Last week
I discussed some of the broader points of Dark Cloud, but there is a
ton going on with this game (and I spent too much time on it) for me not
to do a second post. So lets get right to it.
The first
thing I commented on was the graphics and I don’t think I quite gave
them enough credit. Yes, they are incredibly boring but they are very
well done. There was a huge graphical jump between
the N64/PS1/Saturn and the PS2/XBox/GameCube and it really shows here.
Every thing is super clean and well animated. All of the areas look
unique and feel lived in once you release all the residents. The
dungeons are okay as well and fit their areas appropriately.
I also
have to give credit to the sound. There aren’t any grand, epic tracks
but the minimalist sound design really fits here. Each track adds to
its respective dungeon or town. The sound effects are
okay too. The characters voices aren’t annoying and the weapon
effects are fine.
The
pacing of the game is pretty standard for a dungeon crawling action
RPG. You have your hub town, which here starts as just one building,
with access to a dungeon. You dive down as far as you can
into each dungeon, collecting items and weapons as you level up your
characters. Touching altimila (SP?) unlocks pieces of the towns, which you
can use to add buildings and people. This is how you gain access to
things like shops and item storage. The game does
a pretty good job of giving you the important stuff on the early floors
and it is relatively easy to backtrack to completed towns if
necessary. Each dungeon is about 15 floors and takes a handful of dives
to beat. One issue I had here is the difficulty curve
is a little unbalanced. It is very difficult to get started and the
first dungeon can be quite brutal.
Gameplay
wise, you are looking at a pretty standard action RPG. You can swing
your weapon, block and charge your attack. Really though you will spend
most of your time spamming your attack. I very
rarely found blocking to be useful or the charge attack to be worth the
time it takes. You play as one of six characters, three melee and
three ranged attackers. However, you are essentially forced to spend 80
percent of the time as the main character Toan,
as he is the only one that can unlock altimila. That means you are
essentially forced to leave a dungeon if he dies, which can be
frustrating. In general the ranged attackers are more useful towards
the end of the game and few enemies have the ability to
close distance on them, so you will often find yourself switching back
and forth constantly.
The game
does add variety in a few ways. For one, you have a lot of different
things to manage. In addition to the obvious HP, you also need to keep
characters hydrated and repair weapons. Repairing
weapons is critical, breaking one can lead to a lot of lost progress as
they are what levels up rather than your characters. Some gamers hate
this stuff, but I always kind of liked the whole survival aspect. The
game is also very generous with items to keep
your levels where they need to be and you can prolong your dungeon
trips by simply rotating characters. Also, you don’t need to kill all
the enemies to get to the next floor, you simply need to find a specific
item that unlocks the path forward. It helps
speed up the game quite a bit, although it is generally advisable to
collect all the treasures on each floor.
I think
the biggest problem here is the sheer amount of times you need to open
menus. You open a menu to switch characters. You have to open a menu
to repair your weapons, or drink, or use healing items,
all of which happen frequently. THis could have been solved relatively
easily by simply including more quick item slots, but you only get
three, most of which you will need to use for the status effect
prevention items. This really, really bogs down the
game and gets worse as you get more characters.
The
second big issue is how difficult it is to upgrade weapons. There is no
way around it, if you want to get the best weapons, you need to grind a
lot. The game helps you a little bit by giving you
access to “back rooms,” areas of the dungeons with better loot and
tougher monsters. That makes it easier, but you also need to increase
your weapon ratings against certain enemies, which requires specific
items that aren’t necessarily that easy to find.
It makes the game drag and its really frustrating. The one saving
grace here is that the game is beatable without the best equipment,
although the same can’t be said for the extra dungeon.
The town
building is a nice diversion even if it isn’t always the most
interesting. The interface is self explanatory and very easy to use.
Sometimes things like this are a bear with a controller rather
than a mouse, but it works here. You can also move relatively easily
about the town with a handy teleportation feature. Each building has a
resident and several additional pieces that need to be placed before
they are considered complete. Once they are
finished, the townspeople will give you items to aid you in your quest
(and in some cases, items that are integral to beating the game). You
can also get bonuses by building the towns to resident specifications.
Unfortunately, the translation isn’t great
so you don’t always understand what they are asking.
I am
already running long, so I am not going to go too much into the story.
It’s just okay, although the twist at the end was pretty solid. And
that pretty much sums up the entire game. For all of
the unique gameplay elements, Dark Cloud just isn’t that interesting.
It’s still a pretty good game, but the combat gets stale and the
minimalist graphics and constant menu switching don’t help. Not
something I would go out of my way to play, but not bad
at all.
7/10
Play this game if:
You can’t decide whether you want to play Sim City or Secret of Mana
You are a big Action RPG fan looking for something different
Avoid if:
You can’t stand the constant back and forth with the menus
You like Action RPGs with more timing based combat
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