Dark Cloud, Part 2

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