Disgaea 2, like the first Disgaea, isn't just a tactical RPG imported from Japan. It's also a vast, insidious, and utterly charming spreadsheet. 'Vast' for how many options you have to consider and the long-term commitment it requires; 'insidious' for how easy it is to find yourself addicted and whiling away hours at a time; 'utterly charming' for its own goofy sense of humor; and 'spreadsheet' for the fact that it's composed almost entirely of bare numbers and bald math.
This sequel is a great game, to be sure, but not for anything that didn't already make the first Disgaea great. If you didn't finish the first one -- admit it, you know you didn't and you've still got a saved game on a memory card -- there isn't really any compelling reason to rush ahead to Disgaea 2. This is one of those "more of the same" sequels. If you did finish Disgaea, you're probably the sort who pre-ordered the sequel anyway. But if you never played Disgaea, just jump ahead to Disgaea 2.
You know that weird mathematician guy, Grigory Perelman, who refused the Fields Medal for solving the Poincaré conjecture? He would totally dig Disgaea 2. But so would anyone who can get into a character-based leveling grind, MMO or otherwise. For a game that's so nakedly numbers, there's a wide appeal here. The point of the Disgaeas is leveling up characters. Period. There's a sort of refreshing honesty in the way you're not exploring dungeons or navigating dialogue trees or crafting armor or finding keys to locked doors. Instead, you're fighting battles. Battles, battles, battles. Each of the game's 13 chapters is a series of battles, with randomized battles and secret battles and political battles constantly available on the sidelines.
Each battle is an intricate puzzle, with a lot of pieces fitting together into a tactical brain teaser with any number of solutions. You manage character classes, monsters, terrain, spells, items, special abilities, combos, and idiosyncrasies like explosive penguins and throwing party members around the map. The more you play, the easier it gets to interpret what's going on and what you should do. It's not unlike doing crossword puzzles or sudoku; the more you do it, the easier it gets, and the more you want to do, as if you're training and strengthening some corner of your brain, and with it your appetite.
In a tactical RPG like this, battles are resources. Disgaea lets you play battle as many times as you want, mining them for experience for your characters. If you manage to play well, you'll get a considerable experience bonus, which moves you up a list of reward items. But maybe you could have done a little better and made it another notch up the list? This is a lot of what makes Disgaea so compelling. If at first you don't succeed as much as you wanted to succeed, try try again. And again. And again. Not moving forward towards the end of a game was never so gratifying.
As your characters level up, they learn new abilities and you'll unlock more classes. Characters gather the points you need to make more (and more advanced) characters. You'll also be able to spend these points to convince a demonic Senate (don't ask) to shift the mechanics of the game in subtle but important way. There's a new subpoena system, which is a way of granting a character special bonus quests and guiding the game in strange and unexpected directions.
There's a streamlined inventory system that looks pretty simple at first. Each character can equip a weapon, and three miscellaneous items; there are no paper dolls, Diablo/Tetris grids, or weight limits here. Each item modifies your character's stats. For instance, a sword might add 10 to your attack power and a shield might add 15 points to your defense. There are some important distinctions among weapons if you peer another layer deeper, but the point is that Disgaea always traffics in simple and clearly displayed numbers.
Most items have a magical bonus of some sort, usually a modest increase to additional stats. But once you're comfortable bopping along the missions in the storyline, here is the next level of time sink, sucking you further into the fifty-hour odyssey that is a Disgaea game. An item's magical bonuses are the product of little people living inside the item. So to optimize your party -- Disgaea is at once a min/maxers absolute paradise and utter hell -- you'll want to go into the item, which consists of random levels. You'll descend one level at a time to find and extract a bunch of these little bonus people, and then you can put them into your uber-items, which can be further improved by traveling down into them.
It sounds crazy to anyone who hasn't played Disgaea, but it mainly means one thing: randomized dungeons. Lots and lots of them, and always with a purpose. This is where you’ll find most of the new stuff in Disgaea 2. The randomized worlds are more coherent, many with a thematic style instead of being slapped together wildly. There are also branching paths through the random worlds that can take you off to bonus areas, with shops, hospitals (phew!), and unique challenges. Wandering high-level pirates might make an appearance, dropping special items if you can defeat them.
Unfortunately, this is where Disgaea 2 missed an opportunity to be friendlier to less obsessed/dedicated gamers. The point of an item world is often to get as deep as you can before turning back; the lowest level you reach determines how much you've improved the item. This means random dungeons are a constant tension between cashing in, or pushing forward. Since you can't save the game down here, you've got to live with the consequences of your decision. Fair enough.
