Very dull and excessively cliched, and a disappointing follow-up to Dark Cloud 2/Dark Chronicle. Lacking in focus and originality and suffering from bloat, it doesn't have much going for it.

Many story beats feel like they were lifted from somewhere else (Cowboy Bebop, Star Wars, Princess Mononoke, Astro Boy, etc., and also just a bunch of generic predictable plot points), and that's when the story is even advancing at all. Well, it's not like the story is decent. The characters aren't much better, sometimes leaving a poor impression if they aren't being forgettable. Hour-long dungeons can end up being made longer by special attack animations that you want to skip. And the dungeons sure do feel stretched out.

Insectron was kinda fun, though.

The music is just okay and mostly inoffensive, it sort of teeters between generic orchestral music and stuff that's kinda solid when you're listening to it but I'm just ambivalent about it and honestly I don't remember any of it off the top of my head. Graphics are fine but they're sometimes wasted on uninteresting places like the prison.

Overall, not what I was hoping for from Level-5 or Sony at the time. Also, I gave up at the last boss because it's quite obnoxious and didn't get around to beating it until a while later.