Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness review

[Bassman]

I have been playing this since it arrived from Amazon this morning. Nice that Amazon are doing First Class Post on Pre-Orders now.

So this is a sequel to Hour/Afternoon of Darkness.

The story inevitably deals with Laharl trying to be recognised as the Overlord. The Disgaea humour makes its presence felt, of course.

The look is on a par with Disgaea 4 in terms of sprite quality.

The game has been simplified and in some ways enhanced, compared to Disgaea 3 and 4.

One interesting feature is the "Cheat Shop" which allows adjustment of 5 items... Exp, Mana, HL, Weapon Mastery and Special Exp (not too sure what that is). In Chapter 1 I was allowed to reduce any by 10% and add the percentage points onto other items. I reduced HL and increased the others. In Chapter 2 I can do a 20% reduction with a maximum of 10% to be added to any one category. I now have HL at 80% and the other 4 items at 105%.

You can do some training to improve stats... I have yet to try this.

Gone are the complications with Skills. As you use them new ones can unlock and for magic squares affected and range increase automatically. Just like the original game... I prefer it.

Passing on skills is easier as well. For instance you have a Healer and a Mage. You want the Mage to learn Heal and Espoir. The Mage can be set as the Healer's Apprentice and those spells are available and you don't need to be adjacent to the Healer. Get the skill to Lv 1 and you can keep it. So you can easily chop and change the Master/Apprentice situation for your characters to get the skills you want. The best yet in that respect.

Item World is back, but with enhancement. I think you can level items to 300 now (or more). I haven't got to that yet, so I will update when I get a better idea of it. he Guide is due out next month, though I ought to have a better idea of the process before then.

There seem to be more Legendary Items in the Bonus Lists for the maps which is nice.

Weapons and Armour are now bought from the same persion and you can select by weapon type rather than wading through a list of everything.

Not sure how the character classes work now as I was able to create a Tier 1 Mage and was given the choice of spell type (Ice, Fire or Wind). I have unlocked Tier 2, so will have to check it out. You can also select an Evility when you create the character. For the Mage I selected the option to regen a little SP at the end of each turn.

All in all, a good update to the series. It seems to have the good points from the the first game with the best bits of the subsequent games and some nice additions thrown in for good measure.

Watch this space!

[MartyG]

Onto chapter 5 now and 16 hours in, there's a bit of a jump in difficultly which has meant more item world grinding - but I'm liking item world a lot more in D2. I like the way it's been streamlined, making it far easy to progress. The skill learning is also better done this time around.

It's been honed to suit Disgaea fans, a step back to the first game perhaps, but all the better for it.

[Bassman]

I'm up to Chapter 4 now.

I have to do a fair amount of grinding as the enemies, though lower level than my characters can take rather a long time to defeat.

The skills are better, as they are the same as the first game. None of this rubbish of having to pay to unlock them. They appear automatically.

The Apprentice thing is an improvement over skill inheritance in any of the previous games. Easy to do and by the look of things the skills become permanent after three uses (seems true of Heal or Espoir anyway). To save finding antidote potions to poisoning, the majority of my characters possess the Espoir spell and all the magic users have Heal, Espoir and at least one offensive type spell. Adjusting the Apprenticeship is very easy as you can switch it on or off for any character. Another benefit is that the Master gains a stat boost from their Aprrentice. Great for boosting the stats of a weak character to make for easier levelling. Each Apprentice can, if required, be the Master of another Apprentice and so on. It can get a little convoluted if you want to do some resets, but the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

As I am up to Chapter 4, I can use the cheat shop to get better percentages on some of the stats. My money is at 60% now with 110% on the Experience stats, Weapon Mastery and Mana.

My strongest characters are a couple of Lv 27 Mages (always did go for the magic based characters as it was easy to get a 3x3 square hit on enemies.

So far I have unlocked three Tiers on the Mages and Thief characters (at Lv 10 and 20 so far). Now, rather than having to reincarnate a character to move to the next Tier to get better stats, you pay 200 Mana for a Promotion to move the character to the next Tier, retaining their current colour (you get some extra choices when creating the character) or selecting the one for the Tier. As the mages now have improved stats for each Tier with element selection on creation, rather than having three initially to chose from (with the same stats), dependant on element (Red - Fire, Blue- Water/Ice and Green - Wind).

I have only been down 10 floors on an item so far. I went further but abandoned the game as there was a level like the Reverse Pirating from the last games which turned out to have a time limit which I had somehow failed to realize. I did some grinding to better take advantage of it the next time.

I am still somewhat unsure of the advantage of training (I'll maybe wait for the Guide).

The Guide is out in a couple of weeks and is a hardcover affair (only) produced by Prima, so ought to be an improvement on the Brady Games Guide to the last Disgaea game (the first Digaea Guide I have not bought). I pre-ordered mine from Amazon.

[MartyG]

My strongest characters are a couple of Lv 27 Mages (always did go for the magic based characters as it was easy to get a 3x3 square hit on enemies.

Laharl is my strongest character at lvl 80, followed by Flonne and three tier four mages at lvl 60 - up to the end of chapter 7. There's quite a bit more to the cheat menu now than just adjusting the mana, HL, exp, weapon mastery and skill advancement options. You can tweak enemy levels and item world stuff too, much better than having to go through the Dark Assembly. I've unlocked the first bonus character too - there's seems to be an obsession with teen idol stuff this time around.

I think overall the difficulty level has decreased. I saw one review saying this game was inaccessible to newbies. I think it's probably the most accessible Disgaea yet.

[Bassman]

I would agree that it is the most accessible Disgaea, though there is a fair amount to get to grips with. I am not sure whether the original was more accessible (it was simpler)... before they started adding bells and whistles!

Even now I have been caught out on a few occasions with the enemy strength. On some maps it is almost a give it a try, work out the strategy and reload (in extreme cases). On one map I lost two of my three mages and had to be rather cautious to complete the map.

I still only have the five items in the Cheat Shop.

My Thief is getting very powerful from all the stats she keeps stealing. Now Lv 29 I think. She can now use her stealing "spell" from six squares away.

I think I am finally getting to grips with the training. On some of the stats I now have three characters with a 15% boost.

If you pick the right Masters and Apprentices you can get pretty much any skill on any character. I used that to pass down skills to new creations.

My Mages are Tier 4 now. I suddenly saw and Star spell on one of my other characters and realized that my Tier 3 Mages had learned the spell. Makes for a much better system with the mages, as each Tier improves stats, unlike before where the stats improved at Tier 4. I have gone for Witches rather than Skulls, as the SP regen is rather useful.

The Evility does make things interesting. My Thief has the one to boost the rank of items from chests by three ranks. Useful on that map with the two legendary chests.

I am on the chapter after Lanzarote.

[MartyG]

I have noticed that the AI doesn't always go for the weakest character any more, so I'm not entirely sure what the new criteria is. You could previously chuck out the odd low level character just to get enemy units to move away, I'm now relying on the tank characters a little more - it's probably worth trying to level up the dragon classes for this purpose.

[Bassman]

Map three on the Angels Chapter (can't remember which) proved extremely troublesome (You have four Geo Panelled areas - now I think of it I should have used my Monk on them... doh!). There is the No Melee, No Range, Reverse Damage and HP/SP swap areas. The AI now knows to use Heal spells on the third of those. I failed a few times and eventually went grinding the previous map for a good while. After I'd finished , My lowest Mage was Lv 70 (still wasn't a walk in the park) with my Thief up to Lv 37 courtesy of stealing Experience (she now steals from seven squares away).

I need better defence on my Mages. Porkmeister has the highest defence at Lv 41 (even better with Laharl on the map) with my Lv 37 Thief a close second (have stolen a fair amount of DEF). The Mages are around 200 behind those two at Lv 70+!

I seriously need to do some Item levelling!

I rather like the Knight (Tier 3 is Rune Knight) with the Evility that doubles the characters damage when using an element the enemy has a negative on. Good for higher level characters for levelling.

Now have a few characters with Magic Boost courtesy of Lanzarote.

I recruited Porkmeister and Asagi.

Nice to see suppost spells giving experience. I think that came in with Phantom Brave (played that on the PSP fairly recently).

Still nothing new in the Cheat Shop.

[Bassman]

Well, managed to open the Cave of Ordeals courtsey of four Hard Liquor Items to get Senators drunk and a Chloroform to put one to sleep. I have been using CoO2 for grinding. I think I am now up to CoO5.

The final story boss was pretty powerful, but by that time my best mage was around Lv 210 with a set of legendary equipment including a high rank staff (the three rank bonus with chests using the Thief was very helpful with that). That plus a strategic lift of said boss!

Did I miss the multi-page Cheat Shop thing, or is it just Post Game.

I just kept saving, reloading, and repeating the post game boss bills until I had unlocked them all.

The beam girl proved a little troublesome as she refused to get off her tower and the other enemies destroyed two of my three boxes. Why is there a three box/barrel limit on a map (or per thief maybe)? That does strike me as a severe restriction. I even had to practice my Wind spells with my best mage on a friendly unit (in an Invincible area) to try to get around it. Didn't do much for her friendship rating of course. Eventually had to move the box and managed to defeat her in two shots (she did a Mega Heal which didn't help). I ended up with a recruit at Lv 250 (I think my best mage was Lv 230 by then).

I have been making good use of the Sea Angels Evility of boosting Exp by 10% for Ally units. I presume multiple ones give a combined bonus.

I have still only done 20 levels on an Item. I had one of those "timed" levels and noticed a 4 and thought it was 4 turns, so failed again and did a reload. With my powerful characters and Lv 250 recruit with an Evility to increase ranged combat for adjacent units by two squares, it ought to be a lot easier now.

[MartyG]

Need to finish the story this w/e on chapter 9 atm, I've yet to unlock CoO.

The multipage cheat shop is there throughout the game, different things open up on it depending on what you do. The item world stuff unlocks the more you go through it.

[Bassman]

Some of those CoO maps have some very powerful enemies to contend with.

So much for those Cheat Options when I was playing the story!

Now up to Lv 17 on Enemy Strength for my grinding on CoO6 (nice 3x3 and 3x2 enemies after beating it the first time). Riding a Lv 1 monster with my best mage boosted the monster to about Lv 500, though I was riding a Sea Angel with the 10% Exp boost and other than my Mage and Lanzarote, all the others on the map were Sea Angels as well. 80% Exp Boost from the Sea Angels and another 400% Exp Boost from Page 1 of the Cheat Shop helped.

I have the main Mage Spells on my Sea Angels (five of them are Tier 6) and for some reason on CoO6, the Mage gets 99% on the list of enemies, the Sea Angels (for some reason) get 205%, so I am not sure whether that is the reason for their good damage. Sea Angels are definitely the most useful monster.

If you need to grind, the Lv 99 enemy boost trick still works and Map 6.1 with Enemy Level at 9 gives two blocks of 2x2 enemies at Lv 99 (apparently equivalent to Lv 324 enemies, so good Exp). Got my Mages beyond Lv 500 there (with Sea Angel Boosts).

My best Mage is beyond Lv 2000, but the last extra character I have to unlock is likely to prove troublesome as some of the enemies on the map have 99% in all the elemental strengths which means minimum damage from Elements. I hope the non-elemental INT attacks on the Sea Angels will prove more effective which is why I am levelling five of them at the moment. Two are past Lv 1000.

[MartyG]

You're going to need to grind further than that if you hope to defeat Baal - from what I've seen his stats are insane.

[Bassman]

I have now unlocked all the extra characters. My stats in the cheat shop are...

Exp - 450%
HL - 5%
Mana - 10%
Weapon Mastery - 115%
Skill Exp - 115%

With another 80% from the Sea Angels I now have my Mage beyond Lv 4000 with my five good Sea Angels past Lv 2000.

Decided it was time to work on my Thief which was only Lv 75. Went the Mage approach. Had a legendary staff (from the "big" mage - not a brilliant one admittedly) to go with her three legendary items. Set Skill Exp and Weapom Mastery high with no exp and used on the early maps. Got to the 3x3 grid Fire at a range of 8 and started off with 6.1 on Lv 9 Enemy Strength. Now able to clear CoO6 on Lv 1 with her (and a Magic Boost) with Lanzarote and the eight Sea Angels for boosts. Will try to get her to a good high level for stealing.

I was a bit disappointed with the LoC as the maps and Bonuses were just carried over from the normal game. As far as I can see there is no way to get good items from it.

When the Thief is suitably levelled I will hit the Item World in earnest. I have a fair number of low level items with 8 point Statisticians on them which should be a good starting place. It is a pity there are no innocents on items from the shop now, though at least you can control what innocents you get on items from the Hostpital Prizes. The only reasonable normal items I am getting now are the first 4 Bonuses on CoO6 (using the Bill a lot!). Legendaries seem to be in very short supply there. I think the only one I saw today was a spear!

I can open Baal now if I am feeling brave and can persuade an "Approved".

[MartyG]

I finished the main story last night - the last boss is quite tough - not bad overall. I think the story was better in the first game but generally it was a good experience. CoO, now unlocked, seems pretty tough too; the second map is a bit of a pain, in fact all the post game stuff ramps up the difficulty a notch or two, so I foresee grinding ahead.

I'd definitely recommend giving this a go if you enjoyed the other titles in the series.

[Bassman]

All the maps on CoO are pretty tough, though the grinding I did with 6.1 at Lv 9 helped a lot.

I don't know what it is with those Sea Angels, but they seem to do double the damage of my main mage, but are half her level and stats.

I agree that the original Disgaea Story was better than this. The more diverse range of characters in the first story certainly helped.

I am currently going down a mid-range (or so) legendary Staff. At Lv 20 I get a 7000 boost to INT with three other legendary items. Needs more work. At least I have a Ship I can use to reach Lv 100.

Not a fan of those "Reverse Pirating" levels in the Item World as you have to clear them in one turn (failed to get the Level Sphere).

[MartyG]

The number of turns you get seems quite random - I've had those levels with 4 turns on them. If you've got the masked hero characters with decent shoes they're a bit easier as they've got quite a longer reach.