Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice is the latest installment in Nippon Ichi’s tactical role-playing series Disgaea and the first to be released on the PlayStation 3. With the inaugural title making its first appearance on the PS2 in 2003, the series has since won over a supportive fan base, captivated by its quirky design and immersive gameplay. Disgaea 3 happily retains these laudable elements but is ultimately marred by its visuals, which are truly lackluster considering the capabilities of a next-gen console. However, with a light-hearted comic storyline and engrossing gameplay, the pros outweigh the cons.
The story takes place at the Evil Academy in the Netherworld, a demon school where everything is conventionally backwards. Delinquent students are those who attend classes every day and do their homework, while honor students are those who do the complete opposite. (Why can’t our world be like this?) You play the character of Prince Mao, evil genius son of the Overlord, and Mao’s current ambition is to overthrow his father because he destroyed his gaming system, which resulted in the loss of millions of hours of hard-earned digital accomplishments. After researching extensively through volumes of manga, Mao discovers that the key to defeating his father is to become a hero and hold true to the tenets of love and justice — things he has no understanding of whatsoever. And so begins Mao’s journey to transform himself into a true hero so he can defeat his father and become Overlord of the Netherworld.
You can probably tell from the synopsis that Disgaea 3 carries none of the seriousness of other RPGs. Comic mischief dominates the tone of the game through the anime-style visuals, intentionally over-the-top voice acting and the odd-ball off-the-wall humor. It’s almost a small miracle that all of these quirky and slightly bizarre elements manage to cohesively fuse together to generate such a unique sense of fun. It’s not every tactical RPG out there that allows you to play as the evil genius Prince of the Netherworld, so it’s best that you go along with the game and embrace its inner zaniness.
The Evil Academy acts as a central hub where you can buy armor, weapons and items and heal and manage your team. This is where all your nonbattle work and preparation happen. From here, you can access the classroom to assign seats for your team, which affects character compatibility and battle performance. It also is the room where you can create a new classmate who will become a new controllable character in battle. Their starting stats depend on how many Mana Points you’re willing to spend, so if you’re stingy, you’re going to have to carry that character along.
The combat system in the game is turn-based, and you lay out your characters on the grid from a launching point one at a time and assign them specific actions. You can move your characters as far as their highlighted grids allow and pick your choice of standard actions such as attack, special attack, use an item or defend. You also can equip new weapons or armor and check character status if you feel it’s necessary. When you’re finished your prep, hit execute, sit back and watch the sparks fly. But that’s not all. Geo panels and geo blocks add a puzzle element to a battle. Geo panels help or hurt anyone standing on them, depending on their characteristics. Geo blocks are used to destroy other geo blocks and geo panels. It is more often than not in your best interest to destroy the geo blocks and panels as soon as the battle starts, and to do it in the most efficient and beneficial manner requires some strategic thought. Chaining the destruction of geo blocks and panels together ramps up your bonus gauge, giving you extra rewards when the battle is over. If you’ve ever played a tactical RPG, you should get the hang of things fairly quickly, but whether you’re a novice or a pro, there are tutorials to help you get acclimatized; and trust me, you’ll probably need them.
There’s a lot to see and do in Disgaea 3, and depending on how obsessive-compulsive you are, it can be as much or as little as you’d like it to be. If you just want to play through the game for the sake of the story, then it lets you. But if you want to explore every nook and cranny while leveling your characters to level 9,999, you can do that, too. A key part in being able to level so high is the Item World that allows you to explore the dungeons within items. After completing a stage, your item will increase in power while your characters get stronger from battle. This feature has limitless potential for what it can do for your characters, and if you’re willing to put in the time, the rewards speak for themselves.
Unfortunately, the visuals of Disgaea 3 are a serious disappointment. Even though it’s on the PS3, the game continues to use 2D sprite graphics, resulting in extremely pixilated lifeless-looking characters. The environments look better than the characters in so far as they don’t look pixilated, but they are unremarkable. To be honest, this is the PS3, and more effort should have been put into the visual component of the game to at least justify its presence on a next-gen console. Cutscenes are played out in static portraits, which are adequate but again, not worthy of the console. If Disgaea 3 were made for the Nintendo DS, it would be great, but seeing what the PS3 can do for other games, you can only be disappointed thinking what could’ve been.
On the audio front, it’s a significant improvement. The music and voice-over work are well-produced and help to carry you through the story, because the visuals can’t do it alone. Each of these elements helps to support the comic tone of the game. The music is comprised of energetic anime flavored pieces to engage your auditory senses while you often make lengthy preparations before and during battle. The English voice-over work is surprisingly strong as all the voice actors seem game on hamming it up for the humor. But, if you find that you don’t like it, the game also includes the Japanese audio track as an alternative.
Disgaea 3 is another solid entry in the tactical RPG genre. Though the visuals in the game are laughable, it possesses a level of gameplay that suits whatever your tastes may be. The game is what you make of it, and this should satisfy gamers of any level of expertise. And thus I say, give in, embrace your inner evil genius and conquer that Netherworld.
