Those Japanese, eh? They're crazy! Japanese TV, and particularly their idea of a game show, is more than enough to give you that impression, and anyone who's got even a little experience in gaming knows that many Japanese titles redefine the term 'quirky' to say the least. Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories is one such title; while it's a fairly straightforward strategy RPG, its characters, story and - the pinnacle of 'lost in translation' Japanese gaming - dialogue are pretty out there. I imagine this is going to be something of a love it or hate it kind of a game, but personally I'm leaning towards loving it!

You play as Adell, the last human on a planet where everyone has been transformed into demons and monsters by Demon Overlord Zenon. That's not to say that these demons are without any trace of humanity though - indeed, Adell's mother and father, and his brother and sister Taro and Hanako, are a cheery if slightly weird-looking and psychotic bunch. Our story begins with Adell's father attempting to summon Overlord Zenon, so Adell can defeat him and restore his family, and the rest of the planet's population, to their former selves. Fortunately (because at this point our inexperienced Level 1 Adell would be no match whatsoever for the might of Zenon) the spell goes awry and instead it's Zenon's spoiled daughter, Rozalin, who appears. Indignant and outraged that she might be used as a hostage, Adell quickly reassures Rozalin that he is far too noble to do something so low, promising to correct his mistake by returning her to her father so he can confront him personally!

It's at this point that you begin to realise that Disgaea 2's story and characters are inherently daft, with the cheesy voice acting and often bizarre dialogue not helping matters - some will find this fun and charming (like I did), while others will think it's atrocious. As the game progresses, you meet a range of quirky characters, including wannabe celebrity Axel the Dark Hero and his Director, Beauty Queen Etna, Yukimaru (zam!) and Tink, the strange floating French frog (no really, even his dialogue is written with a reedeeculus Franch ak-sant!) who is Queen Rozalin's former aide, transformed during an attack on her palace. There's never a shortage of storyline or quirky dialogue, even if the unfolding story is painfully predictable (Overlord's daughter begins to form bonds with the common folk and sympathise with their plight, while plucky hero falls in love with said daughter and begins to worry about killing her father).

Sticking with the areas that may cause some of you to dislike Disgaea 2, the overall presentation is shockingly basic. Every cut scene is rendered either with Manga-style stills of characters that slide in and out of sight as they talk, or in the 3D isometric game engine, which you could be forgiven for thinking was from the final generation of PSOne games. Final Fantasy XII this ain't. However, as with the other aspects of Disgaea 2 that are lacking in comparison with the competition, the animations are fun and the little cartoony characters are quite endearing. You also get used to the combat animations during battle and begin to want to see the next new move that comes along - with higher level characters able to perform some attacks that actually look quite impressive (at least by this game's standards!) Similarly, the audio aspects will either endear you further or turn you right off - the music is bouncy and fun, but with a relatively small range of themes some will find it grating eventually (not me though!) and the sound effects are unspectacular, while the voice acting as I've already mentioned is cheesy fun. At least most of it is acted though - every cut scene is fully voiced, a big achievement considering how much dialogue there actually is.

Despite its various shortcomings, Disgaea 2 shines where it matters most though - with gameplay so addictive and deep that, if you do find yourself becoming hooked, you could easily spend 100 hours in the game and still not get even close to seeing everything it has to offer. Oh, where to begin?!

Well, let's start with the basics - the gameplay takes place in only two areas, either making preparations in the game hub or on the battlefield itself. Rather than a conventional RPG like Final Fantasy, where exploration and an assault of random battles are the order of the day, there's little in the way of exploration here - you hang around the hub until you're ready to go (opening a few treasure chests that can be easily spotted), then you simply select either the next battle available, or revisit a previous one to boost your characters' experience a little, and off you go. Don't let the apparent simplicity fool you though, because there is an almost endless number of things to do in the hub. You've got your three retailers for starters, where you can purchase weapons, armour and a wide range of items for healing, restoring magic, stealing from enemies, curing ailments, temporarily increasing stats and a whole lot more. There's a huge range of weapons on offer too, with a range of types like gloves, axes, spears, staffs, guns, bows and other weapons for monsters. Yes, you heard me - in an unusual twist, you can actually recruit baddies - any enemy you've defeated can be created and added to your party, and there's a range of armaments to increase their offensive and defensive capabilities.

On the stats front you've got a range of numbers to work with - health and magic maximum to start with, then things like attack and defence, intelligence and resistance (the attack and defence equivalent for magic), hit rate and speed, which determines how far you can travel around the battlefield in any given turn. Many weapons enhance not only your attack but other stats too, and some can reduce them (like a magical item reducing your defence or a heavy weapon decreasing your speed). Thus it's your job to balance your characters' stats as best you can to maximise their strengths and minimise their weaknesses, making the most of the single weapon slot and three defensive item slots.

Not only this, but every single item in the game holds a mission within itself! You can take any item you like and enter it via the Item World, where you trawl through a number of randomly generated dungeons with increasingly powerful enemies to battle as you progress the levels and delve deeper. There are occupants within items too, which bestow the various stat-enhancing abilities of that item, and by meeting with and defeating these occupants, you can then transfer them between items or combine them to enhance that item's power further and make room for new occupants to be moved in. Getting through an Item World can be quick if you just head for the exit each round and focus only on the occupants, or take hours if you set out to defeat every monster on every level, with bonus rooms and rest points coming up every now and then, usually just when you really need them!

This depth continues into the Dark Assembly too, where you can go for a range of purposes. Here you're up against a bunch of very powerful monsters - but you don't fight them (unless you choose to). Instead, they're going to vote on your proposal! Some are for your proposal, some are against it and some are undecided. Some are also drunk and others are asleep! It's your job to either bribe various senators with items they want to sway them to your side, or you can drug senators against you to sleep or get drunk, or wake or sober up senators who are on your side. Once you feel you've got enough support, you can submit your proposal and see if it passes. Proposals include introducing more expensive items into the shops, making new character classes available, increasing or decreasing the level of standard enemies and much, much more - suffice to say, this is another game within itself and to even get a glimpse of everything on offer will take you dozens of hours. You can also accept a subpoena for a crime too, and the more subpoenas you accept (like being too fast or too strong, or even vandalism of property!), the more notorious you become and the more respect you command in the Dark Assembly. Finally there's the all-important hospital, where you pay a reasonable sum to restore your health and magic power to full for your whole party (or selectively if funds are running low).

Once you're ready to head out, the battle takes place on an isometric 3D grid. You take it in turns to move your party around the battlefield, deploying up to ten characters at once and using all or none of them, as you require. There's tremendous depth to the combat system and in the range of options you have at your fingertips. Obviously you can move around, then once you're in range of an enemy for either a physical or magic attack, you can action that attack. However, you don't have to execute it straight away - and moving all your players into position and selecting their attack options, then executing, allows for combo attacks that can rack up those experience points very fast. Points mean prizes, not only in the form of levelling up and unlocking new abilities for your characters, but in goodies given out at the end of each battle too.

There's a range of attack options on offer - you can do a straightforward attack, which is in proximity for a weapon like gloves or an axe, from one square away if you have a spear, or for a reasonable distance with a bow or gun. Magic attacks (and indeed defensive magic like healing and stat enhancement) start off with a small range but increase to nearly the whole map as you level up repeatedly, and you also gain the ability to affect multiple squares of the grid in various patterns, to maximise the damage you can afflict to multiple foes in a single turn. I stuck with the Red Mage assigned to me (rather than adding a Blue and/or Green one as well) and his fire attacks became awesomely powerful, moving from Fire to Mega Fire and then Giga Fire, able to hit over eight squares at once from a great range. I also had my fighter who used a spear (your character builds up an affinity with a certain weapon type so it's best to pick a type and then stick with it), my healer, who is very handy with a bow, and created myself a thief and a couple of monsters a bit further down the line. I'm not sure if there is a limit to the number of characters you can have on hand, but you can develop dozens of them, then deploy the ones that work best against whichever enemy types you're up against.

Movement and placement plays a big role too - if three characters are standing alongside each other, with the middle one next to an enemy, when the middle one attacks there's a good chance of a triple combo involving the other two, for serious damage will often wipe out your enemy in one swoop. Best of all, the two who came in on the combo are still free to move around (if they haven't yet moved this turn) and carry out their own attacks too, or be set to defence mode if you prefer. There are many special attacks that use magic points too, which require you to be a certain distance from the enemy and have certain squares on the grid around you empty. These are the most fun to use and although there is a cost, you can attack and kill multiple foes or deal serious damage with these.

In an unusual move you can also lift and throw characters(!) so you can set up a chain of characters that lift and throw another character from one to the next, in order to get much further on your first turn than you could otherwise, maybe to reach a foe you want to deal with quickly or get in range of a chest you want to attack, to release the goodies within (enemies always prioritise chests so if you don't get them on the first turn, you'll probably miss out).

If all this wasn't enough, some levels also feature geopanels - colour coded, glowing panels that gain certain properties when a glyph is placed upon any one of the coloured geopanels. For example, say there is a blue area and a red area, and on one blue square is a blue glyph and on one red square a red glyph. The red glyph might double the power of the enemy attack and the blue one might increase the defence of every unit by 50%. Clearly you want to be on the blue area and bait the enemies off the red area, right? Wrong! Attacking a glyph causes it to explode and send a chain reaction around every geopanel of that colour, which damages anyone standing on that colour. Attacking the red glyph would neutralise the red squares, but if you threw the blue glyph onto the red squares as well, then attacked it, it would blow up, changing every red square blue in the process, which would in turn destroy the red glyph and send a second shockwave around, dealing double damage to everyone standing in the wrong place. With up to six colours and a range of glyphs (that have effects like altering stats up or down, preventing certain attack types, preventing lifting or even preventing entry), the possibilities for wiping out multiple enemies with a well-placed bunch of glyphs are almost endless, and you'll be enthralled as you attempt to maximise these chances.

Even with all I've written, there is still plenty more to discover - but I've already said enough and I'll leave you to find out the rest for yourself. Lifespan is definitely one of the strongest points of Disgaea 2 and if you find yourself drawn into its intricately crafted world of strategy, you'll spend many, many hours fighting through the lengthy campaign and many hours more in Item Worlds, or creating new characters and levelling them up. Little of this time will be spent waiting around either, as the loading times are very short, lasting for no more than a few seconds here and there. It should also be mentioned that the inventory and menu systems are straightforward and easy to understand, with a wealth of information at your fingertips about any character, friend or foe, that you select, making it easy for you to exploit their strengths and weaknesses accordingly - or you can just ignore all the finer details and plough on through!

Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories is the deepest RPG I've ever played. There's so much going on under the surface, so much to do and find, so many characters to create and train, and so many, many battlefields to conquer, all of which adds up to one of the best value for money games you could ever purchase - that is if you're not put off by the clumsy dialogue, often daft story events and rudimentary presentation, which some will see as charming and others as just plain poor. As I said at the beginning, it's a real love it or hate it affair, but the only way to know which side you'll end up on is to try it and see - and if you're even vaguely interested in RPG and strategy games then you really owe it to yourself to find out!

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).