I really loved this game (and its sequel moreso) in the PS2 days. I replayed it fairly recently though, and really don't think that it has held up all that well.

Basically it's half town building sim/half dungeon crawl, with some light RPG elements. Act Raiser is the only other game that I've played that has taken these completely disparate genres and put them together.

It's super interesting and this game does have some good ideas. Finding new town components in the dungeons and subsequently placing them in town always yields a gratifying feeling.

However, for every interesting or fun idea, there exists another to detract from the experience. Breakable weapons don't add challenge to the game, it simply makes it unfun, as you constantly have to stop playing the game to fiddle with inventory minutiae. This is also the only game that I've played that has a 'thirst' meter, and probably for good reason. There's nothing fun, or even fair, about getting thirsty in a dungeon that doesn't even have a water pool (the dungeons are randomly generated, so this happens somewhat often). It just feels like playing an RPG where your character is poisoned from beginning to end.

Overall, there's enough here to make me reallllllly want a Dark Cloud 3, which we will unfortunately never see.