by Will Greenwald
NIS America is climbing out of its Disgaea rut with the bizarrely-named Z.H.P. Unlosing Ranger Vs. Darkdeath Evilman
While Z.H.P. uses the same engine as Disgaea, it’s not a turn-based strategy game. In fact, you only control one character, the titular Unlosing Ranger. No, Z.H.P. is a Roguelike game in Disgaea’s clothing, a turn-based dungeon crawler in the tradition of Nethack, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Shiren the Wanderer, and Izuna the Unemployed Ninja. Instead of raising an army of different soldiers and monsters, you have to run nearly solo through almost bottomless dungeons, relying on stat grinding, strategy, and blind luck to survive.
A monstrous villain named Darkdeath Evilman is menacing the city/Japan/the world, and since the original Unlosing Ranger has been hit by a car, you need to put on his sentai duds and fight evil in his place! This results in you getting your ass kicked so badly you end up on the other side of the solar system, on Bizarro Earth. It’s no Makai Wars Netherworld, but it is a surreal and demonic place full of monsters and demons, all who serve as counterparts to people on Earth. Since you’re too weak to face Darkdeath Evilman, you have to train on Bizarro Earth, helping out these wayward monsters and, in doing so, improve Earth as well. In a strange and thoroughly NIS twist, the entire game is essentially a training simulation/tutorial, all to beat a single final boss.
Each chapter gives you a different, multi-leveled dungeon to explore. These dungeons are randomly generated, but they all share the same gimmicks depending on the level; some dungeons are filled with lava that can hurt you, some require you to hold onto balloons and float between platforms, some need you to tread carefully over rickety mine cart tracks, and some randomly shift around every few steps. There’s a great amount of variety.
If you’ve played a Mystery Dungeon game, you can grasp Z.H.P.’s mechanics. Everything is turn-based; each step lets you and every monster around you move, and you need to plan ahead to avoid getting surrounded, and to best attack enemies. You can perform basic attacks with your equipped weapon, or expend a great deal of stamina to perform a variety of special attacks based on your equipment. Equipment is extremely varied, ranging from swords to guns to different hats to tank treads to wings to cat tails, and they all change how your character looks.
Unfortunately, you’re going to have a hard time keeping those items, and any levels you accumulate. One of Z.H.P.’s most bizarre systems is its constant deaths and the need to build yourself up from scratch over and over. Whenever you die in a dungeon, your level resets to 1 and you lose all of your items. You can keep the items you picked up if you safely leave a dungeon, but your level still resets to 1. However, each level you gain in the dungeons contributes to your “total level” rating, which gives you stat bonuses and slowly, but surely, makes you stronger. These stat bonuses can be augmented by turning the items you get out of the dungeons into chips you implant into your body to get even more stat boosts. Combined with a very equipment-intensive stat and skill system and a ridiculous level of micromanagement, and you have a game that tons of JRPG fans will love, and tons more gamers will totally hate. It’s wheels within wheels of grinding, all tempered by a ton of opportunities to squeeze every last stat point from your inventory.
You can also customize your “headquarters” by setting up facilities like a blacksmith’s office, a trucker’s office, a doctor’s office, and even a home complete with a Prinny wife. Each facility gives you benefits in the dungeons; the home lets you get a stamina-replenishing meal from your Prinny wife, the truckers can set up a mobile base at a designated spot in the dungeon so you can repair your equipment and even leave with all your goods before beating the level if necessary, the doctor’s office performs the aforementioned cybernetic implants, and so on. It’s yet another level of customization that gives you control over your dungeon exploration.
It wouldn’t be an NIS game without a ridiculous number of optional dungeons, and Z.H.P. fulfills that requirement in spades. You can find special cards in the dungeons that unlock different themed dungeons named after anime, manga, and Japanese novels. These special dungeons have their own unique characteristics, and can provide plenty of powerful and rare equipment. Each dungeon you beat gives you a new costume (under all your equipment), based on the anime/manga/novel it’s named after, and there are dozens of these dungeons. Of course, there are also nearly bottomless, randomly generated, randomly-themed training dungeons for general grinding purposes, as well.
Z.H.P.: Unlosing Ranger Vs. Darkdeath Evilman is a great game, for those in the narrow audience to which the genre itself appeals. Its grinding, its random levels, its unforgiving difficulty, it’s all like crack to NIS America fans, turn-based JRPG fans, and most importantly the small group of gamers who love series like Mystery Dungeon and other random, turn-based dungeon crawlers.
