Tactical RPGs, Disgaea and Me

When the first edition of Disgaea was sent my direction from Scott, I was entranced. Cool little boards, lots of number crunching, fun game mechanics, leveling up weapons through dungeon exploration, Disgaea contained all of that and more that I did not even scratch the surface of doing.

I probably put more hours into Disgaea than any other RPG or game except for possibly Final Fantasy X.

Before Disgaea, I had played Final Fantasy Tactics, but never got around to completing it since some of the scenarios were rather difficult and I was not motivated to power level characters.

Since then, I played a little of La Pucille Tactics, a little more of Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced, and actually completed Song Summoner - the Square Enix tactical RPG for the iPod.

Sure there was Disgaea 2, which I was scared away from thanks to the reviews, and a few other TRPGs but none really grabbed me.

When Disgaea 3 was announced, excitement started to build. The game started appearing on my short list of games to pick up - but that on going theme of "It cost's too much." kept rearing it's head and I held off.

Enter Gamefly and Disgaea 3 was shipped to me for rental purposes. Finally, I was going to return to irreverent, self-aware tactical RPG I enjoyed so much many years ago.

And it was good.

The plot begins a demon kid out to overthrow his father (the current Overlord of the Netherworld) this time the setting is the school for demons, so the subsystems of the game have been changed, which is fine.

There is a classroom where the player can influence who can combo better with whom, pass new bills to improve the goods available for purchase, and add characters to use in the dungeons.

Then there are new stat changing Evilities, clubs for the characters to join in the class room, Magichange abilites allowing a class character and a monster character to join forces and do lots of damage. The list of things to track and monkey about with goes on and on.

So we have this game with tons of stuff to do, funny scripting, and lots of approaches to take. And then there is the player who has two young children and is approaching forty in age. This doesn't look good for one of these two parties.

In this case, I was the one to cave and return Disgaea 3. Playing a game like this would require such commitment that I would not be able to finish it unless all other games were left behind. And I already kicked World of Warcraft to the curb once, no need to fill that gap.

So the gutcheck on this game, is to give it a shot if you have the time and enjoy a deep, but easy, tactical RPG. I remember no real challenge from the first Disgaea, and this release did not appear to up the ante. But the fun factor of fiddling with numbers and beating up the bad guys was present.

However, if time is at a premium, then give this a pass for now.

http://disgaea.us/dis3/