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"Disgaea II - 6.5 out of 10 "Apparently, this is what three years gets you"

Thought I would post this. Doesn't seem like a good review and comments like "So far all i hear about Disgaea 2 is that its the same game as the first but with all the best parts out. No humor, no fun story. well we still get the same old great gameplay. but i will skip this one..." aren't very encouraging. :(

Prinny please

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1UP Review

The original Disgaea: Hour of Darkness did something that few games can accomplish: It turned a kooky, unabashedly low-budget Japanese game into a cult hit. A series of spiritual follow-ups did little to reignite the enthusiasm, but NIS saw fit to produce a sequel anyway. Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories is more -- much more -- of the same, which can be quite a double-edged sword, especially in a strategy RPG.

Disgaea 2 follows the path of all the other NIS SRPGs, with its stumpy Japanese cartoon characters running around on a grid making quick work of one another. Building up parties is simple and fast, but it's awfully easy to overdo it and end up having to manage an army. Not to mention having to grasp the variety of systems and features -- the Geo Panels, the Dark Assembly, the Item World dungeons -- that all add up to a game that will siphon away your time, like it or not. You won't be blown away by the quality of the graphics, either, as those are still low-res, low-detail, and blurry up close, but provide colors like green and blue this time.

Fact is, the preceding paragraph describes both Disgaea games perfectly. Disgaea 2 adds only one significant new feature to its gameplay: the ability of stacked characters to attack. In Disgaea you could lift a character above another's head, and then throw that lifted character across the map. You could build whole towers of characters by strategically throwing and stacking characters. In the sequel, these piles of people can actually attack and function as one, sending an enemy up the chain and racking up damage (into the millions of hit points) along the way. Otherwise, anyone familiar with the original will have no problem at all jumping back in, though there remains a large amount of reference text to read.

Part of what made the original game's story so enjoyable was its turn of convention: you played Laharl, a smart-assed demon kid who knew he was hot stuff and wouldn't let anyone steal his thunder. In Disgaea 2, you're Adell, a good-natured kid who wants to beat down a demon lord and turn his family back into humans because he's the only one who can. He gets wrapped up in the demon world, so he gets to deal with all the same stuff Laharl did, but the charm just isn't there anymore. Adell is your regular good guy, and none of the other characters really help him become anything more than that.

Nothing in the story grates as much as the "dynamic" between Adell and his unlikely companion, the demon princess Rozalin. Much of their early conversations follow this dialogue tree, starting with Adell: "I'll protect you!" "But I'm your enemy!" "I don't care, I'll still protect you!" "But I'm your enemy!" Teenagers are usually bad at communicating, but these two come off as downright retarded. After a revelatory plot point they eventually smarten up, but by then the story is hardly worth caring about. And the humor just isn't as grand as it was in the original, either, no doubt due to the change in publishers and localization teams.

Rarely will you feel like you're playing Disgaea 2, just Disgaea 1. Again. And that can be just as awesome as always, because the core game is still fast, fun, and wholly satisfying to anyone who digs grid-based battling. But when only little things that don't affect the big picture have been changed, not much is worth commendation as a sequel. Apparently, this is what three years gets you.

Shame everywhere else has been giving it 8's and 9's. ul.

Probably too complicated for their little button mashing minds, or like Fix says

And to answer the review it isn't three years it's 10 months considering that was the development period. He might have known that had he done some research like any decent reviewer does. There's not much added? Ermmm how about a whole load of new maps once the new game is completed virtually making a whole new game, Dark World, Crime system, new Geo panel system, new Dark Assembly system etc etc


And if that's the regular type of review standard on 1up i'm glad i had never heard of it until now because it looks a crock of crap.

Of course having a controvercial review would get the site a fair few hits.

Thought I would post this. Doesn't seem like a good review and comments like "So far all i hear about Disgaea 2 is that its the same game as the first but with all the best parts out. No humor, no fun story. well we still get the same old great gameplay. but i will skip this one..." aren't very encouraging. :(

Prinny please

----

1UP Review

The original Disgaea: Hour of Darkness did something that few games can accomplish: It turned a kooky, unabashedly low-budget Japanese game into a cult hit. A series of spiritual follow-ups did little to reignite the enthusiasm, but NIS saw fit to produce a sequel anyway. Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories is more -- much more -- of the same, which can be quite a double-edged sword, especially in a strategy RPG.

Disgaea 2 follows the path of all the other NIS SRPGs, with its stumpy Japanese cartoon characters running around on a grid making quick work of one another. Building up parties is simple and fast, but it's awfully easy to overdo it and end up having to manage an army. Not to mention having to grasp the variety of systems and features -- the Geo Panels, the Dark Assembly, the Item World dungeons -- that all add up to a game that will siphon away your time, like it or not. You won't be blown away by the quality of the graphics, either, as those are still low-res, low-detail, and blurry up close, but provide colors like green and blue this time.

Fact is, the preceding paragraph describes both Disgaea games perfectly. Disgaea 2 adds only one significant new feature to its gameplay: the ability of stacked characters to attack. In Disgaea you could lift a character above another's head, and then throw that lifted character across the map. You could build whole towers of characters by strategically throwing and stacking characters. In the sequel, these piles of people can actually attack and function as one, sending an enemy up the chain and racking up damage (into the millions of hit points) along the way. Otherwise, anyone familiar with the original will have no problem at all jumping back in, though there remains a large amount of reference text to read.

Part of what made the original game's story so enjoyable was its turn of convention: you played Laharl, a smart-assed demon kid who knew he was hot stuff and wouldn't let anyone steal his thunder. In Disgaea 2, you're Adell, a good-natured kid who wants to beat down a demon lord and turn his family back into humans because he's the only one who can. He gets wrapped up in the demon world, so he gets to deal with all the same stuff Laharl did, but the charm just isn't there anymore. Adell is your regular good guy, and none of the other characters really help him become anything more than that.

Nothing in the story grates as much as the "dynamic" between Adell and his unlikely companion, the demon princess Rozalin. Much of their early conversations follow this dialogue tree, starting with Adell: "I'll protect you!" "But I'm your enemy!" "I don't care, I'll still protect you!" "But I'm your enemy!" Teenagers are usually bad at communicating, but these two come off as downright retarded. After a revelatory plot point they eventually smarten up, but by then the story is hardly worth caring about. And the humor just isn't as grand as it was in the original, either, no doubt due to the change in publishers and localization teams.

Rarely will you feel like you're playing Disgaea 2, just Disgaea 1. Again. And that can be just as awesome as always, because the core game is still fast, fun, and wholly satisfying to anyone who digs grid-based battling. But when only little things that don't affect the big picture have been changed, not much is worth commendation as a sequel. Apparently, this is what three years gets you.