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.
No me mola el género pero tenia pinta de estar guapo
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.
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.
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 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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Hey woah this is kinda raw hold on there Level-5
One of the greatest JRPGS of all time.
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.
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 localization on this is admittedly horrific but damn if this isn't an amazing mash of concepts.
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. ✨
Favourites
Character It's somewhere between Flotsam, Elena, & Mayor Need, but I love them all. 🥹 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. ✨
Favourites
Character It's somewhere between Flotsam, Elena, & Mayor Need, but I love them all. 🥹 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.
Mi juego favorito de ps2
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.
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.
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
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.
A slight upgrade from the first one but the characters are considerably less interesting. Photography game captured my interest since I liked Pokemon Snap.
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.. :(
Dark Chronicle
So many mechanics and minigames! Worth a look on emulation or if you nab it cheap on PSN. #100RPGs
It's my favorite childhood game, as charming as it was fun. Love it.
A game that marked my adolescence, those were happy times.
I'll never forget you.
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.
Perhaps a bit grindy, but a great formula that was unfortunately never copied anywhere.
Charming graphics and characters.
Charming graphics and characters.