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I was fortunate enough to get a coy of Disgaea 3 ahead of time, but I've not been fortunate enough to play a lot of it because work has mostly kept me from doing so.
HOWEVER... I had yesterday off (though not today or the next four days) and that meant I was able to devote some good time to it without fear of much interruption.
So far, the game is quite good (though not yet the perfect 10 that I felt its predecessors were; maybe that'll change and maybe it won't). The plot is a lot more humorous than the one in Disgaea 2, though not as clever--I feel--as the one in the first game. It's almost like it's trying too hard and some of the stuff (though at least original and not a repeat of either previous game) is a little bit on the ridiculous side.
Combat hasn't changed a whole lot, except with the introduction of geoblocks instead of those pyramid thingies from the previous game. You can now set off chain reactions just by using one block as a sort of fuse. Tossing a solitary green one against a bunch of green ones clustered somewhere else will trigger said chain reaction, which in turn could cause other stacked blocks to fall and trigger more and more... like in some sort of puzzle game. Really cool if enemies happen to be lurking on top.
Another difference is the class room, which has replaced the dark council but serves many of the same purposes. Now you get to try to be voted for class office and the seating chart you compose will affect what people do well in battle together. Besides that you can extort funds--as usual--and you can arrange topics for discussion (which is about the same as trying to learn skills before).
One final difference worth mentioning--and one I don't like as much--is the way skills are learned. As you wage war, you gain mana points. These must now be spent to progress your ablities. So to clarify, in past games you could use a spell a bunch of times and it would gradually increase in range and also you'd be able to spedify larger swaths of damage. Through use, you'd go from being abe to select one tiny square, to two squares diagonal to one another, to a straight line of three and so forth. Those upgrades are still available now, but you have to buy them manually and they seem to come about less frequently.
Anyway, that's all I have to say for now, but I'll be squeezing play time in around my regular work hours and then probably finishing up the game near the end of the week when I have more time off (since I need to put this one to bed and move onto other projects).
I just thought I'd give you information on the above so that when the game comes out, you're not totally in the dark as to my opinion. I mean, I did get an advance copy and all that. The least I can do is let some of you know a little bit about the game ahead of its release, right?
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Genj - August 24, 2008 (01:36 PM) I'm kinda curious as to whether so far you feel like it could have run on PS2 because from the screenshots it doesn't look like a huge step up graphically from other NIS games. |
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jerec - August 24, 2008 (02:13 PM) I'm interested in playing this game, but I'm not interested in getting a PS3. Thanks for writing this, it gives me a decent idea of what to expect. I think it's about the only PS3 game I want that hasn't gone multi-platform yet. :P |
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honestgamer - August 24, 2008 (11:17 PM) I would say that nothing I see graphically is anything that the PS2 couldn't have handled. Or if anything I've seen so far IS that way, none of it is in a way that makes you think "I'm glad they put this on the PS3 so that I could see THIS!" I consider it likely that it could've been done on the PS2 with little or no graphical tweaking, and I'm confident that it could be on Wii (which is only a bit more powerful than the original Xbox) with no issues at all aside from the same one that could potentially affect a PS2 version: space constraints. The game has a LOT of voiced dialog. It's rather surprising how much there has been so far, with most of it really done quite well. Not a single line has jumped out at me as a miss on the part of the voice actor, which is rare. Still, nothing PS3-specific yet aside from maybe that. It mostly just plays like you'd expect from the next Disgaea game. The jump from the second in the series to this one isn't any more significant than the leap from the first to the second. In any event, it's one of those games that I would recommend buying if you already have a PS3--at least so far--especially because of how long it will probably last and because it comes with a $49.99 price tag, as I recall. For SRPG fans looking at it as a primary reason to buy a PS3, though... keep looking. The PS3 library is full of great games that are worth a purchase if you already own the system but aren't system sellers, and this is another of those games. |
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MartinG - August 25, 2008 (02:21 AM) I never managed to gather enough interest to play Disgaea 2, despite having loved the first, but the claims that this third part is more humorous are sparking my curiosity :) And I always thought that the real question about Disagea's graphics is: could it have been done on the PSX? |
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jiggs - August 26, 2008 (10:07 PM) is Laharl in the game? Captain Gordon?? i'm probably going to get this game..and i'm glad it's going to be 49.99 |