Disgaea D2 (PS3): An Unnecessary, But Fulfilling Experience.

So a little over two years ago I did a review about Disgaea 4. I was very pleased with it and felt it was a return to form after a bit of a falter in the less than stellar Disgaea 3. But in its intro, I talked about what made the first Disgaea game so great, mainly the primary characters. They were everyone's favorite and regardless of who came after, fans would piss and moan about how they weren't as good as the originals.

The main cast have always poked around other Nippon Ichi titles as bonus characters or side chapters, but otherwise have not really been a part of the main fold. Now, almost ten years after the first Disgaea title Laharl, Etna, and Flonne finally return in a brand new adventure. The question is, can it possibly live up to ten years of expectation?

DISGAEA D2: A BRIGHTER DARKNESS(PS3)

Our story picks up not shortly after the events of the first Disgaea game. Following the canon of the good ending where Laharl opts not to kill Seraph Lamington, and Flonne gets reincarnated as a fallen angel (10 year old spoiler alert). While Laharl has claimed himself to be the undisputed overlord of the Netherworld, there is a great degree of civil unrest about his acquisition of the throne, and ploys and plots to remove him from power.

Specifically from a group of people calling themselves the Krichevskoy Group, an entourage of the the late kings former vassals, who are striving to find a more suitable leader to take the throne, as they feel Laharl isn't nearly mature enough to rule over the Netherworld properly.

The problems are also being compounded by an encroaching infestation of Yuie flowers, which are indigenous to Celestia and cannot grow in the Netherworld. Yet they continue to expand in vast numbers and their presence is starting to affect the Netherworld's atmopshere and thus it's demons in strange ways, and causing the civil unrest to exacerbate. Through it all, Laharl is out to solve these issues and prove that he is the undisputed overlord.

You'll find that NIS's ability for cheeky dialog is as sharp as ever.

So the whole presentation for Disgaea D2 doesn't feel like it's been changed very much from the previous incarnations. The sprites are clean and look very good, but they went back to the to the still frame conversations for the major cutscenes. It was kind of a disappointment because despite all the flaws in Mugen Souls, their conversation cutscene animations were the one good idea that game had, and I would have loved to see it implemented here.

The game follows a pretty similar formula to its predecessors: Chapter start, opening cutscene, shop at castle, gatekeeper to new world, 5 or so stages, end chapter, hilarious Etna preview to next chapter. While it's a tried and true formula, I would have liked to see the dynamics changed up a little bit. It's been the first time we've seen this cast in like 10 years, shoulda came in with a bang.

Tried and True, but improvements to this style of storytelling would have been nice.

There are a couple little subtle changes to the mechanics though. For example, the most brilliant idea was the inclusion of the cheat shop. Basically what this is allows you to make adjustments to the game. Most specifically the difficulty of the monsters. Now grinding has been made simple because you don't need to waste an hour trying to petition the monster council to keep raising the difficulty. Now you can boost it up, grind, bring it back down with easy.

Tower stacking is back in this game and thank god, because there isn't a great number of places to grind for levels. It was exceptionally helpful in bringing the rest of the team up to speed with Laharl, as he will naturally start to out level the rest of the team as you play through the story missions. This also helps with throwing your tower as you can throw at angles instead of in lines.

Another feature that I loved is the ability to promote my existing team without having to transmigrate them. So when I level up my Shogun girl to the point where the new level of her class unlocks, I don't have to transmigrate her to level one or make a whole new character. I can just promote her for 100 mana points. Transmigration is still a good alternative for boosting your characters overall stats, but I didn't devote as much time to this installment than I usually do so promotion was a great option.

Instead of Magi-changing your monster teammates into weapons, you can now mount the monster characters with your humanoids. I'm not overly sure how effective this was since my team generally consists of the humanoids. On few occasions I would mount a character onto one of my Nekomatas, but it basically felt like I was giving up an attack so I wouldn't do it all that often. But for those wondering, yes, you can ride prinnies now. And if you look at the video below, you can see with the right grinding it can be pretty powerful.

Sadly, Etna and Flonne don't have their original voice actresses from the original games but they've had a couple of different ones as the Disgaea franchise has moved along. Thankfully though, Laharl is the same voice we have been getting since the first one, and that is the important voice to have.

I suppose if I had one really big issue with the game, it's with the one thing that shouldn't have an issue: The story. It's been almost 10 years since we last go to see these characters in a starring role, so I have to say I feel a bit let down that the story for the most part really hasn't changed at all. It's still Laharl trying to be the overlord, it's still Etna dealing with her lost memories, it's still Flonne promoting the power of love, and now we have a new Angel Sicily also throwing her name in the hat for the overlord title. While the whole game is brand new, it feels like I've been here before.

Another thing that kinda bugs me is the aforementioned lack of a grinding spot. Usually in this series, the game always has one level that you can repeatedly play over and over that provides the best possible experience output for leveling up your characters. Either story quests or in the cave or ordeals. In D2 the only spot I really had any success with that is 3-4 (see my video), and there is really no great way to do it aside from tower stacking and just raising the difficulty. I've heard Cave of ordeals 6 is the best place to grind, but chances are you won't make it there until after you beat the game. Which is fine I guess but a bit of an aggravation.

Geo Panels are every bit as frustrating as you will remember them. 

And this is a another game where I'm starting to get annoyed with the shift to DLC content. Don't get me wrong, there is a good degree of unlockables as you play through the game. That's one of the best parts of this series is that all the characters from previous titles get little cameos in bonus stages of the games, and a good number of them make appearances here.

But even more of them appear as part of DLC content packs. While (I don't think) these are on disc, it now forces me to shill additional money if I want to unlock Priere from La Pucelle Tactics for my Disgaea D2 team. I hate this. Gone are the days where you are rewarded for putting in excessive effort into a title. Now you have to give even more of your hard earned money for these rewards. It sucks (although I'll probably cave there, because I love Priere.)

Please stop nickle and diming me, NIS. Save that shit for EA and Capcom.
Just charge me the full 60 for the game and put all the extras in it already.

I didn't think any of the new characters were really all that fantastic either. Sicily brings an interesting charm to the game but with Flonne already there, she is kind of redundant. The Archer is now a named character (who I don't even remember) who you get by completing the story. There is a Demon Hunter named Barbara who you fight a few times, but by the time you get he she's grossly under leveled. After the stellar lineup of characters in Disgaea 4 (except for Emizel of course, he was terrible) the team this time around is just a little disappointing. You still get the big 3 but that's all you really get.

So here is thing, Disgaea suffers from that awkward situation that Portal now suffers through. And that's the fact that the first installment just knocked it so far out of the park, every installment to come out after it just fails to meet the same standards that people have set for it, even when the game is good.

It's kinda an unspoken rule that the first Prinny my friends and I make will always be named Jerrod.

Disgaea 2 was a prime example of this. I thought the Adell and Rozalin team were a good double act. They were funny, they had charm, and their story was fun to go through and had a satisfying conclusion. But because they weren't Laharl, Etna, and Flonne people didn't really give them a fair shot. It's a shame because I felt Disagea 2 was really good, but because it wasn't a direct sequel people didn't care for it as much.

But now we have that direct sequel that people have been clamoring for, and it feels like it falls a little short. Don't get me wrong, Disgaea D2 was a lot of fun and I saw it through to the end, and when I have slower gaming moments I will certainly go back to the grind there. But you would think that with a 10 year break between the first game and this one, the story would have a bit more to offer than what we get here. It was a fun experience, it just didn't seem necessary.

The charm is there, and some of the gags are funny. It just felt like we were
 reminiscing the old jokes we knew instead of hearing new ones. 

And that is pretty much where I stand on my review with this game as a whole. From a completely objective and technical standpoint, Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness does exactly what it needs to. It's the right length, has lots of fun extras, brings back that nostalgic charm from the first game, gives you tons of replay value, and gives you another spell with characters from so long ago. But yet on the other hand, it feels like it doesn't really need to exist, and it was released simply because people demanded it.

Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness was a good time, and the story did get better as it went on. So I would say that if you are a fan of the series as whole, it was worth the 50 bucks. You'll get a good number of hours out of the game and probably have fun playing it, just don't expect it to capture that same magic the first game had, because that was something special.

Now if they'd just make a La Pucelle sequel, I can be truly content.