Disgaea 3 Absence of Justice
by Atlus
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Product Summary
Brand: NIS AmericaAudio: English (Unknown)
Published: 2010-06
Release Date: 2008-08-26
Platform: PlayStation 3
Model: DG-00131-4
Publisher: Atlus
Product features:
- Story and endings evolve as you play the game
- Geo Blocks introduce a real 3D battle system to a SRPG
- Over 270 customizable characters
- Class world adds 40 battle stages per character or 10800 stages
- Only SRPG with infinite number of randomly generated battle maps
Video Game Reviews of Disgaea 3 Absence of Justice
Customer Review: Much better than 2, a little less good than 1.
Summary: 4 Stars
Title is a summary of it all, but here's the detail. This will mostly be comparing it to the other two games, rather than about Disgaea 3 itself much.
Disgaea: Hour/Afternoon of Darkness is absolutely one of the best strategy RPGs ever created. It's got a great storyline, great characters, fun battles and is hilarious as all Hell. The only other Nippon Ichi game that I'd say is close to how funny it is (and maybe even more) is Makai Kingdom.
Disgaea 2, however, strayed from this path and attempted to be more serious. While it did make some upgrades to the battle system, it almost entirely ditched the humor aspect of Disgaea 1 and made me sit there and wait during the entire game for the good jokes to pop up, my expectations having been set from Disgaea 1. Now, that's not to say I dislike serious games, Phantom Brave is yet another one of the greatest strategy RPGs made and also probably one of my top 20 favorite games, but Phantom Brave was its own game series. It'd be like if Terminator 1 was the slasher/horror flick that it is, but then 2 starred Will Ferrel and was a comedy. It just completely changes the atmosphere of the game, it's uncalled for, it's out of place.
Even if you take the title of Disgaea 2 off and name is something else, I still feel D2 is rather mediocre. It does add a bit more to the battles, but the characters and story, to me, are pretty bland. I was honestly quite bored with the game the entire time. It's a decent game, I had fun moments in it and it's not completely devoid of humor or style, but it's really just an average game.
Disgaea 3, however, goes right back to the roots, as if they realized the mistake they made with the second. It goes back to being a humorous game with nonsensical plot devices. That was the magic of Disgaea 1. It surprises you by ending up actually having deep characters who are more serious than what the game starts it all out to be. They actually care, have feelings, love, hate, cry and it's unexpected since in the beginning, it's a comedy where nothing matters. Mao even looks almost identical to Laharl. The game isn't QUITE as funny as Disgaea 1 and it's somewhat easy to see how the story plans to unfold, since it follows a very similar path as the first game, so while it's much better than the second, it does fall short of being as good as the first, mostly due to a slight lack of originality.
The last note about D3 has to be about the graphics. It's both good and bad that it's the same engine as the PS2 games. Since it looks the same, you could say it's good for being nostaligc. Plus, it's a comedy game, it's supposed to be cartoony. It just wouldn't come off the same if it had graphics on the same level as Killzone 2. However, at the same time, they could have upped the graphics a LITTLE and still have it mostly be a cartoony sprite style. It is on the PS3, after all. Might as well put it to good use, you know?
Now, about the actual game itself, rather than comparing. Disgaea 3 has excellent gameplay and characters. The story is a bit cheesy, but still entertaining, especially with Disgaea's setting. It's a great game, there's not much else to say other than to rant on about how much I love it, so instead I'll say what I really hate about it, the huge flaws.
One is the camera. There's three view modes: zoomed in, normal and overhead. Zoomed in has no purpose, it just makes the low-resolution sprite graphics incredibly jaggy and it's annoying that the default view in towns is zoom (yes, you can zoom out and make the graphics look like they're not trash)! Overhead view is useful for seeing around more corners so you don't have to keep turning the camera in circles, but whenever you try to do anything while in overhead (attack, use an item, end turn), you will have to press X twice instead of once, the first time sets the camera back into zoom, whereas if you're in zoom or normal camera view, you only need to press it once. After that, if you need to see in overhead again, you must press L2 twice again, so it becomes annoying to have to keep pressing L2, L2, X, X just to do ONE thing, repeatedly over and over. The camera also zooms in every time during an attack animation, making it bit annoying having to see those pixellated PS2-port graphics every attack.
Another thing is the absurd number of unnecessary monsters in every fight. For example, there is a boss named Prinny Mask, who himself states, "I am anti-social." However, in the actual fight with him, he's on a map with twenty or so other enemies. What is an anti-social person doing with almost two dozen allies on the map? And this happens in every single fight in the game. Every fight. Even the last fight in the game, with the cutscene showing just you and the boss, suddenly he has four other allies on the map, with no explanation for them. Sometimes, just you versus the boss is okay. That's right, NIS, you don't have to dump a load of monsters on every map for people to have a challenge, or to have fun. Lastly, this is worsened through the fact that every map must be totally cleaned of enemies before you can continue. You can't win by simply defeating the main enemy on the map.
The final annoyance with this game is that as it progresses, map puzzles become more and more frequent. My favorite levels are the small maps with just you, the enemy and nothing but bashing each other. I like getting to the point of things and doing the dirty work of punching one another's lights out, not dealing with dumb puzzles to disable enemy invincibility, or to cause all spellcasters on the map to be silenced and to not do those puzzles renders the map unplayable. It'd be okay and even fun if it was just a few maps, but midway through the game, this will become extremely annoying and repetitive when every map has some ridiculous enemy buff that you have to work around with a puzzle (specifically, it's with the geo blocks in the game, for anyone wondering what I mean by puzzles).
Despite those flaws, I highly recommend Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice. Overall, it's an incredibly excellent game. Everyone who likes RPGs and owns a PS3 has *NO* excuse to not own this.
Description of Disgaea 3 Absence of Justice
The Famed Disgaea series goes next gen on PS3! With high-definition graphics, including beautiful high-res 2D sprite art and stunning spell effects, one of the most highly-acclaimed and beloved strategy RPG series is making the jump to the next generation of gaming with Disgaea 3 Absence of Justice for PLAYSTATION 3. Re-enter the world of Disgaea and experience all of the humor, zany characters, thrilling action, and unmatched excitement in this all-new over 100 hour adventure!The third American release in the Disgaea series by Japanese game developer and publisher Nippon Ishi, Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice marks the arrival of this acclaimed and beloved strategic RPG franchise into the Next-Gen gaming era. A PlayStation 3 exclusive, Absence of Justice features high-definition graphics, including beautiful high-res 2-D sprite character art and stunning spell effects. And although it is the third in a series of games, its story and gameplay stand on their own, allowing players both new to and experienced with the humor, zany characters, thrilling action, and unmatched excitement of the Disgaea universe to jump right into the battle.
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Set in and around the ‘Nether Institute, Evil Academy,’ the demon version of the preppiest of prep schools, Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice follows the puzzling decision of Mao, son of the Overlord of the Netherworld, who after reading a manga comic book decides to forsake his proper demonic upbringing, become a hero and attempt to overthrow his father. But in the backwards world of demon scholastics where good is bad and bad is good, Mao is a top honor student. He knows all about ditching school, being totally unhelpful and quickly resorting to violence, but nothing of the selfless nobility and patience of heroes. Heroes are for delinquents, as the number one delinquent of the Nether Institute, Raspberyl and her friends try to tell him. But Mao’s mind is made up. It's a hero he will be.
Flow of Gameplay: Events ? Base ? Battle ? Repeat
Events: Players advance through the game as events unfold. These events can occur during the story, at your base, or before/after battles. You will be able to witness the fun and interesting interactions through a mixture of sprite animation and exciting character battles.
Base: Mao's school, the Nether Institute, Evil Academy is the base point of the game. Players will be able to prepare for upcoming battles here by purchasing new weapons and items, customizing characters and/or restoring health.
Battle: You will be fighting against enemies in battle scenes with a quarter view, tactical simulations. The goal is to defeat all of the enemies before all of your team members die. Battles utilize a turn-based system, where all of your team members will have their turn to attack before enemies begin theirs.
Character Customization: The Evility System
Character customization is crucial in all role-playing games. Absence of Justice allows for maximum character customization through its "Evility System." There are two different categories of evilities: evility that is already set for each character depending upon the jobs of each and evility that players can customize. Customizable evilities include: evility to acquire the special skills for certain weapons, evility to up character status under certain requirements, evility to up the amount of experience points earned, evility to enable special skills and functions, etc. This variety is powerful and important. You may have only one kind of evility that supports a character's status, but you may have multiple evilities for skills. Use this system to create and customize your characters and ideally group multiple evilities in one to conduct battles more efficiently.
The Disgaea 3 Battle System
Combat in Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice consists of a combination of the franchises familiar standard system of attacks, along with a whole new array of moves debuting with the game. This wide range of possibilities allows players to pick and choose tactics that suit the immediate conflict before them or to quest for overall success in the game, and maximum fun by attemping to master all. Attacks and skills include:
- Team Attack - Use up to four adjoining team members to help you attack adjoining enemies. Although this may seem random, it is actually closely connected with the team members you have selected in class and their special skills.
- Combos - Combos happen when multiple team members attack the same enemy during a single turn. They can occur even when team members are not on adjoining squares and their effectiveness increases with the number of occurring combos.
- Lift and Throw - Humanoid characters have the ability to lift and throw enemies or teammates. The distance of a throw depends on the thrower and lifted team members are safe from attack, making this a key defensive tactic.
- Stack Attack - If you keep using the lift command, you will be able to create a tower of characters. Select the attack command while in that state and all stacked characters will begin to attack. The larger the stack the higher the damage to your enemies.
- Double Throw - If one of your characters stacked in a tower selects the "throw" command you can choose to throw any of the stacked characters. This is a useful skill when you want to reach a floor that is too high to reach on your own.
- Throw and Receive - Useful in moving long distances, when you throw a character towards a monster teammate he/she will knock the thrown character further away in the direction faced.
- Geo Effect - The combination of geo panels and geo blocks is called the 'Geo Effect.' The special effect of a block on top of a panel will affect all panels of the same color. You gain the power of those effects by landing on the right block.
- Uniting Skills - If you meet certain requirements during a combo, two skills will unite into one, increasing damage and depending on the skills will increase the effectiveness of your combo.
- Magichange - Magichange allows humanoid characters and monster characters to to fight as one. In doing this the monster will turn into a special weapon for the human to wield and in the process increase the power of both.
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