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Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice

lithuvien

By lithuvien,
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lithuvien Contributor

lithuvien

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Title : Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice

Platform : Playstation 3

Genre : J-RPG

Publisher: NIS America

 

The Netherworld, a world spoiled by

spite, cruelty, blood-soaked

taboos and boundless riff-raff

 

They say that dark dwellers run rampant,

causing horrifying disasters in these lands.

 

In the center of this Netherworld lies a school

that endlessly continues to expand its grounds.

 

~ The Nether Insitute, Evil Academy

With the OverLord as dean and greater demons for teachers,

demon students who follow their base instincts are labeled

as honor students in this school of torment.

 

This is the root of evil in this tumultuous Netherworld ...

That Pandora's Box that spreads corruption and destruction.

 

Still, many continue to be fascinated by this darkness.

If you have the courage to descend upon the lands of

this Netherworld, beware of losing your mind to the chaos.

 

This is your only warning.

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Finally, after two months of endless torment, I have recieved my copy of Disgaea 3, all thanks to the mighty h3lios.... may his XBOX 360 never see RROD.

 

Now, the first thing that I did was leap into the manual for this game, and come away with my head spinning. There are a lot, and I mean a lot of things you can do in this game and they are all extremely varied. After reading the manual, I thought that I was somehow reading a tutorial on how to play Final Fantasy Tactics, SIMS and Bakugan Battle Brawlers all at the same time.

 

Now I can't wait to reach home and try this baby out. Seeing the vast scope of this game, impressions will be delayed, at least till I feel I have seen enough to whip up a decent write-up.

Also, I can't spend too much time on this now as I have my JLPT level IV on 7th December. But, I will try to come up with something by this Saturday.

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reaper Newbie

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^^ Hmmm, not played a strategy RPG exactly, but have played some strategy games like AoE, and remember liking it....or was it Age of Mythology :nerves: ?

if it involved greek gods, it was Age of Mythology .. else it was Age of Empires.

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Tyler Newbie

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Either way, it's not AoE kind of strategy we're talking here. In a strategy RPG you have a grid based battle area. Each character can traverse only a few blocks or attack per turn. Attacks are also limited to the range of the character. Think of it as something similar to chess, only a lot more complex. Characters can gain XP and level up in battle and can be customized with new equipment (that's where the "RPG" part comes in)

 

Check out this gameplay video from Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice...

 

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lithuvien Contributor

lithuvien

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All Righty then

 

I finally managed to comlete the tutorial despite office work, Japanese study and (yuuuckk) BIG BOSS. Here are my impressions:

 

What is it that one feels when one is sitting in front of the TV, with the controller in hand and eyes riveted to the screen? Well, depends on the game, doesn't it? Dead space scares you, Ninja Gaiden thrills you, Final Fantasy lets you soar off to a new world.

Disgaea 3? It made me laugh, laugh and laugh. Its more like watching a Japanese school-centric anime than a RPG.

 

But as far as teh gameplay goes, all I can say is that someon here mentioned "chess". Well, it does feel like I am playing chess. You have to manouver through obstacles, pull off combos, ensure you get maximum bonus to get mroe stuff ...........

 

This is nothing like the traditional RPGs where you simply pull off one attack after the other. This is also more complicated than games like Fire Emblem. This is definitely not a game to which you can turn to after a hard day's work. You need to be relaxed and have a clear mind.

 

Anyone up for chess? :dance:

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lithuvien Contributor

lithuvien

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Game Review:

 

 

Well, after playing this game, only one word comes to my mind; totally unexpected. But in a world of games where everyone follows more or less the same pattern, this is not a bad thing. On the contrary, I have been able to predict almost nothing, whereas I am able to predict with a certain degree of accuracy, what will happen next in an RPG. Whether unpredictability is good or bad, that is up to you to decide.

 

 

Story: 10/10

 

As I said before, the story is nothing you would have encountered, except maybe in your wildest dreams. Without giving away too much, the gist of the story is as follows:

 

The setting of the game takes place in the "Evil Academy", which is located in the Netherworld. Now, the Netherworld is full of demons, ghouls and all the stuff your nightmares are made of. As the name suggests, the Evil Academy is full of students who aspire to be more evil, which is good for them. Anyone who tries to be good is labelled as a bad student or a delinquent. So, bad is good and good is bad.

 

The main protagonist of the story is Mao. He is the most cold-hearted, nastiest and meanest student around, which makes him the school's number one honour student. He is also the son of the Overlord, who is the dean of the Evil Academy and the strongest and largest demon you could ever find in Netherworld. Mao has only one burning desire … to defeat his dad. For that, he spends hours researching on ways to defeat him and finally comes to a conclusion fuelled by his 1.8 million evil quotient points; he must become a hero. (No points for guessing where he got the idea from). Thus begins Mao's goal to capture a hero and steal his powers to defeat his dad. On the way, he is hindered an helped by his childhood rival, Raspberyll (they both are 1570 years old … long childhood). Raspberyll is the school's biggest delinquent because she never skips class, is polite to others, etc ,etc. Mao somehow manages to capture a hero, a human called Almaz. He then removes the title of hero from Almaz and attaches it to himself (seriously, even I didn't think it was possible to surgically become a hero). In return, he makes Almaz his slave by giving him the title of "Demon-in-training". But, things don't go as planned and what happens is utter chaos.

 

 

Gameplay: 9.5/10

 

Game play is rather complicated. The whole battlefield is divided into a grid. The first order of business is to summon your team through the entrance portal. You can summon at most ten of your team members. Each member specializes in a particular field, except for Mao, since he carries the title of "Hero". The objective is to clear the map of enemy units. Each character can move a certain number of steps, like in any other strategy RPG. The weapon you carry, as well as the type of attack you use will determine your attacking range. The attacking range will also change depending upon the level of skill you use. For example, The Red Mage starts of with Fire level 1, in which she can attack any single square. As the level increases, the number of adjacent squares she can attack will also simultaneously increase.

 

The battle system also relies heavily upon the "Team Battle" system, where to or more team members will come together to attack a single target. To trigger this, you must have compatible players in the same row attacking the same target one after the other. Team attacks are triggered based on a success percentage. If it succeeds, you will see an animation of the two/three characters coming together and pulling off a flashy looking combo to deal heavy damage to the enemy.

 

You can also combine skills of two members if they are compatible. For example, if you have a fighter and a fury specialist in a row, where the fury specialist uses Phantom Fist and then the fighter uses Big Axe Swinger, then the two attacks will merge to form the Phantom Swinger, which deals huge damage to the enemy.

 

You have two generic kinds of members; humanoids and monsters. The monsters can use their special skill Magichange, to change into a weapon with special attacks. The member who gets the weapon gets to use that attack for a certain number of turns. Also, in this game, you can lift allies or monsters and throw them anywhere you want. Monsters cannot lift.

 

The map itself is a big challenge. The map is littered with coloured squares which may or may not offer special attributes like Enemy Def -50%, No Close Combat, Heal 50%, Damage 50%, etc. You have to be very careful when you encounter such situations. I once spent a full five minutes hitting an enemy unit with everything I had without realizing that he was standing on a Damage Reversal square.

 

As with any other RPG, you have shops where you can buy weapons, items and armour. You will have to manually unlock each new level of items to get access to better ones. You can also go inside a particular item to level it up. This will make the item stronger.

 

There are lots of other features in the game play that I have not mentioned because they would take up too much space and time. It's better to discover them yourself.

 

Graphics: 6/10

 

The characters are beautifully drawn and look stunning. Unfortunately, they are all in 2-D. This will be a shocker as the PS3 is known to host games with fantastic graphics.

 

Sound: 9/10

 

You have two voice options: English and Japanese. Both have been done very well, but I prefer the Japanese voice-over to the English voice-over. The music is pretty nice and absolutely sets the tone for the game.

 

 

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