Disgaea D2: A Brighter Darkness review

[Bassman]

I hadn't until yesterday and thought I ought to give it a try, so went to a Chapter 1 map and threw in one of the Humanoid characters as an experiment (Warrior type). I caught it, so reloaded as I had no use for it. Looks like you can capture anything. Apparently some of the enemies can have unique names with a description before the class. I think I saw an Observant something (can't remember the class). Not sure whether there is any advantages to them.

Stole my first Evility today. Decided it was about time. Got my best Mage to 5 Hearts with my Archer (Sniper Evility) in the Assembly (went the pay up route as it was quickest). Then payed up for the Stealing Bill. Great second ability for the Mage as it now has a 2 square boost to its magic range.

The character you steal from loses the Evility until it reincarnates, so I took a Fist with my two 300 Stat Stacks and levelled the Archer until I had enough Mana for the Reincarnation (took it to around 3000). Big Bang being an easy clear in CoO6 at lowish level. After the Reincarnation I took her back to about Lv 1000.

Get a couple of stacks of Statiticians (or more) and recruit the end of game characters and you can get a good boost from the Exp in the Cheat Shop (currently 800% for me) plus some Sea Angels and you will level quickly. If I can get some more stacks I can reduce Lv1-9999 from five runs of CoO6.

[Bassman]

I am now up to the serious grinding phase. I repeated CoO6 on Loc (got up to Lv 400) to boost the stats on my best Mage (now over 6M HP and over 3M INT). She is now on Lv 4 Aptitude boosting from the Dojo (I already got some Sea Angels to 300 Aptitude on all except HP and SPD). I picked up a Prism Mage in the Item World with Staff Mastery at Lv 50 so have been levelling her as well. She is also on the Aptitude Boost. I'll just gain stats on them on CoO6 LoC until they have 300% on everything they can and then revert to INT boost on levelling when I reincarnate.

One of my 300% Sea Angels is now through a couple of reincarnations and can do some decent damage with her Magic.

To make things easier in CoO6 I created a couple of Tier 6 Shaman with the Evility that reduces Evasion by 20%. Two of those on CoO6 improve your chance to hit by 40% which makes Misses a lot less likely. It makes two hit clearing for each block much less painful.

I made good use of my Lv 9999 Thief on the Pringer Z Map (having farmed a good number of Legendary Prinny Suits) to get Legendary version of Makai Wars, Superalloy Suit, Arcadia and Propel Vernier. Pringer Z is Lv 8000 on Normal Lv 0, so I can steal the items from the front. Took a few reloads but was definitely worthwhile. I will get some more as I am still nowhere near defeating Pringer Z. As I have all the Prizes from the Hospital, I now have automatic healing on for whenever I return to the Castle, so fatalities at the hand of Pringer Z when I get Game Over are now free. If I equip anything I go into the Assembly and come straight out to get free healing.

I now have two and a half stacks of Statisticians. I managed to get the Pure Staff from Pure Flonne with two Statisticians of 43 (took a few reloads). It took a fair time to get a Longinus from the Zombie with even one Statistician (43 again) on it, so I went with that. I didn't bother with the other item (can't even remember what it was!).

My UK release Guide arrived yesterday (I hope the Raspberyl DLC will be buyable at some point as the UK version does not come with a code). Haven't had much of a look at it yet, but it is a nice Hardcover publication with about 360 pages (the last section is some Artwork).

My best Mage stole the Sniping Evility from my Archer (2 square boost to attack and magic attack). I boosted the Archer and reincarnated her to get the Evility Back. For the Mage I got from the Item World I created a cheap Archer, boosted Likeability (had to do that with the other one as well) and stole the Sniping and deleted the Archer. I now have two Mages than can hit from 11 spaces away. May have to do that on some of my Sea Angels as well.

[MartyG]

Still trying to finish up the post game. I unlocked Artina yesterday and I'm trying to get all classes to tier 6 at the moment, quite a few of mine are at tier 5 currently, with a few at tier 6 including Sea Angel, Mages, Onmyo Monk. My Beastmaster is tier 1 as I hadn't realised I'd not unlocked it, but that'll soon be promoted.

At 78 hours there's still a fair chunk to do, I've been spending too much time in item world trying to uncover 100% of item types.

[Bassman]

I got my first (Legendary) Trapezohedron today. Took a Legendary Arcadia to Floor 99 on Normal, Gencied out and went back in on LoC to get the Item God to spawn with the Trap. My Lv 9999 Thief was able to get a 99% chance on Stealing Hand from behind, so got that and a Legendary Cosplay Cats Ears. Managed to get a high rank Legendary Staff as well. As I had been boosting the stats on my Sea Angel I was able to clear all the enemies from the maps on LoC. On getting to Floor 100 I did the maximum number of 20% INT Boosts in the Item Assembly and took it another 10 floors.

I managed to clear the Pringer Z's on LoC with that Sea Angel. Took a while but I beat them. They were hitting my Sea Angel for 1M-1.5M per turn (just as well she has 34 Billion HP and SP). That unlocked the ability in the Cheat Shop to have everyone on the map as a Bomb!

Reincarnating that Sea Angel in LoC Rasetsu meant she retained her stats. I could clear LoC Rasetsu CoO6 at maximum level with her (could two hit them with magic Boost after the first level up).

I now have six Statistician stacks (subdued 3 at 43 in that Arcadia, I was levelling, for a 258 stack which helped). Nice that the Innocent Warehouse will put any extras over the maximum for a stack as a separate item when you do a combine.

I am now at around 155 hours! I do have the occasional day when I can't be bothered to play it.

I have been collecting some of those extra named characters from the Item World. I (now through reincarnation) have a Galaxy Mage XVI among others.

Using the Priest Evility to boost the spell range, I now have a Galaxy Mage using a Book (one I collected from the Item World with a decent level on it). She has gone through a few reincarnations now.

I now need to try to get a second Lv 9999 Thief (picked up a Lv 2000 one in the Item World) with high Fist Skill.

Managed to get to the Skill Room in the Item World, so bought all the high level skills for each weapon. Currently on one character but easy to transfer with the Apprentice System.

[MartyG]

I'm going to have to start power levelling now if I hope to defeat more of the end bosses due to their stats - I've not done any evality stealing, but it looks like it might be worth it for the extra buffs they give.

[Bassman]

When you start stealing Stats in LoC mode, make sure you have Auto Heal On when you return to the Castle, otherwise you will be spending huge amounts of money.

With my Sea Angle Reincarnations retaining her stolen Stats, in LoC/Rasetsu she is still ridiculously powerful at Lv 1. Only thing is I can't seem to increase here Stats beyond 10 million (or maybe thats 100 million) in any one category. Even stealing more Stats has no effect. At least HP and SP are still going up. I gained about 10 Billion on them from Pringer Z yesterday. She is still getting Aptitude increases via the Dojo, so should eventually be 300% in all categories.

At least Reincarnating maxes out at 999,999 Mana otherwise the cost would get silly.

Need to get the maximum usable number of Stat Stacks so that Lv 1 to Lv 9999 is one trip to LoC CoO6. I have been buying up items with Statisticians from the Item World Shops. Maybe I'll get some more when I level up that Trap (remembering to go into LoC for another Trap from the Item God on Floor 100 by Gencying and Saving on Floor 99). I suspect getting Lv 999 Items will prove to be something of a pain.

[MartyG]

Capturing enemies is way way easier in this game. I've turned on LoC and gone through some of the story maps which has been a far quicker way of unlocking the tier 6 classes.

Also, is no one else playing this?

[Bassman]

I'm guessing there are just the two of us playing this.

I see the first batch of DLC is in the Store. As I had about ?2.60 there I thought I would try out Lilliel. Another Magic character. A Book User though it is in the shape of a doll! I levelled her and got the Priest Evility so that she gets full range on her spells. Now reincarnated a number of times. Interesting standard Evility. She gives a 2% healing per square moved. She is using my Statisticians, so make three CoO6 runs on Lv 100 (non-Rasetsu) to get to Lv 9999 and not lose out Skill on her Tera Fire. Only time on the game today was a few more reincarnations on her.

I used 6.1 at Lv 9 Normal to get my Tier 6 characters unlocked. One trip there with the character and a decent set of Sea Angels to boost Exp and I soon got to them.

I need to do some more Pringer Z runs to get some Legendary Arcadias etc. to kit out some more characters with 4 Legendaries.

[MartyG]

The DLC seems a bit not worth it tbh and this time the pricing seems a bit over the top.

Does it add anything to the game really? I don't think so.

I have now nearly unlocked all classes at max, just a couple more to go.

[Bassman]

I suppose when you consider you could buy a full game for less than the cost of a DD2 DLC in the "dark ages of gaming", they do seem expensive. One use for the DLC would be new Evilities to steal!

I have yet to unlock some of the higher Tiers on some of the monster classes.

I finally have a Sea Angel with 300% in all Aptitudes. Still not entirely sure what good they are.

I have been a little distracted from this having just bought a 2DS and Pokemon X and Y.