Welcome to the armies of Overlord Laharl, lunch meat. Your job from now on—your only job—is to show up when we call you and kill whoever we point you at. This may include other demons from the Netherworld, the angelic forces of Celestia, the fiercest monsters ever spat out by any of a dozen different dimensions, or giant demon warlords from the far side of reality. Whatever the opposition, we expect you to fight and probably die. More than once. Repeatedly, really. Sometimes just because we think it would be funny. (Mostly talking to you here, Prinnies.)
Most of Disgaea D2 takes place on the battlefield, where you’ll need to deploy your units strategically and carefully if you intend to survive. This is not a game that’s shy about handing out the tutorial tips, and you can find a lot of decent information just by reading the help menus, but there’s a lot to keep straight. That’s what this chapter’s for.
Deployment
To win a battle, the first thing you have to do is show up.
When you start a stage, none of your characters are initially in play. To bring out your forces, target your base panel and push the X button. From there, you can deploy up to ten units in any combination you like.
If one of your units is killed in action, you cannot replace them with another one from your bench. Suffering a fatality also reduces the hard cap on your active characters. If you lose a total of ten units in a single battle, it’s game over. You’ll be returned to Laharl’s Castle, where the Netherworld Hospital will dutifully patch you up.
Should you decide to pull a character out of play for whatever reason, returning one of your units to the base panel removes it from the fight. You can immediately resummon it to finish out its action, or replace it with a fresh character from your roster. Enemies cannot move through your base panel, although if you throw one onto it, you have a chance of capturing them.