Review by: James Fudge

Z.H.P. Unlosing Ranger vs. Darkdeath Evilman (hereafter referred to as ZHP, for the sake of sanity and space) is a turn-based rogue-like masquerading as a real-time JRPG. This is a good thing, as it shows that NIS America -- and more specifically the development team behind the Disgaea series of strategy RPGs - is capable of thinking outside the box. If ZHP is anything, it is a game that is comfortable with being odd, quirky, and whatever other adjectives you can imagine.

Even the storyline is odd. On his way to save the world from the greatest villain of all time - Evilman Darkdeath - and save Super Baby (an odd baby with an unknown amount of untapped potential), the Unlosing Ranger is hit by a van and killed. A pedestrian who happens to witness Unlosing Ranger's untimely demise is given the hero's powers to take up the mission that the expired hero is unable to complete. Of course, this new hero, who the world believes is the immortal Unlosing Ranger, is quickly thumped by the villain and finds himself in Bizzaro World. Bizzaro World, the main area of the entire adventure, is a negative world where people are the opposite of what they are in the real world. Being dead on Earth, the new hero must live and train on Bizzaro, so he can try once again to take down Darkdeath Evilman. He will fail repeatedly, but it is an important part of the game and the story being told.

The storytelling in ZHP is clever because NIS has no problem making fun of Japanese otaku culture. Whether it’s the helpless citizens that opine about the weakness of the hero, or the fake TV commentators giving the blow-by-blow, NIS America’s stick is sharpened to poke fun at everyone and everything to make the story interesting and funny.

Putting the game's bells and whistles aside for a minute, ZHP plays much like a traditional Rogue-like. Players jump into randomly generated dungeons to pick up throw-away items and weapons, kill monsters, and make their way through a certain number of levels.

As the player moves, the enemies on the map move too, or commit to some sort of action. In other words, the game uses a simultaneous turn-based system. In a Rogue-like players tend to try to go as far as they can before dying. ZHP uses a similar method. The player can die by being overwhelmed by monsters or running out of supplies like food but none of that really matters. Whether you make it to the exit, or you get laid out by monsters or starvation, you earn levels and lose levels.

Your earned levels are thrown into a catch-all total level system so that when you die you learn something from it. In addition to that, you earn stat bonuses that do not go away when you die. There are some caveats to the system: for one, you lose just about everything you found in the level including items, money and anything you have equipped. You also have your main levels reset set to the minimum, which means that when you enter the dungeon again you start from scratch. At first, players who did not read the manual will likely get frustrated, but after plowing through all the tutorial levels and getting a firm grasp of the system, it actually makes a lot of sense. It lets you succeed while failing—and you will fail a lot in this game.