Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice (PS3)

For those of you who've played Disgaea Hour of Darkness (PS2) and Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories (PS2), you probably don't need a review to decide whether you'll buy this or not, but feel free to skip to the end for a list of new features.

For those who haven't, Disgaea 3 is the third installment in Nippon Ichi's popular Strategy RPG series Disgaea. At first glance the game itself resembles your typical SRPG like Final Fantasy Tactics. The game plays on a grid system and first you, then the enemy, take it in turns moving your force of units. Your units can level up, get better equipment and so on and so forth. But most of the similarities between Disgaea and other SRPG series ends there. Disgaea games are deep, with incredible customization options, hundreds of hours of gameplay and enough addiction to hook even the most diehard WoW addict. Top this all with some quirky Japanese humour and you have Disgaea.

Disgaea 3 starts you off in a netherworld which is basically just one big school. Students who do evil deeds are considered good, while those who are nice and helpful are considered delinquents. Your main character is Mao, the netherworlds Overlords son. You follow Mao on his mission to kill his father and become the next Overlord, and a whole cast of weird and wonderful characters join you. Yeah... You don't want to take the storyline seriously, but it is hilarious.

The game play proceeds through chapters, and most of your cutscences and dialog will just be talking portraits, or half-body drawings that change slightly to fit the situation. Don't let this put you off though. NIS did a superb job finding good voice actors, and Mao pulls off a stellar performance. I'm pretty sure you can switch to the Japanese audio track and just read instead if the English voice acting bugs you.

Anywho, the storyline really isn't that long. If you have past experience in SRPGs, expect to breeze through it in around 8-12 hours. However, you'll probably get side tracked along the way, and won't finish the main storyline for around 20 hours.

In battle your characters are represented by 2D sprites, but the background and level itself are 3D. The sprites are good, and battle animation is superb. If 2D sprites are your cup of tea, then you should be happy enough. Weapons also appear in your characters hands, and change when you equip a new one, although fist weapons and monster weapons don't have any noticeable change. There are about 40 of each weapon, and tons of armor and accessories.

The game comes with numerous features to help customise your characters and make them stronger. There is item world (an ability to enter your equipment and progress through random dungeons to make it stronger), Class World (you can go inside your characters to power them up with extra abilities and increase their stats), reincarnation (sends your character back to level 1, but increases their stats). There's pirates to kill, pirates to pirate, a super-hard mode you can unlock, tons of cameo characters from other NIS games, hundreds of items and character classes and so on. Your characters can reach level 9999 (with the right equipment in the post-game you can do this in about 3 minutes), but don't get complacent, your enemies can also get just as strong!

Off the top of my head, some of the more important changes are:

Class World (As said before, go inside your character in random dungeon form, like item world but with more benefits)
Reverse Pirating (Pirate your own items to make them stronger)
Evilities (Special innate abilities your characters have)
No weapon skill levels (You use mana to increase your skills strength instead)
Magichange (Turn a monster into a weapon you can use, they all have 2 attacks I think)
Pirates show up more frequently
Item world easier to navigate
Geo Cubes (A new kind of geo block, but their big and square and explode when you combo them)
More enemies on screen and much bigger maps than previous games
DLC (The American version has extra downloadable characters, but not sure if the European one is getting them)

In closing, Disgaea 3 is a must have for PS3 RPG fans. The 3d graphics are still rather awful and the sprites are low res, but at least the menus are in HD... You could easily lose hundreds of hours in this game, although not as many as in previous titles. NIS have made it easier to grind, and if you look on a few FAQs on the internet you'll have no trouble figuring out what to do.

The game only really falls flat with it's storyline, which feels like one big tutorial for the post-game (you keep playing when you win, unlocking extra missions and characters). But it's still an enjoyable romp and should keep you entertained. If you have hours to waste, or just want something to unwind with after work while you smash peoples heads in for 1 billion damage, Disgaea 3 is the way to go!

Poor graphics, lots of farming, and somewhat turns your PS3 into a PS2.

Is that bad? in this case it's not, since this is how the game was created intentionally. It's a true Disgaea in form and spirit, which means that every Disgaea fan is going to love it, but for those that never before played the game... better get the Nintendo DS remake of the first Disgaea along with this one or you may feel really lost.

Myu personal opinion as a Disgaea follower: Epic Win!

Once upon a time, the people responsible for Disgaea were possibly involved in the Dark Arts: demented alchemists, mad scientists, that kind of thing. The type who might howl at the moon on eldritch nights just for a bit of a laugh, but who would still end up scaring the innocent townsfolk for miles around. The type of twisted professionals who, had the Devil popped in to ask if they wanted to sell their soul, would probably be able to produce a receipt from when they went to visit him. Oh, and a list of clauses they'd imposed on the deal. And possibly a written agreement from Old Nick stating that they'd be able to get a refund if they changed their mind.

These are not criticisms.

Because, since Hour of Darkness some five years ago and continuing with this title, what Nippon Ichi achieve is so good it should possibly be made illegal just to safeguard our own souls.

Their genius is to have taken two established and now traditional forms (role playing games and strategy role playing games) and distilled from them the essence of pure, unadulterated compulsion. And then concentrated it. At least twice. The result? They've produced possibly videogaming's most utterly addictive game. And while addictiveness in itself is enough to make a good game, they have also packaged it with a sequence of plots that are quite simply absurd, inspired, almost nonsensical, and scripted so well they will make you laugh out loud. That's not a figure of speech, this is a rare beast indeed: a videogame with a twisted sense of humour that will make you laugh.

As a result any Disgaea may very possibly eat your life, and even while it does so there'll be a part of you that just wants more...

Your friends will be confused if they come round to your gaming den. They'll see low-res 2d sprites in scenes of orchestrated anime special-move action and scratch their heads. They're never going to be wowed by the old school and very limited graphics. They'll wonder what's going on with the funny coloured tiles, and the blocks and the odd little worlds that float in space. They may ask what on earth you are doing, why you are doing it, and what does it all mean? Because this certainly isn't a video game that, if you're not already a fan of the things, you watch in action for five minutes and decide to give a try.

But you'll try to answer because you'll feel like there's something crucial you need to tell them to explain why it's so good. You'll talk about the features listed so well in the review above. You'll tell them you can customise and level any item in the game. You might tell them that you can make and remake characters and teams and classes and meet pirates. You'll tell them about the joy of clearing the geo-panels that blow up all the bad guys. You'll tell them that the game encourages you to cheat by moving and re-moving your characters to rack up ridiculous combos. You'll tell them about the humour of the script, the way the thing keeps on opening more and more up in front of you, and how you only have to do the bits that you want so that the game stays as deep as you want it to. And you'll realise that everything you say is simply making you sound more hooked, and the game sound more bizarre.

And worst of all, none of it will quite describe just what an insane and wonderful and, most of all, time-destroyingly brilliant experience you're having as you keep playing. One more item world to visit. One more innocent to subdue. One more skill to adjust, or character to reincarnate. And on and on it goes. Perhaps more options and less depth than the first Disgaea, but all the same a wonderful and indescribably compelling experience.

This isn't a game for everyone. It's more fun and more tactically interesting than FF Tactics, and less po-faced certainly. It might not have the depth of the original Advance Wars, but you'll play it more all the same. But the graphics are no better than PS2, and this type of gameplay simply isn't to everyone's tastes. If yours end at Space Marines saving the world with very big guns then you're not going to be interested. It's a shame, because you can have fun as a Space Marine and also end up dwelling in this glorious bedlam for a while. And I'd even go so far as to say you should.

So this game isn't for everyone, then, but those who like it may never need another game again. It's that good, and it knows it is, which is another reason why it's so much awfully confusing fun. Don't be put off by how crazy it sounds: be encouraged. After all, the only thing you'll lose is (vast chunks of) time. Because there simply aren't many games that have more character, identity and twisted compulsion than Disgaea... except other Disgaea games.