It seems that there really is a large sea of anime-inspired Playstation 2 games out there; in a sea so vast, what sets apart the cruise liners from the rubber dingies? I put Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories through its paces and discovered many a hidden treasure.

Disgaea 2 is a delightful, light game. It has the right mix of humour, character interaction and gameplay. By light I mean that it can be played and enjoyed merely as simple entertainment, rather than a serious and involving game like Half Life 2, which demands lengthy playing sessions. The game does have a story line though and sees you playing a determined young man called Adell. Adell is stuck in a never-world, a land ruled by villainous overlords, in his case he just so happens to be stuck in the never-world ruled by the so called ’God of the Overlords’ who has also cast a curse on all the inhabitants of the land, slowly turning them into demons. At the start of the game Adell’s mother attempts to summon the Overlord Zenon, unfortunately she accidentally summons Zenon’s daughter who has never ventured outside of the safety of her castle. Now Adell must take Princess Rozalin back to Zenon and defeat him.

The game’s storyline is constantly geared towards laughs, and I found it succeeding at many occasions; the humour is further increased by the wonderful array of characters you pick up along the way, from a schizophrenic frog to a failed movie action hero who is convinced he is still the best. The character conversation scenes are fully voiced adding a nice touch to the game and delivering the all-important humour with extra oomph. The game is spread across over a dozen chapters providing plenty of chance to get your characters to amazingly high levels or get that perfect item you’ve been saving up for. What’s even better is that any of the sections of the chapter can be replayed as many times as you like during the game.

The game is full of interesting items and features. The most exciting feature I found, something which I’ve never seen in a game before was the inclusion of a fully functional Senate, with a huge variety of bills to choose from. The bills can do many things, such as stock the local shops with rarer items, or give your characters a 3x experience point boost, or even weakening enemies. The system relies on ensuring a positive outcome from all votes, usually through the use of bribery. It can be a very powerful tool if used correctly, although the more rewarding benefits are definitely challenging to achieve. Another unique idea within the game is the idea of upgrading your items, such as weapons and armour, by going into what is called the ’item world’, this is where you literally go into a miniature world within your item, this world is full of enemies and you must battle these enemies to progress through the stages, once you reach the end of the stages your item is upgraded. Hard work to say the least; I did not find this function very rewarding as it is generally easier to just buy a better weapon and the actual stages in the item world were extremely challenging.

The battle system is an interesting cross between an RPG and an RTS, it is a turn based battle system which takes place on an isometric battle grid, each character has a movement turn and an attacking turn. The pattern of madness in this game does not stop when it comes to the battles, in fact it increases. You have the option to pick up neighbouring characters to form giant towers and then toss each other to all sides of the map, or even attack from this position. It’s also possible to chuck enemies around, sometimes with disastrous consequences. The enemies range from dancing penguins to ghosts. The battle system is easy to get to grips with, and there is a tutorial level at the beginning of the game to get you going. Characters can tag-team enemies by combining attacks and performing combos. The landscape can also be used as a tool with things called geo-panels which can provide beneficial effects to your characters but on the other hand the same effects can also be applied to your enemies.

This game is definitely a fine piece of entertainment, there is enough of a story to keep you interested, and the features I mentioned above will certainly be a fresh experience even for a seasoned gamer. One major niggle I have with the game is that it can become very hard, very fast. Sure, strategy is important in this game, but in a game that is based on joviality and humour I did not expect to have to work so hard within the game, meaning I had to go back and spend ages levelling up in order to succeed.