Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice is a milestone for
NIS America. Not only is it the third installment of NIS America most popular
rpg series, it is also the very first rpg game from NIS America to be launch in
Blu Ray High Definition. There's a lot of expectation from this game since it's
the follow up to the highly popular Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories and with rpgs currently
in short supply on the Playstation 3, Disgaea 3 is one of the must have rpg games
for the Playstation 3 for 2008.
STORY
I need the power of a hero!
Okay Super Hero, you're going down.
In the Netherworld lies Evil Academy, a school for demons. Things are different in the demon world compare to the human world as students who skip classes and don't do their homework are considered honor students while students that do come to classes and do their homework are known as delinquents. The number one honor student in Evil Academy is Mao who is also the son of the Overlord of this Netherworld. While at home in his demon castle, Mao spends his time researching the power of a super hero from video games to comic books. Mao has a strong ambition in defeating his father, the Overlord, because his father accidentally erased his video game save file. Thus long hours of gameplay time on his favorite video game where he was about to face the ultimate boss, Baal, at level 9999 all went up in smoke leaving Mao with a hatred for his father. Mao concluded that the only way to defeat his father is by becoming a hero himself because good guys always win in the end base on his research in comic books and video games. To become a hero, Mao decided that he needed to gain the title of a hero himself. With the help of his butler, Geoffrey, Mao went off in search of a hero to defeat and gain the hero title. Meanwhile Mao school rival, Raspberyl, the number one delinquent in school, heard about Mao wanting to gain a hero title from her friends decided to stop Mao because if Mao becomes a hero, he too will become a delinquent which will endanger Raspberyl position as the number one delinquent in school. Plus it is a delinquent duty to admire and protect the heroes of the world. Raspberyl finds Mao at the demon castle confronting a hero by the name of Almaz. Despite arriving in time, Raspberyl and her friends were unable to stop Mao from capturing the hero, Almaz, and stealing his hero title. But things didn't seem to go to plan as Mao had hoped as he soon learn that Almaz is a fake hero, someone who gave himself the title of hero but haven't done any heroic deeds to become a hero. Realizing this mistake, Mao tries to give back the fake hero title to Almaz but soon learn that giving back the hero title isn't as easy as stealing it. It appears that deep down his heart doesn't want to give back the title of hero to Almaz. At the same time Almaz now having Mao demon title started to slowly become a demon due to having a demon title. With Almaz and Raspberyl by his sides, Mao begins his journey into his heart to discover his inner childhood secrets to learn why his heart doesn't want to give back the title of hero. Will Mao be able to give back the hero title in time before Almaz turn into a demon? Why does Mao want to defeat his father? Answers to those questions can only be found in this devilish story in Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice.
The Disgaea storylines were more about spoof base on video games than actual serious rpg stories. Even though the Disgaea stories were comedy stories in an idiotic way, they had their charms and funny moments that made the stories fun for gamers. The approach of Disgaea 3 is similar to this outline with one except. The story fails to provide the charm that previous Disgaea stories had. There are two reasons for this failure. The first reason is that the concept behind the Evil Academy for demons is just too plain idiotic that it's just too stupid to make sense to even be funny or charming. The idea that for students to be consider honor students or good students with good grades, they need to skip classes and not attend school and just stay home. Don't do homework, don't listen to teachers, and basically do whatever you would do as a normal drop out student in the real world to be considered an honor student in the Evil Academy. Of course if you attend school classes, do your homework, do community work, help others, you would be considered a delinquent student. So basically in the demon world, being a good student like in real life would make you a bad student in the demon world. If this is the case in the demon world, than what's the point of having a school like Evil of Academy since you're basically telling everyone to stay home and don't study or do your homework. It's just too stupid that it doesn't make any sense to the point where even the idiocy behind this logic isn't funny or charming. It's just stupid. It makes the whole plotline centering on demons attending the Evil Academy making no sense because demons aren't really attending the Evil Academy because they're not suppose to go to school in order to be good honor students. How can you call them students if they don't even attend school at all? What's the point of having a school if people don't go to school? See it just make no sense at all that it's just too stupid to be funny. A second reason why the story fails is that the main character, Mao, is more annoying than likeable. Mao doesn't have the charm that Laharl and Adell have for you to root for him. You just end up annoyed at the way he acts and the way he talks because he comes off as a brat. And he's not the only one. Other characters in the game are also very annoying that you have a hard time rooting for them to enjoy the story. I know they make these characters act this way on purpose to make them cute and funny but it doesn't come off very well in the story. The idea of Mao wanting to defeat his father to become the next Overlord because his father destroyed his video game console and thus losing all those long hours of save files would be funny as it's a spoof of real life gamers getting upset of having their save files being deleted if Mao wasn't such an annoying character that you are glad his video games were destroyed. You try to like this story and you try to laugh at some of the so called funny moments but in the end there's a lot of fails in the story that you really are just bored with the story and hope it end soon. But to be fair I did like some of the story scenes but just not enough to really enjoy it.
Score 6/10
CHARACTERS
We're all friends to the end.
There are 9 main casts of characters in this game. However the game really focuses on 5 of those characters. The other 4 characters are mainly supporting characters. There are other hidden characters in the game as well from previous Disgaea games but they don't really play much of a role in the story. The 5 most focus characters are Mao (main character), Almaz (main hero), Raspberyl (main female), Mr. Champloo, and Sapphire. Like with previous Disgaea games, character developments are short in coming. This is nothing new since the Disgaea series were never heavily focus on a story with in-depth characters. What they lack in in-depth characters, they usually make up for with their colorful charming personalities that make them likeable. Unfortunately this isn't the case with Disgaea 3. Most of the characters in this game come off too annoying from their personalities, to their terrible accents, and to the way they talk to be likeable. It's not that the characters are boring, they just aren't very likable. Mao for most of the game comes off very annoying with his rude behavior and just plain stupid as one of those annoying bratty know it all kids that you run into. The know-it-all kind of type that just bugs the hell out of you, that's what Mao is in this game. Mr. Champloo talk in stupid food riddle that he ends up just annoying you more and more as you progress into the game. It's not a good sign when the main character of the game just comes off to you as a total idiot that you don't want to root for since you are basically playing him in the story. Raspberyl is the average character that there's nothing really great about her but she doesn't really bug you or annoy you like Mao and Mr. Champloo. The only redeeming quality comes from Almaz and Sapphire where these are the 2 characters you want to root for and they are the ones that will make you smile with their charming personalities. In fact most of the story charming and funny scenes usually involve Almaz. His character alone is holding the entire cast of characters up and the entire story too. Without Almaz in the story, you probably wouldn't care a whole lot on what happens to these other characters at all. Of course it's also a nice pleasant surprise to get to see Laharl and his gang but they are after all just secret hidden characters on a repeat replay. It's too bad too. One good character in an entire game isn't really enough in my opinion.
Score: 6/10
GRAPHICS
Only on Blue Ray High Definition
Despite the fact that Disgaea 3 is on the next generation
blu ray console, the Playstation 3, it still retains its old school 2-D graphical
style. This is a disappointment because the game could easily have been release
and done on the Playstation 2 without much difference. The 2-D backgrounds with
small sprites and anime character artworks doesn't even come close to pushing
the more technologically advance Playstation 3 engine. Still even though Disgaea
3 looks pretty much like Disgaea 2 on the Playstation 2, there is an upside or
a hint of what possibilities there are if an rpg game out there really tries to
push the Playstation 3 Blu Ray technology. Playing Disgaea 3 on a large size,
wide screen High Definition TV is a whole new gaming experience indeed. In Blu
Ray High Definition the game looks so much crispier, clearer, and brighter. It
really gives you that entertaining atmosphere as if you were watching a High Definition
movie even though you are actually playing a video game. It's just too bad the
game graphically look didn't move away from the old school 2-D designs.
Score: 7/10
MUSIC
Need lots of HL for the music shop.
In terms of varieties on musical scores, this game got it. In terms of quantities of musical scores, this game got that too. The downside here is that when it comes to original new musical scores for Disgaea 3, this is where the game falls short. It's not that the game doesn't have new musical scores, it doesn't have enough new materials alone for one game. This is why the game need to recycle and reused musical scores from Disgaea: Hour of Darkness and Disgaea 2: Curesed Memories. The musical scores are all in their original Japanese format so that's good news and the qualities of the musical scores are great too. But for a new game, you're hoping and expecting to see more new materials than just recycling previous tracks from the last 2 games. The total overall soundtrack is still good on the bright side of things.
Score: 7/10
GAMEPLAY
Let's get this battle going.
I'm going to be a pirate.
Game Information
Genre: Strategy RPG
Publisher: NIS America
Disc: 1 Blu-ray Disc
Memory: 1536 KB
Players: 1 Player Mode
Rating: Teen
Release: August 2008
HD Output: NTSC,480p,720p,1080p
Despite the fact that Disgaea 3 takes place in a different environment, centering on a school, the main concept of the gameplay is still similar to previous Disgaea games. The only exception is that they added some new features and expanded some returning features into the mix to freshen things up. Most Disgaea fans would be very familiar to the overall gameplay. This is still a basic strategy battle map rpg game in a turn base setting. You have your job classes for each of your fighters and you can call out a maximum of 10 party members for each battle map. To get a stage clear for each battle map you just need to defeat all the enemies on the map. Nothing is really new in terms of the combat system and the flow of battle, especially if you've already spent hours and hours from playing previous Disgaea games. You can attack the enemy using single attack, team attack or by doing combos with other fighters in consecutive attacks on a single target. The small minor new thing here is that you can now link up regular skill attacks into a single new powerful skill attack between 2 fighters. You also see the return of Geo Panels, Geo Effects, and Geo Chains on battle maps too. The new thing here is the introduction of Geo Barrels that work like Geo Panels in terms of giving off certain effects on the battle maps but can also cause Geo Chains when the same color of Geo Blocks are thrown together. Other returning combat features that fans will be familiar with is the use of lifting and throwing party members and enemies, creating towers with party member for the purpose of throwing a party member toward an out of reach map area, and fusing enemies together into a single higher level opponent. Defeating enemies of course will net you experience points, mana points, and HL (Disgaea 3 money). The one thing you will notice is that mana points been given a more of a center role in this gameplay than before. Before you only need to worry about mana points for reincarnating your fighters and approving your Dark Assembly proposals but now you need mana points for just about everything this include learning new skills, upgrading new skills, opening up new areas, and clubs. This will become a bit of a tedious task down the road as you start to run into mana problems. But overall the main concept of the gameplay is the same for all you Disgaea fans out there. Now let's look at some new features and what returning features have been changed to freshened things up.
Dimensional Gate: Accessing new story stage maps, extra stage maps, and any previous stage maps can be done by taking the Dimensional Gate. For most of the time Geoffrey, Mao's butler will serve as the Dimensional Guide for your travel. An X-Dimensional Gate will open up later on in the game once you've manage to unlock the Dark World. Netherworld Hospital: You can revive and heal all your characters by visiting the Netherworld Hospital. You will be rewarded with various prizes base on the amount of times you heal and revive your characters. High rank rewards will only appear if you have someone in the Hospital Club as a member. You can read more details on Clubs down below. Job Classes: The game offers over 40 different job classes and monster
classes to choose from. You will be able to unlock more job classes and monsters
once you play further into the story as well as level up some of the basic job
classes further which in turn will unlock some other job classes. Each job class
and monster starts off with the basic first rank class but as you level them up,
you will be able to unlock the higher rank classes. The game added a few new job
and monsters classes in this game that weren't seen in previous games. Shops: The basic Armor, Weapon, and Consumable Shops can be found at the Academy. You can unlock higher rank items by buying more stuff and propose for more expensive stuff at the student council. You can also introduce different items into these shops by having members join certain Clubs that effects these shop inventories. Skill Shop: One of the new feature in this game is the introduction of
the Skill Shop. Weapon skills and unique job skills must first be unlock through
the Skill Shop by buying them with mana points. In previous Disgaea games all
it took was simply being able to equip a weapon and using it many times. In Disgeaa
3, all skills are done through the skill shop. You need to purchase your skills
first to be able to use them. You can boost their range and power through the
Skill Shop too. Skills: There are three different types of skills in this game and they are weapon skills, job skills, and passive skills known as evilities. A few things to note here that is unique in this game. Unlike previous games where everyone can learn whatever type of weapon skills regardless of their weapon affinity, it just takes them longer to learn those weapon skills if they have a weak weapon affinity rating, this game place a limit on what weapon skills a job class can learn base on their weapon affinity. To compensate this limit to what job class can learn what weapon skills, the game introduces the ability to transfer skills from one job class to the other through the Class World. To give you a better understanding, lets say a thief has a limit to only learning 3 types of gun skills on her own due to having a low weapon affinity for guns. For a thief to learn any other higher gun skills, you would need to transfer those gun skills from a job class such as a gunner who can learn more than 3 types of gun skills onto a thief. By going through this route, a thief will eventually be able to use all the gun skills in the game, she just can't learn all of the gun skills on her own thus need to use the skill transfer system through the Class World. This make things a bit more complicated in the game for players but at the same time give a better reason in having different weapon affinity for each job class. Student Council: The Student Council work in the same way as the Dark Assembly where you are voting on proposals to unlock new job class, new battle maps, new clubs, make enemies stronger or weaker, introduce more expensive stuff to shops, and other various extras into the game. The difference here is that instead of having Senators casting votes, your fellow students in the Academy will be casting votes. Just like with the Dark Assembly you can bribe your fellow students to vote for you or you can use force to persuade them. Clubs: One of the biggest new feature in this game is the introduction of Clubs. Clubs are a means to give bonuses to specific characters in the Club as well as having certain key features available in the game by just having a member in the Club. The best way to try and explain this is through examples of some Clubs and the effects they have. One example of a Club is the Honor Student Club. Now this Honor Student Club gives all members in the club an extra 10% exp bonus. So if you want certain party members to have any extra exp bonus you would place those members in this club. Another Club is PPP where if you have at least one member in the PPP Club you can do Reverse Pirating in the game, a key new feature. You can read more about Reverse Pirating down below. And the more members you have in the PPP Club, the higher chance of you encountering pirates in the Item World. Now that's just two examples of the effects Clubs have in this game. Understanding each Club and their uses will make your gaming more enjoyable. Another important thing about Clubs is that you can only transfer skills between members in the Class World if they are in the same Club. You can also only use the Magichange feature if a monster and human are in the same Club. So who you place in Clubs is also very important so take note of that. Teachers: All of your party members will be place in a classroom with a Teacher. There are numerous different types of Teachers that you will slowly unlock as you play the game. Each Teacher will increase the growth rate of character stats to all of the front row students allowing you to customize the growth rate to some of your fighters. You will have this key feature available to you where you can pick which Teachers to appear in the classroom if you have someone in the School Board Club. Specialists: All items and equipment in this game will come with at least one specialist. A specialist is an item resident that gives off a certain stat boost to the item that the specialist is living inside of. You can subdue a specialist by finding them as an Innocent in the Item World and killing them. This will allow you to move a specialist from one item to another item, thus creating the ultimate equipment. Just like in Disgaea 2, you can marry off specialists to have an offspring specialist or train specialists to boost their level slightly in Innocent Town. Item World: The best way to level up any equipment is by visiting and climbing the Item World. Each item or equipment will have a different set number of floors base on their rank and rarity. Every 10th floor there will be an Item Boss that you need to defeat. Once the boss is defeated you can leave the Item World to save your progress and the item or gear will level up. During your climb in the Item World you will encounter a few things to make note of. You will randomly find and encounter Mystery Gates, Innocents (Specialists), Innocent Towns, Level Spheres, Event Areas, and Pirates. By now you should be familiar with all of the above from Disgaea 2 with the exception of Level Spheres and Event Areas which are new features introduce into the Item World for Disgaea 3. If a floor has a Level Sphere and if you have a party member lift and hold up the Level Sphere while you clear the floor, the item will get an extra free level up. Think of Level Sphere as a free way in gaining an extra level to an item in addition to leveling up the item through climbing the top floors of the Item World. Event Areas is a big grey area that can randomly pop up on certain floors. Each Event Area has a different number of requirements base on the number of characters that need to be standing on the Event Area. Once you have the correct number of characters standing on the Event Area, you will be randomly rewarded with a treasure chest, new Innocent, Level Sphere, or a Mystery Gate. Outside of the Level Sphere and Event Areas, the Item World is basically the same as it was in Disgaea 3. Innocent Town: After you defeat the Item boss on every 10th floor, there's a random chance that you will enter Innocent Town. This is the same feature in Disgaea 2 called Specialist Town but they just change the name and called it Innocent Town for this game. An Innocent Town will offer a few things. You can find an Item Hospital which pretty much works the same as the Netherworld Hospital except it's in the Item Word, you may see an event scene involving any subdue Innocents, and finally you maybe able to access the Item Council. The Item Council works in the same way as the Student Council with the except you are voting on a proposal that will help the item grow in a particular stat. Reverse Pirating: This is actually a very fun new feature introduce into the Item World where you can be a Pirate as a reversal of roles in the Item World. Once you have cleared all 100 floors of an item and have established the PPP Club to unlock Reverse Pirating, you can journey back into the clear item and be a Pirate in Reverse Pirating. You can Reverse Pirate on every 20th floor of a clear item so you are looking at floor 20th, 40th, 60th, 80th, and 100th. In order for you to Reverse Pirate you need to have a Pirate Ship. You can obtain different types of Pirate Ships from defeating Pirates during your climb to the 100th floor of the item. Each Pirate Ship is different in terms of capacity to carry loot and the number of turns you get before the Pirate Ship takes off. What's the point of Reserve Pirating? Well it's a second chance to go back into an already clear 100 floor item to try and get more Innocents, Level Spheres, Treasure Chest, and Item Bosses. In other words look at Reserve Pirating as another way of leveling up an item more even after you cleared the item of all of its floors. The difference here is that you don't really need to climb all the way up to 100 floors again but just do the boss floors. The purpose of Reserve Pirating is to try and get as many Innocents, Treasure Chests, and Level Sphere onto your Pirate Ship before the Pirate Ship runs out of turns. Once the Pirate Ship turns run out than the floor has been clear and you won't be able to go back and do another Reserve Pirate on that floor again. This is really a fun feature to play with. Class World: Class World is a new key feature that works in the same way
as the Item World but the difference here is that instead of going inside an item,
you'll be going inside a character and climbing the floors of the character in
hopes of increasing the character stats that you normally wouldn't be able improve
anywhere else or to transfer skills from one character into another character.
Once you establish the Student Council Club, a Prinny NPC will randomly appear
at the Academy allowing access to Class World. Since the Class World is a mini
Item World, you only have to climb 10 floors of a character. The number of times
you can enter a character is base on the quality of the character that you use
to create that character. The maximum number of times you can enter a character
base on a reincarnation is 3 times. Every 9th floor there will be a Mystery Gate
where you can enter and talk to the NPC to either increase the character stat
or to transfer a skill from another character to the character you are climbing
in the Class World. Note however that in order for skill transfer to take place,
the characters all must be in the same Club. Of course this is all done with the
cost of mana. Some examples of increasing character stats are increase in movement,
increase in jump, increase in critical hit, increase in attack stat, increase
in hit stats, ect. Although this is time consuming to do, it's a great way to
even out all your party members abilities, especially making weaker character
more on par with the stronger characters. Clearing the 10th floor boss will increase
the aptitudes of the character you are entering Class World for. And randomly
during your climb you may encounter Dropouts, clones of the character that the
Class World is host to. If you kill a Dropout, it too will increase aptitude of
the character once the Class World is clear after the 10th floor. I like the Class
World but it can be annoying and tedious at times as once again the amount of
mana needed to increase a character stats or transferring skill can be very high
that you need to make a few trips just to get enough mana to do one stat increase
or transfer of skills. Magichange: Probably the only really new feature introduce into the combat system. If a monster and human are in the same Club, the Magichange command will be available to be use for the monster in combat. The basic concept of Magichange is that the monster can transform into a weapon with a unique skill that the human character can use for 2 turns. Once the 2 turn is up the monster will no longer be available for combat until the stage is clear. For this reason alone I find the Magichange feature to be pointless on two fronts. First you can only use Magichange for the average of 2 turns not including having members in certain Clubs to make Magichange last longer. Second is once the monster is no longer useable when Magichange is over, you're basically left with one less member to fight with for the rest of the stage. That just handicaps you more than anything else to be worth using Magichange. Dark World: The Dark World is back but a bit different than what was presented in Disgaea 2. It's still a hard alternative version of this game but done in a more puzzle solving way. You can unlock each Dark World stage individually by obtaining Illegal Tickets in the Item World from Mystery Gates or by defeating Pirates. Each Pirate Captain in the Dark World will hold an Illegal Ticket and once defeated you will obtain their Ticket. You can also buy Illegal Tickets from a NPC that randomly will show up inside a Mystery Gate. Now as for the Dark World stages themselves, they are more puzzle solving stages than anything else where in order to clear a stage you need to defeat all the enemies to do so but Geo Blocks, Geo Panels, and Geo Effects will hinder your objective so you will need to use some brain power to solve those Geo Effects first and clear them out before you can defeat the enemies. Land of Carnage: The Land of Carnage is back and even harder than before. You can unlock the Land of Carnage by clearing at least 25 Dark World stages. The Land of Carnage is pretty much an extreme hard mode extra version of the regular gameplay where everything is 20 times harder than what was presented in the regular game mode. This is strictly for the serious hardcore gamers where you will be facing against enemies that can be in the 9999 level range. The Land of Carnage is also the only place to get the best equipment in this game.
Disgaea 3 gameplay is very balance in a way that it provides just about everything for both casual and the hardcore players. If you not into spending hours into a level grind and getting that enormous high level for your fighters than you can just work on the story mode gameplay. But if you prefer more of a challenge and want something really hard, you can tackle the grinding powerlevel mode in the Post Game format with the extra bosses and the Land of Carnage. The game can be completed in less than 30 hours or it can go on pass the 200+ hours mark. It all depends on what kind of player you are. This is a very good strategy rpg gameplay but when you compare it to say Disgaea 2, it tends to fall a little short. There's a few factor to this. The gameplay isn't as long as it was in Disgaea 2 as the story mode is very short. The gameplay here consisted of up to only 8 chapters while Disgaea 2 had up to 12 chapters. The extras also seem a bit less in this game than what was available in Disgaea 2. I don't know if that's a true comparison but I can say that Disgaea 3 just seem smaller in terms of overall game package than Disgaea 2. But the most important factor in this gameplay is that it just doesn't seem as fun in this game as it was in the last 2 games. Disgaea gameplay was all about powerlevel but for the first time it seem very tedious in this game to the point where it make the game not fun anymore. This is due to the fact that some of the changes in the features made the game much more tedious to do. I didn't really enjoy how the change in the skill system was done. I find having to constantly farm for more mana to unlock new skills and to boost the power of current skills more work than fun. I didn't like the fact that you had to waste time transferring certain types of weapons skills to other fighters that aren't able to use those skills due to lack of weapon affinity. I also didn't like how the game uses Clubs and the effects of Clubs for everything. Having to have party members sit in certain clubs just to have certain effects and key features be activated seem like a waste of space and fighters. These are all minor annoyances or complaints as the gameplay is still very good overall but they are annoyances that made the game less fun than it could've been. Good gameplay but not as good as Disgaea 2.
Score: 8/10
EXTRAS/REPLAY
Overload Baal is a mushroom??!!
The one thing that is constant about the Disgaea series is that it's all about the extras and replay value. It's no different here as Disgaea 3 is loaded with extra battle maps, boss fights, hidden secret characters, and new game+ feature for replay value. The extras are broken down into 2 categories of in-game extras where you can access them during your first regular gameplay and post game extras where you get them as more of epilogue episodes after the main story is over. You are looking at a total of 13 extra post-game battle maps to complete. In-game extras you have the usual Ordeal Maps that Disgaea games provides for gamers to use as leveling maps. In addition to the Ordeal Maps, you get to see the return of the Dark World which was introduce in Disgaea 2. The Dark World is basically a whole new game of Disgaea 3 but in a harder mode using an alternative world. Due to the difficulty of the Dark World its best to tackle the Dark World during post game even though it is possible to tackle it during the regular in-game story. The Land of Carnage makes its return from Disgaea 2. And as usual the Land of Carnage transforms all of the regular story mode maps and enemies into a much harder version. In the Land of Carnage is where you can find the best weapons and gear in this game. So while the Dark World is an alternate world of Disgaea 3, the Land of Carnage is the hard mode version of Disgaea 3. Again you can access the Land of Carnage during the first play through but it's better to tackle it in a new game+ or during post game. So there are lots to do in terms of extras if you want to complete the game fully and get the best gear in the game. Now for replay, the game does provide a new game+ feature where all the skills, jobs, and money you have unlocked will be carried over. The only things you need to unlock again are the story characters. The purpose of doing a new game+ is to try and see the various small multiple endings that the game provides. Not as big as what Disgaea 2 provided but still tons of stuff to keep you preoccupied and let's face it, without the extras in this game, the regular gameplay is fairly short.
Score: 9/10
Well when it comes to looking at this game as a Disgaea game, there's a bit of a mix feeling there. Hate to say it but Disgaea 3 isn't as good as the previous Disgaea games. It has all the components of what a Disgaea game should have but the one key thing that it falls short on is the charm that the last 2 Disgaea games had. There's also the feeling that it's not as fun as it should be or could be. Disgaea gameplay has always been about powerleveling but in this game the introduction of making mana the key component to almost everything makes the game too tedious at times. Before you only had to worry about spending hours on getting experience points to level up but in this game, you now have to worry about spending hours in getting mana points as well for usage in getting new skills, transferring skills, upgrading skills and magic, and of course reincarnating party members. It just became too much. Hence by the time you finish the game, you just feel over exhausted on it and the game doesn't have that fun factor anymore. Of course you don't really need to power level your characters if you are only interested in playing the game for the story mode but if that's the case than the game won't be as good if you're just playing for the story mode. On a positive note, Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice is still a good strategy rpg game. It's just not as good as its predecessors. And with the current lack of rpg games for the Playstation 3, Disgaea 3 is a must buy for rpg fans on the Playstation 3. At least a must buy until there are more rpg games on the Playstation 3 library to choose from.
