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?