Interested in Dark Cloud but haven't played it yet?
Maybe it’s an all-time favorite and you want some more history?

Check out this “Prep Kit”, full of pre-release coverage, interviews, advertising and merchandise to get you in that Launch Day mindset!

https://goatedquest.blogspot.com/2024/04/068-dark-cloud-prep-kit.html

Let me help make every game you play feel brand new, no matter how old

On today's episode of Georama: turban boy loots cool knives, Goro jobs again, the town NIMBYs residents complain about some missing orbs (wait, that's Jak), a gun-toting moon rabbit breaks the game in half, literal "dark Cloud" dumps his backstory all in the final dungeon, and the player runs out of water or weapon health again!

Just a day in the life of Level-5's debut game, a less-than-clever but earnest homage to ActRaiser & other mid-'90s alternative ARPGs and dungeon-crawlers. I keep reading reviews from others who bounce off due to awkward controls, even more awkward mechanics, and truly awkward moments in the story and progression further in. But I think it's that awkwardness which set my expectations to a reasonable level. You're not getting a polished experience here, not in the slightest. This was an experiment, a way for ex-Riverhill Soft veterans to dip their feet in a genre their former employers shied away from. And ever since, Dark Cloud's hung over them, looming in the distance as a reminder of when Level-5 made standalone adventures. They've been chasing media-mix behemoths like Inazuma Eleven, Yokai Watch, and Megaton Musashi since the HD era, but I wish they'd consider making something quaint like this title again.

That said, I don't blame anyone for jumping straight to the sequel, even considering its own jank. A journey around the world rebuilding towns and people's lives sounds great, but you spend most of your time in randomly generated dungeons, dealing with combat and item/equipment management. The game's enemies usually aren't hard to deal with, having just one or two predictable attacks. It's things like weapon deterioration, imperfect hitboxes, and certain dungeon floors forcing you to use a subpar character (ex. Goro…) which sully the fun. At least you get more than enough consumables for repairing your gear or haste-ing through levels. For all its rough bits, the crawling-fighting loop here is competent enough, and often bite-sized in a way that makes it easy to return to at any time.

Dark Cloud shines with its Georama system, where you use the Cool Orbs found in dungeons to rebuild whichever town they correspond to. This means not just placing buildings and land features in ways that make sense, but re- enabling the lives and schedules of others. Norune Village at the beginning sums this up very well, as any opening part of a game should. Talking with each and every villager you rescue from purgatory gives usable hints on how to improve their homes and hearth. Get things wrong and you suffer consequences, such as Gaffer falling from his ladder and only selling a limited shop inventory if you don't add items in order. Maximizing your ratings with each Georama section involves a rewarding loop of conversing with everyone to find that right balance, then scouring the premises for bonus item chests you get from higher ratings. I wish you didn't have some key moments tied to gimmicky quick-time rhythm games, but at least those are over quick.

Much like ActRaiser back in the day, Level-5's game thrives on the symbiosis between two game loops—one consumptive and one creative—with dungeon crawling playing into world creation and then back. Neither part of the game's that complex or involving on their own, but mesh so well in the midst of a playthrough. This works great for most of the game, but then the last two areas (Moon and Gallery of Time) sag in quality by misusing the dynamic. At the same time you're doing more, harder levels testing your character/weapon builds and inventory, the Georama segments get very linear and predictable. What before offered an illusion of a customizable, in-depth experience becomes more obvious, more repetitive. Now sure, I love to upgrade and evolve weapons in this game, but that system works best in service to tangible progress. As mentioned, awkward elements are easier to forgive when the story's active, the world's offering something new, and the end's somewhere in sight.

That leads me to another glaring issue: Dark Cloud's story is comically backloaded, to the detriment of earlier, better designed sequences like Matataki and Queens. It's already a simple tragic tale of an antihero's love interrupted, leading to even greater calamity across time. But shoving the majority of that larger narrative into the final dungeon reeks of "we had to rush this part, sorry!". Until then, you're left with a rather generic "defeat the Dark Genie" plot which gets stuck in the background until Muska Lacka. By contrast, Dark Cloud 2 does a way better job of revealing and twisting the main plot from start to finish, albeit via some more blockbuster tropes and framing. The prequel's so much more about atmosphere and light character interactions up until the last stretch. Again, it's less that the story's bad, more that it's needlessly thin and tangential to what you're doing for most of your playthrough. (What I've heard of the studio's following non-Dragon Quest games tells me Akihiro Hino still doesn't know how to write a rock-solid story or world, honestly.)

However, atmosphere is one way this game rises above that problem. Part of this might just come down to my own nostalgia, having played the game multiple times since the late 2000s, but it's just so charming. Dark Cloud's visual design takes a refreshing turn away from ye olde JRPG stylings, starting with the Weird West village Toan's from. The generally colorful, decently detailed town areas give life to their more sparsely constructed dungeons, both through architecture and NPC designs/dialogue. Tomohito Nishiura offers the first of many great Level-5 soundtracks, with its simple and clean arrangement of melodious multi-genre tunes. I could listen to tracks for locales like the Wise Owl Wood, Shipwreck, Matataki Village, or Queens all day. The user interface shows its age in terms of usability—far from bad, far from ideal—but it's easy enough to navigate and has a comfortable leather-and-parchment feel too. Cozy's an accurate word for this game in general, even during its darkest story moments (some unnerving enemies aside).

If you haven't tried either Dark Cloud game, I'd recommend at least trying this one before moving on to the sequel. It's definitely not as polished, expansive, or impressive, but the original's elegance and much shorter time to completion make it a closer contest. Beating the game lets you play through a very tricky bonus dungeon, ideal for testing out your super-weapons and enjoying that excellent ambiance. Both series entries are available on recent PlayStation systems and can emulate very well. Overall, I'd have a fun time replaying this right now, assuming I didn't have bigger priorities in my backlog. So many of the aspects that define Level-5's better-known, more recent games appear here in a primordial form. At the very least, it's a strong launch-period PS2 release which is worth experience both in that context and on its own merits.

P.S. Make sure to level Ruby towards the back half of the game. The final boss is weak to certain elements which are best targeted using either her magic or the right magic-infused weapon with Xiao or Osmond. Regardless, don't skimp on ranged combat!

i liked this game quite a bit when it came out. not sure why now, but it was probably the collecting of town pieces and rebuilding of towns. scratches a similar itch to soul blazer, one of my all time faves.

that said, that's about the best aspect. this is very clearly an early ps2 title. battles are beyond jank, bosses are borderline nightmare battles of attrition, they kinda just said "yeah this is good enough i guess" and left them all semi-broken. how many "survival" mechanics did we really need here because they thought the base game wasn't challenging enough? thirst and weapon durability are honestly mostly just annoying. i feel like these mechanics only really work in actual survival games because you know what you're signing on for when you play those.

also every character has like one base attack and maybe a powerful attack and that's pretty much it. switching out characters for the simple reason of traversing a puddle or hammering a peg, also a tad annoying and just there to be there, much like the survival stuff. please make sure you use this meh character for two seconds then immediately switch back!! please!

i wish i could say the nature of finding new town pieces and placing them makes everything worth it, but not really. the sequel is a huge improvement and also added a camera mini-game feature which makes it a lot more fun. get that one, maybe try this out as a curiosity if you havent yet.

Played it as a kid and recently replayed it to completion. A fun part city builder part dungeon crawler that fully welcomes the PS2 graphics. I remember back then this was marketed as the PS2’s Zelda and while not as engrossing story wise as one I felt like I enjoyed it as much.

The combat isn’t too annoying and is pretty straight forward with many different styles to fight. As the game goes on and you make the villages “perfect” it feels not only rewarding but cool because you can just plow through dungeons. While there’s the novelty of it being an early PS2 title I’d highly recommend the sequel over this as it just expands on everything better.

This was one of the first games I had on the PS2 that I really enjoyed... and what a game it was!

It's a rare dungeon crawler that I actually really liked. That genre is usually one I find myself disliking, or even despising, due to a lack of variation in its gameplay and there not being a story or purpose.

However, Dark Cloud is much different in that regard... this game has all of these wonderful ideas the game displays throughout. I loved the multiple gameplay elements that helped break up the monotony of dungeon crawling they had in this game - the multiple characters, weapon upgrades, city building with the Georama pieces, fishing, etc.

This was also the first 3D game I played with a day/night cycle, which invested me even more in its world.

With this game coming out in 2000, it has shown its age, but I will always have fond memories of playing it. It also contributes to one of the greatest sequels I've ever played. Its sequel, Dark Cloud 2, takes the ideas of this game as its foundation, and "runs with it." It builds upon it in such a spectacular way, and in my opinion, becomes Level 5's magnum opus (forget Ni No Kuni - that doesn't even come close)...but I'll save that for my Dark Cloud 2 review.

US version

this game is pretty okay the dungeons parts can get boring because they are mostly palette swaps with new enemy's the whole game and the town building can be fun you get a choice between 6 characters that you can switch from at any time only in dungeons witch are toan,xiao,goro,ruby,ungaga and osmand but why bother choosing when xiao is literally the most overpowered character in the game with long range and a early 30+ damage weapon and by the end is like a literal god i give this game a 7/10

I had a friend in middle school name Gary. Or maybe it was George. Gir... Giraldo? It was some kinda G name. We bonded over Battlebots and for a while we tried to build one of our own, which was just an RC car we stuck a really long nail to that we found near some train tracks. Gabe was also obsessed with Dark Cloud, Level-5's debut game and a cult classic for the PlayStation 2 that otherwise would've totally passed me by were it not for long afternoons of watching him crawl through dungeons after test driving Naildoser.

This review is dedicated to Naildoser, who sadly perished when Grant's mom backed over it with her car.

The last time I saw Dark Cloud being played was like, 2003, so I'd entirely forgotten what kind of game this is outside of vaguely knowing it to be an RPG. Going in with fresh eyes left me open to a number of surprises, like protagonist Toan giving a magic item to a stray cat that turns it into a very young looking girl that hugs his leg and calls him "master," and whatever the hell this is. This game might've been made by perverts. It was also made by a team that clearly took a few ideas from Actraiser. Dark Cloud is a hybrid action-RPG/city sim, wherein you scour procedurally generated dungeons for missing homesteads, residents, and items to restore a broken world. However, unlike Actraiser, the balance is way off and Dark Cloud fails to establish a satisfying rhythm between these two disparate gameplay types.

Neither dungeon crawling nor city building have any real depth. As mentioned, dungeons use procedural generation, meaning they're all random combinations of the same open spaces and hallways with aesthetics and enemies changing between locations. It reminds me a lot of Persona 4, and much like Persona 4, Dark Cloud artificially limits the amount of time you spend in a dungeon. Rather than doing so by making MP a precious resource, it instead employs some of the worst weapon degradation I've ever encountered in a video game. I'm talking two combos being enough to snap your +3 Sun Sword like a twig even after applying endurance buffs. It is insane, and I'd go so far as to say it's ill-advised to dive into a dungeon without half your inventory being composed entirely of repair powders. Toan just coming out of these dungeons covered in a thick layer of gold dust and a wild look in his eyes. Maybe I'm a bit biased here, because I think weapon degradation is an inherently awful mechanic that I've never found additive to the experience of playing a game. No follow up to that statement.

City building is also very rudimentary, and largely amounts to slotting specific items and townspeople into set buildings, then plopping them down on the map and speaking to their respective residents for a reward. You can fulfill additional requests, all of which relate to the proximity of their building to certain landmarks, but this is all optional and the game can be a bit finicky about registering whether these requests are satisfied. That's pretty much it, though. There's no method of taxation to increase your party's funds, no resource management, and extremely few townspeople are story or progression relevant. In fact, most barely have any dialog at all. This is fine for the most part, but I would have appreciated it if the game found new ways to make you consider how you're laying out your villages or populated them with more interesting characters.

The worst part about Dark Cloud is that none of these systems ever evolve. It is mechanically unwavering, shallow yet constant. New party members barely change how you actually play, and they all have zero plot significance or even dialog after joining you. Despite initially gelling with how quaint Dark Cloud is, it quickly became a chore. Like, great, I need to get five layers of the sunken ship done tonight. Maybe if I knock that out fast enough I can watch a show or cook a meal. Aw shit, my +5 Magic Hammer broke in two and I lost an hour of progress, I guess I'm eating out tonight, not enough time to make myself a meal.

On some level this makes sense. That level is Level-5 (HhhhhaaaaaaHA!) because this was their first game, and I have to assume they only had so much to work with. Dark Cloud feels like a vertical slice that happens to run 30 hours. There's good ideas, but all of them lack substance. Hell, there's virtually no plot to speak of outside of the first and last hour of the game. I have faith that Dark Cloud 2 resolves a lot of my issues as it seems to be better received, but I'm going to need a pretty big break before I get to it. Need to play something a bit more engaging, like uhhh... Xenosaga Episode 1.

I'm gonna go lay down behind Garrett's mom's car.

There is clearly a nice wee game here, but it's buried under so much busy work that hasn't aged well at all. Weapon elemental upgrades and strengthening, weapon degradation, thirst management, all things we still see nowadays, but DC is already clunky enough that these things feel like you're playing some fan modded hardcore mode. Absolutely kills momentum and feelings of progress.

I feel bad because I like everything else about it. The cute town management stuff is lovely, and I'm a sucker for rebuilding/restoring places, but I cannae waste hours wading through shit just to be allowed to do that.

Dark Cloud was notable for its blend of action-rpg, dungeon crawling, and light city-building. Far from merely jumbling those elements together, this game elegantly weaves parts of each that interact with one another from mode to mode, creating this addictive loop. Apart from the RPG aspects encouraging creativity and customization, the additional characters also enable strategic depth beyond their gimmick, not only providing a different combat style but also opening up new avenues to handle resource management, enemy interactions, and general dungeon crawling. The setting, characters, and graphics are for the most part uninspired, although especially Zelda-like are the enemies, delightfully irritating to fight with individual combat details that only add to the gameplay flow.

Not all of it works, unfortunately. Each unique dungeon disappointingly feels like a slight variation on the same theme with reskinned enemies, the Limited Zones mechanic makes certain floors way more tedious than it should, and the uneven boss bottles are either too easy or too frustrating. Even so, Dark Cloud remains an overall effective and sprawling work. It's impressive how Level-5 managed to fuse several styles into such a cohesive, calculated, engrossing whole.