Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice

• Take it easy. Don't worry about what characters to make early on in the game, just play it however you want. The level cap is 9999 and you can reincarnate to go back to level 1 at any time. You have literally hundreds of hours to work it all out. Healer characters gain exp from healing now, so bear in mind that you don't need to have them throw the last punch to level them up any more.

• Also spend some time practicing to make sure you know how to handle geoblocks properly, there are some pretty puzzling levels later on.

• There's a zombie in the academy that teaches you what stat each weapon relies on. Pay attention to this because when I first started out, I assumed ATK and DEF were all I needed (this actually only applies to fighters).

• On a similar vein, certain classes will get more/less bonuses from equipment than others. For example, caster classes might get +20 DEF from a shield, but a fighter might get +70 DEF from the same shield.

• Press the square button to rotate the orientation of your spells.

• Reincarnation is good for carrying over skills to other classes. I find this is best for casters. For example, you can have one character learn fire, wind, and ice spells if you reincarnate them as red/green/blue skulls/mages. Just remember though: if you reincarnate with weapon skills, you should pick classes that use the same weapon (ie-reincarnate thief into archer as both use bows). If you reincarnate monsters, you generally don't retain the same abilities as they are unique to that monster. You will, however, carry spells over.

• Grab the Alraune monster when available. She's one of my best healer/support classes; Also her attacks are pretty good.

• Experience is mostly gained from defeating enemies; your healers will get some experience from using spells but if they stick to healing they will lag behind very quickly. Every once in a while you should throw them into the front lines and take out an enemy that has real low health. Be sure to learn and boost their weapon skills. My healer uses a bow which lets her stay in the back and pick off low health enemies whenever possible.

• Don't kill enemies by blowing them up (ie-throwing enemy Prinnies or throwing explosive barrels). You don't get experience from them.

• When leveling, go for the stages where you can clear geopanels and get bonuses. You will need the gold.

• Between New Game+ and reincarnation, it's pretty much impossible to permanently lose anything, other than maybe a couple unique items that you won't see until the post-game anyway, so don't worry about reading FAQs or anything until you've at least beaten the story once. Also, don't worry too much about the item world and class world until you start doing the optional post-game content, unless you really like grinding in those areas.