Disgaea 3 is an insane, fun filled tactical RPG that offers crazy amounts of hours to be enjoyed.
So right off the bat, this game already is extremely out of control with it's whole story premise. You are the No. 1 Honor Student in the Academy, so the game takes place within the Academy, and a few other like your house, Mao's heart (yep), and Item World.
You go into the battle map, which is based on blocks, and you battle enemies. It is kind of set up like chess, you have your characters, and then the enemies set up on the other side. You can only move your characters so far up, so far over, and so many blocks at once. Once you have made your move, you can choose your attack, which is your basic attack, special attack and even your magichange which morphs you and a monster creature together forming a type of powerful weapon.
After you choose your attack, you execute it, watch the crazy damage and animation you dish out, and then end your turn, which makes it the enemies turn.
Item World is basically like the rest of the game, it is just made for power leveling, and leveling up certain items that are not equipped. And once you are in item world, there is no getting out until you have made it passed 10 battles. That is unless you have a special item that lets you leave Item World (you receive one for free your first time there). I highly recommend going very prepared with health items and SP items, which is what you need to keep your special meter filled.
There are weapon shops, armor shops, item shops, a nurse, special attack power ups, and homeroom. Homeroom is set up exactly like it sounds, like a classroom. The main goal in this is where you arrange you characters in order, arrange them in battle formation which is called Clubs in the game (which is good, so if two or more people in the same club are next to each other in battle, the chance of a double attack increases). You can also vote for new abilities, such as higher priced items, which is higher leveled and more powerful items. This then goes to officials that vote Nay (no) or Aye (yes) on the whole thing. If it goes through, then wonderful, but if you get more nay's then it is declined, you can then either accept it, or battle the officials.
Disgaea 3 does have an annoying camera angle I must say, but I do think that it is also their signature thing as well. I would have really enjoyed if I had the freedom to adjust the camera more close and at an angle, rather than just an over-head view.
I do also wish that the graphics were more updated, it still feels like a bad PS2 game, maybe with the next Disgaea, they will think about updating them.
Those things shouldn't keep you from picking this game up though, I have spent hours playing this game and it is still so much fun. If you want a hilarious, creative turn-based rpg, I highly recommend picking up Disgaea 3.