Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days Review Page 2

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

Place your party members in the correct positions in battle and you’ll be able to pull off some spectacular and highly damaging combos. Equally, however, place them badly and you might find an isolated party member becomes surrounded by enemies and takes a right old pasting. Geo Panels complicate matters even further, making certain areas of the map more favourable to your enemies (or your party), offering defensive and attacking bonuses. Thankfully, you can manipulate these bonuses by destroying or moving the Geo Panels, adding yet another layer of strategy to an already impressive roster.

Disgaea’s core gameplay is incredibly engaging and strikes a deft balance between simplicity and depth. That’s not to say you’ll find it easy however and, once you get through the tutorial sections into the core of the quest, you’ll encounter some pretty noticeable difficulty spikes. At these points, you’ll need to check out some of the game’s other features in order to advance. The game’s central hub allows you to heal your party between levels as well as buying new equipment to strengthen your attacking and defensive force. You can also use the game’s Dark Assembly feature to create new characters and generally strengthen your squad by asking the Assembly to vote on certain issues.

Perhaps the best way to enhance your party in Dark Hero Days is to venture into the Item World, where each item in the game has a multi-level dungeon. If you make it through the dungeon you’ll be rewarded with a legendary item. In case you missed it, that’s every single item in the game. It’s undoubtedly a bit of a grind and when you find yourself six or seven levels into a dungeon you start to wonder if you’ll ever get out again, but the effort is often worth the reward as your characters level up and you gain access to some top notch items. Starting to realise just how much gameplay is in Dark Hero Days?

That’s not to say the game doesn’t have some sticking points. As mentioned earlier, the story has a habit of veering into tedium every now and again, the lack of autosave can lead to some frustrating replays and the camera can become a problem on some levels with it becoming almost impossible to get a good look at certain sections of a map. However, these minor faults are easily eclipsed by the game’s solid, addictive core gameplay and the sheer amount of content on offer. While there may not be enough new content in Dark Hero Days to warrant a purchase if you owned the PS2 version of Disgaea 2, newcomers to the series, or anyone looking for a top quality turn-based strategy experience on the PSP should take a look.

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