Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories

"Imperfect, but fans rarely ever get what they want - Welcome to Disgaea 2"

Welcome to Disgaea 2, the game in which fans of Nippon Ichi Software (NIS) and Disgaea alike have been awaiting. Is it the same? Is it a letdown? Does it still have the Disgaea charm? And most importantly, is it a(nother) good (NIS) game? Read on for details and answers to those burning questions.

Graphics

It's a pretty game with a lot of brightly colored environments and characters. So bright, in fact, one will question if it's even related to Disgaea at all during the earlier hours of the game. The character sprites, the little people you'll see on the map, are in NIS' traditional 2D fashion, and the portraits are both vivid and well drawn. The design on the people you'll see in the game are both original, yet somehow, familiar and bland. All your quasi-interactive environments are in 3D, and look not unlike PS1 era graphics, and the backgrounds for cutscenes are beautiful and hand-drawn. The spell effects do not disappoint, but are hardly anything to be impressed by. Overall, it looks almost as though this game could be done on PS1. Fortunately, this is the game's only real downfall, and if you are a firm believer in higher-end graphics, this game might make your sense of aesthetics cry.

5/10

Sound

There is a lot of familiar, goofy music in the game, several tracks and sounds directly ported from Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. Personally, I find the town music a bit grating, and the game's new music seems to have a techno-ish feel to them, either for better or for worse. The voices match very well, I think the voice acting is pretty good, particularly that of your main character, Adell. (I laughed the way he says, "...the sacrifice of a life... My life.) The other effect sounds just the way they should, though I miss the cursor confirm sound of the first game. Overall, suiting, but not great.

7/10

Gameplay and Controls

The meat of the game.

It plays like an unbalanced SRPG, on a grid. (Back to the grid, for those who played the other NIS games, Phantom Brave and Makai Kingdom) For those who are unfamiliar to this: Any character has a specific amount of move. This number tells you how many panels you can move, in any direction. When you move to wherever you want to be, you can choose to perform an action. How well this action does (Damage, primarily) is based off your stats, like attack and intelligence. As you defeat enemies, your character will gain experience points. After accruing enough, he/she will level up, and become more able to defeat the more difficult units he/she will encounter. You will be able to deploy a number of units from your base, and there are many different classes to choose from.

It's not so much unfair to you or the game, the difficulty, as it is how quickly one is decimated. Seriously, one map might slaughter you on the first turn, one time, and then, after a small re-calculation in strategy, the tides will change such that you are now the overwhelming force. Very few battles in this game feel epic, as the major force on any given map (You or your foe) is quickly reduced to nothingness. Although weapons seem to be considerably better balanced than in the first game, one can quickly see that in the end, it doesn't matter.

In the usual NIS fashion, very little is to be had from the main part of the game, save the cameos of familiar characters, at least when compared to the immense amount of extras. If one is seeking to just beat it, then this person will have missed out on the best part of the game - The bonuses. There are a huge amount of tasks to do post game, and the hour counter will easily show you how your life has been consumed when you see 100+ hours. The main story however, only takes about 25-40 hours, depending on how you play.

Character development is immense, as you can change your class through the beautiful feature called Transmigration. This reincarnates a character at level 1, in whatever class you chose. However, he/she will grow more powerful as you allocate more points to the determining base stats. Weapons and items also grow more powerful if you journey through its item world, a randomly generated dungeon of varying difficulty. (Length varies from 30-100 floors; difficulty based on overall rank of the item you enter) Geo panels (Colored panels with special effects stemming from a geo symbol) also return with a multitude of new, interesting effects. The bonus gauge also returns to give you goodies.

The controls, however, are a bit irksome at times. Most of the time, it flows well as you dictate which units will do what. However, when throwing gets involved, it tends to be tough to get the right amount of direction and distance. It's a also a bit unforgiving, as I've accidentally thrown a unit in the wrong place countless times, silently cursing hitting the X button a bit to soon.

All in all, very good, very deep, and a lot of big numbers. ^_^

9/10

Story

The main character is the only human left in his cursed land of Veldime. Adell fights for his family and encounters many interesting people along the way. Everyone who WAS human was turned into demons by the curse of Overlord Zenon, and he tries to summon him, so he can presumably beat the stuffing out of him and lift the curse. Instead, though, he gets the daughter of Zenon, Rozalin. She's none too happy about it, but through the contract of summoning, she has to help him find Zenon. As the two journey, they will interact hilariously, and encounter many interesting people, some very familiar to those who played the first game.

The story itself, to be fair, isn't exactly captivating, but the urge to see what happens next in the wacky world is enough oomph to push things along. Post-game, however, things get very interesting, as more familiar faces appear, and should one be powerful enough, perhaps even use...

The two main protagonists (If you can even call them that, ha.) aren't quite the charming trio from the first game, but they get the funny job done. Overall, it might not be quite what people want, but it's enough.

7/10

Replay and Other

The true beauty of the game is when the game reaches that point when extras start appearing, and one is brave enough to take the plunge into the dark world of gigantic numbers and levels. Lv9999? Why not. 1000k damage? Go for it. For a very long time, the only limit placed upon you is getting powerful enough to conquer the next, even more uber, boss. It's not easy to explain, but there's an awesome urge to get that next, even better weapon, or get just another 10,000 points of attack...

The charm from the first game is largely intact, and there will be a lot of arguing which is better... This game will not let you down if you are willing to get into it... A lot of cameos and appearances from familiar people take place, and one slowly realizes that this is in fact...

Disgaea 2.

And yes, it is another fantastic NIS game.

Game
9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/01/06