YMMV / Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice

• Contested Sequel: It wasn't one originally, but it has slowly become one for fans over time. Its detractors often cite its short length, Random Events Plot, unlikable protagonist, unbalanced post-game, and outdated graphics as reasons. Ironically, 3 is generally praised as having the strongest villain in the series.
• Crazy Is Cool: Sapphire is completely off her nut, and we all love her for it.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Salvatore and Big Star are both well-loved. More broadly, Raspberyl is far and away the most popular character, going on to receive hefty cameos in subsequent titles, and Aurum is considered by many to be the best Disgaea villain.
• Fridge Brilliance: Why does the middle finger of Mao's father have the evility One-Man Army (increases the unit's stats by 100% if all other allies are defeated)? He's giving you the bird when it's the only finger that remains!
• Game-Breaker: Has its own page.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Sapphire has a much larger fan base in America than in Japan.
• Good Bad Bugs: Two well-known bugs are commonly exploited to great effect by most players in the meta game.
  • For some reason, the Guardian innocent gives its boost to all equipment under it rather than just the equip it's inside.
  • Normally, it's impossible to steal items from clones, but the Puppy Paw Stick weapon has a special effect that has a 20% chance to steal an item from an enemy upon killing them. This even works on Class Dropouts, a special type of clone. Using this method, you can duplicate your strongest items with only a little bit of patience.
    • Furthermore, despite the popularity and widespread nature of these bugs, they have never been fixed during any of the many patches that have been made available since the game's release.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The fandom’s jokes regarding Mao being a Memetic Molester become a lot less funny given allegations regarding Vic Mignogna.
• He Panned It, Now He Sucks!: To say there was a fire storm over IGN's 6.7 review is an understatement. The review mostly focused on graphics and wrongly claims that there are no gameplay improvements (an observant gamer will notice them in 15 minutes of play). IGN then went on to place this game in the "tears" section of strategy games which describes games that should be avoided at all costs. Once again, the article spends all its time bashing the game over its graphics. That's not to say that graphics, which are essentially the same as the ones used in the previous PS2 installments, weren't bad or very much disappointing. But the specific way the review kept hammering on it constantly without going into detail on much else.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The Prism Ranger stage's dialogue is much funnier in the US version once you realize that Johnny Yong Bosch was once a Power Ranger.
  • Almaz's comment about wanting to be the charming and dashing Prism Blue becomes even funnier in the Fuka Desco Show because Prism Blue is played by Johnny Yong Bosch.
  • Hey Rozalin, remember when Laharl said that the only reason you and Adell defeated him was because you were the main characters and you said that was a stupid reason? Not so stupid anymore, is it?
• Ho Yay: Between Mao and Almaz. It doesn't help that they have a master/slave relationship and Mao can't stop touching Almaz, if only in the name of science.
  • Almaz' whole point of staying with Mao beside being forced into a slave is to open his heart. Now, anyone could have opened Mao's heart, but it's Almaz that has to open it to the point that he's considered a threat to the main villain's plan. And when Almaz dies, Mao's reaction is to yell at him for dying on him. While his true self is the one that returns Almaz' title and brings him back to life, given that his true self values Almaz more than anything, it goes to say what the real Mao thinks about him.
• Jerkass Woobie: Stella shows herself to not be a nice person, but it turns out she was determined to please her abusive father, working so hard even after he was killed by Aurum and couldn't accept he was dead. Then there's also how Stella's sanity was of questionable status during the events of the game.
• Love to Hate: Aurum being such a bastard has made him the most popular villain in the series.
• Memetic Molester: In the name of science, Mao will grope you. The fact that he actually does grope Almaz doesn't help his case. Neither does his heavy breathing and panting, which either sounds like he's masturbating (English) or having an orgasm (Japanese).
  • When Vic Mignogna, Mao's voice actor, heard that Johnny Yong Bosch would be doing Almaz, his response was "YESSSSSSSSSSS! HE'S MY SLAVE!", adding to his Memetic Molester status.
  • Disgaea Infinite shows that he's even worse in this regard. Seems NIS is aware of Mao's memetic mutation and has decided to have some fun with it.
  • And his list of targets keeps on growing with every appearance. Poor Desco...
    • And then NIS decided the joke's getting old in D2, when it's outright stated that Mao isn't a pervert in a way that's directed at the fans.
• Memetic Mutation: Sapphire being just a weee bit Axe-Crazy is getting a lot more focus in the fandom (including here) than in the series...
  • DO A BERYL ROLL.
• Moral Event Horizon: The details of Super Hero Aurum's plot in episode 8 (including causing the death of his #1 fan) certainly qualifies. The cast agrees.
  • Raspberyl points this trope out when she lectures Mao in episode 7.
  • Mao crosses it in the bad ending when he gives in to his Superpowered Evil Side and decides to destroy humanity.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Like previous Disgaea games, the key to becoming truly powerful lies in reincarnations. Unlike previous games, the cost of reincarnating doubles each time you do, making the heights of power prohibitively expensive pretty quickly.
• Squick: Marjoly has an ability called "Oh, Marjoly", where she delivers a long and deadly kiss to her opponent which for some reason deals massive damage. However, due to the size of Baal, whenever she uses this ability on him, her head ends up at crotch height. Unintentional, maybe, but it's very hard to ignore.
• The Woobie: About half the fandom treats Almaz as one. Guess which half.
  • He gains more woobie points in the Almaz ending as well as the worst ending, in which he stays dead.
  • Played for laughs in another ending where he becomes overlord after defeating Mao in a duel. Almost everyone in the cast wants to kill him, kick his ass or both, simply because he's bearing the overlord title(yes, even princess Sapphire, who earlier confessed her love to him). Also, Almaz tried to refuse the title, but he didn't have much of a choice in the matter. The ending basically says that Almaz is condemned to be a Butt-Monkey for the rest of his life.