Disgaea 3

[anchan218]

So I've been playing some Disgaea 3 and am on chapter 3. Mostly this is because I got sick of leveling characters in Disgaea 1. I think this is because I made too many characters, lol.

Anyway, so far Disgaea 3 is pretty cute and funny (to be expected of a Disgaea game). The graphics are better than Disgaea 1, but Wes complains the graphics are not PS3 standard. :P The gameplay is pretty similar (lucky for me since although I know enough Japanese to follow the plot, I'm struggling with the tutorial instructions, lol.)

Currently everyone in my party is level 21, except for the prinny, which is level 20.

Here's a list of differences between Disgaea 1 and Disgaea 3 that I've encountered so far (note I haven't played Disgaea 2, so I cannot compare to it):

1. Since Disgaea 3 takes place in a school, instead of the demon senate you have "home room." What characters sit next to each other in home room affects how likely they are to combo in battle.
   
2. More combo animations
   
3. You can now make characters "walk" on one another, which relieves a lot of the tedium of making 5 or 6 characters pick up one another to make a "tower"
   
4. You can do "tower attacks" where all of the characters in a tower will attack an enemy. After you do this, though, you cannot throw the characters in the stack until the next turn
   
5. You don't seem to get damaged by leaving a character holding another character at the end of a turn (at least not if you've just done a tower attack)
   
6. Specials and special progressions are now decoupled from weapon and special experience levels - they're called mabilities ("ma" being demon in Japanese) and are purchased using mana points. You need to use mana points both to get new abilities and upgrade existing ones. It seems like upgrading weapon based specials increases their power, while upgrading magic increases the number of squares you can affect in one turn (their power seems to upgrade as the magic user increases levels).
   
7. Speaking of weapon experience levels, I'm not sure that there ARE weapon experience levels, lol. It looks like instead certain classes are only allowed to use certain weapon types. There still are specials experience levels, but I'm not sure what they do.
   
8. There are treasure chests both in and out of battle.
   
   1. In battle you get the loot by destroying them (but only if one of your characters destroys it - if an enemy or a geo block destroys it you don't get the loot).
      
   2. Outside of battle you just walk up to it and press "x" to get the loot. Look around the different locations carefully, since there's usually at least 2 hidden around. And after plot events more will appear in different locations.
9. Mao can jump around when not in battle. This helps you find treasure chests in more obscure places.
   
10. Items in the battlefield are now liftable, stackable, and destroyable. You need to lift and stack occasionally to reach treasure chests, enemies, and geo blocks in battle.
    
11. Magic users can't cast magic while standing next to an enemy (at least healers, anyway)
    
12. Geo blocks are way way different.
    
    1. Instead of being pyramidal, they are now blocks - i.e. they are also stackable.
       
    2. If you stand on a geo block, you also get affected by the geo block's ability even if it's not on a geo panel.
       
    3. You can no longer throw geo blocks on enemies.
       
    4. If you throw a geo block onto or next to another geo block of the same color, it will destroy them both. If there are a large number of adjacent geo blocks of the same color, it will destroy the entire group of geo blocks. Anything on top of the destroyed geo blocks will fall and take damage. In addition, if there is a geo block on top of them that is a different color and it falls near or on a group of similarly colored geo blocks, that group of geo blocks will also be destroyed.
       
    5. Geo blocks in item world will sometimes move around the battlefield
13. In item world you may have a gateway leading to some special room in addition to a gateway to the next level
    
14. Monsters, like prinnies, have a new bility called machange (again "ma" for demon) - they can transform into a weapon that another character holds and uses. I haven't really used this much yet, so I'm not very familar with it, but I do know if the character holding the machange weapon gets killed, both your human character and the monster character are dead.