Disgaea 3 is a fantastic game, purely in terms of being a thing to play. If you have a PS3 and want a new game to feed it while you wait for the next AAA blockbuster to hit, this is what you want to play. You may pass on the next AAA blockbuster so you can keep playing it. The game's pace is completely customizable, the story and characters are fun, and the postgame grind is about the best it's ever been in an N1 game. It's not a game to buy a PS3 for, nor is it a game for people with busy lives of any sort, but if you like to grind and aren't already committed to, say, an MMO, you'll have a ball. I know I am.
Anyway, Disgaea 3 is also noteworthy among Nippon Ichi's titles for being the first one to implement any sort of DLC. It actually uses a much more clever DLC plan than most RPGs, with a host of additiional features, characters, and allegedly maps planned to go up through January 2009 in Japan. The American version's DLC hasn't begun going up yet, but strikes me as pretty inevitable... for a reason that makes a lot of DLC, not just RPG DLC, fairly controversial.
You see, a significant quantity of the Disgaea 3 DLC is already on the disc. There's the free Ten Gentlemen , where you can add a new one of these quirky interstitial characters to your party every time you complete the game. Well, that's okay. My anonymous sources have confirmed that all of the Disgaea 2 characters (Adell, Rozalin, Taro, Hanako, Tink, Yukimaru) and Prier from La Pucelle are also on the disc, although their graphics won't display correctly without the DLC code that unlocks them.
Each of these characters retails in Japan for the rough US equivalent of $1.99 each, along with an eighth character named Souichiriou Kogure, who hails from Nippon Ichi's frankly awesome but sadly never-translated Hayarigame horror adventure title. My sources don't report having found Souichirou on the North American disc, suggesting this guy won't see NA release for the obvious reason that nobody is going to know what the hell his game is, and otherwise he's entirely a joke character.
There are also a few bonus character classes you can get, too. While Disgaea 3's default catgirl class are the short, blobby Slumber Cats that first showed up in the woefully under-appreciated Phantom Brave, you can buy the taller, sexier Nekomata design from Disgaea 1 & 2 in a DLC pack for the equivalent of $.99 US. You can also obtain the Angel Soldier, a class wholly absent from all N1 titles since the original Disgaea, by downloading the Item World ranking mode DLC that looks like it'll go for about $4.99. This mode ranks your efficiency at completing Item World by giving you a greater score for completing a gauntlet of 10 levels in the fewest amount of turns possible. Those who rank in the top 100 on the Beginner, Intermediate, or Expert modes unlock the right to use super-powerful Angel Soldiers.
Now, what's interesting is that the Nekomata is on the disc, but the Angel Soldier is not. I have a hard time imagining the Angel Soldier not seeing US release given how fond Disgaea fans are of the Angel classes, so I wonder if this was a character (and a feature) that Nippon Ichi completely came up with after the fact... or if they just wanted her to be a total secret, since she is part of the most expensive DLC pack.
Right now the only DLC fans are really complaining about is the Angel Soldier, because she's a trophy that has to be earned. By definition, most people won't ever get Angel Soldiers. To me, this isn't really a big deal unless she's somehow capable of better maxed-out stats than any of the characters you get through non-competitive gameplay. Given the way stat bonuses for story characters shake down over the course of reincarnations in Disgaea 3, this is highly unlikely chances are the most powerful character anyone makes is always going to be some kind of maxed-out Laharl, no matter what.
When it comes to the other characters, most people are quite content to pay for them if they want them, since none of them are likely to be particularly better than the sixteen story characters the game already offers you and there's no real chance of buying so many DLC characters that you exceed the total number of characters you're allowed to have around at any time (64). I wonder if people would feel the same way if they knew most of the basic data was on the disc already, though? I mean, people got upset over little things like finding out all the DLC puzzles in Professor Layton were really just puzzles in the ROM you needed a special code to access. I recall a lot of people being terribly upset about a particular location in Knights of the Old Republic that was DLC but actually part of the original game install, leading to a popular hack that gave you the extra location for free.
How do you feel about DLC that's actually just an activation of content on the disc, RPG fans? Ripoff, fair play, what? Also, would you prefer DLC of the "you can't get it in-game but it doesn't matter when it comes to full-competing anyways" type that Disgaea 3's doing, or Vesperia's "if you don't want to buy it, work for it in-game" variety?
