Dark cloud, Sony's answer to the Legend of Zelda was released for the PlayStation 2 in late 2000,  it is created by level 5 who later made great games such as dragon quest 8 and the professor Layton series. The game centres around a mute protagonist Toan. After his village is destroyed by a dark genie, he is sent on a quest to rebuild it and many other locations by the Fairy King.

Story
The plot of the game is rather simple, but it is still effective, there is not much plot development but a few major characters have interesting back stories that you will learn of over the course of the game that add more depth to the world. All of the characters you can add to the towns and villages you rebuild are all unique and have personalities and meaning (despite some being bland cliché characters). 

Gameplay
Dark Cloud is very unique compared to other RPGs of this era as it incorporates two major play styles, the first is dungeon crawling. Throughout your adventure you will have to venture into a number of dungeons from caves to shipwrecks and even the moon. Each one of these dungeons have randomly generated floors so it will be different each time you play, although the randomly generated floors are quite basic, making most floors consist of hallways and a few rooms, it makes the game feel very unique and give it a slight rouge like feel. The weapon system is also very different to most RPGs, instead of leveling up a character, the weapons are the main focus, you can gain experience for a weapon which allows it to be turned into even better weapons over time by applying various buffs and elemental statuses to them. The weapons also have WHP points which go down the more you attack enemies with your weapon. These are similar to HP for your weapons and must be restored using repair powder, if a weapon losing all its WHP, it breaks, resulting in a lot of frustration so you always have to keep track of it,

Town buiding is the other aspect of gameplay in Dark Cloud, while going through dungeons, you can collect parts to rebuild towns such as buildings, trees, rivers and components that can be attached to buildings such as furniture and characters. Rebuilding the towns is very rewarding as they are all unique and deciding where to put things is very relaxing. Each villager has a specific request about what they want in the village or where they want to be placed, fufiling all these requests grants you a helpful reward.

Sound
The music in this game is great, it has a very underrated soundtrack. Much of the music is very relaxing, even in some dungeons. There are many very catchy themes in this game that fit the mood perfectly.

Graphics
For such an early PS2 game, this game looks quite good, all of the environments are distinct and look great.. The art style isn't bad but it is not one of the game's strong points, some side characters look blocky but the character model's of the main characters are very detailed and unique. 

Overall, Dark Cloud is a excellent game, it is very unique and addictive, although not living up to Sony's answer to the Legend of Zelda, it is a great game in its own right and worth playing through if you can find it.

sonicdude217 :

You did a great job with this, everything is fine with this review, the formatting, how each paragraph is apart from each other, the length, and I really like how you underlined the category names, you did a really good job with this one.

I never played this game but I'm a huge fan of PS2 so I might check out some videos in the future to see what it's like.