link is a nifty save-anywhere rogue-like, has graphics unlike many others. Made by one guy (and translated by one guy too.) Even has its own soundtrack! Incredible amount of shit to do, check the wiki.

also none of those twerps apparently paid attention to the first few fights in the game. If you have an attack that a Shadow is weak against or cause a critical hit, you get an extra turn. Couple this with striking the shadow in the back with your sword and you get at least two free hits. You should be able to complete a battle with no damage relatively quickly when properly prepared. 4-6 half-minute battles, add in another two minutes to deal with that card shuffling thing (you can skip the animation but won’t know where the cards went), another minute for exploration, and zap back down. It’s never taken 15-30 minutes in between save opportunities except for those few story-related ones. (which I think is still an oversight mind you, it’s one of the reason I shall never touch a Xeno-series RPG, having heard that this sort of thing was supposed to be a FEATURE or something based on how the fans talk about it.) There’s a one in ten chance (about, maybe more like 15% on a ‘good’ day) that a level spawns without a green teleporter. No probs, run to the next one and head back down. If you go three floors without seeing one, it would be a bad idea to play the lottery that day.

One other thing that annoyed me about P3, no way to see a larger version of the automap. Easy to get lost if you get three or four of those four-square pillar-in-the-middle rooms next to each other.

As far the topic goes, I prefer Phantom Brave for playing, Disgaea for storyline. Phantom Brave is just too darn cutesy and “WAFFy”. But it’s a lot more fun and has less thinkystuff and with 550 different skills to maim people with, only about 40 of those are taken from Disgaea, and their properties have changed. (Hurricane Slash looks the same, but now disarms your opponent.)

other pros: Only use one item instead of four. No more #$(*^&@#*&^ing item worlds/specialists, random dungeons are simply random dungeons with differing ‘theme’ layouts, weapons are beefed up the old fashioned way, blacksmiths and fusing. No more grids, free-roaming circular system. Terrain effects like being bouncy or slippery. Battles go much quicker since you can knock off enemies by simply throwing them into the water. (instead of adding their level to the other guy, it’s seemingly random. Two level 190s, you throw one, you end up with one level 250 to level 280. Probably a simple 1 or 0 result for every single level that could possibly be added calced before you can blink) Non-character skills much easier to level. (just find an item with that skill and fuse it to get the attack xp, for innate skills you need to have those people attack high leveled enemies a couple times then combine them all). Characters (other than Marona) also much easier to level. (Objects now carry their own mana. A few characters have the EXP raiser innate skill. They can all be fused. Throw a couple high-level spirit trees into that character and then fuse a bunch of similar characters together, then fuse that final guy into the person you want to keep, presto EXP raiser level 90+.) Weapons now vitally more important than simple character levels. (but can now be stolen by enemies. Only two to really watch out for though, mushrooms and bottlemails, thief-types.)

It only sounds complicated on paper, took me about two hours (which during this time you should level your bottlemail just to steal Raphael’s swords) to get the hang of it(deceptively straightforward), then most of the next five hours played was just listening to story. (as about a half hour of weapon-pumping demolished everything in my way. Mystery box is obscenely strong for such an early attack, though it does have a fire element.) Another half hour after that and I blew past towards the ending.
Also you can save at almost any time, unless an enemy picks up the last object on the map. (You use items on the map to summon characters into play, replacing the static entrypoint of Disgaea. You can bring your own items in to add more people by setting up a chain. Summon one guy, he throws his sword, summon another guy, he throws his potted plant, summon another guy off that, and so forth. A dungeon monk character will warp you home for a fee based upon strength of enemies + dungeon level. Marona may learn this skill but it costs 10 times as much to warp.)

The only grinding involved in PB is if you want to push up the percentages on weapons or level a title. Percentages directly relate to the person summoned from that item. +50% means they get +50% power in that stat when coming onto the battlefield. At first it’s easy to raise, but it goes up by an ever increasing rate, which means more items before the next boost. Also the item put into it has to be higher (obviously) than the one it’s raising.
Pumping a title really only ever needs to be done once (for marona) so that she can’t be stolen from.
I find the best weapon for Marona to be the egg, by the way, though if you want to waste the time any weapon can become the best eventually.

…as an aside, I’ve fallen asleep 6 times while playing Disgaea to date. None for PB. (Damn those geosymbol combos) First time ‘dumbing down’ a game has been a good thing! And the link in my name is NOT a remake but a complete rebuilding of an old classic.