In the year 2006, NIS America brought us Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories for the Playstation 2; 6 years later, Disgaea 1 and 2 are both re- released on PSN as PS2 classics and are still as great as ever.
The game starts off with a humorous scene that that introduces the main characters Adell and Rozalin. The scene explains that Overlord Zenon had cast a curse on the humans, which turns them into demons and Adell’s mother wants to summon Zenon in order to lift the curse but summons Rozalin instead. From this point on, the story revolves around Adell and his journey with Rozalin to return her to her father Zenon and kill him in order to lift his curse.
After the opening scenes, the game starts you off in Holt (Adell’s home town), which acts as the games main HUB. From here you can access all the shops and various NPCs that serve other purposes such as the item world NPC. Once you talk the gatekeeper, the game gives players an in depth tutorial that explain all of the basics. The only things the tutorial leaves out are the more advanced parts of gameplay such as item perfecting. The actual gameplay of Disgaea 2 is grid based strategy. During each turn, you can move your characters and have them use various actions such as lifting and throwing. The enemy’s turn takes place right after, but they can only perform attacks. Much like the other games in the series, Disgaea 2 is heavily grind based which doesn’t exactly appeal to everybody but it is enjoyable and accomplishing once you get to the post story.
One of the more original features Disgaea has to offer is the item world. To access the item world, all you need to have an item in your inventory, and then you speak to the NPC. When you select the item you wish to enter the floors are randomly generated with items and enemies. The whole goal is to defeat all of the enemies or enter the gate and advance to the next floor. The only way to exit the item world is to clear 10 floors or use a “Mr. Gency’s exit”. There are 100 floors in total and each floor cleared will level the item you are inside once. At floor 100 there will be an Item god holding the next level of item up and has higher stats than an average enemy. Another important part of the item world is the Subpoena item. You receive these from another NPC who assigns a felony to one of your characters. Once you have a felony, you enter the Subpoena and go to the designated floor of the item and enter the gate. Whoever of your characters enters the gate gains 1 felony (which also increases EXP gain by 1% per felony, 300% at max).
Eventually, as you progress through the tutorial, you get the option to create your own characters. You do not have access to every single character right away, but once you meet the requirements (such as reach level 10 on bow mastery) you have to unlock them in the dark assembly. There are various classes of character and monster available to create and each once has 5 tiers available to them which are unlocked as you level the character higher and higher. These tiers have increased stats and a different colour palette.
Much like most of NIS America games, the characters are very light-hearted the in between gameplay there are many humorous cut scenes that play in order to fill in background and keep the story moving. Disgaea 2 could quite possibly have the best cast of characters in the entire series. Their various personalities balance each other quite well and each character develops quite well over the games various chapters.
Overall, fans of the Disgaea series should definitely pick up any copy of Disgaea 2. The game is fantastic and quite possibly has the best main characters in the series. For those new to the series, it’s not for everybody, but for fans of other NIS games, it’s worth a try. Disgaea 2 is a great game for fans of heavily grind based or turn based/grid based strategy games. Disgaea 2 is a fantastic sequel to Disgaea 1 and deserves a 10/10.
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