Review: Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories (PS2)

The wonderfully absurd story revolves around a curse placed on the realm ruled by the Overlord Zenon. This ruler has placed a curse on all the inhabitants in the world - turning them into monsters, except for our dashing hero Adell. His family try and summon the Demon lord to them, but instead end up with his daughter. From this point on the story goes completely insane as Adell sets off to find and kill the Overlord and lift the curse on the land.

On your journey you will encounter creatures and characters that only the wonderful scriptwriters at Nippon Ichi could possibly create. The story is ridiculous, but in a truly wonderful way. Additionally there is so much personality in the characters you meet that you can’t help but push forward to see what awaits. Disgaea 2 at times is hilarious; you have to wonder what sort of strange twisted minds came up with it.

The action follows pretty much the same flow as before, with the player’s team being deployed on a map divided into squares. The colour coded squares return- these can be used to create various effects by having different nodes dropped on them. Once destroyed these nodes then cause a chain reaction that will destroy all the coloured squares leading to massive combos.

Crucially (and helpfully) the way that characters gain experience has been slightly changed. Previously, characters gained experience by damaging and defeating enemies. This meant that healer characters and those that used support magic had to be shoe-horned into attacking positions and combos – preventing them falling behind as the warriors in the party levelled up. Instead characters also gain experience from using skills, thereby allowing support characters to level up in a more natural way.

A number of other features have been streamlined and improved. The Dark Assembly (where new characters are created along with new laws) is now much easier to understand and utilise. Bonus awards from levels now contain more experience; meaning there are far fewer level up barriers in the game, which is one of the most welcome additions.

Entering the item world (where you battle through up to one hundred maps to level up items) is much the same as before. Only now it contains more features, such as space pirates, seedy bars, more item specialists and the demon court. This court is an interesting though not vital addition, as within its confines characters can be sentenced for crimes that they have committed. With each crime the character builds up a criminal record and gains new items depending how devilish they have been.

Numerous character classes and skills have been made available, allowing more customisation for players willing to dig into the near endless depths of the title. Players can create large numbers of characters to use, but as only a limited number can be placed on a map at any given time. It pays to keep your character groups small, as anyone not used quickly falls behind in the levelling up stakes, meaning you have to replay levels to get them up to speed.

The new option of killing and resurrecting your characters in a new class is interesting. The idea is that if you are lucky characters will keep some or all of their skills from their previous incarnation and now be able to gain the new abilities of the new character class. The game even tells you it is possible to create a character with every skill, should you have the time and the obsessive compulsive disorder to do so. However there is always the very real risk that character will forget some or all of their previous skills leaving you with a slightly stronger but unskilled reincarnation.

As far as tactical RPG’s go there is no other current developer to rival the skill level and passion of Nippon Ichi. It is clear they really care about what they produce and continually polish their titles to the smallest detail. Disgaea 2 is a little easier than its predecessor due to the welcome omission of so many frustrating level up walls but it still contains stupid amounts of extra things to do, which those with any kind of life outside of gaming will never see.

Though easier, Disgaea 2 is still fairly long, probably taking around fifty hours. Putting an estimate on how many hours you would need to devote to the game to complete everything is both pointless and a little scary to imagine, but we dare say that someone out there in a very dimly lit room will be attempting it. Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories is a joy to behold, you can dip into it for a short time or lose several years of your life. It represents both the most complex and most accessible title in the genre and a must for anyone who is looking for something a little bit different, an epic adventure or a life long love that provides value for money.

Rating: 9 / 10

Words by Gareth Chappell