Disgaea: Hour of Darkness brought some great things to the SRPG genre. Most importantly it brought humor, character building and lifting. Now, Nippon Ichi has returned with Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, a very much improved sequel. Is it improved enough to overtake the throne of the Netherworld? Or is it just a rehash?
The story this time around is about a young man named Adell. Adell is the last human left in his world, the others have been turned into demons thanks to the evil Overlord Zenon's curse. Adell vows to defeat the overlord to reverse the curse and to do so, Adell's mother decides to summon the overlord to them. The spell goes wrong and a girl is summoned instead. Turns out she's the daughter to Overlord Zenon and doesn't know the way back to her home. Now, Adell is bound to her and needs to bring her home and defeat her father. The story overall is more serious than the first game's and Adell is the exact opposite of Laharl, but it remains funny and it's actually pretty enjoyable in it's seriousness. The characters remain pretty enjoyable and charming and the plot has some nice twists and turns that are hard to see coming. It's a more well crafted story than the original and the writing remains solid.
The gameplay has everything from the first game and more. You still run around a hub world and talk to a gate guide to select which battlefield to go to. The combat proceeds the same, you take turns attacking each other until one side looses all of their units. The real differences are the improvements. There are more classes to choose from, though some of the classes from the first are removed in favor of some new ones and they still remain fun to level. The Dark Assembly returns and functions the same, but there is also a subpoena system. This system is used to add sins to a characters total. This doesn't add anything to the game and other characters can get blamed for other character's sins. The only time this comes up in the story is to progress to one chapter that requires a single character to have a single sin.
Before you can get judged, you need to travel through the subpoena itself. This acts like the item world in that it's a randomly generated dungeon. The item world is also a randomly generated world that powers up the item you are inside as you go down levels. You can beat the game just fine without either of these systems but they are there and they add more things to do. Healers now gain EXP from healing which is a relief and you can now do tower attacks. You can still lift allies and enemies and, if you pick up multiple allies, you can attack from the tower. The more people in the tower, the more damage you do and the more range you have. It's a helpful mechanic for training underlevel characters. Overall, it's Disgaea, just improved. More weapons, characters, chapters, end game content and item worlds. It's got tones of content and it's still great fun.
The music is still catchy as well. The game has an animated opening with a theme song and the voice work remains great, both in English and Japanese. The sound effects are still good but get repetitive. The returning characters from the previous game have the same voice actors, with the exception of Etna's English actor which is a great replacement.
The visuals haven't been improved at all and still use pixel sprites with low quality 3D environments. They still look fine, as the sprites are attractive and colorful, but they still look dated. The new classes and new designs look great, however. The special attacks are still over-the-top and awesome to look at, but the story scenes still have the two styles, the portraits or the sprites. The sprite scenes have been improved, but the portraits are still the better looking scenes. The item worlds look pretty bland, however. Overall, it looks good and better than the original, but still pretty dated.
PROs
- Serious story is a nice change from the first game
- Gameplay remains fun and addicting
- Characters are fun and charming
- Improvements make a lot of difference
- Music is catchy and voice work is good
- Sprites look great
- New classes to use
- Some characters return from the first game
- Lots of content
CONs
- Game can get quite difficult
- Visuals look dated
- Story is more serious
- Characters aren't as charming as Larhal and his crew
Overall, Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories is a huge improvement over the original game. The gameplay improvements make it hard to go back to the original, though the original has the best cast of characters. If you enjoyed the first game, you'll enjoy this one. It's more serious and the visuals are still dated, but it's a fun, challenging game.
Story: 9.0/10
Gameplay: 10/10
Audio: 9.0/10
Presentation: 8.0/10
TOTAL: 9.0/10