Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice Review

Despite its graphical setbacks, Disgaea 3 packs substantially more features than the previous games, making it an enjoyable and worthy successor to a very solid and well established franchise.

Disgaea has always been about the big numbers other RPG's wouldn't dare touch: 100's of allies in your party, level limit at 9999, 1 million attack power, enemies with 1 billion HP.

Disgaea 3 is about a demon called Mao who wants to beat up his father (the Overlord), since his dad wrecked his computer game with a 4 million save file. Mao even undergoes 3 months of researching Animes, Comics and Computer Games to come to the conclusion that he must become a hero to overthrow the Overlord, only to regret his actions later; a nice twist for a typically clichéd story about fighting the Overlord.

The first thing that hits you when you first look at the game is that there's not much (if any) technical improvement. It doesn't look like the generational leap we'd expect when moving from the PlayStation 2 to the PlayStation 3. There's barely a minimal improvement other than the graphics being adapted for HDTVs. A change to something like Street Fighter IV's cell shading style would be more appreciated, since Disgaea 3's graphics look like something from the PSN store, rather than a fully blown retail game.



However, beauty is only skin deep, since what the game lacks in graphics, it makes up for in gameplay. Disgaea uses a grid system like many Strategy RPG's before it. You move your character within it's limited movement of squares and when near an enemy you select attack. However, this does not end your turn right away, meaning you're able to position all your units and watch all of their attacks in succession. You can also send your chosen allies back to the base and send another unit out if the situation requires it. Potentially you could use all 30 allies of your party in one battle if you want.

The game is based around a school, so you'll be assigned to a classroom to create your allies instead of the Dark Assembley. Allies require 'mana' and how much 'mana' you use determines how much you can increase your allies' parameters. You can also assign clubs, whose members will gain extra abilities.

What sets Disgaea apart from other SRPG's is everything that happens in the battles. A combo attack is achieved by positioning your units in a tetris-T block shape where the central unit attacks, and depending on the other units' affiliation with the attacker (this is indicated through a percentage) you can achieve up to a four person combo to deal extra damage. You're also able to increase the affiliation of the members by sitting them next to each other in a classroom.



Combos extend to special attacks for extra damage, which occur when you throw allies on the same square: they will create a tower and deal a special attack.

'Geo-blocks' add an interesting puzzle element to the battlefield: hey either boost or weaken enemies or allies; some make units invisible; and others clone enemies and allies. Therefore, 'geo-blocks' make you implement a more thorough thought process when moving around the map. The reason 'geo-blocks' give more food for thought is because, for example, if Mao is at level 2000 he can still succumb to a level 50 'mage' if you're not careful.

'Item world,' in a nutshell, is a bunch of randomly generated maps that enable you to level-up your item and in turn your enemies' items too. This can end up feeling exhausting and repetitive, because after a while each map starts to look alike. The enemies' levels spike very high the further in you go, but if you defeat them you can extract them and improve your weapons. More often than not at the tenth level there's an innocent town which is a welcome relief that saves the trouble of exiting and re-entering the world to restore your party.



Disgaea is designed with more flexibility than other tactical games, since your characters aren't stuck to a certain square if you make a mistake - you're allowed to manipulate the situation to your advantage by canceling a move if you didn't assign the unit to attack - the game allows you to make your own strategies.

When you start getting strong enough to knock off hundreds-of-thousands of HP, there's a certain satisfaction that all the time you've spent in the game is worth it. However, this is also a double-edged sword because you feel that with each of these combos, towers, and geo-blocks, each battle takes too long. It would be more appreciated if improvements from the PS2 Disgaea, like the ability to manually select A.I for the allies, would make battles somewhat quicker as a result.

A similar issue is that despite the PS3 having a built in hard drive, there's no way to save game-states. This means that whilst in a battle you have to sit through all of it before you can save your progress - this includes all the cutscenes before and after a fight. Valkyria Chronicles allowed save states so why couldn't Disgaea?



The method of gaining skills has been completely revamped, since now everything relies on how much 'mana' you have rather than your level-ups. This allows you to buy cross-over skills for weapons your character doesn't use if you plan on switching weapons, which is a welcome change to the level-grind-with-every-equipped-weapon-till-he-has-all-skills that plagued the previous Disgaea iterations.

Along with buying skills there's now the ability to 'magichange;' an ability that transforms monsters into a weapon for you to wield, which is a handy way to encourage you to level up the monsters that were all but useless in previous games. Another addition to the foray of additions is the 'evilties,' which is a perk that also requires 'mana' and does certain things for your character under the right conditions. Soon you'll start to realise that 'mana' is a very important second currency in the game.

There's a feeling that Nippin Ichi missed a trick by not adding a multiplayer option into the PS3 game, they were happy to add it in the PSP remake and it would have been welcomed to an already feature rich game. Still, at least they've shown support for the game through downloadable content.



Disgaea 3 is a game that's underrated in the public eye. However, it purposely aims for the niche market and is proud of it. If you don't like turn-based battles, Anime style cutscenes, or spending lots of hours on one game (which is probably most of you) then this isn't your game. For those that do Disgaea 3 is a very solid and entertaining PS3 RPG that won't penalise you for spending only 30 hours to complete it but it'll reap rewards if you spend 200 hours searching every nook and cranny.

8/10

Roydel Wilkie-Grey