Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days Review (PSP)

Fan of the series or not, Disgaea 2 will offer you alot out of your PSP from it’s level grinding.

If you think RPG/Strategy games hard, then you’ve probably never heard of the Disgaea series. If you haven’t heard of the series it has a random and humorous story set in The Netherworld full of Demons, Disgaea 2 however is a sequel to the first Disgaea game back in 2003 for the Playstation 2 and got re-released for the PSP and DS.

Not only is the story is random, the gameplay can be a little random and crazy. In most RPG/Strategy games you know what level monsters are at, if you’re in a random dungeon it’s impossible to beat an enemy that’s a Level 9999 if you ever did encounter an enemy in an RPG game. However if you haven’t or have played Disgaea 2 the PSP version will have a ton of new content including Magichange and a features chapters of the Dark Hero Axel.

The story for Disgaea 2 in general takes place 15 years ago where a powerful Overlord name Zenon appeared in Veldime and cursed its human population. Since then all its inhabitants have become demons and remain that way, trying to find a way to break its curse. A young man named Adell was the only person who wasn’t cursed by Overlord Zenon, Adell decides to put an end to Zenon and break the curse to free his family and return everyone else back to their true form.

Adell’s mother tries to summon Zenon but instead they accidentally summon Rozalin who is Zenon’s daughter. She has no past memories so instead she decides to help Adell and find out more about here lost memories.

Gameplay: If you haven’t played the Disgaea series it’ll take some time to get used to the gameplay. You can have up to 10 characters on the field. Whoever you choose can only move to a number of steps kind of like a chess board game. Once you’re near an enemy you can either attack, use magic or pull off a powerful attack or if you have another character nearby you can pull off a team up attack.

At the end of each battle you’ll earn random rewards from EXP to Items and Weapons/Armour. However if you have played Disgaea 2 on the Playstation 2 you’ll expect a few new features added to the PSP version including gameplay mechanics from Disgaea 3 (PS3). You can use Magichange where a character can team up with a monster or a Prinny and turn into a weapon to use.

If you are a Disgaea fan in general you’ll enjoy the new features which have been added to the PSP re-make

Geo-panel make an appearance where if you are on a coloured square on the field it’ll have an effect if you stand it, it can either Warp to another random square on the field, or gives you +50% on attack power depending on what effect it has it. You can destroy the panels too if you find them annoying if you throw them to the same colour or attacking it, if so it will change colour and switches off its effect and causing some damage to everyone on the field.

If you want to level your characters you can also level up any items, weapons or armour and you’ll get wrapped into its own little world. You can go up to 10 floors where each floor will have enemies on a random level, once you’ve defeated the item boss you can either exit that world or keep fighting to make the item stronger.

If you want to have more people join your team you can enter the Dark Assembly and make a new character from a Prinny, to a Red Mage, even to a warrior and choose its class and what a attitude you want the character to but will cost you some Mana points to do that. But do realise that if you want to make a new character and join your party it’ll begin at a Level 1 so you’ll have to level up that character if you wanted to.

Graphics and Sound: If you have played Disgaea 2 on the PS2 most of the graphics for it have been ported to the handheld console and still looks good now and it did back in 2006. The Disgaea series in general will use Anime art on its characters which look really well done and detail pretty much feel a good random anime.

Animated GIF’s are throughout the gameplay from battling dungeons and through the 13 chapters, cutscenes use a mix of comic book graphics for during cutscenes during the story and used for pulling off strong/team up attacks against enemies. However, Disgaea 2 has some great art visuals from its magic spells and attacks to its locations you’ll be battling and its colourful and flashy anime opening before the main menu opens up.

There maybe one or two problems in Disgaea 2 but it’s mainly on its camera which can be annoying at times or trying to see where you need to go. You can only use the L and R shoulder buttons to move the camera around. Voicing does a nice job some returning voices return for those who have played the first Disgaea or have watched the Anime series of Disgaea, most of the characters in Disgaea 2 are good as well but also bit of French/English from a character called Tink who is a frog/fairy looking demon.

But if you don’t like the English voicing you can change the voicing to Japanese. Music does a nice job from its opening theme, to its boss fights and its character themes. You can also go to the Music shop during your time in the Netherworld where you can purchase and listen to Disgaea music from Disgaea 1 to 3 during your time battling your way through waves of monsters in the Item world.

Overall: If you are a Disgaea fan in general you’ll enjoy the new features which have been added to the PSP re-make including Axels story which you can unlock once you’ve beaten the game once and it’ll also let you carry over your characters and levels to Axel’s story or play the game again with the same levels there on.

You can also purchase characters from other Disgaea games and characters from Makai Kingdom. One or two characters are free and some you can purchase from no more than £1.50 and you can download them to your PSP to use in Disgaea 2.

Beating the game first time round should take you around over 20 hours,depending on how much level grinding you do, but you can easily spend over 150 hours for its addictive Dungeon floors in the Item world to level up. There are multiple endings but most of them will depend on what level your party team is at and what luck you’ll have to beating its boss or taking out an overlord who wants to be the main character again in the Disgaea series.

I would admit you’ll get a lot out of Disgaea 2 more than Disgaea 3 if you have played it on the PS3 with a good random story to follow and will most likely keeping you busy for a very long time on your PSP.