Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories
Don't even read this, just go buy the game. Now.
Published: August 29, 2006
For whatever reason, we never reviewed the first Disgaea -- and in fact I didn't even play it until a good year or so after it came out, which means I've only been starved for a proper sequel for about half as long as the rest of the fans of the series, and it's meant I had to endure sitting through some of Nippon Ichi Software's attempts to get lighting to strike twice with releases of La Pucille: Tactics (which actually came out before Disgaea Japan, but hit afterward here in the States), Makai Kingdom and Phantom Brave, none of which really clicked with the same kind of addictive appeal of Disgaea.
It's also means I can't go the easy route and point to our earlier review and go "it's almost identical, now go buy it." Unfortunately for those of you that just want to see the score, you'll have to scroll allll the way down the page to see that instead of reading about the rest of the game. If you'd like to skip over the basics and just get into what's good about the second game, feel free to skip ahead to Page 3. Now, that said, Disgaea as a whole needs a bit of explanation.
Setting a game in the demon realm has plenty of advantages. All the residents are inherently evil, and it affords plenty of opportunity for light sadism in how the deal with each other. If that sounds a little scary, don't misunderstand; this is an incredibly light-hearted (and funny) world, it's just that you won't catch any goodie two-shoes love-fests here. Well, at least not from the demon realm's denizens.
The first Disgaea introduced Flonne, an angel-in-training tasked with destroying the Dark Lord of the Netherworld, and, well... let's just say the darker side rubbed off on her a little. It rubbed off on Larharl, the Prince of the Netherworld, too, and eventually they settled down together to let their peanut butter/chocolate differences mix. Also introduced were Etna, a demon teenybopper with a penchant for being a drama queen (or, um, Beauty Queen) and her army of little pengins-with-peglegs, the Prinnies.
The sequel actually leaves a lot of this behind; Flonne and Laharl don't show up until very late in the game, and instead the focus shifts to Adell, a lone human in a town full of demons. They weren't demons originally, though; see, the Overlord Zenon cursed the realm of Veldime where Adell, his siblings and folks all lived, but only Adell managed to escape the curse for some reason. As his family slowly succumbs to the curse and begins transforming completely into monsters, they make a last-ditch attempt to summon Zenon to the town so Adell can put the hurt on the guy (he's a scrapper, y'see).
Thing is, the spell doesn't quite work, and instead of pulling Zenon into town, they end up summoning Rozalin, the Overlord's daughter. Now, stuck in this realm and bound to follow Adell wherever he goes by the terms of the summoning ritual, the two set off to find Zenon -- Rozalin so she can be reunited with her father and Adell so he can kick the crap out of him and get the curse reversed. But, just as in the case of Laharl and Flonne, the two worlds combining produces some interesting learning experiences for both characters.
If the storyline is different from the first game, the actual gameplay is nearly identical. There have been some minor refinements, of course, but nothing that's overtly sequel-worthy; the camera can now shift to a near-overhead angle to better see things in more column-rich areas like the Item Worlds (more on those in a second), and you can "stack" characters by using the Lift Command to execute awesome vertical strikes that keep smacking the enemy up the stack until the top character finishes with a huge blast.
It's also means I can't go the easy route and point to our earlier review and go "it's almost identical, now go buy it." Unfortunately for those of you that just want to see the score, you'll have to scroll allll the way down the page to see that instead of reading about the rest of the game. If you'd like to skip over the basics and just get into what's good about the second game, feel free to skip ahead to Page 3. Now, that said, Disgaea as a whole needs a bit of explanation.
Setting a game in the demon realm has plenty of advantages. All the residents are inherently evil, and it affords plenty of opportunity for light sadism in how the deal with each other. If that sounds a little scary, don't misunderstand; this is an incredibly light-hearted (and funny) world, it's just that you won't catch any goodie two-shoes love-fests here. Well, at least not from the demon realm's denizens.
The first Disgaea introduced Flonne, an angel-in-training tasked with destroying the Dark Lord of the Netherworld, and, well... let's just say the darker side rubbed off on her a little. It rubbed off on Larharl, the Prince of the Netherworld, too, and eventually they settled down together to let their peanut butter/chocolate differences mix. Also introduced were Etna, a demon teenybopper with a penchant for being a drama queen (or, um, Beauty Queen) and her army of little pengins-with-peglegs, the Prinnies.
The sequel actually leaves a lot of this behind; Flonne and Laharl don't show up until very late in the game, and instead the focus shifts to Adell, a lone human in a town full of demons. They weren't demons originally, though; see, the Overlord Zenon cursed the realm of Veldime where Adell, his siblings and folks all lived, but only Adell managed to escape the curse for some reason. As his family slowly succumbs to the curse and begins transforming completely into monsters, they make a last-ditch attempt to summon Zenon to the town so Adell can put the hurt on the guy (he's a scrapper, y'see).
Thing is, the spell doesn't quite work, and instead of pulling Zenon into town, they end up summoning Rozalin, the Overlord's daughter. Now, stuck in this realm and bound to follow Adell wherever he goes by the terms of the summoning ritual, the two set off to find Zenon -- Rozalin so she can be reunited with her father and Adell so he can kick the crap out of him and get the curse reversed. But, just as in the case of Laharl and Flonne, the two worlds combining produces some interesting learning experiences for both characters.
If the storyline is different from the first game, the actual gameplay is nearly identical. There have been some minor refinements, of course, but nothing that's overtly sequel-worthy; the camera can now shift to a near-overhead angle to better see things in more column-rich areas like the Item Worlds (more on those in a second), and you can "stack" characters by using the Lift Command to execute awesome vertical strikes that keep smacking the enemy up the stack until the top character finishes with a huge blast.
