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.
Disgaea goes Next-Gen on PS3 |
Search for clues and advice in conversations.
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Enjoy 3-D play across geo blocks.
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Level up weapons and gear with 'item world'.
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'Magichange' makes weapons of characters.
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Inflict damage with the 'Stack Attack'.
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The Story of Mao, a Demon Gone Bad
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 Maos 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.
Will Mao be able to become a hero and defeat the Overlord? Or will Raspberyl and the demon delinquents convince him to return to his honor role ways? It all depends on you, and so the troublesome, devilish story begins.
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 Great Game |
| Review Date: August 29, 2010 |
| Reviewer: James C. Foster, |
| I love the Disgaea series, and while the main characters and storyline aren't as entertaining in the sequels as the original, game play improves greatly with each addition |
if you liked disgaea 1 or/and 2 you WILL like 3
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| Review Date: August 7, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Khaotic, |
this game is just what i expected it to be, my favorite jrpg on another level,
its jsut about the same as every other disgaea except the obvious differences such as magichange, evilities, etc,
but for anyone wanting to really enjoy it i suggest you also buy this with the DISGAEA 3 COMPLETE DLC PACKAGE, as it has over... what 15 new caracters? to add to the game plus 4 extra side chapters , and new modes.
but its worth MORE than the game itself at 50$ USD which is what disappointed me but if you play disgaea im sure your willing to go the extra mile. |
The Best Entry in the Series to Date
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| Review Date: July 22, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Devon_v, |
Disgaea 3 carries on the tradition of the series, taking the game play to new heights of absurdity. The game is primarily based on the upgrades made in the second title, but streamlines them, thankfully without dumbing anything down. Some of the late-game tedium was eliminated, and the whole system of reincarnating and customizing your characters is more flexible than ever, sharing some traits with the related system in the spin-off Makai Kingdom.
The game's graphics are still pretty much PS1 quality, and indeed, a few sprites from the first game are still in use, along with many from the second, though there are many new monsters and characters to encounter as well. Though a little on the expensive side, the DLC options allow you to customize your experience further by adding characters from many of their other titles to your roster. These characters bring unique abilities, some of which can be transferred to your other characters, giving you more options to build your ultimate characters.
The Homeroom and class committees add terrific new short-cuts, such as allowing you to reassign the master/pupil relationships at any time, and even allow certain characters to share EXP or Mana gain with those adjacent to them, helping to level up characters still too frail for the power leveling maps.
The Dark World returns as the X-Dimension, and instead of the Evil Sun, you will have to contend with radically changed level layouts, and brutal new Geopanels. Many of the levels are actually complex Geopanel puzzles, sometimes with only a single enemy, the trick being to figure out how to reach them, or make them vulnerable.
Although the main story can be completed in roughly 20 hours, I have already played the game for 107, and I am nowhere near having completed all of the challenges and alternate maps. I don't even have the Land of Carnage unlocked. Disgaea is truly a game that is not over until you decide you've had enough. Even if you defeat the Tyrant Overlord, there's always the LoC version with 20 stronger enemy bills passed. Supposedly he has a billion HP and can deal 2.9 million damage a hit. There's always another challenge awaiting you. |
if you have the time
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| Review Date: July 11, 2010 |
| Reviewer: D. M. Smith, Santa Monica, CA |
Had fun but not the most challenging of games plus its a great time waster...
The main story started off ok but its got pretty cheesy fast with the same jokes over and over again. |
I didn't like it, but others might.
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| Review Date: June 13, 2010 |
| Reviewer: S. Bavik, |
I picked this game up after playing disgaea 2 a little with some of my relatives. 2 seemed okay so i decided to pick this up. Right away, the story seemed a little lame. Mao, the nerdy son of the Overlord, wants to kill his dad. Okay, typical revenge story. He apparently goes to "Evil Academy". When I think Evil Academy, I don't think about not washing hands, it's more blood sacrifice and dark powers. Further on, I get through the some of the story, Mao trying to fit into the "Evil Boy Genius" stereotype. I also get to meet several other characters, including but not limited to; Cliche Goody Two Shoes, Cliche Shy Hero and a strange mixture of Cliche Chef and Cliche Kung fu Master. I played for a while, but Mao never seemed to get any closer to killing his dad. They keep getting sidetracked by fighting the school tournament, the "Hero" title and a dragon egg. When I get a goal in a game, I like feeling like I'm actually getting closer to it with each event. Next, the music in the Evil Academy gets kind of annoying because it's twice as loud as the battle music and is not at all evil. Finally, I got really tired of hear Mao shout "Experiment!" every single time he attacks.
However, the gameplay itself seemed pretty streamlined and easy to figure out. You get a variety of of characters who have a variety of abilities and equipment, the ability to combo characters together, and interesting tile-based affects that change how the each fight can be done. Personally, I liked the fighting and the strategy, but absolutely hated the story. |
Hours of fun..you keep coming back!
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| Review Date: May 29, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Nick Alec, Ny,Ny |
The Disgaea series is pretty much the only SRPG series that i like. I was never too fond of SRPG's and then i played Disgaea 1 which got me hooked. Still these games, as you should know, can consume 100's of hours of your life. The insane amount of levels you could get(not only your character but items as well!) was what hooked me but theres so much more to do and each addition to the series keeps adding even more!
I would say the 3rd one(this one) has the best gameplay. In terms of characters though i would rank it after Disgaea 1 but better than 2's. The story is alright(somewhat short though) with some neat twists, and the characters voice actors do a good job in my opinion. The graphics are the same as the first two, but Disgaea 4 NIS said will have better graphics. Though i hope its keeps the same charm it has always had. If the graphics discourage from getting this dont let it!! The grinding of levels gets annoying sometimes but i always come back after taking an 1-2 week break. If you like trophy's this game got a patch to include trophies it now has a whole ton of them to earn.
So to recap if you like SRPG's,funny wacky stories,funny characters(prinnys!), and a great bang for your buck you should give this a try!
I personally cant wait till Disgaea 4 hits to see what insane new additions will be added. |
Disgaea - Best SRPG Series of All Time
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| Review Date: April 23, 2010 |
| Reviewer: TaoMeowMeow, NY |
| I am a longtime Disgaea fan, and to a larger extent Nippon Ichi fan, since Laharl and co.'s debut in Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. Disgaea 2 kept the series moving forward, and now we have Disgaea 3, arguably the best of the bunch. To write a full review for this game detailing all of it's features would take far too long, suffice it to say this game is packed with literally hundreds of hours of content. This is a game you can play for as long as you want, and will never grow stale, provided you like the core gameplay, which is turn-based strategy at it's very best. Definitely worth a purchase if you are at all interested in this genre. You will not regret your decision! |
Disgaea stays true
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| Review Date: March 13, 2010 |
| Reviewer: A. Beeler, TN, USA |
My favorite title before this was Hour of Darkness, and this game definitely delivers to the fan base. Great Cameo appearances from beloved characters, great twisted and humorous story, and fun game play.
Sure, it's a ps3 game, and they haven't kicked up the visuals all that much, but I would much rather have a game with solid game play, and story.. than a $[...]piece of junk that looks nice with a lame plot, troubling story, and no replay value.
It's light enough that someone that has not played the previous games can just pick it up and play with ease, as the games in a way stand alone in story. But it's a homely feel to those that have played previous Disgaea games. |
A really fun, lacks in the graphic deparment.
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| Review Date: March 1, 2010 |
| Reviewer: E. Celis, USA |
This is the "newest" Disgaea game. The game is a great improvement from it's predecesors. They added a lot more skills, and changed the way they were learned. They also added a lot more features. The story is like the other games, very humorous, and best in my opinion. My only "beef" with this game are the graphics. I enjoy the "anime" like look they give the sprites, but they are very unpolished. You can even see the pixels in the corners. That is something that can not be forgiven, specially in this time and age and for the PS3. Which is suppose to have he best graphics of the current gen.
I really hope they continue to make great games like this, but to improce their graphics, or at least polish them. |
Just about as good as the first
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| Review Date: February 3, 2010 |
| Reviewer: H. Sitko, Seattle...literally |
| The first Disgaea was a big strange surprise to me. But i very quickly fell in love with it. That lasted for a long time. Then the second game came around and it was not as great in my opinion. I was weary about the third. But after playing it, i realize my mistake. It is great. Its just about as good as the first one. The only reason i would say its not just as good as the first is just because this one didnt come first. Its right back to being on par with the quality and funny story line as the first game. A must have for a system with a pretty small must have library. |
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