RandomNPC – Video Game RPG Reviews, Editorials, and Features

With Disgaea 3 coming up soon, I thought I’d make up a list of a few simple changes that could help make things a little more convenient for the player. I realize that a lot of these will only appeal more heavily to those who go above and beyond the requirements to beat the game, but I still feel that they would be convenient tweaks nonetheless, especially with as many all-powerful extra bosses the last two Disgaeas had. This editorial is, of course, assuming that many of the basic game mechanics, such as specialists, carry over into Disgaea 3.

• Make it so the camera can shift in the vertical direction as well. I know I heard complaints about this from those playing through Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness.
• Auto-sell overflow items instead of throwing them away. When going through the item world or leveling up in one of the bonus dungeons, I often find my inventory filling up very quickly. Auto-selling excess items would be a little kinder than simply trashing them. Better yet, it would be nice if they gave us the option of swapping the overflow out for junk that’s already in our inventory from previous battles. This would be very helpful in case we won something nice, such as a Legendary class piece of equipment.
• The ability to sort items/equipment by specialists. Manually searching through each individual item for rare specialists, or the item with the highest rating of a more common one, got old in the first Disgaea. The ability to sort by a specific type of specialist would be much appreciated.
• On that note, it would be nice if there was a way to easily look up what each type of specialist does. Some become obvious when comparing the stats of one item to another, but there are quite a few that are a bit more difficult to figure out.
• Give us something to do with excess mana/money. When going through high level challenges, it becomes easy to get ridiculous quantities of money and a fair excess of mana. It would be very nice if there was something we could do with all of that extra cash and mana. One potentially useful application would be using those funds to improve the levels and stats of new characters, as you could in Soul Nomad, or even take it one step farther and allow previously created characters to earn some exp this way as well. Perhaps they could even throw in a way to directly purchase specialists or something along those lines.

These are just a few thoughts I’ve had. Obviously, their inclusion or absence wouldn’t make or break the game, but I think they would certainly make some parts more convenient for players, especially those who go through lots of optional material.