Gaming off the Beaten Path

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.

It’s no secret at this point that I’m a huge RPG fan.  That said, I have always found action RPGs to be hit or miss.   I find a lot of them to be very unbalanced, filled with difficulty spikes and generally inconsistent.  So naturally, I wasn’t all that excited when Dark Cloud was released back in 2001.  There were just too many other games out there that were more interesting and it got fairly middling reviews, so it was easy to ignore.  However, it also garnered something of a cult following and it has been one of the longest standing classic games available for download on Sony’s PlayStation store.  I figured now was as good a time as any to try it. Right off the bat, I noticed a bevy of themes that are prevalent in modern games: randomly generated dungeons, ‘town building and other mini-games and an almost singular focus on item collecting and upgrading.  This stuff existed in games back then, but it wasn’t nearly as prevalent as it is now.  These elements c