I really adore the very specific mood that Dark Cloud 2 and a ton of games of this era had: a sort of illustrative, vaguely French, soothing carnivalesque pastoral steampunk anime fantasy vibe... I know that is a LOT of descriptors but it was such a fucking thing I swear!!! Nights / Klonoa 2 / Professor Layton / Final Fantasy IX / Steambot Chronicles / Radiata Stories / Tail Concerto... There is some aesthetic affinity between all of these that feels really meaningful and worthy of a subgenre descriptor by someone more savvy and cogent about the origins of this style than my dumb ass!!!!! You know the vibe: Everything looks ADORABLE but kind of janky/haphazard at the same time and there are accordions and big loaves of bread in random peoples houses near gleaming amber hay fields where a bunch of purple hot air balloons are floating and your messenger-capped protagonist fights with some bulky tool or with something silly like a weaponized jack in the box and there are simultaneously cartoony medieval knights and monacled train conductors running around everywhere and there's definitely a big circus happening somewhere at some point! It's such a lovely storybook way to render a world and serves this wonderful game so well. Intensely overlong if you want to engage with even 30% of its side content (I think my childhood playthrough took me like 160 hours) but in a sweet and welcoming way that never feels burdensome. Maybe a little bit too saccharine to return to something this time-intensive as an adult, but this has good vibes and good fun that I remember fondly.
when you clear a dungeon you get to play golf in it
Undeniably one of the most interactive games for the Ps2.
It's an action and rpg adventure mainly focused on crafting and building.
Fun. This game displays an enormous amount of activities. Most of them are not mandatory, however they can contribute to the main quest by giving useful bonuses.
Soundtrack. One word that comes to mind is balanced. No track felt exciting in any way. As a whole, the music seems designed around nostalgia. The game looks like is set in the past thanks to the soundtrack too. Violins and air instruments are used brillantly and set the mood in any part of the game.
Story. On the surface level, there is not much to say. It really looks like a generic rpg adventure. However, underneath the colourful blanket lies a story that tackles with very interesting themes such as memories and the meaning of daily life. What someone accomplishes in their life, meaningful or not, may end up in something great.
What a joy this was!
It's an action and rpg adventure mainly focused on crafting and building.
Fun. This game displays an enormous amount of activities. Most of them are not mandatory, however they can contribute to the main quest by giving useful bonuses.
Soundtrack. One word that comes to mind is balanced. No track felt exciting in any way. As a whole, the music seems designed around nostalgia. The game looks like is set in the past thanks to the soundtrack too. Violins and air instruments are used brillantly and set the mood in any part of the game.
Story. On the surface level, there is not much to say. It really looks like a generic rpg adventure. However, underneath the colourful blanket lies a story that tackles with very interesting themes such as memories and the meaning of daily life. What someone accomplishes in their life, meaningful or not, may end up in something great.
What a joy this was!
What a delightful game. I’m blown away by the detail in each room, especially considering how old this game is. I’m playing as an adult and I know I would’ve never put this down as a kid. I love the weapons level-up system, the evil clown, the time-travel, everything. Every time I get bored with dungeons, I just remember that whatever happens in the story next is gonna be fucking crazy. You will be consistently surprised.
Deeply flawed yet eminently enjoyable.
Dark Cloud 2 is a game I've had an affinity for for quite a long time, and just recently I played it for the first time in 15 years. The amount of flaws in the game was staggering so I wanted to take moment to briefly recount them.
To start, the inventory system of the game is possibly one of the worst I've ever seen. The player collects so, so many items throughout the adventure in a variety of types. There's quest items, weapons, battle items, healing items, status items, crafting materials, upgrade materials, fishing materials, fish, etc. etc. All of these things co-mingle in the same inventory with no auto-arrangement options. Over the course of the game the inventory balloons to an unusable girth, and manually organizing things becomes a chore.
Crafting is such a fundamental mechanic of the game that a cumbersome inventory system is not only unforgivable (Spoiler alert: I end up forgiving this flaw) but mind-boggling in how the inventory made it out the door looking the way it does.
A second issue with the game is the implementation of the literal world-building mechanic relative to the first game. The Georamas were never too intricate in Dark Cloud 1 (DCX for the PlayStation fans) but they did go a bit further in the various requests of the citizens that the player had to keep in mind when arranging the cities of land. There was also that delightful totem pole puzzle in the desert area.
The city building in Dark Cloud 2, however, is pretty mindless. There's a reason for this: the amount of structures the player can build is largely uncapped. Let's look at an example:
In the volcanic area of the game there are a few buildings that need to be built a certain way. One needs to be elevated a few blocks in height, which entails committing materials to building those elevator blocks and then placing the house on top of it. So I did this, and when it came time to move a particular NPC into the village, I found that he needed a special house with a fence built around it.
In Dark Cloud 1, I'd have a conundrum here. I would need to construct more blocks around the house to allow room for the fence to also be built up a few stories high. However, in Dark Cloud 2, I can just build an entirely separate house on ground level, easily build a fence around it, and move the NPC into it with nobody occupying the higher-up structure.
By removing the cap on structures players can dedicate one house to each "building requirement", where before the very slight difficulty of the building sections came from balancing all of the requirements within the limited number of structures.
There are precisely two attempts to do something interesting with the building: One is a city that has to be built on four plateaus that rise and sink depending on the number of houses on them (???) and thus the player has to equally build on all to create a perfectly flat ground. The other is the final building section of the game that tasks the player with rebuilding a garden to the exact specifications laid out in a few portraits they can find in the nearby dungeon.
While these approach the more thoughtful usage of the building mechanics in the first game, neither is that mentally demanding nor engaging.
One is left thinking why they brought this mechanic back at all. Did Dark Cloud have that much star power that they needed to brand this as a sequel with ham-fisted legacy mechanics instead of just making a new game unburdened by what kids in Blockbuster perceived as "discount Zelda"?
Almost everything to do with the story of Dark Cloud 2 is another misfire. The voice acting ranges from mid to awful, and the awkward load times of the PlayStation 2 ensure that cutscenes never run smoothly. There are frequently awkward pauses as the next line of dialogue loads that produce unintended comedy as characters just stand around in otherwise dire situations.
A significant element of the story is time travel, and Dark Cloud 2 has some of the least thought-out time travel mechanics seen yet in games. There is no attempt to logically think through what time travel would mean in-world insofar as causality and logic. I'm fine engaging a game on its own level when it comes to these things rather than missing the point by nitpicking, but the way time travel is handled in this game is just so illogical that it can be difficult to accept at times for anyone who has engaged with the idea before in any other form.
The rest of the writing, too, is off. It's incredibly juvenile, which is of course fine were the game to be good for kids, but I the mechanics of Dark Cloud 2 are just one step above what most children would find approachable or even possible to engage with. The mismatch of the mechanical depth and the maturity of the writing produces some amount of cognitive dissonance.
And man are there just so many mechanics! At the base level there's world-building and weapon crafting, both fundamental to the completion of the game. But there is also photography, invention, monster recruitment, fishing, fish breeding, fish racing, golf (???), and robot customization. All of these exist in varying degrees of completion of depth, and none of them are particularly engaging. The dominant strategy of completing this game seems to lie in choosing just one of these, whichever you find the most fun, and forgetting all of the others exist.
And yet the core gameplay loop of this game is just so satisfying to me. Running through samey floors of dungeons, wiping out enemies, building up your weapons until they evolve (???) into another weapon, saving the nearby city until all of its inhabitants are happy, it's something I could do for hours. Despite all of the flaws listed above, I was incredibly disappointed when the game concluded after only 35 hours.
The Dark Cloud series will never win any awards nor be put on any best-of lists, but it is one whose gameplay resonates so completely with me as an individual. I love these games; I love playing them despite all of their warts. It may take a special kind of autism, but if you enjoy rote dungeon crawling, I recommend this game with my entire being.
Dark Cloud 2 is a game I've had an affinity for for quite a long time, and just recently I played it for the first time in 15 years. The amount of flaws in the game was staggering so I wanted to take moment to briefly recount them.
To start, the inventory system of the game is possibly one of the worst I've ever seen. The player collects so, so many items throughout the adventure in a variety of types. There's quest items, weapons, battle items, healing items, status items, crafting materials, upgrade materials, fishing materials, fish, etc. etc. All of these things co-mingle in the same inventory with no auto-arrangement options. Over the course of the game the inventory balloons to an unusable girth, and manually organizing things becomes a chore.
Crafting is such a fundamental mechanic of the game that a cumbersome inventory system is not only unforgivable (Spoiler alert: I end up forgiving this flaw) but mind-boggling in how the inventory made it out the door looking the way it does.
A second issue with the game is the implementation of the literal world-building mechanic relative to the first game. The Georamas were never too intricate in Dark Cloud 1 (DCX for the PlayStation fans) but they did go a bit further in the various requests of the citizens that the player had to keep in mind when arranging the cities of land. There was also that delightful totem pole puzzle in the desert area.
The city building in Dark Cloud 2, however, is pretty mindless. There's a reason for this: the amount of structures the player can build is largely uncapped. Let's look at an example:
In the volcanic area of the game there are a few buildings that need to be built a certain way. One needs to be elevated a few blocks in height, which entails committing materials to building those elevator blocks and then placing the house on top of it. So I did this, and when it came time to move a particular NPC into the village, I found that he needed a special house with a fence built around it.
In Dark Cloud 1, I'd have a conundrum here. I would need to construct more blocks around the house to allow room for the fence to also be built up a few stories high. However, in Dark Cloud 2, I can just build an entirely separate house on ground level, easily build a fence around it, and move the NPC into it with nobody occupying the higher-up structure.
By removing the cap on structures players can dedicate one house to each "building requirement", where before the very slight difficulty of the building sections came from balancing all of the requirements within the limited number of structures.
There are precisely two attempts to do something interesting with the building: One is a city that has to be built on four plateaus that rise and sink depending on the number of houses on them (???) and thus the player has to equally build on all to create a perfectly flat ground. The other is the final building section of the game that tasks the player with rebuilding a garden to the exact specifications laid out in a few portraits they can find in the nearby dungeon.
While these approach the more thoughtful usage of the building mechanics in the first game, neither is that mentally demanding nor engaging.
One is left thinking why they brought this mechanic back at all. Did Dark Cloud have that much star power that they needed to brand this as a sequel with ham-fisted legacy mechanics instead of just making a new game unburdened by what kids in Blockbuster perceived as "discount Zelda"?
Almost everything to do with the story of Dark Cloud 2 is another misfire. The voice acting ranges from mid to awful, and the awkward load times of the PlayStation 2 ensure that cutscenes never run smoothly. There are frequently awkward pauses as the next line of dialogue loads that produce unintended comedy as characters just stand around in otherwise dire situations.
A significant element of the story is time travel, and Dark Cloud 2 has some of the least thought-out time travel mechanics seen yet in games. There is no attempt to logically think through what time travel would mean in-world insofar as causality and logic. I'm fine engaging a game on its own level when it comes to these things rather than missing the point by nitpicking, but the way time travel is handled in this game is just so illogical that it can be difficult to accept at times for anyone who has engaged with the idea before in any other form.
The rest of the writing, too, is off. It's incredibly juvenile, which is of course fine were the game to be good for kids, but I the mechanics of Dark Cloud 2 are just one step above what most children would find approachable or even possible to engage with. The mismatch of the mechanical depth and the maturity of the writing produces some amount of cognitive dissonance.
And man are there just so many mechanics! At the base level there's world-building and weapon crafting, both fundamental to the completion of the game. But there is also photography, invention, monster recruitment, fishing, fish breeding, fish racing, golf (???), and robot customization. All of these exist in varying degrees of completion of depth, and none of them are particularly engaging. The dominant strategy of completing this game seems to lie in choosing just one of these, whichever you find the most fun, and forgetting all of the others exist.
And yet the core gameplay loop of this game is just so satisfying to me. Running through samey floors of dungeons, wiping out enemies, building up your weapons until they evolve (???) into another weapon, saving the nearby city until all of its inhabitants are happy, it's something I could do for hours. Despite all of the flaws listed above, I was incredibly disappointed when the game concluded after only 35 hours.
The Dark Cloud series will never win any awards nor be put on any best-of lists, but it is one whose gameplay resonates so completely with me as an individual. I love these games; I love playing them despite all of their warts. It may take a special kind of autism, but if you enjoy rote dungeon crawling, I recommend this game with my entire being.
Dark Cloud 2 heavily refines the approach of the original. Level-5 improves their genre-crossing dynamic to overwhelming heights, with its strengths - all mechanical, displaying a truly rare talent of JRPG gameplay ideas feeding into practically everything.
Even if its predecessor's tense dungeon crawling is virtually non-existent here, it compensates by introducing several ideas that grant degrees of replayability to each dungeon floor while avoiding monotony. New combat options, dungeon achievements and specific enemies/loot on each floor (and even a golfing minigame!) all contribute, while the revamped build-up/spectrumize system basically turns each equipped weapon into a separate party member; continuously evolving organisms, constantly mutating, building and inheriting traits freely. The new invention system demands environmental awareness from the player while providing additional value to each town, player-made or otherwise. Even outside of those, the mechanics are smartly woven together, from the crafting system to fishing, from city-building to time travel, each concept connecting to one another in various ways.
Story-wise: the revamped style, setting, better production values and cutscenes certainly helps its whimsical, intrepid adventurer attitude. However, the final dungeon succumbs to the same tired genre stereotypes, both in the more-tedious-than-tense gameplay and the predictable story sequences. The plot is hardly revolutionary, but it at least feels like an honest attempt this time around, and not a goofier, verbose Zelda clone. Regardless, the sheer value and depth in its gameplay makes Dark Cloud 2 a milestone of 6th generation dungeon-crawlers.
Even if its predecessor's tense dungeon crawling is virtually non-existent here, it compensates by introducing several ideas that grant degrees of replayability to each dungeon floor while avoiding monotony. New combat options, dungeon achievements and specific enemies/loot on each floor (and even a golfing minigame!) all contribute, while the revamped build-up/spectrumize system basically turns each equipped weapon into a separate party member; continuously evolving organisms, constantly mutating, building and inheriting traits freely. The new invention system demands environmental awareness from the player while providing additional value to each town, player-made or otherwise. Even outside of those, the mechanics are smartly woven together, from the crafting system to fishing, from city-building to time travel, each concept connecting to one another in various ways.
Story-wise: the revamped style, setting, better production values and cutscenes certainly helps its whimsical, intrepid adventurer attitude. However, the final dungeon succumbs to the same tired genre stereotypes, both in the more-tedious-than-tense gameplay and the predictable story sequences. The plot is hardly revolutionary, but it at least feels like an honest attempt this time around, and not a goofier, verbose Zelda clone. Regardless, the sheer value and depth in its gameplay makes Dark Cloud 2 a milestone of 6th generation dungeon-crawlers.
So far it is a really enjoyable game.
The visuals are nice and the game-play is very fun, even if you're trapped in dungeons for a while.
What frustrates me in this game is the difficulty (I am not sure if it changes as you level up). The enemies are too strong at the beginning so you can easily die with 3 blows.
The battle system, although challenging, can be improved with the amount of weapons you have (distributed between characters). You can evolve weapons and change them (synthesizing your weapons isn't as fun though because it could be done in a faster way, instead of taking all those steps).
Characters-wise and plot-wise it is not its forte. It's what you would expect from Japanese games (surely not bad but not amazing either). It's a very simple game in terms of this.
In terms of enjoyment it doesn't disappoint and I can easily recommend this game for people who like playing on the PS2.
The visuals are nice and the game-play is very fun, even if you're trapped in dungeons for a while.
What frustrates me in this game is the difficulty (I am not sure if it changes as you level up). The enemies are too strong at the beginning so you can easily die with 3 blows.
The battle system, although challenging, can be improved with the amount of weapons you have (distributed between characters). You can evolve weapons and change them (synthesizing your weapons isn't as fun though because it could be done in a faster way, instead of taking all those steps).
Characters-wise and plot-wise it is not its forte. It's what you would expect from Japanese games (surely not bad but not amazing either). It's a very simple game in terms of this.
In terms of enjoyment it doesn't disappoint and I can easily recommend this game for people who like playing on the PS2.
Potentially better than the original. So many new gameplay features and voice actors, plus weapons don't despawn. All in all a god tier video game. Have probably not completed true 100% (probably missed a lot of photographs, but got everything else), but will definitely come back and do that someday.
Dark Chronicle
I have a lot of admiration for this game, however I feel to unlock Dark Cloud 2's full potential as a game, I would have to sacrifice my real world life which I was reluctantly unwilling to do.
There is so much to do, and the ridiculously vast amount of content was overwhelming for someone who wasn't able to commit much more than an hour a day whenever possible, resulting in spending a lot of time exploring an endless pool of guides out of fear of missing something out. I wasn't able to devote every spare moment to photographing every entity in Chapter 1 before they became permanently lost (one of the first boss fights included a photo), and that was a red flag for me. If I was a child with no commitments, this game would be the dream for me but sadly those days are gone.
The visuals are bright and vibrant, I enjoyed exploring the towns to recruit people and I was a big fan of the scope of the whole thing, however it's not without it's flaws. I found dungeons incredibly repetitive, and this was one of the things that put me off persevering through Dark Cloud 2. The battling left plenty to be desired, which isn't ideal when you're looking at about 30 dungeons per chapter.
I wish I could have stuck out longer with this game as it includes so many interesting components, for which I congratulate the designers. I just needed something a bit more streamlined.
There is so much to do, and the ridiculously vast amount of content was overwhelming for someone who wasn't able to commit much more than an hour a day whenever possible, resulting in spending a lot of time exploring an endless pool of guides out of fear of missing something out. I wasn't able to devote every spare moment to photographing every entity in Chapter 1 before they became permanently lost (one of the first boss fights included a photo), and that was a red flag for me. If I was a child with no commitments, this game would be the dream for me but sadly those days are gone.
The visuals are bright and vibrant, I enjoyed exploring the towns to recruit people and I was a big fan of the scope of the whole thing, however it's not without it's flaws. I found dungeons incredibly repetitive, and this was one of the things that put me off persevering through Dark Cloud 2. The battling left plenty to be desired, which isn't ideal when you're looking at about 30 dungeons per chapter.
I wish I could have stuck out longer with this game as it includes so many interesting components, for which I congratulate the designers. I just needed something a bit more streamlined.
One of my favorite RPGs growing up, I'd like to get back to it one day
Another childhood game for me. Weapon system is really fun to work with, combat is engaging and fun. The graphics are a little dated but the cel-shading helps it. Story is unique, but the voice acting is...depressingly mediocre, despite the rather impressive voice talents that were hired to dub this game in English. This game was longer than the first, but felt shorter due to better pacing. Lots of extra stuff to do. Worldbuilding was fantastic and the literal world building, meaning the georama, was pretty great too! I'm proud of my reconstructed villages. However, all praise aside, this game is a pain in the ass to 100% in the PS4 trophy department. It will easily make you despise the game due to some missable achievements.
This game and it's gameplay and story felt like a downgrade to me in many areas. Towns weren't as cool to make, pictures were annoying, recruiting wasn't great as well. The dungeons were fine, but too much downtime.
I wanna come back to it but the dungeon crawling was weird
Hey woah this is kinda raw hold on there Level-5
One of the most criminally underrated and underappreciated gaming gems of the 6th generation of video games. Level 5's magnum opus that deserved all the adulation and praise that Ni No Kuni received... if you look up the term: "pure fun", it should display a picture of this game.
There were so many different gameplay systems that were expanded and improved upon from the first game. And they didn't stop there! Introducing an incredible array of new, ambitious ideas and additions to the gameplay variety, such as: improved dungeon exploration, weapon upgrades - with a tighter focus with there being only 1 melee/1 range weapon for the 2 main characters: Max and Monica, Ridepod customization, monster collection, town-building (and jumping back and forth in time to see what your town becomes in the future), recruiting townspeople to move into the places you build, Spheda (golf mini-game), fishing, fish raising/racing, and the photography/invention mechanic.
This game constantly keeps things fresh by having no shortage of things to do. With the absolutely gorgeous and timeless cel-shaded graphics, it all comes together perfectly. Level-5 put their entire heart and soul into making this masterpiece.
I'll always look back on this game with great memories, whether it be playing it for hours by myself back in middle school, or introducing it to my cousin when he was younger and us passing the controller back and forth. The only thing that saddens me when thinking back to this game, is that we never were given a Dark Cloud 3... after 20+ long years, and 3 console generations, I would have loved to see this franchise continue to grow and evolve from here. Alas, we shall never see it happen.. :(
There were so many different gameplay systems that were expanded and improved upon from the first game. And they didn't stop there! Introducing an incredible array of new, ambitious ideas and additions to the gameplay variety, such as: improved dungeon exploration, weapon upgrades - with a tighter focus with there being only 1 melee/1 range weapon for the 2 main characters: Max and Monica, Ridepod customization, monster collection, town-building (and jumping back and forth in time to see what your town becomes in the future), recruiting townspeople to move into the places you build, Spheda (golf mini-game), fishing, fish raising/racing, and the photography/invention mechanic.
This game constantly keeps things fresh by having no shortage of things to do. With the absolutely gorgeous and timeless cel-shaded graphics, it all comes together perfectly. Level-5 put their entire heart and soul into making this masterpiece.
I'll always look back on this game with great memories, whether it be playing it for hours by myself back in middle school, or introducing it to my cousin when he was younger and us passing the controller back and forth. The only thing that saddens me when thinking back to this game, is that we never were given a Dark Cloud 3... after 20+ long years, and 3 console generations, I would have loved to see this franchise continue to grow and evolve from here. Alas, we shall never see it happen.. :(
I'll never forget you.
Wahnsinns Soundtrack und vollgepackt mit Content.
Man kann Fotos sammeln, Baupläne erfinden, kämpfen, Dörfer bauen und man wird für nahezu alles belohnt.
Man kann Fotos sammeln, Baupläne erfinden, kämpfen, Dörfer bauen und man wird für nahezu alles belohnt.
A game that marked my adolescence, those were happy times.
Dark Cloud 1 but cooler and less jank. Underappreciated.
I love this Video Game. It may be Nostalgia, it may be good design, it may be both. This games got it all, weapon upgrade systems, town building, villager recruitment, multiple characters/movesets to play with, and an emotional (though perhaps basic) story, with characters that make you care about them.
I adore everything about this game; its combat system, its city-building mechanic, golfing and fish racing, gaming peaked in 2002
One of the greatest JRPGS of all time.
A mi parecer si es verdad que mejora muchos aspectos de su predecesor, pero se me hace a veces un poco pesado, sobretodo en los retos y los niveles normales.
Es muy bonito ver como según avanzas tu personaje va descubriendo cosas de su familia y de si mismo.
Es muy bonito ver como según avanzas tu personaje va descubriendo cosas de su familia y de si mismo.
yeah it was cool till the game started throwing multiple enemies at me that can stun lock me and just kill me without any room to even block
This is where games as a medium peaked thank you Level-5
Buy or download or pirate the PDF of the strategy guide, I BEG YOU. Dont miss a miss-able picture and forever be locked out of something you had no idea you missed. In a multiple 100s of hours arpg. There is so much shit to do in this game it's unreal.
Maybe today I will spend 24 hours just golfing, and then top it off by catching a huge hog of a fish to put in my personal aquarium
Maybe today I will spend 24 hours just golfing, and then top it off by catching a huge hog of a fish to put in my personal aquarium
Perhaps a bit grindy, but a great formula that was unfortunately never copied anywhere.
Charming graphics and characters.
Charming graphics and characters.
It's my favorite childhood game, as charming as it was fun. Love it.
So many mechanics and minigames! Worth a look on emulation or if you nab it cheap on PSN. #100RPGs