Disgaea 3 is a Bundle of Fun

Quick Synopsis – Defeat your father, the Overlord, who broke your Slaystation Portable which had millions upon millions of save game hours.

This is probably one of the most obsurdly awesome games of the disgaea series and the genre itself. The plot is completely off the wall and allows the player to laugh at almost every single character in the game due to their wacky jokes, puns, 4th wall breaking and references to pop culture/gaming/anime (approx over 40 references). Some of the weapons make a homage to movies, tv shows, and games. There’s even a character that acts like “The Rock” who calls people Jabronis.

Although the 2D sprites have not changed very much from the previous games, they still retain that dangerously fuzzy cuteness (sort of). Both the english and japanese voice actors have done an excellent job in portraying the characters to the point where either choice is equally good. Personally, Mao’s voice is plain awesome just because of his hilariously evil laughs and the “I’ll mess you up” quote.

Most fortunately, gamers can beat the main storyline in about 15 hours or so without much grinding (repeating levels to upgrade your platoon of doom). Of course, the main temptation to any SRPG like this game is make your characters awesomely strong through the use of item worlds (upgrading items/equipment) and class world (upgrading characters directly). However, beating the main story mode is only the beginning for fun. There are about 8 endings total in this game along with 7 side missions for unlocking new guest characters. Nonetheless, there are 19 unlockable generic classes in case one does not like the standard generic classes. On top of that, each class has 6 tiers, each better than the last. And for those perfectionists, one can try to beat the last superboss on the hardest difficulty, Baal in the form of a shroom.  Before I forget, there are also legendary skills that can be unlocked for each weapon class.

There is an immense amount of playability and customization, since just about every class is pretty much equal (sorry, there is no class that rules them all).

As of now in Japan, there are 13 Downloadable characters for about 200 yen each.

For those who loved Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea itself, give this a run and it will probably be your money best spent. Do not let the graphics put you off, cause you would be missing the point of the game itself. What would normally be a 15 hour game can be easily expanded to 100+hrs. New Game+ option is a very nice feature too.

Although I have beaten the main story, chances are that this is one of those games I will always fall back to when I’m bored, or simply want to conquer hordes of demons who are 20+ levels above my party.

Disgaea 3 Meets my Expections

Having just bought the game yesterday and playing it for a few hours, I am thoroughly surprised and satisfied with the game.  All the controls have been remastered with the new interface to make finding information extremely convenient.  Also, the music and extensive voice-overs are very much top notch.  In fact, the music is so good, that I am tempted to find the original soundtrack.

Ironically, the english dubbed voices sound better than the japanese counterpart, making the game feel wholesome.  Hearing the funky orcs with hispanic voices talking like mexicans really made my day.  Also the one-liners for all the characters are very comedic and fitting.

I guess the only disappointment that will come to mind are just the low-quality sprites, but they don’t really matter after an hour into the game.  For those who already have the game, I recommend changing the art portrait from smooth to sharp to reduce strain on the eyes (making the sprites pixelicious).  In addition to changed gameplay mechanics, the fast forward/skip button is possibly the best addition to this SRPG genre as of now.

I will upload a pdf version of the game manual later to clarify the new features of this game and to save myself the trouble from ruining a really nice manual.  This is also because the paint on the manual cover comes off very easily on the fingers, leaving nasty prints on the cover.