Written by Brian Beck, 9/29/2006
Played on:
PS2
Some games are released and become near-instant hits. HALO, The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Brothers never really had a problem selling during their respective releases. The two NES games were just good and HALO was so hyped that it sold well.
However, some games will come out and not seem to sell well for a multitude of reasons. Maybe they’re quirky and hard to understand. Maybe they’re really good but only to a small subset of gamers. Or, maybe they’re just short printed because the publisher didn’t estimate much success. The latter was the case with the first Disgaea – the game was and, to this day, is still rare and commands a price nearly double that of its initial retail cost. At the time, gamers had been clamoring for a strategy RPG in the vein of Final Fantasy tactics but nothing seemed to truly hit home. Disgaea’s fun gameplay, hilarious story and great characters made for an experience that made a popular game out of one that wasn’t initially expected to be one.
Given that, a sequel was inevitable. However, it took a few years for us to get one. Since then, we’ve had many Disgaea-like games come from Nippon Ichi – La Pucelle Tactics, Makai Kingdom and Phantom Brave all brought something different to the table for those in the States that had yet to play them. Fans, though, still clamored for a sequel to the game that some played for years and still play even today.
Disgaea 2 definitely does not stray from the formula set out in the original. You still have a grid based movement system, you have similar character classes and even magic spells. Some things, however, were added to the game to make it a better overall experience – the graphics were improved, some small changes were made to the way combat is conducted and new effects for geo squares were added. In all, Disgaea 2 is a lot of what you are used to with enough new stuff to spice up the adventure.
This time around, you’re thrust into the shoes of Adell, a human from Holt Village. The game starts off with your mom trying to summon Overlord Zenon, the main baddie in the story. See, he put a curse on all the humans in your village that turns them into demons while refreshing his power. So, your mom sacrifices some of the life energy from your brother, sister and dad (after beating them over the head to get them to stay in the summoning…cauldron thing) to try to summon the overlord. However, the spell fails and you instead meet Zenon’s daughter and your first party member, Rozalin.
Throughout the story, you’ll meet a hilarious cast of characters including some that are familiar from the first Disgaea (and I won’t spoil the surprise here). You’ll also run into some that seem to be spinoffs from characters in the original. For example, Axel the Dark Hero feels a lot like Vyers (aka Mid-Boss) from the first game – he appears early on and you fight him multiple times. They’re also both really into themselves and such. The characters this time around are just as funny as the ones from the first game and all of them have quality voice acting, too.
The story itself is just as funny as the one from the first also. There are many points where the game will have a cutscene of sorts (before the start of a map, typically) that is just downright hilarious. Most of them involve hurting Tink, a flying frog that you’ll meet early in the adventure. The story does take a couple of twists and turns along the way, some expected and others not so much. I’d highly recommend you at least start the game a second time – the opening cutscene may help to make something click in your head like it did for me.
Other story scenes in the game take anime-style pictures of the character on either side of the screen conversing with another character. These are pretty easy to follow and again show off some of the excellent voiceovers that are a part of this game. The backgrounds used during these scenes are also pretty and show off some of the talent of the artists involved with the game. Overall, the story plays a huge part in making this game’s first 30 hours enjoyable and it isn’t recommended that you skip over them (though, if you just want to play for fights, you can skip them by pressing the triangle button).
Without fun gameplay, though, you’re not even going to get a chance to enjoy the story. Thankfully, Disgaea 2 has some of the tightest and most fun strategy-RPG gameplay that I’ve experiences in a long, long time. First of all, your party composition has no real limits. You can only bring 10 of them in per battle, but there isn’t anything keeping you from having a ton of different types of mages depending on monster resistances, a fighter that uses each type of weapon and a fleet of battle penguins. Yes, battle penguins – prinnies are one of over 200 character types (most types are simply leveled up versions of the other types) available in the game for you to have as party members. On top of that, each of the story characters has their own unique class, giving everyone a chance to have the type of party that suits them.
Once you have a party that you are happy with, you’ll probably want to start tackling some of the story missions. Fighting in the game is simple on the surface but has a ton of nifty little elements that can make for some deep strategy. Take, for example, the ability to lift and throw your teammates – maybe you want to block off a choke point but can’t reach it in your normal movement. Problem solved! Just pick up your party member, toss him or her at the chokepoint and let them block it off. Throwing can get even more fun when you have a stack of characters, each one tossing someone after they land. Some of the stages even require you to do things like this to have any hope of getting past them.
Another neat element is the combo system. If you have characters right beside an attacking character or behind them, they’ll have a chance to combo if the attack used is a normal one. Comboing doesn’t take up their action for the turn, either – you can move them into range for the combo, execute the attack, cancel the move and then go off and attack another monster. Something like this seems like an exploit in the battle system but Nippon Ichi embraces this type of gameplay with the game, even encouraging players to use this to their advantage. Neat little things like this add to the many layers of strategy that can be revealed as you fight – the game’s combat doesn’t ever really get stale, especially considering some of the stage layouts.
