Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories is the sequel to the seminal Strategy RPG Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. The original Disgaea set Nippon Ichi Software on the map for bringing Strategy RPG’s to American audiences with a slew of titles; La Pucelle, Phantom Brave, and Makai Kingdom. Now they have gone back to the source by evolving the gameplay that made Disgaea so great.

The story goes: Fifteen years ago, a powerful Overlord by the name of Zenon appeared on Veldime and cursed its human population. Since then, all its inhabitants became demons and were to remain that way if the curse was not broken. Adell is the only human unaffected by the curse, so he sets out to defeat Zenon and return Veldime to the way it was.

The crux of the gameplay revolves around leveling up your characters. On the surface, you can just fight, gain experience and abilities. Experience is gained by using a character, a weapon, a spell, or an ability. Every time you use one of the above, you become better at it. The deeper you dig, you’ll see that every statistic of your party can be tweaked. Then there’s the item leveling dungeons. Yes, you can level up your weapons by diving into them, fighting enemies and specialists, thus making the item stronger. This game is a micromanager’s dream.

For those of you who have played the first game, you are in familiar territory. The hub town of Veldime functions just as the castle did in Disaea. Now the hub is one big board, not a smattering of small rooms. In Veldime players can buy items, weapons, and armor at three shops. Here you can find the Dark Assembly where you can hire new units, and propose bills like more expensive weapons at the shops. New to Disgaea 2 is the Dark Court, where you are issued subpoenas for committing bad deeds. Since this is the Netherworld, a felony is like a trophy to these demons.

Adell the lead is a little sexually ambiguous. He’s accompanied by Zenon’s daughter Rozalin early in the game. Immediately he protested against girls saying, “I don’t like demons or girls.” He gets really offended when anyone asks him about pretty girls. Rozalin at one point asks him, “You really seem to dislike girls. Do you have some kind of trauma?” Adell had nothing to say afterwards. Silence means consent, sister. So far he hasn’t made any advances to any of the male characters. He’s playing it ambiguously, can I get a Kinsey report on this one?

So far I’ve really enjoyed the game. It’s fun, quirky, the graphics are a marked improvement over the original. The script and voice acting are really funny. For all of the technical aspects of the game, Disgaea 2 keeps the mood silly and fun the whole time. I would recommend this title to anyone curious about all of the hooplah surrounding the first game.

Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories Official Site