Disgaea 2 Review
Disgaea 2PS2
Release Date: August 30th, 2006
Strategy/RPG
Review by Sirus
Breath of Fresh Air (8)
Disgaea was a game with a huge sense of humor and very quirky story. Disgaea 2 follows the way of Phantom Brave almost with its emotional story although it still keeps the light hearted feel of the first game somewhat.
The differences between the first Disgaea (D1) and Disgaea 2(D2 as I will refer to it from now on), while subtle, are numerous enough that it feels like a totally different game. Fans of Phantom Brave and Makai Kingdom’s grid-less battlefields will notice instantly that we are back to the grids that were present in D1 making battles more tactical because you aren’t able to jump over enemies unless you can fly and most characters can not.
One new feature the game brings, is the change of the item world. You are able to go into any item like before to enter a randomly generated dungeon that’s anywhere from 30-100 floors deep. Thankfully you can leave every 10th level and save or use an item called Mr. Gency’s Exit to leave the item world and save your game if you absolutely must leave. New now are mystery rooms that randomly appear on floors. If you enter the mystery room portal you will end up in a mystery room. These rooms can contain anything from hospitals and shops to groups of enemies that you must defeat in 2 turns to increase the maximum level of the item by 3.
While trekking through the item world, you also have a chance of running into one of the many pirates who roam the world. They are generally a much higher level then the rest of the enemies on the floor but they carry maps that are used to unlock a dark version of the item world known as the land of carnage. The land of carnage has much stronger enemies and is the only way to get the highest level of weapons.
Another thing the game does different then previous installments is the addition of Felonies. The game gives you Subpoenas to appear before the prinny court and get felonies whenever your stats get over a certain level or you have a certain number of kills. The felonies are nothing but positive though and work to increase your EXP gain percentage as well as altering the prices at the shops.
Also new to this game is the Dark World. The Dark World is a set of alternate versions of every one of the story missions that are much harder and have better rewards. This essentially doubles the number of stages you have open to you although it is not required so the normal game is not lengthened in any way by its inclusion.
Characterization/plot (8)
D2 is very much a character based story as all of the previous Nippon Ichi games before it. D2 tells the story of a boy, Adell, who is the last human left in his world after the curse of Overlord Zenon started 15 years ago. Everyone else is slowly being turned into a demon by the power of the curse. Adell wants to break the curse on his family and so with the help of his mom, they decide to summon Overlord Zenon. When they perform the summoning, they are surprised to see that instead of Overlord Zenon, they summoned His daughter, Rozalin. Rozalin acts like a normal snobby princess would act and eventually, Adell promises to take her to see her father because he wants to kill Zenon and thus the story begins. The story takes them through many different locations in an attempt to stop the curse and like any good story, along the way, the characters learn things about themselves. The characters are all very well done. Adell’s little sister Hanako and little brother Taro are both super cute while Rozalin’s servant Tink is an annoying flirt with a dual personality. Adell’s rival throughout the story, Axel serves a role similar to Midboss from D1 and keeps the story interesting. There are many other interesting characters in the game and a few returning favorites from D1.
Graphics (8)
The graphics in D2 are filled with beautiful sprites that have received a slight upgrade from the first game. The 2d sprites are very expressive and work perfectly for what they are meant to do. The different weapon sprites offer a good deal of variety of looks making each weapon type anything but boring and the spell effects are as over the top as fans of previous games have come to expect. Scenes are played out with 2d anime style stills and text boxes like in D1 and other N1 games. While the graphics are not technically impressive, they have a lot of anime style that makes the game look great.
Gameplay/controls (9)
D2 is a well done SRPG most similar to D1. In battles you can move around and cast magic as well as lifting up any characters you encounter. If you aren’t able to reach a far away object, you can create a tower of characters and have each one throw the next one until you get where you need to go. Any character who equips a traditional weapon can lift while the monsters who have specific monster only weapons are not able to lift or throw but can be lifted and must be at the top of a tower if they are to be in a tower of characters.
You can also perform combos with your characters. Any character facing a character has the possibility of combining with any character who is on their left side, right side, or behind them. Depending on the relationship between the characters, the chance of a combo will change.
Like D1 before it, there are geo-panels on almost every map. Geo-panels by themselves do nothing to your characters, however when a geo-symbol is on the panel, all the other panels of the same color receive the effect from the geo-symbol. There can be multiple effects on a given color. If you destroy a green geo-symbol on a red panel, all the red panels will turn green resulting in the destruction of any other symbols on the panels and damaging any unit on the panels. They will all change the color of the panels in the order in which they were destroyed. If the color change is a Null, instead of changing the color of the panels, it will destroy the panels altogether, removing them from the map. Nulls result in an extra explosion of damage that damages all the enemies.
There are all sorts of effects that are as simple as attack + 50% to the more complicated No Entry and Critical effects. No entry effects, prevent any units from passing over the panels while any unit on a critical panel will die in one hit. Large combos from geo-panels will result in more bonus. Each map has a bonus meter that has 10 rewards you can earn including experience, money, and items. Small actions and combos result in small gain while wiping out the entire maps worth of panels in one combo will result in near 10 bonus and sometimes all the rewards. Geo-puzzles can make for some very interesting and very frustrating maps that really make the player think and add strategy in a game that is mostly weighted in favor of power leveling over thinking.
Sound (10)
The music in D2 is beautiful. Tenpei Sato does it again with a style very similar to that found in Phantom Brave and D1. The game includes a few vocal songs for key bosses that make the game more emotional. All the vocal songs are in Japanese and can be heard in both the English and Japanese dubs. Like was implied by the last statement, the game includes selectable Japanese and English dubs. Both versions have solid acting up to par of previous games.
Conclusion
Overall, Disgaea 2 is a great addition to the library of SRPGS from Nippon Ichi. The game can be completed around 30 hours if you rush through it although the final boss is quite challenging without some extra leveling. Completing the game 100% can easily take up to 200 hours. Fans of previous N1 games should definitely check this one out but I bet any fans reading the review already bought it because they already know they will like it. Anyone who has not played a SRPG before but enjoys Anime style stories should give this a try. I used the Doublejumpbooks strategy guide to aid me in my completion of the game and I find it to be the perfect meaty guide for a meaty game.
Final Score 8.6 (an average)