this is your brain on bacon

Well having bought the game yesterday and beaten it by this morning,

YEAH RIGHT. There's obviously 100+ hours of gameplay in this monster, which has me a little worried. I played 3 hours in just the tutorial missions alone.

However, having come to the series completely fresh despite owning every disgaia game ever made (I know, sad, right? but I'm one of those abhorrent "collectors" who keeps things sealed) I am VERY VERY happy with the game.

So the perspective of this review is from a first timer, however I used to be obsessed with FF tactics (NOT the DS/GBA ones, they are terrible) which I believe to be one of the greatest games of all time, so I got into it right away.

Disgaia 3, for me, fixes many of the problems that I had with FFT - the main one being the plodding pace of each battle: despite the fact you can gain many levels and a ton of experience for battle, it never had the "pick up and grind" feel to it, because so many things could go wrong and kill you, you could lose characters forever, etc, etc. Each battle was a wearying, 30 minute epic, just to get that one skill or class. Which obviously could be fun, but you had to dedicate a chunk of time for.

Disgaia 3 is crack. To clarify, it is a homemade cocktail of crack, blowjobs, bacon, and pringles, the four most addictive substances known to man.

What drives this addiction? For one thing, the fact that every skill, special ability, character recruitment and team/party upgrades are purchased with a single unified currency called "mana" (not your magic points) mean that you will be playing battles until well into the morning for just one more sweet drop of the sticky icky black tar heroin. And then you might want to play the game some more too.

The battles are short (so far) and even when they are not, the pacing is incredibly speedy; enemies can be defeated quickly with strategy, multiple counters and counter-counters are available from the start. (FUCK you FFT for making you level up to like 25 before you can even think of countering attacks) and you get many bonus attacks depending on which characters are next to you. And you can chain attacks together as well. Combo-tastic.

Also the UI is incredibly well-designed (good because this is a stat/item/magic-manager's obsessive compulsive dream) with speedy and uncluttered access to everything you need.

The "classroom" dynamic, which I thought would be clunky and shoe-horned, is a great and fun way to uncover hidden upgrades and team abilities, as well as expanding your team, by bribing your class reps. it sounds confusing but is implemented extremely well.

There are also puzzle elements mixed into certain matches that involve matching colors and moving blocks to gain access to level elements, that boost bonuses and hurt enemies. Again, I was worried that, coming into it for the first time I'd be overwhelmed, but it just adds another addictive level to an already satisfying dynamic.

The Graphics:

OK, here is where all those mongoloid reviewers have dropped points, arguing that this could be a PS2 game. To clarify, it could NOT be a ps2 game. The HD display, the unbelievable magic attacks, and the crisp, high-detailed and sharply rendered 3D backrounds (not to mention bluray cinematics) all speak of loving quality and care with the artistic direction. As a passionate lover of 2D art, the sprite animations are fantastic as well: not many people understand every frame of pixel art is done by hand, and the amount of time and care that went into it is obvious from the first minute.

Basically:

Never go with the girls who touches your penis in a bar, even if it's on the outside of your jeans, because she has the herp. Or worse, her own penis.

In terms of Disgaia 3, imagine if they took the best parts of Persona 3 and put it in Final Fantasy Tactics, with the humor of Portal. If you've never gotten into the series it's an excellent game to start. If you like SRPGs AT ALL, you owe it to yourself to give it a spin.

This game is fantastically underrated.