The Dark Assembly makes a return in the game, which was used to unlock features of your team. Things like levelling up all enemies were an option, or transmigrating the powers of an old character into a brand new one. You may choose to lobby members of this assembly to your side by bribing them with items. Another thing that you can do is feed them alcohol, or chloroform, which adds a bit of randomness to their responses. They may even become knocked out, so that they will be unable to vote for or against you. This time around the larger levelled characters will influence the smaller monsters that are sitting beside them. This means that you could end up with a chain reaction, assisting you to pass a motion for you. There is also the Dark Court, where you could be held accountable for your actions. Mainly the goal of the game is to be as mean and dark spirited as possible. The nicer you are, the more you will be called into court to answer these charges.

There are a few things added to battle as well, like the feature of the Dark Sun. In the middle of some battles, the game will give you a warning that the Dark Sun is coming. After a few turns, if the battle is still going, it will make a randomized call, which could end up with your team being defeated, or instantly winning. Another battle feature involves the Geo Stones. Now there are creatures that can live inside of these stones, which will stand up and walk around in battle, changing the battlefield. For those who do not know what the stones do, they add features like +50% defence, or invincibility, to certain squares, adding quite a bit of tactics to the game. Another thing you can do later on is call in a strike, involving some of the original characters from the first game, to come in and give you a hand in the middle of battle.

This new Disgaea game will have a few new features over the old one, and they are awesome. I was personally able to sit down for a while and play the game. For those who are anxiously waiting for this follow up, be prepared for it in August of 2006. Furthering up on the Disgaea craze, they have also obtained an anime cartoon over in Japan, and it does look like they will be bringing it to North America as well. This seems to be happening in October, as they are planning to get it on some networks.

All and all, NIS does have quite a few games for the Playstation system. Hopefully they will also begin to develop for the Nintendo DS as well, as they could release a game similar to Disgaea on there as well. This will be a company to be on the look out for, so be ready to jump on their bandwagon. They had a fantastic showing this year at E3. - Gordon Edward .