YMMV / Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories

• Accidental Innuendo: Thank god for dialogue boxes, 'cause otherwise what would you have thought of when Adell said "Trust this." as he pulls Rozalin towards himself and kisses her.
• Anti-Climax Boss: The Final Boss. While the boss is really strong, it has no allies to help it, meaning you just have a straight up 10 against 1 battle, and the boss is not so powerful that it can overcome those odds.
• Awesome Music:
  • Sinful Rose, the intro.
  • The incredibly awesome White Tiger.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: When recruiting Pleinair.
  Adell: I'm your biggest fan!
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Rozalin is the true form of Overlord Zenon, it's not that hard to figure out if you're paying attention to the intro.
• Cliché Storm: One of the most common complaints of the game, especially at the time of its release. While it has its silly moments and a few twists, it plays many of the traditional JRPG/Shonen anime tropes straight. Coming off of its predecessor and Makai Kingdom (which, while not part of the Disgaea series, is thematically similar), Disgaea 2 felt vanilla by comparison.
• Cry for the Devil: When everyone tries to reason with the real Zenon in the Good Ending, she initially rebuffs their attempts to reason with her. Zenon states that everyone she ever trusted, friends and servants, always betrayed her in the past.
• Demonic Spiders: The Ambling Pirates, found on the Item World, are 8x stronger than the other enemies on the map, and their high speed makes them hard to hit. To make things worse, this type of enemy has the highest chance of appearing than all other Pirates, making it both incredibly annoying to get the other Pirates' map sections, and all but a guarantee that if you're trying to take on Item Worlds around your own level, the floor is a bust the moment he appears.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Axel, one of the biggest ones in the series, thanks to his Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain tendencies and likeable personality.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • The summoning ritual at the beginning of the game didn't fail. Another example ties into Fridge Horror; throughout the game, Rozalin displays a taste for meat, especially when undercooked. In the worst ending, Adell devours Taro and Hanako under the influence of Overlord Zenon. Rozalin must have eaten a lot of other demons during her days as an Eldritch Abomination...
  • Rozalin's repeated remarks about the futility of fighting and the foolishness of Adell's wanting to solve things with his fists seems to stem from her being a spoiled princess who's never had to fight for anything in her life. Then you find out that she reincarnated specifically because she was tired of all the fighting she had done. When she says fighting is futile, she's speaking from experience.
• Game-Breaker: Has its own page.
• Good Bad Bugs: A possible Overlook bug, You can make the White Dragon party like you by going into a bill as Senator Adell where you're supposed to disapprove by spamming an item at them. They won't take the item, but their Likeness towards you goes up, which will carry on other bills.
• Goddamned Bats: Geomancers enemies. Come across a Geomancer or two on the other side of an item world map? Better start saying goodbye to those bonuses. And even if you don't care about the bonuses, the skill takes its sweet time pulling out the bonus list and deleting the bonus item even with attack animations off. Their shrill voices only makes it more aggravating.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • According to their names and descriptions, magic monster weapons are all Tomes Of Eldritch Lore. One of them is named Twilight. Coincidence?
  • In one of the "Next Episode" previews for the manga, Tink goes to a world filled with female versions of the Warriors, Ninja and Samurai. Adell quickly points out that Disgaea 2 didn't have Female Samurai, and the preview ends with female versions of the Gunner and Heavy Knight. Disgaea 2's remake added the Female Samurai back in, with Female Gunners appearing in Disgaea 3 and female Heavy Knights making their debut in Disgaea Dimension 2.
  • When Rozalin is snarking at Adell, she asks if he's so sure of himself since his level is over 100,000,000. The current highest level cap, as of Disgaea 6, is 99,999,999, one level shy of it.
• Ho Yay: "The Dark Hero I fell in love with is back." Uh, if you say so, Mr. Director guy...
  • There's also the fact that he constantly addresses Axel as "Axel darling".
• Jerkass Woobie: Axel might not be the nicest guy in the world, but it's hard not feel bad for him when he's struggling just to get by, especially when we see has family to support.
  • The real Zenon is a paranoid murderer who will kill anyone she meets, even if they don't show any hostility. But in the Good Ending she states that everyone she has ever trusted has betrayed her. Between the constant glory seeking challengers, her friends and servants betraying her, she is implied to have lifed a life where everything in the universe she meets is trying to kill her. It's easy to see why she's so paranoid.
• Memetic Mutation: "That's my style!" It's such an infectious Catchphrase that whenever Adell is brought up in conversation, you can expect someone to say it.
• Moe:
  • Yukimaru is one of the cutest ninja in existence, zam.
  • Pleinair by token of gaining her memetic Cute Mute status. She only says one word in the entire game.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Adell killing and eating his siblings in the worst ending. Though to be fair, at that point in time he's possessed by Zenon.
  • Fake Zenon crossed it when he destroyed the Snow Clan village just to take Rozalin and brainwash her.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The worst ending, in part because you do NOT expect this sort of thing out of this series. In summary, Adell is unable to talk Zenon down and is forced to kill her. Zenon's spirit then leaves Rozalin's body to possess him, causing him to kill his adopted siblings while they beg for mercy. As an added bonus, if you're playing with the JP voice track, you get treated to the disturbingly realistic sounds of Zenon!Adell gruesomely tearing their bodies apart and eating them.
  • Adell's nightmare in the manga. He appears as a child surrounded by zombie-like creatures with no eye sockets who are supposed to represent the altered humans in Veldime. These creatures all lunge at him and try to strangle him to death, his family being amongst them.
• Obvious Beta: Dark Hero Days's DLC was released with so many crippling bugs and glitches that they had to take it down from PSN so they could fix them... and it still had several glitches! On Play Station Vita, the DLC will never work, failing to verify.
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • At the time his game debuted, many were disappointed that Adell was the Straight Man and more of a classical JRPG hero compared to Laharl. Fans warmed up to him over time as they began to appreciate his Hidden Depths.
  • The Sinner class. Not only did it have an uninspired design and bad aptitudes, but it replaced the Brawler classes from Disgaea: Hour of Darkness as the primary fist-users. The Geo Masters get similar hate for replacing the more popular Scout classes as the Geo Change users.
• The Scrappy: An in-universe example. Just EXISTING is a crime for Tink. Considering how obnoxious he can be (especially when his red personality is dominant), though, it's hard to disagree with the game.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The Dark Court. While the idea of getting rewarded for felonies fits the series' tone and can be amusing the first few times, many felt that the novelty wore off its welcome due to the fact it replaced the statisticians as the main EXP booster. While multiple characters can enter the Dark Court and the Bailiff (the Innocent that determines the level on which the Dark Court can be found) can be transferred onto other items, many felt that it was still unwieldy and cumbersome compared to the more flexible statisticians, which can be easily given to any item the player chooses. This was especially bad in the game's initial release as the maximum felonies that can be displayed is 99 despite the maximum level being 300, forcing players to keep track of the felony levels for each of their characters themselves^note Later releases, starting with Dark Hero Days, fixed this by adding a maximum felony counter on the status screen. The Dark Court doesn't return in later games, which adopts the first game's statisticians.
• Shocking Moments: The worst ending tends to horrify people when they see it. Especially if you have the JP voice track on.
• Sophomore Slump: While no one will argue the gameplay hasn't been improved from the first Disgaea title, general consensus is that the characters and story just aren't as memorable or interesting compared with the Hour of Darkness cast. Some characters like Adel, Rozalin, and Axel have their fair share of fans, but that's about it.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The early chapters of the Manga adaptation focus on the fallout between Etna and Laharl that leads to her involvement in the main story. She faked being upset about Laharl eating a pudding cup she was saving to justify quitting so she could become an Overlord, leading to the majority of his workforce to quit over his refusal to apologize to her. Laharl however doesn't know that and spends most of his on screen time during these chapters sitting in an empty throne room mindlessly playing games, watching TV and eating snacks in an obvious depression with only Flonne as company. It's made explicitly clear that he misses Etna but can't suck up his pride to apologize.
  • Another from the Manga is Adell's recollection of the beginning of Zenon's curse and his parents becoming Demons. His mother is shown as a more manic version of her usual self, but his father appears as an unrecognizable jet black monster with a terrifying Slasher Smile as they both attack him, hidden from the reader's perception by a shot of a shredded teddy bear covered in blood. The very next panel shows them in their more recognizable states crying Tears of Remorse and embracing Adell in grief over what their transformation made them do. To make matters worse, Adell is a young child during this sequence. One has to wonder what would've happened to him if he actually had been a human.
• That One Sidequest: Finding and defeating all the pirates is a giant pain in the ass Luck-Based Mission as it is, but the Ambling Pirates just seem to love appearing significantly more often than any other. And his level is eight times higher than the floor, making him frustrating to deal with if you're not going through a low level item even though he's alone. The Jolly Pirates are almost as annoying as said Ambling Pirate for precisely the opposite reason: They'll either appear in the first few tries or it'll take eighty different Item World trips to possibly spawn one. Good luck.
• Vindicated by History: The game's premise, following a classically righteous hero in his quest to topple a classically despicable villain, was divisive among fans when it first released, with many rejecting the Lighter and Softer tone and comparatively more vanilla story. The new cast also caused an uproar; as far as some people were concerned, Adell was not Laharl. While the original game is still generally accepted as having the stronger characters and story, Disgaea 2 is much more appreciated in the fandom than it used to be, especially for its hero and heroine's relationship.
• Woolseyism:
  • Though many know him as Axel, it was actually a change made by NISA as his original name was Akutare. Some sources, including the credits at the end of the Japanese version of Disgaea 2, romanize it as Octalley.
  • Anything related to "Beauty Queen" Etna. Her title in the Japanese version is "Majin/Demon God/Demon Lord". A considerable amount of dialogue was added to make fun of the change, including the infamous line where she claims to have hacked her title.
  • Prism Rangers: "We are delivering justice... Even when no one asks us to." The second part of this phrase is US-exclusive.
    • Speaking of the Prism Rangers, in the original Japanese version Prism Orange speaks like a stereotypical Japanophile character in an anime, speaking Japanese with a distinct foreign accent. The American version inverts this by having him speaking Engrish phrases with an Asian accent.
  • "You have friends that care about you...and Etna." In fact, most of the jokes in the game were added in the English version.
  • The Kurtis clones were given a voice and speaking manner that parodies William Shatner.

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