Customer Reviews

Dark Cloud

5 star:		(101)
4 star:		(66)
3 star:		(24)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(33)

 

 

I'm a huge Zelda fan, and was looking for something similar on the PS2. Dark Cloud combines a very Link-like character with dungeon crawl combat, quest solving, and mini games too.

The main thrust of the game is that you're trying to rebuild a series of homes destroyed by the Evil Enemy. To do so, you go slogging through nearby dungeons, finding home-bits like beds, lamps and so on, on your adventures. When you bring them back to town, you have to figure out which items to where to please the people. In addition, the houses themselves have to be placed so that the people are happy. Some people want to live near a stream, some want to have morning sun in certain windows, and so on.

Your weapons can be customized as you go, and need to be maintained. This gives you a bit of RPG-like control over your life, more in fact than most Zelda games provide to you.

In addition, there are some fun mini-games which help break up the dungeon crawling, and give you a bit of variety.

The game's provides much longer gameplay time (usually several weeks) than many other PS games on the market, meaning it's a good value for the price. Perhaps the only downsides are the graphics, which aren't top-notch, and the dungeon crawling being a bit tedious after several hours. Still, it's a good, fun game to play. Grab one for your PS library!

Whatever the people who gave this game 3 stars or less, TOTALLY IGNORE THEM! It's not necessarily their fault,though, for they have only read the Japanese reviews. The people who made this game didn't have time to include all of the details that they wanted to, in the Japanese version, because they had to make a deadline. But since the U.S. release wasn't for 6 more months, they added a lot more to this game. Such as: 35 additional weapons, nine new items, 18 new monsters, two new bosses, an additional form for the last boss, one new duel/event battle, 11 new fish for the fishing minigame, a revised lock-on targeting system, a new chest quiz character that offers you a choice between items, mystery circles that can help or harm your character, new expanded combo attacks for Toan and Ungaga, enhanced enemy AI, an enhanced weapon system, a bonus 100 floor dungeon called Demon Shaft, and lots of other minor changes. How do i know all this? Cause i have a subscription to the sweeeeetest PS2 mag out there, O.P.M.(Official U.S. Playstation Magazine)! Anyway, what's not to like about fighting through dungeons to collect Atla pieces which you use to build villages any way you want to? And who cares if the main character has a hat that looks like a turban with tube socks stapled to the back? There are 5 other playable characters in the game. I don't know about you, but I AM SO BUYING THIS GAME!

To look at this game, your first impression might be to compare Dark Cloud to the Zelda series. You would not be far off the mark in doing so. Fans of the Nintendo series will likely feel right at home in this dungeon crawling environment.

It also harkens back to the days of Actraiser, a game where you fought to reclaim lands and then build them using your magic. Don't be fooled, the premises may be form other games, but DC is great in its own right.

It is Toan's task to rebuild his world from pieces called Atla, found stashed away in various levels of the dungeons you encounter. Enter the dungeons, tackle the flow of monsters, and reclaim the pieces you need to restore your world, but don't run out of water, and don't let your weapon break.

The combat system is a bit awkward, but nothing that can't be dealt with. The realtime system, weapons damage/upgrade system, and the water system are all interesting concepts. At points the can be tiring (The heroes getting tirsty every few minutes...Take a drink before you enter the dungeon or something...), but also fun concepts.

Wepaons can be upgraded and merged, strengthening in the process, provided you don't break them in combat first. The in-game tutorial is boring and unskippable, which is annoying to those of us who actually read the manual and know what to do.

Do not let minor flaws distract you, this is a fun game, perhaaps one of the best I've played in the RPG genre

We've all heard it: previews of Dark Cloud by people and magazines hinting at the possibility of it being the "Zelda killer." But come on! Did anybody really believe that? Is that even possible? Maybe (a BIG maybe) Square or Rare could make such a game, but Sony? Not a chance! And it's true, Dark Cloud isn't even close to Zelda. But wait, don't think that it's a bad game; in fact, it's the best RPG for the PlayStation 2 so far.

I'll tell you right off not to expect much out of this game except for gameplay. Graphics are just average for what the PS2 can create, and there are no lighting effects whatsoever. Sure, you have a good looking shadow in the shape of your character, but the positions of torches and other external lights have no effect on its movement. Music, too, is average and sounds okay; it's just bad when the music doesn't quite fit the situation. For instance: early on, your village is being destroyed to the accompaniment of music that almost seems heroic or cheerful. Finally, the game has a simple and boring story with characters that are only briefly developed and dialogues hampered by careless translation. One minute you think her name's Gina, and the next minute someone calls her Xena (warrior princess?).

Now with all the bad out of the way, let's go on to the good--the gameplay. Okay, this is going to sound bad: Dark Cloud is about 90% dungeon-crawling. But hey! so was Vagrant Story, and it was phenomenal. Okay, so it also had a great story to back it up, but hear me out. Your mission is to travel through deep dungeons looking for "Atlas" which hold parts of destroyed villages that you get to recreate. I'll get to the village creation part shortly. In the dungeons you'll find a good variety of monsters to do battle with, and each time you hit a monster your weapon will take damage. If it takes too much damage, make sure to repair it with some "repair powder" or it will break, and then you have lost it for good. Also you'll want to keep an eye on your thirst gauge. If you don't use an item to quench your thirst or find a pool of water before your thirst meter empties, you'll start losing health (if you've ever played a Dungeon Explorer, you'll recognize this as similar to the food element that game imposed upon its players). These two things make the game kind of addictive, like watering your crops and taking care of your cows in Harvest Moon.

Similarly to Vagrant Story, you get to customize your weapons. You'll get items in your quest such as "Attack +1" or "Endurance +3" that you can put on your weapon to increase its attributes (attack, of course, determines how much damage the weapon inflicts, and endurance determines how much damage it takes each time it hits an enemy). The five elements--fire, ice, wind, thunder, and holy--can also be found and attached to a weapon to increase its elemental strength. Ice-based enemies are weak against fire weapons, undead are weak against holy weapons, etc. Other items such as "Beast Buster" and "Stone Breaker" will make the weapon more powerful against ordinary beasts and stone or rock enemies respectively. After so many battles, weapons will be able to upgrade and absorb any items attached to them, giving you the option to put items on them yet again and power them up even further until the next upgrade. So, if I want the ultimate weapon against stone enemies, I could keep putting on "Stone Breakers" and maybe slip in an "Endurance +3" every now and then (because stone enemies really damage your weapons). And let's say I wanted to make another one of my weapons super against the undead; I could keep giving it "Holy"...but I don't have any more! Time to do some treasure-hunting!

Exploring for treasure in the game is really fun thanks to Dark Cloud's random dungeons. Even if you revisit a floor of a dungeon that you have already cleared, its layout will be random, and all new treasure chests will have regenerated. If you're lucky, you may even be able to visit "Back Floors" of dungeons, where rarer treasures await but greater enemies lurk.

Remember those "Atlas" I spoke of? Well, in each one you'll find a piece of a destroyed village such as a house, river, or any of several miscellaneous objects that go inside the houses. With these pieces you can start to rebuild a village any way you want it...well, kind of. You are restricted somewhat by what the villagers want. Some like the smell of food, so you put them near the house of a good cook; others enjoy fishing, so you put them next to water; others just don't like a person, so you keep them away. But if you please the villagers, you'll often get a reward. I found it kind of neat to decorate the villages, and it gives a nice break from all the dungeon-crawling; the restrictions imposed by the villagers' requests even give a kind of puzzle element to the game.

Zelda is still king of Action-RPGs, but for now Dark Cloud is the PS2's king of the genre. I wasn't expecting a Zelda when I purchased Dark Cloud, so I wasn't disappointed, but if that's what you expected, you probably won't be too happy. Give it a chance, though, and its addictive gameplay will hook you.

I awaited this game for months! When I finally got it, I tore it open read the instruction book and was devistated! The magic system looked very complicated and other elements--like needing water, food and keeping weapons repaired--made me think that this game would be too complicated to be really enjoyed. I WAS WRONG! Once you start to play, you are lost in a three dimensional world of your own making. The graphics make you wish that Zelda had lived up to it's potential. This game is suited to all ages and playable for hours, especially if you have kids like myself. Dark Cloud is a cross between games. Like SimCity in that you can build your own world, that is, arrange elements (houses and rivers and trees and such) and collect items that affect the outcome of the story. This is well combined with the combat style found in Onimusha and magic systems as intuative as those in the better Final Fantasy installments. The camera angles can be tricky at first, but soon become second nature. The same with keeping your weapons upgraded and repaired. Everything blends with breathtaking imagery and FULL and CONTROLLABLE panoramic view.

I've been out on the loop when it comes to console gaming for nearly a decade. When I finally got back into the swing of things with the purchase of a PS2, this game was among the first dozen or so I've thrown into my library.

It was a launch release when the PS2 first came out, so I wasn't expecting much in terms of graphics, but who cares. This is a suprisingly fun little dungeon romp. Dark Cloud reminds me a bit of the old SNES games like "ActRaiser" I used to rent and play a lot. Not unlike "ActRaiser", the thing that sets this game apart from most other PS2 adventure and RPG games, and just other action / RPG games in general, is that this is sort of like two games in one. You must first dive head-first into the dungeon, clearing away monsters and gathering parts of the town that were sealed in spheres called "Atla" which are scatterd throughout the dungeon's floors. Battles are in real-time, making this more of an action-RPG or adventure akin to the popular 'Zelda' series. Upon exiting the dungeon then, you can switch to the so-called 'Georama' mode, where you can get as creative as you wish, placing down buildings, trees, bodies of water, and roads (a-la 'SimCity"), so long as you meet NPCs' requests. Example: In Norune Village, your (Toan's) mother wants you to place your house in such a way that the rising sun can be seen through the window. Meet requests such as this, and you'll aquire needed items to continue your journey.

Other reviewers have probably already elaborated on the story end of the game, so I'm just going to run down technical bits:

- Graphics -

Again, as stated, this was a launch release, so these are first-generation PS2 models here. Nothing spectacular to write home about, but for what it is, and when it was released, Dark Cloud does offer a fair amount of detail. Toan's (your main character in the game, I'm using default names) clothes move as you move...little details like that, along with the (to my eyes), realistic-looking water and waterfalls that go with them. Because the dungeons are randomly generated maps that use the same graphic sets, things can get a little redundant here, especially for longer dungeons, but at least they keep to the themes presented. Caves look like caves, castles look like castles, and so on.

- Play Control -

Controlling your character is fluid. Tilt the stick a little, Toan walks. Tilt it all the way, and he runs. it took me a bit of time to get used to the fighting mechanics, but after a few battles, it comes easier to you. The annoying part is the camera, which I wish had a little more control especially when locked onto an enemy. When I lock onto an enemy and I am attacking, sometims the view swings around to where I can't even see my playable character, forcing me to 'unlock' from the enemy, and swing the view back around. This can make boss battles insanely difficult. "Georama" mode is explained in the game itself, though it's just simple 'point, pick up and drop' simplicity here.

- Sound -

There's no voiceover work here, but then again, not many PS2 games that came out in the first wave of releases at least up until Final Fantasy 10, had voiceacting in them. The only things hinting at a characters 'voice' would be the grunts or squeals you hear when attacking enemies, or being hit. Ambient noises sound like they should....running waterfalls, torches along the walls, and out in the towns you hear the wind, the birds, and (at night) crickets chirping. Other sounds (the clashing of swords, bombs blowing up, etc) are your standard fare.

- Music -

A few early PS2 games brought over MIDI sequencing techniques used in older (pre- Year 2000) PC games, the SNES, and PSOne. Most, if not all games today use CD (also known as "RedBook") audio, or in the case of most PS2 games now, DVD-Audio. Dark Cloud is one of the few that used an 'old-school' approach to the music, which while the indidual songs can get a little repetitive, there are some enjoyable tracks in here.

- FMV's -

This is sort of a new category for me. Old-school RPGs didn't have the technology avaliable until the PSOne, to go beyond just various sprite movements and LOTS of text to lay out the story. Final Fantasy VII, as we all know, broke that barrier and brought some of the first use of Full-Motion Video (FMV) intertwined into the overall game story. It seems no RPG developers have looked back since.

The same here is true for Dark Cloud. The minute I booted up the game, chose my options, and hit "Start", I was Wow'ed by what I saw. Though voice acting would have made things flow better like how they do in FF 10 or other-like games, for a first-gen PS2 release, this isn't bad at all. Fluid movements, cel-shading, and not in Dark Cloud, but rather in other games, bits of anime cutscenes. Technology for FMVs has really taken leaps and bounds in advancement since the mid/late 1990s and it shows even in an older game like this.

- Overall -

Dark Cloud, taking into account when it was released, is a title worth having. It's not the longest of RPGs out there.....you can probably clean house in under 30 hours if you just blaze straight through without getting any extra items other than those you need to complete the game, but length doesn't always make a great game. Shorter games are more concise and quicker paced. The battles and dungeons can get repetitive for some, and they did for me, so that may diminish the 'fun factor' a bit, depending on tastes. Otherwise, this is an overall, very good, and very underrated PS2 title. I recommend it to those getting a (late) head start with the PS2 RPGing experience, or those looking for a little break away from the redundancy of the Final Fantasies and Kingdom Hearts of the RPG world.

RPG's have always been my favorite genre in gaming, and I often gauge how good a system's performance is by the quality of its RPG's (the N64 for example, had two amazing Zelda games, but also had Quest 64 and Aidyn Chronicles, so it's a very subpar machine). Now with Dark Cloud, Sony has created a respectible RPG that may not be perfect, but is addictive and enjoyable enough to tide anyone over until the bigger Square stuff hits, much like what Suikoden did for the PS1.

Dark Cloud has a very dark storyline, hence the name, but it is in general a very lighthearted game that often does not take itself very seriously. The main character is Toan, a person who doesn't speak a word of dialogue throughout the whole game (a strange trend in RPG's from Super Mario RPG to Chrono Cross) and has to first rebuild his home town and then travel the world to save it from the brink of destruction at the hands of the Dark Genie. It's not the best story in the world, but it does an adequate job at framing the action and allowing Dark Cloud to mix so many genres so well.

The Gameplay of Dark Cloud is probably its best feature, and the game's ability to allow a wide variety in the gameplay is a nice way to break up the long hours of dungeon crawling (and they are long, trust me). Anything from taking a break to go fishing and earn otherwise unattainable items to dueling someone else in Parappa/Vib-Ribbon inspired timed button presses will act as a nice diversion from the main story. Plus, the Georama system is truly enjoyable, especially due to the complete lack of load times. The power of the PS2 allows you to plop down a house and immediately walk around within the newly created place without a hint of loading or slowdown. It's a great joy to try and make everyone happy, and the payoff for meeting their demands is almost always more than worth the task of recreating the town.

Now, the biggest complaint I hear about Dark Cloud is the entire dungeon crawling and fighting system. But I tend to disagree, and find the dungeons to be just as enjoyable as all the other parts. While the battle system is a very close match to that of the Zelda 64 games, I wonder why this is indeed a bad thing. The lock-on system that Zelda created is a great thing, and probably the only really good system for a 3D Action RPG. I would much rather have a battle system I have seen before and has proven to be a strong one than to risk creating a new one that would limit the experience. Innovative? No. Solid? Yes. And since so much of Dark Cloud revolves around taking on the deep dungeons and looking for the all important Atla, a solid battle system is very important. Add to this the ability to almost completely customize your weapons (not to the extent of Vagrant Story, but still very deep) and you've got the constant struggle to find new weapons and add ons to try and create the ultimate weapon.

Dark Cloud succeeds entirely because of its depth. Genre melding is a very ambitious and risky proposition (just ask the makers of N64's Hybrid Heaven, that is if they still have jobs in the industry). And Dark Cloud takes enough out of each genre to create an extremely enjoyable and highly addictive game in which the whole is much better than the sum of its parts. This is one of the few PS2 games I have bought so far, and I'm not disappointed in the least.

Just looking at Dark Cloud's cover makes you think of Zelda games. Toan, or whatever you happened to name him, looks remarkably like everyone's favorite little guy, Link. Still, DC, in my opinion, turned out to be remarkably different from the Nintendo 64 editions of Zelda, and I believe this was a good thing.

The only complaint I have is that the dungeon crawling is annoying because of the weapon break addition to the game. That's right, weapons, if used long enough, will break. While this may seem realistic, the quickness with which your weapons wear down in the early stages of the game is absurd. What's worse is that unless you have your original weapon(the one you started the game with) equipped, the weapon that breaks will dissappear altogether. I haven't yet lost a weapon because of this yet, but I know I will be very pissed if it happens.

Dark Cloud's story, while fairly original, is very childish, and a lot of the bad guys look less than frightening. The first boss made me laugh. He was a giant flying dog or pig or something named Dran. It didn't really strike fear in my heart when he flew into the cavern to do battle with me.

While Dark Cloud has many negative aspects, it outweighs them with its positive ones. The city building was a taste of something new and was a lot of fun, especially since after you place a house and people you can go talk to them to get advice on where their house should be and what items are missing from their home. It was a lot of fun to walk around in my newly build town.

I highly reccommend Dark Cloud to anyone with a PS2 who enjoys Action/Adventure RPGs like Zelda and Diablo. It may not live up to the hype, but it succeeds in its own ways.

While there may not be a lot about this game that isn't recognizable, I think that it's the combination of elements that make this a great game. It does follow the examples of many of many other RPG's (Zelda 64 for example) I think that the end result is a fun playable game.

I have about 30 hours on the game so far. There are several small puzzles that were fairly easy to figure out but I enjoyed them more then some of the illogical and almost impossible ones I've seen in other games.

The graphics were quite nice and the movies were nicely made if a bit long (especially in the beginning).

The world creating section is excellent. Searching out parts of a destroyed world and not only recreating it but also making it better is one of the most enjoyable and original aspects of the game.

My favorite part of this game is the dungeons. While the levels in a single dungeon are very similar to each other, I really liked the way the layouts changed every time you entered it and the way that you never knew what you were going to get out of it. The monsters are interesting and I liked the way that you had to figure out which of your characters worked best and with which weapon.

This is a game that anybody can beat if they work long enough - the challenge is in beating it fast. The fun is in creating a world, characters, and weapons to do it. All in all this is a game that can be enjoyed by anyone from the age of 10 up. I really liked it.

Dark Cloud was the first game that our family bought for our PS2 system and everyone in our family plays it and thoroughly enjoys it. This includes the Mom of the house, who has never played any type of gaming system game with us before.

The game is very easy to pick up on. It contains fighting of course, but no mangled body parts or blood, so it's very family friendly in that respect. Somehow though it manages to be challenging and interesting enough to capture the attention of those of us who have been spoiled by the creativity and excitement of Final Fantasy type games.

The dungeons, while admittedly similar, change each time you go through them and offer new opportunities for key items and experience to build up your characters and weapons. The story line is actually kind of cool, requiring you to take sort of a "Sim City" approach to acquiring city pieces and putting them back together.

The final battle was difficult enought to require several attempts (we hate it when they are too easy -- hear that FFIX makers?), and you get the nice bonus of 100 additional levels of play (the Demon Shaft) if you can actually make it through.

All in all, Dark Cloud is a great game and one that any true lover of PS2 RPG's MUST have in their collection. By the way, this is a great game to use to turn others on to the system and the genre.