Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days Review

29 Jan 2010 at 11:00:25 by Andy Alderson
Systems used to review this title: (PSP)

As intros go, Disgaea’s is a little dark. We see a woman standing by a well with the intention of making human sacrifices out of her husband and two of her kids, in order to summon up a demon for her one remaining child to kill. How long before the Daily Mail picks up on this? Luckily Nippon Ichi's Disgaea series has always had its tongue firmly planted in cheek and Dark Hero Days, the PSP ‘remake’ of Disgaea 2, is as light hearted as it is downright weird.

You take on the role of Adell, whose mother is attempting to summon the dark Overlord Zenon after he cursed humanity turning everyone into demons.  Apart from Adell, the one remaining human, who has a habit of getting a bit high and mighty about it. He is tasked with destroying Zenon in order to lift the curse but, of course, things don’t go too smoothly. It wouldn’t be much of a game after all, if the summoning worked perfectly and Adell did his job in the first five minutes. Indeed, instead of the mighty Zenon, it’s his mouthy daughter Rozalin who appears and immediately clashes with Adell, kicking off a quite predictable love/hate relationship. She agrees to help guide Adell to her father, while secretly planning to sabotage his quest and so, with the aid of some companions, they embark on their journey.

The story in Dark Hero Days is a mixed bag of tedious, repetitive dialogue in which the characters insist on making the same point over and over again, and genuinely sharp comedy. The Adell/Rozalin dynamic gets old pretty quickly but once you’re introduced to some of the game’s side players, like the excellent Axel, you’ll find yourself warming to Disgaea’s narrative. Axel is a down on his luck actor with a gargantuan ego, filming a low budget TV show with a Spielberg-a-like director documenting/mocking his every move. He’s a much more interesting character than the rather one dimensional Adell, and NIS has cleverly expanded his role in the PSP version of Disgaea 2, offering up his own story sections. Unfortunately the majority of the game focuses on Adell and co but, although the tale isn’t exactly riveting, it does serve as a decent backdrop to some top notch RPG/turn-based strategy gameplay.

Like its predecessors, Disgaea’s gameplay is centred around turn-based strategy battles on small square-filled maps. Adell has a party at his disposal, featuring all your standard classes like fighter, Red Skull (mage) and healer, and you must direct them strategically in order to triumph in battle. You have a wide range of attacks available to you via your party – long range, close quarters, special attacks and magic  - and, like in all good turn-based games, you’ll need to utilise all of them to succeed. Success in Dark Hero Days relies on balancing your party, playing to your characters’ strengths, thinking a few moves ahead and, most importantly, good positioning.

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