The Video Game Revue

Disgaea 3

Oh the hypocrisy! In my previous post about Battlefield: Bad Company, I said that I can't stand the stereotypical spiky-haired anime style protagonists of JRPGs. Then I promptly went out and bought Disgaea 3.

I haven't gotten very far yet, so these are just early impressions, but Disgaea 3 seems to carry forward the Disgaea formula well. There are some changes to the game that distinguish it from Disgaea 1 and 2, but overall it's simply the next iteration of the same deal. Disgaea was one of my all-time favourite PlayStation 2 games, so this is definitely a good thing.

The characters and story aren't bad by Disgaea standards. Let's face it: the original Disgaea has the best characters that any Nippon Ichi game is probably ever going to have(*). Laharl and Etna are classic, and frankly, I'm glad that they're not the stars of every Disgaea game, because that would just get tiring. As it stands now, I enjoyed those characters, and I want to keep it that way.

So when I say that Disgaea 3 has good characters by Disgaea standards, what I really mean is that I was relieved to find that the little kid with spiky hair on the cover of the game box turned out not to be foreshadowing that the game itself is terrible, which is what I had feared. Instead, Disgaea 3 happily joins my slowly growing library of quality PS3 games.

The PS3 count is now up to four disc games and two Sony Store downloaded titles:

- Metal Gear Solid 4
- Gran Turismo 5 Prologue
- Ninja Gaiden Sigma
- Disgaea 3
- Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection
- R-Types (PS1)

Excluding the PlayStation original game, I can count my PS3 titles on one hand, but that is one happy hand. The great thing about the PS3 is that I had only moderate-to-fair expectations for each of the titles on that list, and they all surprised me in some way. In comparison, my Xbox 360 library is bursting at the seams, but a lot of the 360 games that I play are throw-away fare--titles that are fun for a couple of weeks and then tossed aside. Within that library of mostly mediocre games, the 360 has a respectable selection of essential classics, so it's not as if the PS3 has it beat. Still, the PS3 has something going for it, and that's nice.

(*) The cast for La Pucelle Tactics was good too. It should go without saying, but turning on the Japanese voice acting is a must to get the proper characterization out of these games. Prier is a fucking badass.

posted by Parappa @ 2:33 PM