Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories

"One hell of a game."

Imagination seems like a lost art in video games sometimes. Many of the big companies are trying to be as real as possible, right down to the gravity gun somehow having real physics behind it and a million words of text describing it. Even our fantasy games are trying to flesh themselves out. Yes Bethesda, I understand that the fire spell isn't actually just random cool magic, but a power granted to us by random goddess # 4, thanks for ruining our high of frying goblins, jerk. Now if I didn't make it obvious enough, this all was supposed to be a clever set up towards explaining how Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories manages to capture the imagination like few games have done before it with yet another amazing world in the Disgaea universe, an amazing cast of characters, and many moments when the sadistic gleam in your eyes will make you seem demonic.

Not a direct sequel to the hit Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, this time the story centers around a young man named Adell, the only human on a planet full of demons. It wasn't always like this; it was once a normal planet until a powerful overlord came to the planet. Zenon, the overlord, is said to be so powerful that he has earned the name “God of all Overlords”, cursed the planet and the humans have slowly begun to turn into Demons. Mysteriously, the only one not affected by this curse is Adell. Like any good RPG cast, the characters assumed this meant that Adell was the chosen one meant to bring Zenon's reign of terror to an end, and so they set about summoning Overlord Zenon. They were met with apparent failure however, because instead of summoning the big bad overlord, they summoned his haughty daughter, Rozalin. From there they join forces to murder her father! Well, not quite. Rozalin isn't exactly a willing ally by any stretch, but hell Adell has enough willpower (if nothing else…) to make it work, so I am sure he'll be just fine. Because, as he points out around four dozen times over the course of the game, that's just his style.

While willpower is nice, in a world filled with demons, zombies, and lurking dark heroes, you need to put up or shut up every now and then. Since Adell just doesn't know when to shut up, it is time to put up. In this game, there is only one way to put up: Gain levels and kick a lot of enemy ass. Gaining levels takes on a whole new meaning in Disgaea 2, since there are so many things to level. For starters the actual “level” of course can be leveled, up to 9999. Then if you have gotten that out of the way you can use the game's Dark Assembly, which features a Senate to pass various bills through to enhance gameplay such as additional experience or better items in shops, as well as to Reincarnate your character all the way back to level one, that way making your stats stronger for the next time that you reach 9999. You can do this so many times that eventually you'll have well over 100,000 levels “stored” in that Level 9999 character of yours. If you played the original Disgaea, this sort of depth and endless leveling isn't anything new, but Disgaea 2 has taken massive steps to assure that your post game experience is a lot better than Disgaea 1.

The first and most important step towards this is the newly revamped item world. The Item World is a dungeon that is within every item in the game. The more powerful and rare the item is the more dangerous and powerful the enemies inside the world are. The Original Disgaea's item world was good, but it was very boring after awhile and was one of the things that really held down the original. Disgaea 2 has sought to amend this by introducing several new twists to the Item World. The first is the Dark Court system, which grants the characters felonies for certain crimes. Ranging from Too High Attack, to Murder, to being too rich, there are a lot of ways to get felonies. Once you accept a subpoena from the Dark Court Clerk, you will have to travel to its own Item World until you reach the level where the Court is located, once there you will be judged guilty (or if you don't fit the crime… innocent) and you will be rewarded an item along with your felonies. Felonies may sound bad, but they are nothing badges of honor as well as experience boosters. The max number of felonies you can obtain on a single character is 300, which will give you a 300% experience bonus compared to a character with no felonies, which makes the item world leveling a lot easier.

Secondly the game introduces the Land of Carnage, which is an alternate reality to the normal game that has buffed up enemies, optional bosses, new characters to party with, and a new song in item world so you don't want to turn on the mute button. Land of Carnage is a power leveler's dream, and shouldn't be missed.

Something that remains the same from the last game: the multiple extra bosses that take you off the beaten path. You are going to see a lot of familiar faces trying to beat your face in if you unlock everything, which is rewarding when you consider you get custom titles and a few of them even decide to join up with you after.

The graphics of the game are nice for sprite based models, functional and having a charm all their own. There isn't anything that hasn't been done before graphics wise, but it runs smoothly and without problems. Battle animations are way over the top and most take too long, but are fun to watch if you desire to, which you can choose to due to the option to display the animations or not, good function to have when some of them can take close to a minute to complete. If you are into cutting edge graphics, this game will never fail to disappoint you. Same situation if you can't stand “Anime” like graphics. However if neither bothers you then the game's graphics are manageable if not the prettiest thing out there.



The sounds in this game are usually top notch, crisp and well produced. Sound-Effects are always appropriate, and the voice acting is almost top notch, if brought down slightly by a few bad characters. The soundtrack is fantastic, boasting many memorable tracks, it is quirky and fun, and it matches the game's style and theme very well. The only downside to it is a few repeated tracks sound absolutely abysmal, the item world theme being the biggest culprit of this.

Disgaea 2 does a lot of things right, well above the call of duty. It is a game that can last 100s upon 100s of hours, maybe even 1000s, if you are willing to get lost in it. While there may not be any “HAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA” that were present in the first game, the core game mechanics from the first have improved leaps and bounds from the first game. While there are minor graphic and sound flaws, the majority of the game makes up for them. Many people believe that Disgaea was one of the best Turned-based Strategy games of all time, and if this is so than Disgaea 2 may just be the greatest of them all. You are not going to find any disagreement here. With all of its wittiness, the hundreds of hours of fun to be had, and a style all of its own, Disgaea debunks any Sophomore Slump theories about the Disgaea franchise and establishes itself as the best TBS game to date.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/19/07

Game Release: Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories (US, 08/29/06)