Monsters

Sludge

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Evility

Skills

With any Evility, a Sludge is difficult to kill with physical attacks, but is easily dropped by magic. If you want to use one as a regular member of your crew, your first goal is to find a way to counteract its low elemental resistances, either through Innocents or friendly characters’ Evilities. If you can up its magic resistance via Innocents, Spirit Protection, or Registry Reverse, a Sludge is a virtual tank and makes a great mount for any humanoid you’re trying to protect.

Lantern

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

Bad Trip gives you a lot of trouble throughout the story missions and can be just as powerful in your hands, but both Registry Reverse and Reverse Ailment can potentially be game-changers. Registry Reverse lets you proactively turn a unit’s vulnerabilities into strengths, or vice versa, and Reverse Ailment flips Poison and Depraved into a healing spell and a 30% stat boost. Beyond 
that, the Lantern is a powerful melee attacker, although 
as you might expect from a monster that actually is 
made out of straw, one good hit from a Fire-based 
attack and the Lantern is pie filling.

Mothman

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

The Mothman has respectable offensive stats and inflicts a lot of status ailments with its unique Skills, but even at Rank 6, it’s fragile. Its real value to you is as a mount, as its Move of 6 and Jump of 35 make it the most mobile monster in the game. You can use an equal-level Mothman as a way to compensate for the low Move and Jump of slower units, particularly Magicians or Witches. Its Evilities are all based around improving ailments, which makes the Mothman a good partner for Lanterns, Shamans, or Ninjas.

Golem

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

The Golem’s HP growth is spectacular but his DEF and RES are both lousy, which helps to expedite his Evilities. Since his defensive stats are so low, a Golem will often soak up a lot of damage from opportunistic enemies but survive anyway due to his HP pool. Unless he’s on the verge of death, don’t worry about healing him, as the closer to dead a Golem gets, the harder he hits. If you have the Golem swipe a Zombie’s Predation Evility, you can use the passive regeneration from it to keep the Golem on the verge of death without quite going over.

Spirit

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

The Spirit’s fragile, as one might expect from a talented spellcaster, but it gets such a massive SP pool that it can withstand a startling amount of damage via Astral Body. Using Demon Connect to give it a Witch’s Magic Creation or another Spirit’s Generate Pain can set up a nifty feedback loop that allows the Spirit to face-tank most enemies’ attacks. Another option is to pair it with a Death and use Mind Break and Mind Reaper as a vicious one-two punch, whittling down a tough enemy’s SP pool before delivering a deathblow.

Slumber Cat

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

Taken by itself, the Slumber Cat is the rough monstrous equivalent to a Fight Mistress, with some powerful physical attacks and a handy fire blast via Burning Hairball. The advantage to a Slumber Cat is in her Evilities, as each Aura gives her a flat 50% damage reduction against one commonly encountered type of enemy and lets the Cat take on entire groups of opponents at once.

Prinny

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

One of the weird, hidden ironies of Disgaea D2 is that the Prinny has the best overall Aptitudes of any class in the game. Even at Rank 1, a Prinny has an even spread with only two weak spots, HP and INT, and they don’t care about INT in the least. By the time you reach Rank 6, its Aptitudes and stat growths are on par with or better than most of the unique characters’. Result: a Prinny God in decent equipment rips right through enemies, which is part of why the later stages in Prinny Land are so lethal. It’s almost enough to make you not use Prinnies as improvised grenades throughout most of the game. Almost.

Zombie

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

The basic idea behind a Zombie is that it outlasts the other guy. It’ll never be a spellcaster, but its HP, DEF and RES are solid and all three of its Evilities deal with its recovering HP or SP from dealing damage. A Zombie is a great marathon runner for those long sessions in the lower floors of the Item World. Unfortunately, all its Special Skills run off of its lousy INT, but they inflict Poison.

Gargoyle

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

The Gargoyle’s the slowest character in the game, as one might expect from an animated statue that does not technically have legs. It makes an excellent unit for those occasions when you want to set up a defensive perimeter and murder enemies as they run up to you, as the Stone Statue Evility and its high Aptitude for RES make it very difficult to kill. On any map where you’re called upon to cover any distance at all, the Gargoyle’s better off staying home; even with Turbo Boost, you’ll be wasting a lot of turns just getting it into the fray.

Minotaur

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

The Minotaur pays for some of the highest HP and ATK growth rates in the game with one of the lowest SP Aptitudes and a RES score that’s permanently stuck in the basement. He’ll make mincemeat out of anyone he can reach, but an enemy spellcaster, particularly one that knows Ice spells, has his number from the moment he’s deployed. If you’re going to use a Minotaur, 
use a Lantern or Magic Knight as his running buddy 
and tune up his RES gain at the Demon’s Dojo.

Death

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

As you might expect, using a Death is about triggering its deathblows. It’s sort of the monster equivalent to the Magician and is a glass cannon, but the Mind Reaper and Near Death Reaper Evilities have a lot of really vicious potential. You just have to work a bit to make sure the Death stays alive long enough to realize that potential. Pair it up with a Spirit to take advantage of Mind Break, or equip some high-end Muscles on it so it’s technically below 25% of its maximum HP when you start a fight, thus activating Near Death Reaper.

Living Armor

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

A Living Armor is good at the start of a fight and ends it as one of the most dangerous creatures on the map. It’s a marathon runner and shines on stages where you’ll need to burn through a lot of enemies, like Behind the Star or the Floating Lands.

Counterintuitively, the Living Armor’s unique Skills are all 
INT-based and its Evilities all up its ATK. To get the most of it, you’ll want to use an Emblem rather than a Monster Weapon 
and get the Armor’s HIT from somewhere else.

Succubus

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

Her HP pool is on the low side, but the Succubus is probably the most successful hybrid unit in the game. Monster Mastery lets her get a lot out of Emblems, she learns Fire and Heal spells on her own, and her unique Skills all inflict Deprave as a side effect. The only big drawback is that all of the Succubus’s Evilities depend upon her fighting male units; they either power her up or are at a disadvantage against her. Given how many randomly encountered humanoid enemies are female units, the Succubus’s Evilities won’t apply as often as you might hope they would.

The Shame Evility is interesting, as it reflects 25% of the damage the Succubus takes from a male opponent back at that opponent. This allows you to use up to nine throwaway Succubi against particularly tough male enemies, who will obligingly beat themselves nearly to death. This includes Pringer X and even Baal.

Nekomata

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

Nekomata have some hard-hitting unique Skills and very solid Aptitudes for HP, ATK, and SPD, but there isn’t much they do that Martial Artists and Fight Mistresses don’t do better, and they’re vulnerable to two out of the three types of elemental attacks to boot. Hundred Cat Fist is comedy gold, however, particularly
 if you work it in as the last hit in a Combo Attack, and it does a ton of damage.

Sea Angel

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

You see several Sea Angels in the back half of the story missions who are there entirely to buff themselves and provide the rest of their team with the stat boost from Lovely Song. This is something of a trend with Sea Angels in general, as their niche in your roster is half support magician, half Evility bot. They pack a punch with Ice magic and bring a lot of unique buffs to the party, but even at high levels, they have a serious issue with falling over if an enemy looks at them hard enough.

Happy Song is a free 10% EXP to all units on the map except the Sea Angel herself and Fortune Song is a 20% multiplier to all Mana earned. When you’re on the grind, it’s worth making a couple of Sea Angels with those Evilities just to stand over by the base panel and sing Songs to boost your leveling rate.

Rifle Demon

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

They look pretty cool. That counts for something, right?

Rifle Demons have one of the most overpowered Evilities in the game in Power Shot, which is a flat 75% bonus to their Attack Modifier (see Attack and Damage: The Math. This would be potentially game-breaking if they weren’t a Gun on legs with the drawbacks of a Gun; they can only fire in straight lines and they have a low movement rate. Just the same, however, anything that steps within a Rifle Demon’s line of sight is going to get chewed to bits. A Rifle Demon isn’t 
so much a unit as it is a sentient machine gun turret.

Shark Dragon

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

As long as they don’t get within a country mile of any opponent who knows any Skill having anything at all to do with fire, Shark Dragons are the D2 equivalent of an armored column. At Rank 6, their 155% Aptitudes for ATK and DEF are among the highest in the game, and all of their Evilities are based around shrugging off or being strengthened by Ice and Water-based Skills. Their RES score, on the other hand, is pathetic. All it takes is one opponent with a Fire spell and your Shark Dragon is ready to plate and serve.

Ifrit

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

The Ifrit’s two Achilles’ heels are Wind magic and a surprisingly low HIT. It’s otherwise powerful, with high growths and Aptitudes for HP, ATK, and DEF. As with the Shark Dragon, you can use the Ifrit as-is as a straight brawler, render it immune to enemy Fire spells, or pair it with your own spellcasters to bulk up the Ifrit’s stats by casting Fire spells and Skills. As with the Evil Dragon and Shark Dragon, however, you’ll need to take steps to protect your Ifrit from any magic-users in the area that know Wind spells.

Evil Dragon

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

The last of the “great unless a magic-user’s in the area” monster trifecta, the Evil Dragon is a powerhouse unless somebody who knows Ice magic is around. It shares the same triad of elemental-based Evilities as the Ifrit and Shark Dragon, and its other weak spot is its consistently mediocre SPD. Since SPD is one of its least important stats, the Evil Dragon is probably the best of the three for workaday use. It makes a great mount for your squishy caster types, protecting them from enemies so that they can throw spells from a position of relative safety. It’s even got a slight edge on Move and Jump over the Ifrit and Shark Dragon.

Alraune

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Skills

Evility

All three of the Alraune’s Evilities are powerful defensive tools, to the point where it’s worth grinding Likability with one of them just to transfer Sweet Aroma to your other characters. Sweet Aroma is one of only a few passive healing abilities in the game and it’s based on a character’s maximum HP, so it never becomes obsolete due to gear or level. In the endgame, you can park a few characters with Sweet Aroma next to each other and watch them regenerate billions of HP for free. Earlier in the game, Detox Aroma can be a lifesaver on stages with multiple enemies that inflict ailments, such as half the maps in Episode 6.