The year was 2008, and though the Playstation 2 was still selling, the fact of the matter was that the Playstation 3 was on the market, and it was hungry for new games. For the first time in over a decade, Nintendo was taking a commanding lead in the Console Wars with their Wii, and Microsoft's Xbox 360 was selling strong, but was losing ground thanks to the many hardware problems that had been plaguing the console, most notably the Red Ring of Death. Still, this was a new age for console gaming, where new features that were previously the exclusive realm of PC gaming were suddenly becoming the norm for all games: downloadable content, online play, online socialization, and the ability to upload information to the internet. NIS released their latest game with all these features in mind, and that game was Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice.
Image taken from gamefaqs.com
If there's one thing that's getting gamers riled up in this day and age, aside from ethics in gaming journalism, it's the conundrum that is DLC, or downloadable content. For those not in the know, DLC is content that you can download from the internet and unto the game, expanding the game further. Typical DLC is simply unneeded things, like extra costumes for characters. Sometimes they are things that are nice to have, but not entirely necessary to play the game, such as extra weapons. And sometimes DLC can be things that you just grind your teeth and ask yourself "WHY THE HELL ARE YOU CHARGING ME SOMETHING YOU SHOULD HAVE PUT INTO THE GAME TO BEGIN WITH!?" These are things like extra levels, or characters you actually want to play as but can't understand why they are charging you five bucks to download them into a game that already cost over fifty dollars. So how well does Disgaea 3 handle the DLC?
Actually, hold on to that idea, please.
Actually, hold on to that idea, please.
We start off by saying that Disgaea 3 in itself is an ambitious game in terms of gameplay. Certain sites like IGN make the claim that there were no new gameplay innovations in Disgaea 3. As a fan of the series, I am here to tell you, I can name three gameplay changes made apparent in the first thirty minutes alone. The first change is in how weapon masteries work: in the first two games, weapon masteries were divided by grades: E, D, C, B, A, S, and the higher the grade, the easier it was for you to level up your weapon and learn new skills as you used the weapon to attack. In Disgaea 3, this was done away with and replaced with a new system: each character had up to three weapon preferences, and could only learn skills that belonged to those weapons by spending some Mana in the Skill shop. To gain mana, you had to kill enemies or visit the Class World, destroy some Geo Blocks, and then exit. Both are easier said than done, but the end result was that you could have a character with insane skill levels at...level 10. My little brother and I got into a debate in regards to how good this system is: on one hand it makes leveling skills much easier, but on the other hand it also makes leveling skills a chore, and in theory it is a bigger time waster to go through the class world than it is to just level up the skills by using them. So which system works better? To me, personally, I think buying skills and leveling them up is somewhat less effort, but at the same time, it really takes away from the satisfaction of growing your characters and making them stronger, and in an SRPG, that's part of the fun.
A second gameplay change that was added as the use of Classrooms, where you could situate your characters in any order you liked. Characters that sat next to each other gained bonuses, such as an increase in probability of doing a combo attack. Also, certain skills could combo into each other, allowing for a super strong combination of abilities that dealt more damage to enemies. Of course, what's written on paper and how an idea is executed are two entirely different things. The combos do a fair amount of damage, of course, but visually, they don't impress AS much. What happens is that one skill's animation starts up, gets put on hold, while the second skill's animation plays out at full. Once that second animation ends, the first one's animation continues as if nothing happened. Sometimes it looks great regardless, such as when Almaz, one of the game's main characters, uses his Sword Spinning skill and combines it with another character's Sword Dash. Almaz draws out three swords, starts spinning them around above the enemy's head, slashing them away. As Almaz does that, the second character dashes towards the enemy, stabs them with a sword, then walks away. Once that's done, Almaz finishes his attack and stabs the enemy one last time. THAT looks awesome. But sometimes, it just looks awful, like when Mao, the main character, uses his Blast Finger skill, which releases several strings of energy at the enemy, strangling them, only to pause mid attack so that his ally can use whatever skill! It looks awkward, and I feel as if this really showcases the limits of technology.
Perhaps THE biggest change the game brings is Magichange, the ability to temporarily turn monsters into weapons. For two turns, your monster becomes a weapon that any of your characters can equip, giving them access to not just the monster's native Evility, but to a set of unique skills as well. An example: say you have a Slime, and you Magichange that slime, becoming a sword. Whoever is equipping that Slime has access to the Slime's native Evility, which decreases all damage taken from non elemental abilities by 50%! For two turns, you have a character that can shrug off non elemental attacks like they were nothing! Sadly, once more we see an idea that was better on paper than it was executed. See, Magichange only works if the monster and the character belong to the same club (more on this later), severely limiting the possibilities for Magichange to be anything more than a gimmick. Furthermore, if the humanoid unit wielding the Magichanged monster somehow dies, then both the humanoid and the monster are defeated in battle. And as if that was not enough, Magichange lasts a mere 2 turns, so you're sacrificing a unit for the sake of a weapon that you get to keep for two turns. And that's not even getting into the notion that, most of the time, the new weapon would be WEAKER than whatever it was you had equipped beforehand! Personally I'd rather keep the unit, especially considering that I have a limit of ten allied units per map!
Clubs, that's something we need to talk about. This was another change to gameplay added in Disgaea 3. Basically, in the classroom, you could assign characters to a club, and that club would give them bonuses, such as extra movement, an extra turn for Magichange, among others. Most clubs were useful, and deciding which character goes to which club could very well be the difference between easy battles or easy losses.
Oh my goodness, do we need to talk about characters. Disgaea 3's biggest virtue is that it has so, so many character classes. I counted them: 27 humanoid characters, 22 monster characters, (23 if playing the PSP version of the game). And those are just the generics! And of course there's the unique characters: 7 storyline characters, 9 characters to be recruited in the post game, and 9 other characters to be recruited via New Game+! And as if that's not all, we need to remember that generic classes have six different tiers, each with different stats, for a grand total of (wait for it) 294 generic characters to be recruited! To put this in perspective: Final Fantasy Tactics allows for a grand total 36 generic classes: 20 human, 16 monsters. And if we count the three generic monster sub classes, that's still 68 classes total, not even a quarter of what Disgaea 3 offers. And yet, this virtue is also one of the game's biggest weakness, because these classes? They're not all equal, and some are, objectively, junk. The problem is that classes are divided by gender: you have a male Healer and a female healer, and both are treated as different classes. They have different Evilities: the male healer's innate Evility reduces the damage adjacent allies receive from elemental attacks by 50%, while the female healer reduces Magic Damage received by adjacent allies by 50%. Who's better? Neither one, it depends on the situation. But not all characters are this balanced. You have the female Archer, who deals more damage with her ranged attacks the more panels are between her and her target. The male Ranger, on the other hand, deals more damage if he's on higher ground than his opponent! Sound balanced? Well no, because most maps don't have reliable enough high ground for you to take advantage of the Ranger's Evility! And even if there were sufficient high ground to take advantage of the Ranger's Evility, why would I bother? Chances are, the Archer's Evility would simply work better because high ground only means so much if somehow I'm HIGHER than the enemy can reach! Such a feature rarely, if ever, appears on any map! Personally, I feel as though keeping distance is strategically more advantageous regardless of situation. And then there's the female Gunslinger, whose Evility increases your party's gold gain if she participates in a combo attack. Compared to the male Gunner, who increases his ally's critical rate (the chance to deal double damage) if they participate in a combo attack with him, and we see one hell of a difference. More gold, or more damage? Which one's more useful? Well duh, the damage, because in later levels gold is gained by the tons, to the point that I, at one point in the game, had accumulated 3 million gold in one sitting. Simply put, some characters are sometimes better than others, while others are simply junk.
DLC! We started talking about DLC, so let's expand on the idea! Basically, the DLC for Disgaea 3 includes: several (and I do mean several, a total of 22) special characters, 2 generic monster classes, one generic hmanoid class, four special chapters, bonus modes, and one extra boss battle. Pretty good so far, I've personally seen much worse. The only problem with this package is that the two monster classes were considered staples to the Disgaea franchise: the Dragon, and the Nekomata (catgirl martial artists. They are very popular) Relegating these two iconic characters to downloadable content is something I wish NIS had reconsidered when designing the game.
The game wanted to be so much more than the average SRPG. The game had all the right elements: tons of character classes, hard battles, many strategic elements, powerful attacks, impressive battle animations, high variety of enemies, etc. But...what about the story?
And THAT is the biggest problem with Disgaea 3: the story. I'm not saying it's bad per se, in fact it's pretty good, but the problem is that, when you break it down, it's simply a retread of the themes of Disgaea 1. Consider: an "evil" demon has ambitions to gain a power he does not yet possess, so he sets out on a journey of self empowerment. Along the way, he learns not only the meaning and value of friendship, but also experiences betrayal, heart ache, questions his self worth, learns that he is being manipulated by outside forces, faces off his mortal enemies, conquers his rivals, and in the end, achieves the title of Overlord.
Like Disgaea 1, Disgaea 3 explores themes of Phillia, camaraderie, self improvement, and love. But therein end the similarities.
Laying aside the obvious Japanese High School drama inspirations (which Disgaea 3 proudly wears on its sleeves), the game explores themes of redemption, honor, and of course, staying true to oneself vs pretending to be who we are not. This is reflected in Almaz' character arc: when he starts out the game, he's pretending to be a Hero, acting like he's brave when in reality he's a big chicken. When he loses to Mao, the demon makes him a slave, and forces him wherever he goes. aAlmaz gets humiliated repeatedly, and he just takes it all like a whipped slave. Even when the love of his life, Princess Sapphire (who's insane in the membrane) re enters his life, Almaz just can't catch a break. At one point in the game, he seeks to take the easy way out of his misery by reclaiming his title of Hero. What he does is: go into Mao's heart, take the title, then leave. If that makes little sense, allow me to remind you that this is Disgaea, a series where penguins explode when thrown, and a zombie's considered a threat because it has a horse wiener. EVERY member of the party gives him flak for what he did, and Almaz resolves instead to earn his title of Hero instead of simply taking it. Eventually, Almaz earns his title by risking his life to save Sapphire from a deadly trap. I feel that Disgaea 3 should have been about Almaz, not Mao.
Mao's story, on the other hand, is one of petty revenge eventually discarded. Angry that his father, the Overlord, smashed his Slaystation portable (it's Disgaea, the pun is expected and forgiven) Mao conspires to become a Hero, following the logic that Heroes defeat Overlords. In his journey, he encounters his rival, the delinquent Raspberyl, who never cuts classes, says please and thank you, and looks like an 8 year old girl, even though she's much, much older. Mao eventually learns to let go of his painful past (like Laharl), trust in the strength of his friendships (like Laharl), and overcome his own short comings in order to become the magnificent demon he was born to be (like Laharl). Eventually, Mao learns that his father was already dead, thanks indirectly to him: he told the Super Hero, Aurum, his father's weakness in the hopes that it'd help Aurum defeat his father. Instead, the Super Hero betrayed Mao and killed his father instead, and then disguised himself as the demon's new butler, Geoffrey, to groom Mao to become a heartless demon Overlord.
Mao's story is somewhat similar to Laharl's, but the end result was not the same: while Laharl grew kinder as his game went on, Mao...didn't. Mao at the start of the game is a perverted mad scientist who skips school, never does his homework, and is disrespectful to his teachers. For that, he's considered an Honor Student (again, it's Disgaea.) Who's Mao at the end of the game? A perverted mad scientist who's now the Overlord of the entire Netherworld. Personality wise, Mao doesn't change, and THERE is the biggest weakness to the entire game. It's Almaz who changes, not Mao. Both have character arcs, yes, but Almaz', I feel, is simply the more engaging one: the young man who tried to play the hero, got his ass handed to him, grew a spine, and became the hero for real. It's the classic underdog story! Simply put, I feel as though the game focused on the wrong protagonist.
In the end, what can I say? Disgaea 3 was a huge game changer, revolutionizing the franchise by bringing it to a new age of technology, taking full advantage of the new DLC technology by offering a HUGE plethora of content that could be added on in exchange for a small fee. It brought more to the franchise, offering gamers an experience like no other: hundreds of hours of grinding, hard battles, and amazing battle animations were guaranteed. But, many of the ideas brought into the table were simply not balanced enough: the sprites, though well detailed, were not HD; all the new mechanics were unbalanced, especially Magichange, which became little more than a gimmick that never once felt like an authentic battle strategy. In brief, Disgaea 3 was a great leap forward for the franchise, but it stumbled upon the landing. Luckily, the franchise avoided falling on its face.
So could Disgaea bounce back? Would they return to the classic formula perfected by Disgaea 2? Or would they build on what Disgaea 3 brought to the table? Join me next time when we look at what I consider to be the best game in the franchise, Disgaea 4!
A second gameplay change that was added as the use of Classrooms, where you could situate your characters in any order you liked. Characters that sat next to each other gained bonuses, such as an increase in probability of doing a combo attack. Also, certain skills could combo into each other, allowing for a super strong combination of abilities that dealt more damage to enemies. Of course, what's written on paper and how an idea is executed are two entirely different things. The combos do a fair amount of damage, of course, but visually, they don't impress AS much. What happens is that one skill's animation starts up, gets put on hold, while the second skill's animation plays out at full. Once that second animation ends, the first one's animation continues as if nothing happened. Sometimes it looks great regardless, such as when Almaz, one of the game's main characters, uses his Sword Spinning skill and combines it with another character's Sword Dash. Almaz draws out three swords, starts spinning them around above the enemy's head, slashing them away. As Almaz does that, the second character dashes towards the enemy, stabs them with a sword, then walks away. Once that's done, Almaz finishes his attack and stabs the enemy one last time. THAT looks awesome. But sometimes, it just looks awful, like when Mao, the main character, uses his Blast Finger skill, which releases several strings of energy at the enemy, strangling them, only to pause mid attack so that his ally can use whatever skill! It looks awkward, and I feel as if this really showcases the limits of technology.
Perhaps THE biggest change the game brings is Magichange, the ability to temporarily turn monsters into weapons. For two turns, your monster becomes a weapon that any of your characters can equip, giving them access to not just the monster's native Evility, but to a set of unique skills as well. An example: say you have a Slime, and you Magichange that slime, becoming a sword. Whoever is equipping that Slime has access to the Slime's native Evility, which decreases all damage taken from non elemental abilities by 50%! For two turns, you have a character that can shrug off non elemental attacks like they were nothing! Sadly, once more we see an idea that was better on paper than it was executed. See, Magichange only works if the monster and the character belong to the same club (more on this later), severely limiting the possibilities for Magichange to be anything more than a gimmick. Furthermore, if the humanoid unit wielding the Magichanged monster somehow dies, then both the humanoid and the monster are defeated in battle. And as if that was not enough, Magichange lasts a mere 2 turns, so you're sacrificing a unit for the sake of a weapon that you get to keep for two turns. And that's not even getting into the notion that, most of the time, the new weapon would be WEAKER than whatever it was you had equipped beforehand! Personally I'd rather keep the unit, especially considering that I have a limit of ten allied units per map!
Clubs, that's something we need to talk about. This was another change to gameplay added in Disgaea 3. Basically, in the classroom, you could assign characters to a club, and that club would give them bonuses, such as extra movement, an extra turn for Magichange, among others. Most clubs were useful, and deciding which character goes to which club could very well be the difference between easy battles or easy losses.
Oh my goodness, do we need to talk about characters. Disgaea 3's biggest virtue is that it has so, so many character classes. I counted them: 27 humanoid characters, 22 monster characters, (23 if playing the PSP version of the game). And those are just the generics! And of course there's the unique characters: 7 storyline characters, 9 characters to be recruited in the post game, and 9 other characters to be recruited via New Game+! And as if that's not all, we need to remember that generic classes have six different tiers, each with different stats, for a grand total of (wait for it) 294 generic characters to be recruited! To put this in perspective: Final Fantasy Tactics allows for a grand total 36 generic classes: 20 human, 16 monsters. And if we count the three generic monster sub classes, that's still 68 classes total, not even a quarter of what Disgaea 3 offers. And yet, this virtue is also one of the game's biggest weakness, because these classes? They're not all equal, and some are, objectively, junk. The problem is that classes are divided by gender: you have a male Healer and a female healer, and both are treated as different classes. They have different Evilities: the male healer's innate Evility reduces the damage adjacent allies receive from elemental attacks by 50%, while the female healer reduces Magic Damage received by adjacent allies by 50%. Who's better? Neither one, it depends on the situation. But not all characters are this balanced. You have the female Archer, who deals more damage with her ranged attacks the more panels are between her and her target. The male Ranger, on the other hand, deals more damage if he's on higher ground than his opponent! Sound balanced? Well no, because most maps don't have reliable enough high ground for you to take advantage of the Ranger's Evility! And even if there were sufficient high ground to take advantage of the Ranger's Evility, why would I bother? Chances are, the Archer's Evility would simply work better because high ground only means so much if somehow I'm HIGHER than the enemy can reach! Such a feature rarely, if ever, appears on any map! Personally, I feel as though keeping distance is strategically more advantageous regardless of situation. And then there's the female Gunslinger, whose Evility increases your party's gold gain if she participates in a combo attack. Compared to the male Gunner, who increases his ally's critical rate (the chance to deal double damage) if they participate in a combo attack with him, and we see one hell of a difference. More gold, or more damage? Which one's more useful? Well duh, the damage, because in later levels gold is gained by the tons, to the point that I, at one point in the game, had accumulated 3 million gold in one sitting. Simply put, some characters are sometimes better than others, while others are simply junk.
DLC! We started talking about DLC, so let's expand on the idea! Basically, the DLC for Disgaea 3 includes: several (and I do mean several, a total of 22) special characters, 2 generic monster classes, one generic hmanoid class, four special chapters, bonus modes, and one extra boss battle. Pretty good so far, I've personally seen much worse. The only problem with this package is that the two monster classes were considered staples to the Disgaea franchise: the Dragon, and the Nekomata (catgirl martial artists. They are very popular) Relegating these two iconic characters to downloadable content is something I wish NIS had reconsidered when designing the game.
The game wanted to be so much more than the average SRPG. The game had all the right elements: tons of character classes, hard battles, many strategic elements, powerful attacks, impressive battle animations, high variety of enemies, etc. But...what about the story?
And THAT is the biggest problem with Disgaea 3: the story. I'm not saying it's bad per se, in fact it's pretty good, but the problem is that, when you break it down, it's simply a retread of the themes of Disgaea 1. Consider: an "evil" demon has ambitions to gain a power he does not yet possess, so he sets out on a journey of self empowerment. Along the way, he learns not only the meaning and value of friendship, but also experiences betrayal, heart ache, questions his self worth, learns that he is being manipulated by outside forces, faces off his mortal enemies, conquers his rivals, and in the end, achieves the title of Overlord.
Like Disgaea 1, Disgaea 3 explores themes of Phillia, camaraderie, self improvement, and love. But therein end the similarities.
Laying aside the obvious Japanese High School drama inspirations (which Disgaea 3 proudly wears on its sleeves), the game explores themes of redemption, honor, and of course, staying true to oneself vs pretending to be who we are not. This is reflected in Almaz' character arc: when he starts out the game, he's pretending to be a Hero, acting like he's brave when in reality he's a big chicken. When he loses to Mao, the demon makes him a slave, and forces him wherever he goes. aAlmaz gets humiliated repeatedly, and he just takes it all like a whipped slave. Even when the love of his life, Princess Sapphire (who's insane in the membrane) re enters his life, Almaz just can't catch a break. At one point in the game, he seeks to take the easy way out of his misery by reclaiming his title of Hero. What he does is: go into Mao's heart, take the title, then leave. If that makes little sense, allow me to remind you that this is Disgaea, a series where penguins explode when thrown, and a zombie's considered a threat because it has a horse wiener. EVERY member of the party gives him flak for what he did, and Almaz resolves instead to earn his title of Hero instead of simply taking it. Eventually, Almaz earns his title by risking his life to save Sapphire from a deadly trap. I feel that Disgaea 3 should have been about Almaz, not Mao.
Mao's story, on the other hand, is one of petty revenge eventually discarded. Angry that his father, the Overlord, smashed his Slaystation portable (it's Disgaea, the pun is expected and forgiven) Mao conspires to become a Hero, following the logic that Heroes defeat Overlords. In his journey, he encounters his rival, the delinquent Raspberyl, who never cuts classes, says please and thank you, and looks like an 8 year old girl, even though she's much, much older. Mao eventually learns to let go of his painful past (like Laharl), trust in the strength of his friendships (like Laharl), and overcome his own short comings in order to become the magnificent demon he was born to be (like Laharl). Eventually, Mao learns that his father was already dead, thanks indirectly to him: he told the Super Hero, Aurum, his father's weakness in the hopes that it'd help Aurum defeat his father. Instead, the Super Hero betrayed Mao and killed his father instead, and then disguised himself as the demon's new butler, Geoffrey, to groom Mao to become a heartless demon Overlord.
Mao's story is somewhat similar to Laharl's, but the end result was not the same: while Laharl grew kinder as his game went on, Mao...didn't. Mao at the start of the game is a perverted mad scientist who skips school, never does his homework, and is disrespectful to his teachers. For that, he's considered an Honor Student (again, it's Disgaea.) Who's Mao at the end of the game? A perverted mad scientist who's now the Overlord of the entire Netherworld. Personality wise, Mao doesn't change, and THERE is the biggest weakness to the entire game. It's Almaz who changes, not Mao. Both have character arcs, yes, but Almaz', I feel, is simply the more engaging one: the young man who tried to play the hero, got his ass handed to him, grew a spine, and became the hero for real. It's the classic underdog story! Simply put, I feel as though the game focused on the wrong protagonist.
In the end, what can I say? Disgaea 3 was a huge game changer, revolutionizing the franchise by bringing it to a new age of technology, taking full advantage of the new DLC technology by offering a HUGE plethora of content that could be added on in exchange for a small fee. It brought more to the franchise, offering gamers an experience like no other: hundreds of hours of grinding, hard battles, and amazing battle animations were guaranteed. But, many of the ideas brought into the table were simply not balanced enough: the sprites, though well detailed, were not HD; all the new mechanics were unbalanced, especially Magichange, which became little more than a gimmick that never once felt like an authentic battle strategy. In brief, Disgaea 3 was a great leap forward for the franchise, but it stumbled upon the landing. Luckily, the franchise avoided falling on its face.
So could Disgaea bounce back? Would they return to the classic formula perfected by Disgaea 2? Or would they build on what Disgaea 3 brought to the table? Join me next time when we look at what I consider to be the best game in the franchise, Disgaea 4!
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