Demon Connect

To be fair, the only person who uses the term “Demon Connect” is Flonne, because she is a dork. Everyone else refers to this system as “Likability.”

Disgaea D2 tracks your characters’ relationships with each other over the course of the game. Two characters who constantly work together will develop a lasting bond that, in turn, will influence the chances that they’ll act to support one another in the field.

Likability is shown on the Status screen as pink hearts. At zero hearts, the characters hate each other; at five hearts, it’s love.

The hearts represent a hidden 255-point scale that governs the characters’ affection for each other. Every time the characters take an action that directly affects each other, they gain or lose points on that scale.

The Benefits of Likability

Each heart on the status screen adds a flat percentage to the chance that certain cooperative actions will occur. This includes Team-Up Attacks, Cover Attacks, and Protect Actions. It also changes up what your characters will say if you talk to them at the Castle; at zero hearts they’re barely restraining their hostility, but as your Likability improves, so does their attitude.

Most importantly, if two characters are at maximum Likability with each other, this opens up the option for one of them to propose the expensive I Wanna Steal Their Evility bill in the Dark Assembly. For 100,000 Mana, you can take away one character’s Evility and give it to another. This opens up a number of useful and powerful combinations, and when you’re tweaking your roster out for the toughest battles in the Post-Game, it can be an unbeatable edge. It’ll be a long time before you can really get some use out of it, though, so check out the Post-Game section for more discussion thereof.

Gaining Likability

As noted above, Likability is a relationship that’s specifically between two characters. If you want to generate more Likability points between two of your units, you need to take specific actions with them.

This is a slow process, as you can see below. Unless you go well out of your way to build Likability, you’re likely to end the main campaign with most characters having one- and two-heart relationships.

At Laharl’s Castle

To generate Likability points in the Castle with any character besides Laharl, you’ll need to change your main character at the Dark Assembly. This does not require you to call the Senate to order, although it does cost a small amount of Mana, and the option is only available after you’ve visited the Item World at the start of Episode 3. After that, you can walk around the Castle as whatever character you pick and slowly gain Likability points by talking to the rest of your crew.

These actions can generate Likability only once, but they reset every time you clear a stage in the main campaign or the Post-Game. Returning to the Castle after a jaunt through the Item World or after revisiting a story level that you’ve already beaten will not let you continue to farm Likability with your roster.

In the Post-Game, this changes, and you can gain Likability after successfully clearing any stage in the Item World or elsewhere.

• Talk to the character at Laharl’s Castle: +1
• Let the character follow you around Laharl’s 
Castle: +1 upon returning from a battle

In the field

• Use Heal or support spells on the character*: +1
• Participate in a Team-Up or Combo Attack with the character: +1
• Participate in a tower attack with the character: +1
• End a turn standing in the square next to the character: +1
• Use a Protect Action on the character: +1
• Attack or use an offensive skill while riding the character (monsters only): +1
• Pass the I Wanna Be Friends bill**: +50
• Answer the Counselor’s question correctly on a certain bonus island in the Item World: +50
• Sign up for Love Potion Practice***: +20% to 80% to Likability gains

A character with an apprentice also receives an additional +1 Likability with his or her apprentice any time Likability is generated between them.

* It doesn’t matter whether the Heal spell actually restores lost HP or if the buff spell is actually effective. Simply taking the action is enough to generate Likability.

** Only available in the Post-Game.

*** Unlocked after clearing the Final Episode.

Losing Likability

If you decide you want two members of your team to be enemies, it’s pretty simple. It’s faster to lose friends to make them, and you can do this in a hurry by the direct application of violence.

• Use Demon Buns on the character*: -1
• Attack the character: -1**
• Deploy one character in a battle, but not the other: -1
• Kill the character: -50
• Pass the I Wanna Be Enemies bill***: -50
• Reincarnate: -50 to -90

* You can use Demon Buns on your characters all day from the Items menu if you want and it won’t affect Likability. If one character uses a Bun on another in mid-battle, however, it’ll cause a Likability hit.

** Stealing Hand does not count as an attack for the purposes of Likability loss.

*** Only available in the Post-Game.

Bribes

It’s possible, when you propose a bill, that one or more of your characters may end up as Senators in the Dark Assembly. They’re usually inclined to vote the way you want them to, but they’ll cast a ballot just like anyone else and that means they’re just as susceptible to bribery.

What the character wants as a bribe is randomly determined, and the same rules apply to bribing them as apply to computer-controlled Senators. The quality of your bribe will also cause a shift in Likability between the character who proposed the bill and the character who’s voting on it:

• Does not want: -3
• Not interested: -2
• Slightly interested: +1
• Interested: +3
• Must have!: +6

In the event you try to pass a bill by force, your characters will fight against you like any other Senator would, but you still incur the same Likability penalties for fighting or killing them.

Grinding Likability

It’s not a bad idea to make sure that your characters have at least a healthy respect for each other, to up the chances that they’ll collaborate on Team-Up and Cover Attacks and save each other with Protect Actions. To that end, if you decide to “grind” Likability, there are a couple of ways to do so.

The fastest is obviously to pass the I Wanna Be Friends bill in the Post-Game, but that costs 10,000 Mana for the proposal, plus whatever you end up having to spend or use up on bribes in the Dark Assembly, and only increases Likability by one heart per bill. If you’ve got the resources to burn, though, this will do the trick.

A slower and cheaper method of grinding Likability is to take your two prospective BFFs into a stage somewhere, ideally one where they aren’t in any real danger from the monsters. (Battle Basics 2 in Episode 1 is great for this, since the two Mothmen in the back won’t take any action against you until you move up toward them.) Drop your characters on adjacent panels and cast buff or Heal spells back and forth between the two units, thus igniting a friendship that will last a lifetime. For extra Likability gains, have one unit apprenticed to the other before you start. This will give you a total of 6 Likability points per turn before any modifications, such as from certain Evilities (for example Dark Breeder) or Love Potion Practice.

If you’re going after 100% completion, getting 10 characters to maximum Likability at the same time unlocks the Buried by Rocks at Night Trophy. We have no idea what that Trophy’s name means.