ENKER'S PROFILE

I'll be glad to help out if you need some. I know you know my kind of thing, but just to make it a more official application:











SHEEZY GALLERY

I appologise if some of these are a tad big for the forum scale - email me here or at my regular address if you'd like some help.

I find that having a set of three mages I can whip out to wail on people from long-range before closing in with fighter classes is essential in a lot of the Disgaea missions later on.

Let's get a bit of chatter going over something people enjoy - with an enthesis on what we like rather than dislike about games. What Tactics RPGs would people say is the best they've played and why? It can be any game on any system - with no bashing since this is based entirely on personal favourites :)

I still think 'La Pucelle Tactics' is my favourite - though 'Makai Kingdoms' was fun too.

I've been playing tactical rpgs since Shining Force on the Sega Megadrive (Genesis for you Americans) and really enjoy them. When Disgaea on the Playstation 2 brought them back into vogue it was a really good year for the genre and sprite-based games in general (I've never enjoyed 3D renders as much as I do 2D art and sprites). I've since brought Disgaea 2 and the REbrought them both for the PSP for portable fun and enjoyed them immensly. I've just picked up a copy of Disgaea 3 for my PS3 - which I know is a little late but I've only had the console a few months and had 'Star Ocean: The Last Hope' to contend with first - and have gotten stuck in.

But . . . I'm not loving it as much. The story is great and I think the switch to good male/bad male comedy duo with the main characters over Male/Female dynamic works brilliantly, and the school setting is amusing - but the game feels a little lacking in comparison to previous titles and I think I've traced it back to one reason.

Characters do not learn skills as they level up, instead you're forced to use the games Mana feature to buy skills and 'boost' them instead. Which is fair enough but you also have to use it to buy static abilities, make new characters and do a whole range of other activities, so skills either become a major priority or fall by the wayside fast. In the onld system you'd learn a skill through levelling and it would appear as a weakened ability that you powered up through repeated use - making it feel useful when you cast Heal for the 1000th time. This would unlock wider ranges of effect and make the spells marginally more powerful whilst increasing their range. Now you level a spell and it just gets a tad more powerful with none of the other benefits. For a warrior it's not too bad, as they have a smaller skill pool based on their weapons and stats pumping is more important - but for a spellcaster this is nasty stuff.

To give an example - I'm on chapter three of the game with a level 30 fire witch. At this point she has a fully fleshed out fire spell with all nine radius of damage and a high level of attack, BUT it's her only spell. Comparativly in Disgaea 1 or 2 this witch would be casting some serious heat by now. The knock on effect for me as the player is that I'm not feeling like I've made any significant progress - and it's put me off unlocking or creating the other spell casting character types.

Has anybody else felt this way about the game or is it just me?