I had not met a number of the characters you mentioned so far, so I can't judge on that. I'll agree with you that I absolutely hated the ending for 'til the end of time, and that it really made no sense. However, I still very much enjoyed the game-play. Nostalgia goggles quick addition is probably a factor as well.

Now, I haven't played through the first or the second of the franchise despite my owning the second, so I can't say one way or another on that topic. But certain things that were present there are degraded here "In my opinion".
1.) Item creation. The game has apparently removed additional characters and given you the number of things that could be created from the start. While completionists would find the list elsewhere, example, it still gave a bit more of a curiosity to things.
2.) Maps. Ok, SO3 was a peach to map complete, but if I'm remembering right, the map wasn't given to you from the start and was so large as to include spoilers. I mean, really; I can tell that the planets will have a revisit from them and can see where "surprise events" are going to happen from the get go. There are some advantages to that, I'm sure, but it just bothers me while playing.
3.) Dictionary. I think this was a problem in the prior game as well, but I look at it fairly often; and they aren't accounting for other terms within the description that have yet to be defined. I found the name of the Gregori far before it was even explained that they were referring to those crystals. I found the description of planets before they were even mentioned in the storyline. I just don't like the spoilers when I see them placed out in game. The dictionary should have been a bit more dynamic in that it could replace key terms with vague descriptions until that entry was explained as well.

On the point of characters, I don't think that they need to be any more stereotypical than they are at all; just that it seems it was what they were aiming for, and that it doesn't really feel like the movements match up with the emphasis that the characters are portraying in their voices. Again, I'm probably just getting tired of it which is why I was being more analytical than on prior games. It doesn't mean that I don't see it elsewhere; because I do, and they are overused. If anything, there is a little originality in the character of Edge in that he can mostly hold in his temper versus other wild youth which I have to give them credit for; but the whole remainder of the cast so far have just been bland to me somehow or another.

Lastly the point about the battle system; yeah, I was doing it wrong. I've gotten the hang of it since then, but would have liked a "back me up/heal" tactic so that I'm not required to be the full time healer during boss fights.

lolI'mpreganant

Having been a console gamer for a long time, I generally had always set my own goals, and still saw myself as a perfectionist where applicable and/or possible with my skill level. When steam came along and I joined in thanks to it's cheapness, I thought very little of the achievement system they had. In fact, the only game I have full achieves in there is Psychonauts, and that was because I loved the game, and when they updated the achievements, there was a steam "achievement bonanza" thing going on that they have with rewards in the winter and the summer. Having put over 1000 hours into TF2 thanks to the fun it offered and it's aid in leeching me off of Maple, I never bothered to go out of my way for achieves there; and am sitting on about 2/3s the achieves. Then there were games like Super Meat Boy which just made me shake my head and go, "no!".

Fast forward to the PS3. Several 3rd party titles span across between PC and the new consoles I didn't have (only had a Wii and old DS prior to the PS3), and along with them comes the same achievements. The only difference is that Steam offers much more detailed data about the achievements, and the PS3 has arbitrary ranks associated with them, and an arbitrary number from the totals you collect. That minute difference; just the addition of a numeric value; for some reason has me driving my goals in the direction they had laid out. A simple number that I even tell myself has no real purpose, yet calls to me and commands my attention. I don't get why it works, but it does.

Platinum'd Disgaea 3; more details below.

I was glad to experience this sort of gameplay again; it really feels lacking in today's market. Finished the game on normal 100% so far. But as I mentioned before, I've been very critical over certain details lately. I can't say this game was as enjoyable as the first few. The mechanics may be improving as time goes on, but I really enjoyed the interactions between Ratchet and Clank themselves, which this game lacked due to the story. Sure Dr. Nefarious and Captain Quark are amusing, but they don't quite fill that gap that they had as partners. Also, they really didn't test the boots enough. I had a bugged mission with me the entire game since I jumped a chasm I was supposed to use a wrench on a platform for when I was exploring for stuff. Also, I wound up having to reset getting stuck in the scenery a few times when I was looking for golden bolts pre-mapper. They placed those mushroom guys on a ledge above you in the first world, and I swore there had to be a way to get there. I managed to escape the world 3 different ways in my attempts.

Still, I consider this a game worth my money.

Just past stone sickness (not bacculus). Improving some.

Still pretty much waiting on first party mod support, but I checked out a the Technic launcher and a few mods for the first time in my MC experience. Granted I did it on my laptop so as not to screw up my desktop client, so it wasn't a good representation. Still I like a lot of the concepts. I can also see how there are several directions for MC that don't really mesh well. I'd like to see first party division of modes like back when they split survival and creative; but actually include all the standard content in both subdivisions. Hopefully beyond that we could have an in launcher browser checklist that tells you which mods are known to have conflicts with one another and be able to activate and deactivate them at will. Maybe make a default "phantom" block to represent blocks that are from certain mods when the mods are inactive rather than corrupting the map.

There's probably already all sorts of stuff within the community that already does this; but I'd still like to see them set up a reliable interface and then let the modders just go wild with it.

So... yeah.

Said I'd stop where I was and not continue. Didn't happen. I set myself up to be dragged further in, and then by a series of flukes, I managed to get the Platinum. And I do mean flukes. Quite honestly, I felt as if platinum should have taken both longer, and shorter for me to achieve. Longer because I wasn't actually prepared; and shorter because players before me had the advantage of 100% dropout rate, which would have decreased duping time dramatically.

For now, let me list the series of mistakes I made to drag me further in.
1.) Buying the DLC: I made the choice to buy this DLC over Tales of Graces F. I figured I had to make use of what I had before investing my time in another game that I already had something on my backlog similar to play. I consider Star Ocean's gameplay to be similar to that of Tales of games. I'm not saying that they are identical, but kinda like how Dragon Quest is to early Final Fantasies. I have a huge backlog, so this was supposed to act as some sort of restraint so that I could catch up with it. Ultimately, I regretted it as a majority of the expensive items are not interesting, and realistically, half of those extra characters should've been in by default anyway. The price tag also really hammered me long term since I still won't be able to get Tales of Graces for another 2 months now. In addition to the downside on money, I wound up feeling the need to unlock every character I had purchased, and completing the extra chapters (which I was vastly over-leveled for thanks to misinformation).
2.) Gathering Statisticians Mid-First Playthrough: I admit to looking at the cheats section on gamefaqs in advance to see what it took to unlock certain classes and tiers. That has always been one of my goals within these games, and from there I wound up seeing information about Statisticians, and ultimately duping. Had duping not existed, I likely would not have gotten this far.
3.) Constantly preparing for the next goal: I kept setting myself up with mini-goals, and giving myself preparation for the next stage of difficulty. I did the tedious stuff in the middle of the story, so when it came to post-game I kept being shocked by the fact "I'm ready for this?".

At the end of the day, going for my own goals ended up being further than what the game had given to me. By the time I had gotten all the 39 weapons, I had already gotten a vast majority of the pirate trophies; and by the time I had gotten all the 40 rank ones, I had completed them. The other trophies were mostly done here and there between others, with the exception of the bounce one and the reverse viking one which I had to go out of my way specifically for. After finding that I could do reverse viking on a regular level 20 item, it became much easier; and the bouncing amounted to just creating characters for it, and not saving afterward.

I was sort of surprised by the 10 billion one. The DLC made it much easier than I'd imagine it would be, but all I needed was my first character to have violence transferred to her and a maxed Baal Body (first and only one of two maxed weapons) with maxed Brave heart buff, Red Prismranger and Master Bigster next to her, on a ally boost 50% panel, using a level 6 rank S skill on the prinny hero. Again, I didn't actually expect it to work.

The final 3 pirates were just flukes outright. If I hadn't accidentally gotten the first one, this would have again been a stopping point for me.

Baal Pirates: 1st Run. I was in the middle of maxing my first rank 40 weapon when I got bored and decided to do the last 10 levels in the land of carnage. Literally my first time doing floors 91-100 there (I had done 99-100, but not waited for pirates), I found the Baal Pirates on the 96th floor. There was a reverse damage geo panel, but I was concerned about the healer. Luckily he walked specifically onto silence platforms the first few turns only to be killed by an ally on the 3rd. There was also the fact that the reverse damage block was a runner, and that it simultaneously had warp on it which made it a bit difficult, but my running Space Hero fixed that each turn until I was able to throw the warp block when I knew I could sacrifice a character.

10 Gents: 12th Run. Had my first max weapon by now, but only one copy of it. Fortunately, again on the character with violence, I was able to kill them a bit quicker. Invincibility panel, but a walker block that had one of my decent attackers dead on the first turn as a result.

Prinny Pirates: 35th Run. This one was entirely dumb luck. I honestly should have failed. I sent out my sacrifice for the turn to see if there would be pirates, and then these guys show up. Down to 9 characters. I throw out my geomaster to try and make this one as cake as the other two, and I fail; the best thing I get is Evade. Down to 8 characters. I still have some confidence and toss out my one major damage dealer and throw on a couple incomplete emblems for added measure. Since I won't have enough turns to keep having sacrificial lifters go out, I also toss on my chicken hat. Being the third turn I'm fairly confident I can get at least 3 of them without any trouble. Turn goes as planned and I take no damage; but when it ends, the character poofs. At first I had no idea what happened, but then it dawned on me: emblem massive HP boost + poison = dead. Down to 7 characters; I really had no hope at this point. I threw out my shaman to attempt to poison one them in return; failure. 6 remaining. I throw out my next best attacker with a decent 39 weapon and a lifter to help keep them alive. Only 20 Mil damage out of 400 on one character, and multiple area affect skills. 4 Remaining. Decoy runner to an evade panel and one more attacker out who hopefully won't be targeted next turn. He gets targeted. However, to my surprise, they can't hit my runner, a Space hero. I knew that would be the case if I had reincarnated him into a swordswoman for her evility that nulled back and side accuracy buffs, but I hadn't reincarnated any of my generics at all at this point (deleted all of my originals except one other space hero once I had final tiers unlocked). Ran back and forth from one side of the map to the other to prove to myself that, yes, they can't touch me. Didn't really help me kill them though until I thought of what I thought was a stupid idea. I'd have them kill themselves. That actually worked as there was also a Majin with an axe among them. It ultimately got them down to one Prinny at 200 Mil and the Axe man, but he wasn't quite walking in pace with where I wanted to drag him, so I was stuck there for a bit. As a reminder, I had 3 characters left at this time including the deployed Space Hero. I tried going back and forth between the two across the map, but it still didn't guide them quite right as they always would either attack what could be in range or the lower level one. Then another thing hit me, after I sort of cornered myself on EVADE panels to go to. They had no jump. There was a reverse staircase on the map that was only one panel wide that my Space Heroes could scale. Since the AI knew it couldn't get me over there, it didn't bother going in that direction. Which meant I could keep them in one place for good by alternating the two characters. Thanks to this, I pulled out one last weak attacker who could do 20 Mil a turn, and just alternated out the lifters between the two Space Heroes on the evade panel until they were dead. A vast majority of the fight I thought I would have to come back better prepared to fight them head-on, but I managed to wing it.

Trophy Shop Trophy: 70th Run. My last trophy was ironically this. I managed to get the pirates all each one time in what I think was relatively low time compared to what I've read, but this one was the peach at the very end.

And yet, despite having Platinum now, it still doesn't feel complete. I was compelled because I had the mindset of "possible" the whole time, but I honestly expected to have more stuff maxed for the final challenges. Honestly, I think they should have done the trophies for this game a little differently. The one trophy per pirate might make it easier to remember which ones you got the maps from, but it really doesn't make for an interesting set-up. They should have had more silly ones like the ABC gum. Say, a trophy for pissing off an item world vendor; one for gaining an old skill; one for the first Baal. Maybe even so far as getting a rank 40 item. I feel that they could have included the item world within the trophies just as easily if they had done something to give it a bit more variety. I ultimately still didn't feel satisfied when I had gotten the platinum; I really had done far more preparation for what I expected to be the grinding period after I massively failed at something. I never hit that failure though.

I wound up going a little further til I got tired of the item world, and here are my end results.
Platinum.
Maxed items: Baal Body, Baal Horn, Rank 40 Emblem (Attack)
All Rank 40 items Owned at rarity 0, including 6 emblems for (Att, Move, Int, Spd, Hit, Res)
Total Dupes of Perfect Items (6)
In progress Maxing Move Emblem
All types Max Dual-Stat Innocents (8)
All single stat innocents (8)
Max Statisticians (32)
Max Managers (8)
Max Mentors (8)
All Max Weapon Specialists
100% X-Dimension w/ 0 Rank Rewards
100% 10 Gents w/ 0 Rank Rewards
Missed: Makai Wars, Rank 0 Gold Knuckle Spear
All 10 Gents recruited (and never touched)
All Endings completed
All class/tiers unlocked
All Songs Purchased from Music Shop
All Save Icons Purchased from Save Shop
One Genius of every Class with All Evilities for that class learned
All DLC Characters in Party (I hated getting Aramis; useless as the 10 gents, and half based on luck to unlock)
All DLC/Story Character Evilities Learned
All but 3 old skills learned somewhere
Shinra Support Group Unlocked
Total Characters Reincarnated: 5
Total Characters Reincarnated at 9999: 2
Max Reincarnations on a single character: 2


I also partly blame this on misdirected focus brought about by the meds I mentioned at the start of this post.