Disgaea 3: Absence of Detention

Disgaea 3: Absence of Detention brought one of the most distinctive tactical series ever made to Vita, right in the console's first few months of life. The story takes place at a demonic academy, where the model student is the one who consistently skips class and breaks the rules. Thanks to this, the protagonist Mao is the top of his class, and he decides to become a hero in order to defeat his own father, the ruler of the underworld. A cast full of parodic figures gradually gathers around him, from an overenthusiastic human hero to a girl who stubbornly insists she's an angel. The script pokes fun at Japanese RPG and school-story clichés throughout, keeping a light tone, even though a surprisingly sensitive plot about parents and expectations hides beneath it.

The gameplay is built on grid-based turn-based battles, to which the series has added quite a few inventions of its own. Colored panels change the rules of battle, since they multiply damage, heal enemies, or ban magic, and chain-destroying them can flip the course of a fight in a single turn. Characters can be picked up and thrown across half the map, stacked into towers, and attack together, turning every turn into a small logic puzzle. On top of all that sits the series' famed depth of progression: levels that reach far beyond the usual limits, item enhancement done from the inside in separate procedurally generated dungeons, and damage numbers that balloon to utterly absurd proportions.

The Vita version includes content that was sold separately on the earlier console, so it offers a broad roster of characters, including guests from previous entries. The handheld's sharp display suits the colorful 2D portraits and spell animations well, and the ability to put the game to sleep at any moment fits perfectly with a play style where you fight one battle and set it aside. Contemporary reviews praised the content's generosity and its wit, with criticism aimed at repetitive environments and the fact that the true depth only opens up after finishing the main storyline. That's precisely why Disgaea 3 still works today as a demonstration of just how endless a tactical RPG can be.