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Reviews » Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories [PS2]

This may end up being the shortest review I’ve written, since many of you can leave early. Please answer the following questions:

• Are you lucky enough to have played Disgaea,and did you enjoy it?
• Have you ever played and enjoyed any other Nippon Ichi SRPGs, such as Phantom Brave, La Pucelle Tactics or Makai Kingdom?
• How about Final Fantasy Tactics? Have you played and enjoyed that?
• Failing all those, do you like power-leveling?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you can stop reading. Go buy Disgaea 2. Right now. Run, don’t walk, to your nearest game-vending establishment and buy it immediately. It is a good game, and by answering those questions you have indicated that you would almost definitely enjoy it. If you liked Disgaea, Disgaea 2 gives you more scenarios, more classes, more weapons, more item world shenanigans, etc. If you liked other Nippon Ichi SPRGs, Disgaea 2 is an absolute no-brainer. It’s widely accepted that Disgaea is where Nippon Ichi really perfected the grid-based SRPG format, and Disgaea 2 is more of the same quality product. Same goes for Final Fantasy Tactics, FFT is a good example of the genre Disgaea and Disgaea 2 belong to. If you liked FFT, there’s a very good chance you’ll like Disgaea 2.

If you’re still reading, and may need a bit more explanation, here’s the deal: Disgaea 2 is the sequel to Nippon Ichi’s Strategic RPG masterpiece Disgaea, originally released in 2003. It got a very limited pressing, and almost immediately jumped to impossible-to-find, hope-you-like-paying-$80-on-eBay territory. An SRPG is a lesser-known subgenre of RPG that just isn’t incredibly common in the US. The basic difference between a standard Japanese RPG like something from the Final Fantasy series and an SRPG is the playing field. Instead of combat being handled in short random encounters where you pick your characters attacks from menus and your characters stay more or less fixed in line waiting for a chance to attack, SRPGs require you to deploy a variety of unique characters onto a 2D playing field (often a grid, like a big chess board), and then move said characters around the map to get close to enemy units before attacking.

Disgaea 2, like pretty much all other Nippon Ichi SRPGs, takes place in their multiverse called “The Netherworld”. The Netherworld is essentially a collection of hells, ruled by powerful demons called Overlords, and inhabited by the souls of the damned. Except not so much in a gory Doom kind of way as it is a not-entirely-serious anime kind of way. This time around, your central character is Adell, a guy living in Veldime. Years earlier, a new overlord named Zenon showed up and cursed the population of Veldime, turning them all into varying degrees of monsters, except Adell. In an attempt to bring things back to normal, Adell tries to summon the elusive Zenon, hoping to get him to lift the curse by force or some other means, but accidentally has Zenon’s daughter Rozalin summoned instead. They eventually realize they both need to find Zenon, and go off on a quest to find and possibly defeat Zenon, thus saving Veldime.

But the plot is somewhat secondary in the game.

Disgaea 2 is all about combat and character building. There are three main types of levels in Disgaea 2: Standard levels, Dark World levels, and Item World levels. The standard levels are basic missions that advance the plot. Dark World levels are special extra-hard bizarro-world versions of normal levels that are unlockable later in the game. Item World levels are randomly generated multi-level dungeons that take place “within” items, and apart from just being randomly-generated challenges are used to power up your assorted bits of equipment. What all this means is that there are a ton of levels to play around in, and difficulty ramps up at a rather grueling pace.

Which leads us to the second point: Disgaea 2’s other strong point is character development. The game has a somewhat simple class-based system for characters. All characters get a starting class when they’re incarnated as a human character: archers, fighters, gunners, thieves, mages, etc. All classes have different weapon proficiencies, which determines how quickly they learn new skills for certain weapons. The skills a given character gets are based on their level within their class, and their level for the weapon they use. A healer that uses a bow, for instance, would get restorative spells and bow attack skills. As you level up characters in certain classes and get weapon skills up to certain levels, you’ll unlock new classes or new better versions of existing classes.

This only scratches the surface of the class system, though, since you have the ability to reincarnate a character. When you reincarnate a character, they can change class to open them up to new skills. Depending on how advanced of a reincarnation you can do, you can retain some of the skills you learned as your previous class. You also retain your base stats, at whatever level they had grown before you reincarnated. So a level 60 character that gets reincarnated and starts back at level 1 will end up FAR more powerful than a stock level 1 character. Since you can mix-and-match skills, you’re effectively left with a near limitless amount of freedom to customize and build your characters exactly how you want them.

There are also things to do outside of combat like the Dark Assembly, the governing body of the Netherworld that was previously featured in Disgaea. Characters can spend mana they have accumulated from killing enemies to propose bills for the Dark Assembly to vote on, ranging from bills to change the difficulty of enemies, ones that alter the inventory of the town shops, or ones that unlock new bonus levels to complete. In Disgaea 2 you can also become a member of the Dark Assembly, and abuse your influence to pass just about anything you want.

There’s also a new Felony system added in Disgaea 2. As your characters progress, they might be charged with a “Felony” for a wide variety of offenses like having too much HP, destroying too many Geo Panels, or any number of ridiculously easy things to stumble upon. But since this is the Netherworld, Felonies are considered badges of honor for demons, so getting a conviction is a good thing. To actually get convicted you have to venture into the Item World and proceed to a special courtroom level to collect your Felony. Felony convictions actually serve purposes, though. First, they act as experience modifiers, as each one is worth +1% experience gain. Second, they act as modifiers in shops, providing +1% to item re-sell price, and -1% to item purchase price.

The real draw of the game is that it’s one of those few-and-far-between games where you can literally spend a nearly infinite amount of time screwing around in the game. If you get into it, there’s multiple endings to be had, secret characters to be found, secret levels to conquer, and a level cap way out at Lv9999. I know of people who have logged HUNDREDS of hours in Disgaea 1, and I am not exaggerating this statement. Disgaea 2 is another one of those games with massive staying power. And if you’re into that kind of thing, the resulting value is immeasurable.

Disgaea 2 - PS2

Presentation

Disgaea 2 is slick. Some people might be turned off by the hand-drawn 2D sprites in a 3D world, but I still like it. I wouldn’t have an SRPG any other way. Similarly, the quirky soundtrack firs the game perfectly.

Gameplay

Disgaea 2 has one of the most polished combat systems in any turn-based game I’ve played. It’s almost hard to go back to a normal Japanese RPG after SRPGs, and of SRPGs, Disgaea 2 does it right.

Replayability

As I mentioned above, Disgaea 2 is one of those games where you get as much play time out of it as you want, be it 30 hours or 300.

Value

If you base value on how much potential time you’ll get out of a game, Disgaea 2 is amazing. It’s still selling for full price of $50, but know that due to Crazy People, if it turns out you don’t like it, by the time you go to sell it it’ll probably be considered a rare gem. You might even make a profit.

Overall

If you’re one of those people I targeted with the questions at the beginning of the review, you already know the game is highly recommended to you. But you shouldn’t have read this far, you should be out buying the game. But if you’re not one of those people, it should still be considered.