I was more enamored of this sequel to Dark Cloud than the original, but I never completed this one either. Looking to play them on PS4 some time in the near future, but then the backlog is so damn colossal that who knows when that will really happen.
This game was filled to the brim with so many different types of mechanics. You had your city building portion of the game, golf mini-game, fish racing, there was a little too much to be honest. But it all helped the world in the game to feel alive.
My only gripes with this game would be the repetitive combat and the overall grindy nature of this game.
My only gripes with this game would be the repetitive combat and the overall grindy nature of this game.
Mi juego favorito de ps2
This game was our childhood, and despite amnesia we still remember the month before Christmas, reading the back of the box in the car, knowing that the next month of not being able to play it would kill us. But it didn't, and when we finally got it? It stuck with us.
As a child, this game had it all: unique designs, loveable characters, repetitive dungeon grinding gameplay, photography, crafting, and even a town builder system that let you Walk Around It in 3D??? That was always the coolest back then. We forgot a lot of details over the years, but we'll always remember crying at a particular mid-game reveal.
But to access the final boss, we needed information we forgot. And we didn't have internet back then. We never finished it.
Playing it two decades later, I don't think we would have ever succeeded as a kid. Without spoilers, the end bosses are Brutal, and if we hadn't ground the whole game for very good weapons it may have been abandoned a third time.
But we did it. And it feels like a weight off our chest, something off the bucket list. It was slower than we remembered, but a child's view of the world is so much more magnificent. Despite that, it was a wonderfully charming game that we would highly recommend to anyone who loves a good retro rpg.
4 stars for the actual game, 1 for how much it impacted our life. âš
Favourites
Character It's somewhere between Flotsam, Elena, & Mayor Need, but I love them all. đ„č Bonus shout-out to our childhood love for Monica.
Moment - The motherly discovery. Also Paznos, but that was a lot cooler as a child; as an adult you can't help but realise how clunky the cutscenes are.
Music - Kazarov Stonehenge hits different, and to this day we feel such strong emotions listening to it.
As a child, this game had it all: unique designs, loveable characters, repetitive dungeon grinding gameplay, photography, crafting, and even a town builder system that let you Walk Around It in 3D??? That was always the coolest back then. We forgot a lot of details over the years, but we'll always remember crying at a particular mid-game reveal.
But to access the final boss, we needed information we forgot. And we didn't have internet back then. We never finished it.
Playing it two decades later, I don't think we would have ever succeeded as a kid. Without spoilers, the end bosses are Brutal, and if we hadn't ground the whole game for very good weapons it may have been abandoned a third time.
But we did it. And it feels like a weight off our chest, something off the bucket list. It was slower than we remembered, but a child's view of the world is so much more magnificent. Despite that, it was a wonderfully charming game that we would highly recommend to anyone who loves a good retro rpg.
4 stars for the actual game, 1 for how much it impacted our life. âš
Favourites
Character It's somewhere between Flotsam, Elena, & Mayor Need, but I love them all. đ„č Bonus shout-out to our childhood love for Monica.
Moment - The motherly discovery. Also Paznos, but that was a lot cooler as a child; as an adult you can't help but realise how clunky the cutscenes are.
Music - Kazarov Stonehenge hits different, and to this day we feel such strong emotions listening to it.
- One of my favourite RPG's of all time, has really fun mechanics with the weapon building, village construction, and character development (monster medals, robot).
- It has an Anime plot but it kept me engaged enough with some twists and turns but it never gets too deep.
- The ost is memorable, i am able to remember some songs even though i have not played this in a decent while.
- The ending is a bit weird but that doesn't detract from how fun it is to get there anyways.
- It has an Anime plot but it kept me engaged enough with some twists and turns but it never gets too deep.
- The ost is memorable, i am able to remember some songs even though i have not played this in a decent while.
- The ending is a bit weird but that doesn't detract from how fun it is to get there anyways.
mahusay na laro ang pinakamahusay na nilalaro ko araw-araw
napakasaya ng gameplay at napakaganda ng kwento
napakasaya ng gameplay at napakaganda ng kwento
The metal collecting gives me Vietnam War Flashbacks.
This game is so much. All the ideas from the first are brought over, but with better combat, item crafting via combining photos of different objects that you take, time travel mechanics that are added to the city building mode... and a golf minigame that's set inside the randomized dungeons. I've never finished this game but it's pretty great.
Very cool game, slightly too long and repetitive but still good.
The only reason it doesn't have 5 stars is because the VA work is...a little lackluster in this game, but this game is fun and i LOVE the dungeon set up! Plus you get a really fun host of characters and shopping characters that give you different perks in dungeon.
Love it, love building things, love wanting to save the world and better it from evil.
Love it, love building things, love wanting to save the world and better it from evil.
I wanna come back to it but the dungeon crawling was weird
Really fun game, minigames were extremely improved over the first game, medals were super fun to collect and made dungeon crawling less repetitive. I hate that they cockblock our weapon upgrades, and the ridepod is a tad bit too OP to the point of invalidating weapon buildup almost. Story and OST arent my thing really, but the gameplay carries hard. 6.5/10
The localization on this is admittedly horrific but damn if this isn't an amazing mash of concepts.
Hey woah this is kinda raw hold on there Level-5
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.
Juego muchisimo mas largo que su predecesor.
Arregla varios sistemas y agrega muchĂsimas cosas.
Lo unico que me disgusta es como se alargan mas de lo necesario las mazmorras despues de la segunda.
Arregla varios sistemas y agrega muchĂsimas cosas.
Lo unico que me disgusta es como se alargan mas de lo necesario las mazmorras despues de la segunda.
All I remember is that I really enjoyed what I played of this. I think another game came out that I wanted to play more or something but I never went back to finish this one.
No me mola el género pero tenia pinta de estar guapo
TambiĂ©n conocido como Dark Chronicle, fue un RPG de aventura donde explorabas diferentes escenarios, divididos en "mazmorras". Con una historia bastante interesante para lo "infantil" que parecĂa. TenĂa mecĂĄnicas muy variadas y podĂas evolucionar las armas metiĂ©ndole materiales, cada arma tenĂa varias ramas.
TambiĂ©n podĂas reconstruir aldeas para que los aldeanos pudieran volver a vivir allĂ. Tengo que rejugarlo algĂșn dĂa.
TambiĂ©n podĂas reconstruir aldeas para que los aldeanos pudieran volver a vivir allĂ. Tengo que rejugarlo algĂșn dĂa.
One of my favorite games I have ever played. It's a long RPG with plenty of nuances and differences from typical RPG's, but has the same familiar flavor. The story is long and amazing, the gameplay may be a little dated now, but it makes up for it with all sorts of extra content: village building mechanics, mini game golfing, and monster capturing and training. I always pray the developer Level-5 will release Dark Cloud 3, but I'm glad I have played through 2 plenty if times.
Muy muy bueno sinceramente de lo mejor que he jugado Ășltimamente y aunque tenga claros problemas (colocar las cosas bien al reconstruir pueblos, la curva de dificultad inicial etc.) no hacen imposible jugar el juego y practicamente todos desaparecen a las 3-4 horas de juego. Hacia lo mismo unos 7-8 años que no era capaz de grindear materiales/experiencia/armas en ningĂșn juego porque se me hacia pesado e insufrible y este juego ha conseguido no solo que lo haga si no que encima lo disfrute y lo abuse por mi propia cuenta de lo mucho que me ha gustado, recomendadisimo
This review contains spoilers
Nostalgia in its purest form. A videogame that is mediocre but lives on for me due to nostalgia.
Story:
It's really bland and stupid. The concept is pretty cool, that you need to build civilizations in the past to restore the future and beat the evil forces of darkness. But in general the story just happens and throws stuff around whenever it wants. The dialoge is super cringey as if I am watching a children's cartoon about learning Spanish. The best part of the game is the opening where Max flees from the clowns and beats them up. I rewatched that scene hundreds of times as a kid and it was the funniest shit I had ever seen. It's not as impactful today as it was in my childhood, but I still like it. The story is not the reason I like this game at all.
Characters:
The same with the story. Stupid and cringey. I like Max' character design A LOT. So much in fact that I tried to walk around with his outfit in real life which was also pretty cringe. Monica is just the exposition character and also very boring. The villains are stupid or just there. Not the strong point of the game.
Music:
The music is AMAZING. It has so much charm with a lot of bangers in there. I also like the French inspirations of Palm Brinks. Generally it is very good all around.
Gameplay:
The systems are more fun than the actual fighting. Though the fighting is still fun. It feels very slow and clunky, especially for someone who is used to the Kingdom Hearts action gameplay. But it is still fine. The best part is traversing through the randomly generated dungeons, finding awesome loot and upgrading your weapons. That is easily the best part of the game and also the thing you do the most - which is very good. In addition to that every chapter has a new visual and auditive style for the random dungeons which are all cool and keep things fresh. I only like to play as Max with is main weapon though. I was never really interested in the guns, Monica, the Ridepod or the Monsterforms. Also the invention system is boring because I don't like taking pictures of stuff in general in games and without a guide you will never be able to find anything. I just run through the dungeons, upgrade my wrench and buy seal breaking scrolls whenever possible. That is the most fun to me. But even though this is fun the game has one big problem: the length. I just said that just running through the dungeons and enjoying the gameplay loop is fun, but it way overstays it's welcome. Sometimes you need to do over 10 dungeons in a row with no changes of the pacing whatsoever until you get a 5 minute cutscene to just do 2 hours of dungeons crawling again. They could have just cut the amount of levels by 2/3 and the general pacing of the game would have been way better. The problem is that you have to do most dungeons to find the geostones to provide story progression - it wouldn't have become such a slog if most dungeons at least weren't obligatory. The minigames are cool though and the fact that you can play them in almost every dungeon after defeating all enemies is pretty cool. The music that plays after clearing a floor is also very soothing and fitting for these minigames. It is also very charming that the tutorials are prerecorded videos where the side characters explain what is happening on screen.
Content:
If you want to 100% the game, it is VERY LONG. You can do rediculously many things. Sadly most of that content is boring and I always stick to the core game.
Replay value:
The only replay reason there is, is that you can start a new game with all costumes you have unlocked in your previous save files. That is cool, but that's about it. I still like to replay it occasionally because it just has it's charm to run through the dungeons and upgrade your equipment. It's kind of like my personal favorite Diablo.
Conclusion:
A very cool game that suffers a lot from early gaming era illnesses. There is a lot of unnecessary fluff that is just there to show that there is a lot do to but without the actual fun and quality that belongs to fun content. But the core of the game is really really fun gameplay wise.
Story:
It's really bland and stupid. The concept is pretty cool, that you need to build civilizations in the past to restore the future and beat the evil forces of darkness. But in general the story just happens and throws stuff around whenever it wants. The dialoge is super cringey as if I am watching a children's cartoon about learning Spanish. The best part of the game is the opening where Max flees from the clowns and beats them up. I rewatched that scene hundreds of times as a kid and it was the funniest shit I had ever seen. It's not as impactful today as it was in my childhood, but I still like it. The story is not the reason I like this game at all.
Characters:
The same with the story. Stupid and cringey. I like Max' character design A LOT. So much in fact that I tried to walk around with his outfit in real life which was also pretty cringe. Monica is just the exposition character and also very boring. The villains are stupid or just there. Not the strong point of the game.
Music:
The music is AMAZING. It has so much charm with a lot of bangers in there. I also like the French inspirations of Palm Brinks. Generally it is very good all around.
Gameplay:
The systems are more fun than the actual fighting. Though the fighting is still fun. It feels very slow and clunky, especially for someone who is used to the Kingdom Hearts action gameplay. But it is still fine. The best part is traversing through the randomly generated dungeons, finding awesome loot and upgrading your weapons. That is easily the best part of the game and also the thing you do the most - which is very good. In addition to that every chapter has a new visual and auditive style for the random dungeons which are all cool and keep things fresh. I only like to play as Max with is main weapon though. I was never really interested in the guns, Monica, the Ridepod or the Monsterforms. Also the invention system is boring because I don't like taking pictures of stuff in general in games and without a guide you will never be able to find anything. I just run through the dungeons, upgrade my wrench and buy seal breaking scrolls whenever possible. That is the most fun to me. But even though this is fun the game has one big problem: the length. I just said that just running through the dungeons and enjoying the gameplay loop is fun, but it way overstays it's welcome. Sometimes you need to do over 10 dungeons in a row with no changes of the pacing whatsoever until you get a 5 minute cutscene to just do 2 hours of dungeons crawling again. They could have just cut the amount of levels by 2/3 and the general pacing of the game would have been way better. The problem is that you have to do most dungeons to find the geostones to provide story progression - it wouldn't have become such a slog if most dungeons at least weren't obligatory. The minigames are cool though and the fact that you can play them in almost every dungeon after defeating all enemies is pretty cool. The music that plays after clearing a floor is also very soothing and fitting for these minigames. It is also very charming that the tutorials are prerecorded videos where the side characters explain what is happening on screen.
Content:
If you want to 100% the game, it is VERY LONG. You can do rediculously many things. Sadly most of that content is boring and I always stick to the core game.
Replay value:
The only replay reason there is, is that you can start a new game with all costumes you have unlocked in your previous save files. That is cool, but that's about it. I still like to replay it occasionally because it just has it's charm to run through the dungeons and upgrade your equipment. It's kind of like my personal favorite Diablo.
Conclusion:
A very cool game that suffers a lot from early gaming era illnesses. There is a lot of unnecessary fluff that is just there to show that there is a lot do to but without the actual fun and quality that belongs to fun content. But the core of the game is really really fun gameplay wise.
Fantastic game, the weapon upgrading system takes everything good from the previous game and drops many of the annoyances. Limiting the playable cast to two means you actually use both your characters, and the photos / invention system is a fun little addition. The construction is both more expansive but also cleaner than the other game, so it feel enjoyable to rebuild bases. Finally, Spheda is a ton of tun. All around a big winner for the dungeon-crawler - maybe one day we'll get a Dark Cloud 3
A slight upgrade from the first one but the characters are considerably less interesting. Photography game captured my interest since I liked Pokemon Snap.
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
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.