Dark Cloud

A stunning visual banquet, masterfully blending all the necessary ingredients for a cracking fantasy RPG. We're not likely to see many better PS2 titles this year.

While it can be tough at some points and a bit difficult to master everything in the first hour, it’s a great gaming experience and besides, that genie Ruby is kinda cute.

Pays homage to RPGs past while establishing its own unique identity. [Feb 2003, p.92]

While the task of rebuilding the village is fantastically addictive, the repetitive gameplay is a bore.

There is about 30 hours of play contained within Dark Cloud, but the title does not contain the type of epic storyline needed to drive the player through those hours.

It has buried within other commonplace RPG elements the most innovative approach to game storytelling I have seen in years.

If you have the patience to endure all that dungeon crawling, and a bothersome camera, there's a very addicting game underneath. Don't expect a Final Fantasy caliber story-line, or Zelda-esque adventure gameplay.

spoilers alert : THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVER!!!!! plot = 10: the game is about a boy you play as called toan running around saving and rebuilding villgaes that a dark genie destroyed. this game combines so may ideas that its like a japanese version of sims rpg action and adventure with some dungeons too. the story = 10: in the first village you go into the dungeon to battle monsters on each floor and on each of these floors you have specila orbs that you once opened contains pieces to building the village and on this dungeon there is a back room. when you get some pieces you go back to village to rebuild the village. thers shops you can buy items from and the best part for me is how each new village and dungeon introduce entirelly new items. music = 10: this has the most amazing music sound track ever spilers alert characters: toan = the main character you play as on the first village called norune village xiao (pronounced chao) = a cat girl on ceratin floor in the the first dungeon. gorro = once you get to the 2nd village this guy you unlock ruby = a girl you get on 3rd village (if you dont count brown boo or what ever its called) ungaga = mascka lacka osmond = the sun and moon temples fun fact = seda was the 6th main character intil they introduced osmond adventure 10: dungeons are repetitive but wih new villages items people and content and monsters and a new boss every time keeps it intesting and i like how each village has some small quests norune = cat girl and dran matataki = gorros father queens = ruby and la saia the boss ans so on graphics 9.5: not the best but very good. nobody can disagree that looking at graphics dark cloud graphics are far superier to gta sa (look at the slowness when cj gets blown up its like 20 frames being rendered at 3x teh normal speed) interactivity 9.9: the only thing stoping from getting 10 is no jump button danger 10: lots of boses and monsters to deal with whilst trying to not break weapons colours = 10 amazing variety

reviews based around those years when it got released and how it felt and remembered

A decent game with procedurally generated dungeons. Mostly pretty straightforward. Though I consider the sequel MUCH better, this game does add context to that game. So if you already played DC2, this might be up your alley. Try that one first. The biggest problem with this game is that your weapons are destroyed if they run out of weapon health points (WHP). DESTROYED. That means that if you've been building up a weapon for hours and randomly come across an enemy that makes your WHP drain faster, you're probably going to reset your game in order to not lose the thing you've been building up for hours. I must've reset the game at least 20 times in the first chapter just because I ran into a dragon or rock monster that drains like half of my weapons HP. IT'S SO ANNOYING. And it definitely makes the game feel more repetitive than it already is. Aside from that, the main character seems to only exist to look surprised. The other characters are pretty interesting, but could still be fleshed out more. The story works well enough. The soundtrack is mostly pretty decent. Controls function well enough. Nothing too complicated or clunky. Not a bad game. The set-up is kind of addicting, but it can get frustrating. A lot of aspects of this game are WAY better in the sequel, though.

Dark Cloud is a game I had been curious about for decades, but finally playing it now really highlights how much of a product of its time it is. Antiquated systems like limited inventory and weapon durability add constant friction, and the overall experience feels closer to a late PS1 title than a true PS2 showcase. While the dungeon crawl and town-building loop is interesting at first, it quickly becomes repetitive, with uninspired environments, recycled enemies, and little reason to engage with most of the cast. I can see how this laid groundwork for Level-5s later successes, but playing it today was more of a historical curiosity than an enjoyable JRPG.

Although the georama feature is incredibly fun and interesting, the vast majority of the game is dull-as-dishwater dungeon-crawling. The worst part, possibly, is the weapon degradation system. They are not the first nor the last game that utilizies this feature, however, it is so extreme in this game that you will frequently break two or three weapons within the space of ONE dungeon (which take about ~6-10 minutes each). It becomes incredibly frustrating. If you're looking for the best 'menu simulator', this is for you. Otherwise save your bucks for basically any other RPG.