Flail: The Morningstar's final skill swings the entire map around.
• Et Tu, Brute?: In Petta Mode, she turns on Alex after getting rid of Pram to protect Zetta's interests. Alex repeatedly refuses to attack her despite her not hesitating to do the same. Zetta hijacks their fight.
• Even Evil Has Standards: None of the Overlords are having King Drake's constant scheming.
• Evil Laugh: Zetta is big on this trope. He's very good at it too, even as a book.
• Evil Tainted the Place: When Salome is introduced in Chapter 5, we see a regal, angelic-looking Netherworld presumed to be hers. When the Final Chapter rolls around and Salome slams Zetta's Netherworld into hers, the resulting stages look like dead wastelands that are about to ooze Lovecraft Lite from their seams.
• Eye Beams:
  Zetta BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAM!
• Faux Affably Evil: Most of the overlords except Babylon, who has grown genuinely affable in his old age and isn't really evil anymore anyway, and Seedle, whose outright hostility subverts the "affably" part. Dryzen is probably the most prominent example.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Characters can sometimes get stuck in vehicles and facilities with no way of getting them out. Death is often one of the triggers, but not always. It's unfortunately very random and the only way around it is to reload a previous save.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • Because the Sacred Tome is a Cosmic Keystone linked to the existence of everything, destroying it nets you an immediate game over, even if one of your characters somehow survives the backlash.
  • The background music and faced enemy types of an episode's randomized maps is dependent on which Overlord Zetta chose as that episode's sponsor.
• Genre-Busting: The game is a weird mixture of Disgaea and Phantom Brave, revolving around summoning allies in the middle of the battlefield but less dependent on objects already on the field. There's nothing exactly like it. (Then again, there was nothing exactly like Phantom Brave either.)
  • The game's original Japanese name is Phantom Kingdom, making the Phantom Brave connection more obvious.
• Giant Medical Syringe: One of the weapon types is giant Syringes. These weapons are particularly useful for healers, because their damage is based on the Resistance stat, which also determines the power of healing spells. A Syringe allows your healer to deal ample damage without sacrificing their healing capabilities.
• Glass Cannon:
  • Enforced for the game's mage classes, by design: A light breeze can down most mages, but the range of their Magic is insane. A spell's area-of-effect and the potentially-generous randomness of enemy element resistances are the ingredients for a cocktail of pain. Of course, this applies to you too.
  • Samurai, Hell Sabers, Professors, and Archers all have one thing in common: High attacking stats and pitiful HP growth.
  • Katanas and Bazookas turn their wielder into this, lowering DEF and RES, respectively.
  • Nearly all characters in the player's party turn into this come Post-Game due to defenses becoming a Dump Stat against higher-levelled foes, typical for Nippon Ichi games.
• God Was My Co-Pilot: Turns out that "The One", an entity responsible for helping the Balance Between Good and Evil is really Ophelia... Although this might have been a gag. Also, Trenia was the original spirit of the Sacred Tome.
• Hard Mode Perks: In both the PSP and the Reclaimed & Rebound ports of the game, choosing to play Petta Mode from the beginning unlocks almost every generic unit from the start and give you three-or-so of their tiers for free. Petta Mode isn't that much harder than the main story, but it expects you to be savvy about the game's mechanics and enemy levels shoot into the stratosphere faster since the Mode is only four episodes long. You'll be using its generously-provided Level Grinding maps a lot.
• Harmful Healing: The Syringe can heal the target for free with its basic attack, but the more advanced attacks all cause harm (and replenishes the user's health by an equal amount — it essentially drains away life). Furthermore, it uses the RES stat (which Healers and Medics tend to focus on) to determine its effectiveness, so it can become a very powerful weapon for a class that usually hangs back in the rear.
• Healing Shiv: Syringes and pies allow you to heal allies with "attacks."
• Heart Beat-Down: The Staff weapon is a Magical Girl-style sceptre that summons hearts and ribbons for its moves.
• Hell Has New Management: Seedle is the ruler of the afterlife. How did he come by this position? He was a human warrior who died, went there, and in Zetta's words, "kicked so much ass that they made him the boss."
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Zetta makes no bones about letting others know that he's the strongest, and does so constantly. At one point he actually was, until he blew up everything.
• How Dare You Die on Me!: A rare pre-mortem example: After Zetta is cursed to die in two days, Alexander confronts Zetta with these words, furious at the prospect of losing his rival... And then tries to beat the curse to the punch. This comes, naturally, with a huge dose of Ho Yay.
• Inner Monologue: Zetta does this a lot; one time, Pram even calls him out on it.
• Item Caddy:
  • Downplayed with Thieves. A Thief's primary function is technically to steal from enemies with UFOs. However, their extraordinary movement range and impressive number of item slots make them one of the best characters to ferry people and supplies around the maps. It doesn't help either that post-game dungeons and maps are very generous with Bonus List item-handouts, which will eventually include elite weapons and gear - thus, even the act of stealing stops mattering.
  • Played straight with Chefs. Any character can equip food items and feed them to anybody without consuming their turn (which increases the diner's Experience gains/handouts), but Chefs have the distinction of doubling the effects of said items if they're the feeder; making this their primary role in an army.
• Joke Character: King Drake upon recruiting him. His poor Aptitudes prevent him from properly using three out of the four weapons he's good with, and the one weapon type he can properly use happens to be the weakest in the game. Just stack him full of shoes and use him to throw people around. That's as useful as he's gonna get.
• Large Ham: King Drake the Third. Zetta is a distant second-place.
• Laser Blade: One of the special weapon types that can demolish vehicles. Only two classes in the game can use it inherently, but Reincarnation can solve that.
• Leitmotif: Each of the Overlords has their own theme music. When their Netherworld is selected at the beginning of each chapter, the music changes, as well.
• Lethal Joke Character: Idols and the Heaven's Bliss both seem like absolutely horrid classes with everything but their RES and their Healing spells working against them. And they are. Unless you've given them a Syringe through Reincarnation, that is.
• Long Song, Short Scene: Devil's Descent, Valvoga's theme, only plays twice, during its introduction and as the Superboss music against him.
• Lord British Postulate: A strong-enough character can in-fact destroy the Sacred Tome wholesale. It's an instant game over if you pull it off, whether one of your units survives the backlash or not.
• Love Makes You Crazy: Salome. Salome's love for Zetta consumes her in the final chapter, leading to her subjecting Zetta's Netherworld to a Colony Drop and turning on him. Then it's revealed to be a subversion, as she was Obfuscating Stupidity so she could give Zetta the rest of her power via Suicide by Cop.
• Love Martyr: Salome's entire plan hinged on Zetta killing her so she could give him the rest of her power in one lump sum instead of dying a slow, poisoned death at its hands.
• Magic Knight:
  • Reincarnation and some effort can make any character into this; though the Vampire, Specter and Shadow classes act as this by design.
  • Daggers in particular are designed specifically for this, increasing ATK and INT simultaneously.
  • Out of the recruitable post-game characters, Salome and Valvoga.
• Mana Drain: An in-story example. Salome's power is waning due to circumstances beyond her control or understanding. Turns out she's been feeding Zetta her Mana since he became Overlord and it's been slowly killing her.
• Magikarp Power: More than a few of the game's weapons such as Morningstars and Bazookas compensate for their decent stats with weak attack ranges, a paltry number of abilities and a massive gap in the weapon levels needed to unlock said abilities. Reaching these levels however makes these weapons drastically more effective; usually through unlockable Herd-Hitting Attacks. Special mention goes to the Remote, which only has one ability after its default attack - but reaching Level 10 in its Mastery unlocks an ability that turns the character into a close-range Kill Sat.
• Market-Based Title: The fully English name Phantom Kingdom got renamed to the partially Gratuitous Japanese name Makai Kingdom when it was ported to Europe and North America. It was likely a marketing move to emphasise the connection to the better known Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (which it shares more with thematically) over Phantom Brave (which it shares more with mechanically), though it depends on Viewers Are Geniuses to catch the Bilingual Bonus. The name change was also lampshaded by Asagi:
  Asagi: I hope you enjoy your summer with Makai... Phantom... whatever.
• Master of None: Mimics, Idols and Heaven's Blisses have Weapon proficiencies across the offensive board but suck with absolutely all of them.
• Mighty Glacier:
  • Morningstars invoke this by design - Increasing a character's HP and ATK at the expense of their movement range.
  • While the Corn Man's SP and INT are a notch smaller than Witches and Wizards', its HP outshines every other mage by a country mile. In a game where mages already put the "Cannon" in "Glass Cannon," Corn Men add deceptive sturdiness to that; effectively making them the best of both worlds. This also makes them annoying to fight as enemies for the exact same reason.
• Mistaken for Gay: Zetta is sickened when Drake tells him that he wanted his junk. Drake naturally meant Zetta's money and valuables and not... that.
• Mythology Gag: Being a Spiritual Successor to Phantom Brave, there's the "Confine" ability. It doesn't work the same way here, with Zetta being literally confined to The Sacred Tome. More notable is when Trenia returns to the Sacred Tome, she says out "Confine".
  • This is also how Zetta gets Player Mooks in the game mechanics; by Perma-confining their Phantoms to the leftover rubble.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Zetta does this to his entire netherworld. Oops.
• Noble Demon: Downplayed with the Overlords. Despite being a Card-Carrying Villain Dysfunction Junction, the majority of the Overlords are nice by Nippon Ichi standards; veering close to Lovable Rogue territory. Pram, Seedle and Drake are the only ones with straightforward malicious intent and the first of those three gets better.
• No Indoor Voice: Dryzen, so very much.
• Non-Standard Game Over: Some of the post-game battles ^note Specifically the fight against Alexander unlocked from Salome dying in 8-8, the battle against Pram unlocked by killing 50 of your own units during a cycle and Salome's Event Dungeon unlock typically resulting in a Downer Ending that forces the entire game to restart. (Though you usually get an Optional Party Member for your time) Others just give you an outright Game Over.^note Making the wish for Prinny Overlord Baal's fight using Laharl results in the destruction of Zetta's body after you win, giving you a Game Over. Losing to Flonne, Etna or Baal also Games you Over, though you get a cutscene for it.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Trenia for two-thirds of the game per her position as spirit of the Sacred Tome, knows a lot more than she shows.
  • Salome in the Final Chapter. In a desperate attempt to get Zetta to kill her before her Mana is completely drained, Salome adopts a Yandere persona to get Zetta to pursue her.
• Obligatory Swearing: The champion of The Multiverse by a long shot, even though it holds the same teen rating as the others, the localization is riffled with: Bitch, Slut, Asshat, & etc.
• One-Winged Angel:
  • Valvoga's regular form — a multi-armed demon, an angel head, and a dragon skull mashed together into one being — is intended to be evocative of this trope, which is why he's often referred to as "The Last Boss" (of other games).
  • Subverted by King Drake's... *Snicker* true form...
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Alexander, God of Destruction, won't allow anyone to defeat Zetta except him. Apparently, their personal feud is at a stalemate, and he's waiting for the perfect opportunity to even the score. Zetta couldn't care less.
• Oracular Urchin: Pram and Trenia. Later, it turns out that Pram doesn't have the power of precognition after all. She was just reading from the Sacred Tome, which recorded the entire past, present, and future, the whole time. Also, the Sacred Tome, or rather spirit of it, is actually Trenia, which explains her own power of precognition.
• Percussive Maintenance: The wrench skill Tech Bash repairs vehicles.
• Pigeonholed Voice Actor:
  • Crispin Freeman as Badass Freaking Overlord Zetta.
  • Norio Wakamoto providing heaping dishes of ham with King Drake.
• Plant People: Apple Kids, Corn Men, pumpkin heads, and carrots.
• Player Mooks: Notably, this game is almost all Player Mooks. It's not until the postgame that you recruit any story characters.

• Randomly Generated Levels: Some storyline levels contain portions that change every time you enter them, but those created through the Sacred Tome are almost fully randomized.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Seedle forced himself onto Salome back in his adventuring days. When even demons (Overlords at that) are disgusted with you for doing it, you know you're a bastard.
• Reality-Writing Book: Zetta becomes a type III book.
• Really 700 Years Old: According to King Drake, he and Zetta only met about 10,000 years ago, so imagine how old they must be. In fact, the majority of the game's cast is full of long-lived Overlords.
• Recurring Boss:
  • Raiden. Other than Alexander and Salome, he's the only true "boss" you fight during the normal quest.
  • In Petta Mode, the girl herself. You fight her multiple times throughout the scenario.
• Rewriting Reality: Literally. The Sacred Tome creates whatever is written down in it, but takes the mana of whoever wrote it down to fuel the creation. Overlord-level demons can create entire Netherworlds and just get a little tired, but the mook-level demons you control get killed by the backlash of creating anything. (However, this is a great way to get them to reincarnate if their initial item for creation didn't have any stars.)
• Schizo Tech: None of the Netherworlds appear to be very advanced technologically, but the demons fight with all kinds of futuristic weapons — guns, tanks, UFOs...
• Screw Destiny: Attempted; backfires spectacularly.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Zetta. Parodied.
  • This is how Trenia explains Baal to Zetta in an Event Dungeon cutscene.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: This is how the game is started. The Sacred Tome reveals that Zetta's stupidity will doom the Netherworld. Insulted, Zetta burns the book, destroying everything and proving the prophecy right.
• Shout-Out: Like all good Nippon Ichi games, there's plenty — "I didn't know we had an overlord. I thought we were an autonomous collective." springs to mind...
  • In the Japanese audio, whenever Zetta fries someone with his Eye Beams, he calls out Getta Beeeeaam! "ZETTA BEEEEAAM!"
  • The Mechanic class is wearing headgear straight from Alien Nine.
  • Many of the vehicles, like the Gear Metal LEX, or the RX66 Helldam.
  • One of Zetta's powers at the start, Darkness Falls, causes the wall behind the user to turn red. Swords then emerge, leaving ripples behind, and then the swords are launched at the target. Faking Mongrel!
  • Hitting select to cycle through a list of random names when making a character will turn up a lot of Shout Outs. The Final Fantasy series seems to get a huge number.
  • VERY frequently, characters will insist "go play Phantom Brave", sometimes with "instead of this game!" thrown in. Hilariously, Zetta, upon entering Asagi's world, begs to differ.
    Zetta: ...The next game is not another serious drama, is it? [...] If people wanted drama, they would have bought Phantom Brave!
  • King Drake's One-Winged Angel form is a shout-out to Sazae-san, a reference no-one outside of Japan is likely to get.
• Shoot the Mage First: The game incentivizes this approach - Magic in Makai Kingdom is Herd-Hitting Attack incarnate, especially late-game. Given how liberal the game can be with elemental resistances (for good and ill), prioritizing enemy mages can save your units heaps of trouble. It's also the ideal strategy for the Final Boss of the main story, given the Magic Knight Salome is the only unit you need to actually destroy and she has just enough open space around her for a Combo Attack setup.
• Shovel Strike: Shovels are among the less weird weapons in this game.
• SI Prefix Name: Zetta himself, whose name is based on the prefix zeta. In keeping with the Theme Naming, his daughter in the Updated Re-release gets the name "Petta", based on peta.
• Smug Snake: Zetta, even though he started out as a Heroic Comedic Sociopath. King Drake III definitely falls into this trope, combining it with Dirty Coward.
• Snot Bubble: Babylon.
  • King Drake once Zetta and Pram foil his doomed-from-the-start plan to re-write the Sacred Tome.
• Spiritual Successor: As evidenced by its domestic name Phantom Kingdom, it's this to Phantom Brave.
• Stable Time Loop: The battle against Babylon.
• Stone Wall: Guardians, Golems, Gourmet Ogres and Mimics are designed to soak up punishment with their high DEF and RES. Don't expect them to be able to actually damage the enemy, though.
• Superboss:
  • Like all Nippon Ichi games by this point, Baal is a difficult optional boss (plus Castille and the Disgaea crew). Zetta even Breaks The Fourth Wall by calling him out, knowing the trend.
  • This is also the first appearance of Asagi as a difficult optional boss.
• Super Robot: The aptly named Robosuit is an Optional Boss that you gain control of after defeating it. Comes with Rocket Punch and a V-shaped laser Chest Blaster.
• Take That!: "...The next game is not another serious drama, is it? [...] If people wanted drama, they would have bought Phantom Brave!"
• Tank Goodness: Gear Metal LEX.
• A Taste of Power: Zetta starts the game in humanoid form at level 2000 and with a host of very powerful Sword techniques. After that, however...
• Theme Naming: Zetta and Petta are both obscure numerical prefixes, meaning "Septillion" and "Quintillion", respectively.
• This Is a Drill: Massive drills make great weapons, though they do reduce your movement range.
• Thunder Drum: One of the less common weapon types, these take the form of a ring of six drums mounted on the user's back. Hitting the drums activates various skills that mostly deal electrical damage. Alexander and his subordinate Raiden are the most prominent users.
• Tome of Fate: The Sacred Tome.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Zetta forgot about the book that bound together the fabric of his very universe. And then he set it on fire. He also didn't pay that much attention to how he became Overlord the first time.
  • The game will lampshade this in one of the Non-Standard Game Over scenarios where Zetta can go challenge Salome in her prime. Upon defeating her, he starts losing his powers, as Salome was the source of his power. A hint pops up saying what you did wrong to get the game over, which effectively states "Be careful what you wish for, because you may end up feeling stupid afterwards."
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Micky's Post-Game battle is about him trying to invoke this in himself. He succeeds and gives you his double for your time.
  • In the Petta Mode timeline, Alex has overthrown all of the other Overlords.
• Total Party Kill: As the Sacred Tome, damage done to Zetta gets applied to everything else on the map. If a lucky enemy (or clumsy ally) gets a powerful shot on him, it's Game Over. This applies to healing and stat-altering spells too, which can have its uses.
• The Underworld: Seedle is its Overlord.
• Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: You get stronger throughout the game. Zetta (as the Tome) does not. You can destroy the Sacred Tome once your stats are high enough, but the obvious happens.
• Useless Useful Spell: The game's two Magic-using classes (the Witch and Sorcerer, obviously) gain access to spells meant to weaken the stats of enemy units, which in theory should make them the opposite of a Healer. However, the spells will never work on enemy units, whether you are overleveled or underleveled. However, they WILL work on your own forces half of the time, which is actually useful when grinding for Weapon Mastery; as you can attack your own teammates to gain Weapon Mastery while also being unable to accidentally kill them if you're extremely strong.
• Utility Party Member:
  • Merchants and Thieves have crud Aptitudes, but are designed for item collection. Merchants sell you stuff while Thieves are the only class in the game that use UFOs to steal Items from enemies; having the maximum chance they can to do so.
  • Professors and Engineers are Vehicle-management classes - Profs make your vehicles stronger while Mechanics repair them and sell you vehicle parts. Amusingly, having a Professor in your party expands the Merchant's shop inventory too; thus it pays to have one of each.
  • The Chef's stats are sub-par for a warrior class, but once the player learns about food's hidden utility^note Food increases EXP Growth (for allies) and EXP payouts (for enemies), with an extra percentage if a Chef is the one feeding the target., they'll become an essential toolkit for most of the player's post-game grinding.
  • Downplayed with Carrots. They're mediocre warrior-types at the start of the game, but exist almost solely to be reincarnated into better classes that can benefit from their passive EXP and Mana bonuses come the post-game.
• Visible Silence: Lampshaded by Alex.
  "Ellipses are for chumps — say something!"
• Weapons Kitchen Sink: Everything from swords to drums that shoot electricity to wrenches to balloons can be used as a weapon.
• We Cannot Go On Without You: Justified. Zetta is the Book that controls the nearby reality. If he dies, the dimension collapses. In fact, if he gets hurt, everyone gets hurt. You can actually manipulate this, too; while injuring Zetta will cause you to be unable to summon any more units, you can quickly heal or buff your entire team by tossing the appropriate spells at him, so long as you're prepared to deal with the enemies getting the same effects.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: "Who's the Overlord now, bitch?!"
• Who Writes This Crap?!: "Who the hell writes this crap?" asks Zetta.
• World of Ham: Good Overlords. Even by the standards of other Nippon Ichi games, this is a hammy game. Every single one of the dub actors go completely overboard with lines, screaming out their Badass Boasts and war cries before each fight... and even when there isn't a scrap going on, everybody seems to be taking bites out of the scenery. Crispin Freeman and Jamieson Price masticate an entire set between them as Zetta and King Drake respectively.
• Victory Is Boring: In Alex's ending, where he kills Zetta and then wallows in boredom as Zetta was the only one that offered a challenge to him.
• Yandere: Salome, especially in the final chapter.

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