Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories

[Bassman]

You have Dark Sun World which is unlocked

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after finding hidden levers on the home area and fighting the guardian of the portal (you have to be persitent with this!). There is also the Cave of Ordeals via the Assembly, which doesn't seem to have the levelling potential of the one from the original game. Someone at Gamefaqs says that power levelling is possible... I'll have to re-read the topic there.

You can get through the basic story in about 15 hours (no extra levelling). The Dark Sun equivalent

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probably requires longer, plus extra time unlocking it and all the levels. Cave of Ordeals (5 levels) takes time of course, the last level proving a little tricky initially. You need pretty powerful characters to beat the 4th level due to the strength of the enemies there so you need some levelling for that.

You have extra options from the Assembly [such as

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the meeting that brought up the end credits. There is also another high mana cost item in the Assembly that I have yet to try.

I suppose there is a greater variety of things to do in the game with all the additions.

Of course, there are new

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Geo Panel types

as well, to make life interesting!

[eastyy]

Did they fix the item world problem from the original where some enemys were out of reach ?

[Bassman]

From my limited experience of the Item World (so far) there have been no enemies yet that were out of reach.

Item World this time around seems very colourful and has a lot of elevation changes which can make life a bit more difficult.

The language barrier (the joys of not being able to wait) I had an Item where I went through to Level 10 on and hit Yes, to return to the home base, only to find myself on yet another level. I'm sure the English version should at least explain that sort of thing.

[Bassman]

I forgot about another added feature of D2. You get

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pirates visiting the Item World and on defeating their leader you get a map piece. Collecting all 16 of them gives access to a further set of maps. Apparently you need convictions to access it though.

[Bassman]

I was levelling up an item last night. Managed to buy a couple of decent items from a shop. For some reason I had to go through 23 levels before I was given the option to return to the village (home location).

There appears to be a bonus item killer on some of the levels which could get annoying.

Maximum strength enemies made life interesting at times. I lost one of my two strong witches on one level and nearly lost the stroger of the two as well thanks to a 50+K hit from a Dragon after other hits in the same turn (she had over 90K HP fortunately). If that had happened I would have had to give up. Fortunately she survived and I was able to do a 70K heal next turn and go walkabout to avoid the problem again. I think that was at the 20th level.

[eastyy]

Started playin the original again

Did make me think of a few questions

1.Have you come across any good leveling up stages yet? (one stage in the original i have played about 130 times)

2.Is the item world any less time consuming now?

3.Has there been any changes to the item world like with inhabitants or if you skip some levels

[Bassman]

Apparently you can unlock

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a second alternate set of maps which includes the Cave of Ordeals (Map 4 is the best) which is good for levelling apparently. The normal one gets a reasonable amount of levelling on high enemy strength if you can kill 6 enemies at once. An initial couple of hundred levels I suppose though you need to be pretty strong to achieve that. My Level 1800 which could almost manage it now. Some of the other maps can be helpful for an intiial boost in the first alternate set of maps (No CoO I don't think).

Item World is just as consuming. I need to go there more as that is where you can get items that will unlock that second alternate. On maximum enemy strength it is a little risky even with the Level 1800 Witch and that is only up to Level 30! The first alternate set are unlocked by doing things in the village.

There are shop levels in Item World accessed through an alternate portal and these can lead to a few extra levels to boost the item. There is also a Portal to the Prinny Court if you get convicted of any crimes. You can skip the same as before.

[eastyy]

has anything been added to the skills and abilitys?

I know the more you used skills and spells the more powerful they became plus it would unlock more abilitys

[Bassman]

I think that part is pretty much carried over from the original game.

[eastyy]

Have they increased the bonus gauge?

Noticed in the original with a colour chain i got today could have probably filled 3 times over

[Bassman]

It still only goes up to 9 unfortunately.

[powkisser]

clocked up 4 hours so far, tried the item world on teh 1st level a pirate turned up and proceeded to kick my ass.. ffs
Though other than that, its back the same Disgaea goodness..

[eastyy]

Only played for a couple of hours so far i think its great with a amusing story to

Definetly notice some changes like with the dark assembly.Think i will have to do some power leveling

[MartyG]

I've found no requirement for power levelling in the story mode of the game so far ( and I'm up to chapter 9 ) - a couple of levels required me to restart to work out the strategy a bit better, but anyone who's had any experience with the first game shouldn't have any problems just playing through the game. All the old tricks work like tottenpole lifting to reach the far side of the maps. In fact the game feels a lot better balanced than the first game which had a severe difficultly spike in a couple of places.

Didn't enjoy the first 30 minutes particularly as there seem to be far more tutorial levels in this one ( though you can skip the demo ) - but after that the story really starts to pick up, there are some nice surprises through the game. Likeable characters, decent story and top strategy puzzles to solve.

Have noticed some slight differences with the geo-cubes

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some of them have grown legs and move about

which puts a different slant on things.

Not keen on the pirates in item world - but didn't suffer at their hands - only visited it once so far, the part where you're forced to.

I do like the new way that the dark assembley works - much more consistant now. After 12 1/2 hours so far ( it's still as addictive as ever - up till 1am last night ), I'm suitably impressed that Disgaea has been improved upon, albeit only slightly.

[eastyy]

one thing that did puzzle me (in the first disgaea as well) was how come i see many people are so much higher levels then i was (laharl was only about level 163 and that was after probably about 80 hours play)

Is the item world the way to go ?