Overall 9.5 Graphics 8 Sound 7 Addictive 10 Story 6 Depth 10 Difficulty 7
9.5
Dark Chronicle: Dark Cloud 2 Sowong
IntroductionDark Cloud 2, known as Dark Chronicle to us Brits, is an RPG adventure set in a steampunk world following the story of a young inventor and his red haired princess companion. This game was released in 2002-2003 following the success of Dark Cloud in 2000 and immediately received a 9 out of 10 from IGN. On the Playstation there simply hasn't been another game like Dark Cloud 2, with the possible exception of NEIR, but the least said about that comparison the better. Dark Cloud has a more childish, playful attitude with cartoon violence and a progressive leveling up system which is comprehensive enough to be enjoyed by a range of age groups. Here we are seven years after its release and I'm still the proud owner of this game. Having played the game to completion I still crave more and was so disappointed that the PS3 wouldn't be continuing with the series that I switched to Xbox. Overall I've never found a bug in this game, I've rarely crashed, but that doesn't mean it's not frustrating for other reasons. This new version of the game introduced voice acting and while it was nice to avoid reading text throughout the whole game, the voice acting was never good, and the emotional moments are played out with sighing voices and monotonous monologues which don't fit the bill. The game also introduced new elements to a Playstation game which at the time were quite unique, except to Nintendo games, such as photography, invention, crafting, higher difficulty fishing, fish competitions, mini-quests and golf!
I'd recommend this game to anyone who'll listen.
GameplayThis game revolves around the same ideas as the first: The world has been destroyed and through the power of the atlamallia stones you have to rebuild the world. Rebuilding the world, it seems, involves a lot of running around, photography, inventing, recruiting followers and time travel! So lets brake down the many game elements there are to enjoy and hope it doesn't ramble on for too long.
There are four main areas in the world, the overworld which is just a map with the different locations you unlock by visiting them, the town areas where you craft objects with the Carpenterion and place them within certain goals to change the future, the dungeons where you fight monsters and discover Geostones which contain the plans for objects and goals, and the future, which is accessed by portals, and the power of the atlamallia, so you can get advice and more powers from the people you are helping to restore in the future.
Upgrading weapons is a big part of the game as your character can be improved by finding their favourite foods, which help with defence and health, but these are unlocked and found in the future and some town areas. Upgrading weapons is the real leveling up, and grinding away on their Abs is the key to upgrading, building new weapons from old ones, and killing different monsters.
There's fishing and golf challenges within the dungeons as well, which allow you to win medals which can be used to purchase rare clothing and items.
Fishing competitions exist to allow you to show of the speed of your trained fish, or to show off the fact that you've caught the world's biggest fish, often in exchange for a better fishing rod, or money.
Photography is used to capture unique attacks, different items and then use these photographs as inspiration for ideas and inventions. Inventions can be crafted by using items collected in the dungeons, or bought, and can produce items for your giant robot, new weapons, bombs, healing food, clothing and fishing equipment.
Rebuilding towns is another big part of the game, which lets you be creative, relax a little, and build up a town to your standards, seeking to fit them to the parameters set out by the game, of course, to improve the future and advance the game's story.
To rebuild towns you also have to recruit people, the first man you recruit is needed for his ability to grow trees, and these mundane 'everyday heroes' contribute to changes in the future, but each one requires a mini-quest of sorts, collecting an item, running errands, racing, photography, beating them at fishing, there's quite a lot packed in.
In terms of overall gameplay, everything about this game is time consuming but fun, there are actual rewards for doing things right, and the grind can be annoying, such as leveling up your fishing rod to catch better fish, but you soon start to see the changes, and there's little in the way of pointless challenges. You don't need to play the golf or fishing mini-games to progress, you don't have to make the future perfect, but all these things add up to decent rewards, powerful weapons, gold, and new stores. Farming for gold is about the only annoying thing Fighting is challenging, and sometimes too difficult, but the game will always give you something to use to your own advantage, the slicing motions, clubbing attacks and hits are satisfying, with a decent difficulty incline which requires only some grinding. There is a problem of ignoring one weapon, because really you can only level one up at a time, and finding out later on that what you really needed was an impressive gun or magic armband, but all you have is a hammer and a sword. At least in this game the swords don't break forever when they run out of durability. Being able to switch between two characters Max and Monica, also allows you to play according to their different strengths and abilities, such as Max's Robot or Monica's Monster Transformations.
GraphicsFor the Dark Cloud series a cartoonish style was applied to characters, with thick black outlines and touched-up features such as crows feet and scars equally highlighted with the flick of a black marker pen style which you may be familiar with in modern games like Borderlands. Just like Borderlands, this creates a bright, playful atmosphere for you to explore with wacky buildings, well designed (Astro Boy-Like) characters to meet and generally a jolly and upbeat adventure. Wacky shaped buildings, jaunty signs, roads and objects are used mostly in the non-dungeon areas, the towns that you visit and build, making them more interesting than the simple objects you just have to navigate around, or build, bringing an actual artistic feel to some of the gameplay where you have to rebuild ruined towns and villages. Within dungeons the graphics take on a more serious tone, characters and creatures are still given this 'drawn' look making them appear slightly less sinister, but the seriousness is portrayed in the strict design of the dungeons, each one randomized each time you visit. The fist dungeon is a waterworks, featuring pipes, wooden floors and gratings, the second is a forest without any playful features, flowers or anything friendly, the third is a flooded cave, and another is a strict, cathedral-like castle. This creates a somewhat tense environment which makes the playful nature of the cartoon design suddenly more sinister when balloons monsters, clowns and frogs bear down on you. Each monster is designed in a cartoonish style, with some making a repeat appearance from the first game, there is a mix of silly, fun, and evil creatures for you to battle and the cartoon style doesn't distract from their evil appearance, with Giant Mimics being one of the scariest things to pop out at you. Overall, the graphics are fun, but don't ruin the seriousness of some levels, or create an unplayable game, the soft tones and bright colours are actually a treat from all the bleak, grey games I find myself playing these days.
Sound
AddictivenessThis is a highly addictive game. It's the kind of game you start playing in the morning and stop playing at six in the morning. The gameplay elements, each, can become an all consuming passion; whether it's fishing to improve your rod, trying to upgrade your weapons or breeding the world's fastest fish. It's always, just one more level, or, just one more try, when it comes down to it. The more difficult the challenge the more rewarding it is when you've finished the golf round, caught a big enough fish or killed enough bad guys to win a medal. The photography challenges are what usually get me, this is my fifth time trying the game from the beginning to get all the 'scoops' which are are unique photo opportunities, but I usually miss the boss ones by accident. One problem, however, is that you're not really invested in the chracters. Unlike the first game there was a real reason to go out there are stop the genie, but in this game there's no strong tie for Max to venture out of his town, other than being pursued by clowns, and trying to find out why the world has been destroyed. This is different for Monica, but, she is presented almost like a side character, with her plot-line mostly ignored and the real focus laying with Max and his search for his mother. Trouble is I don't particularly care about Max's Mother, whereas in the first game we were given a real reason to care about Toan helping his village, protecting his loved ones, and then given a true reason in each village, with the introduction of a new playable character with strong ties to their destroyed village. So the real addictive nature of the game isn't within its story, but within the gameplay itself. The gameplay and challenges are so addictive you won't think twice about spending two or three hours on just one problem goal.
StoryI covered a little of this in addictiveness but we'll go through it here again. I gave a quite low score of 6 for story because, well, the game is poorly scripted in that regard. The main character Monica is more or less placed in a support role, despite having her father murdered before her very eyes, for the majority of the game she seems, pretty much, unaffected by this and progresses with a cheerful, upbeat attitude, vaguely concerned with the destruction of time by the evil mastermind which is Griffen. Her character is poorly developed and her need for revenge pops up infrequently, usually when confronted with her real enemy and his henchmen. Max, on the other hand, is a well rounded character with his story properly explored, he's an inventor, he works for a mechanic, he lives in a town and is well liked by the population, and well known, his father is the richest man in the city, his mother vanished some time ago, he wants to know what happened to her, and their relationship is revealed through flashbacks which relate to events in the story, he fishes, he plays golf, has an interest in photography, has a terrible relationship with his father but besides looking for his mother, he has no real reason for putting himself in danger to save a future world by displacing his friends and family around a destroyed world. Monica's function seems to be to explain difficult plot-lines and gameplay elements, but besides this her impact on the story is simply as the 'mysterious stranger' who pulls Max into a madcap future world adventure.
Along the way, however, we're helped along with our motivation through the introduction of minor stories, each one connected with the places you visit. The initial story being Max chased from his town and pursued by a clown troop lead by the sinister Flotsam. The clown, which his robots, beach buggy and army of knife throwing entertainers chases Max out of the city, he is then soon dispatched by Monica and it's unclear what happens to Flotsam's troop after Monica blew him up. We then immediately visit Sindain, a quiet forest village where a giant talking tree who remembers everything about the world. Unfortunately Griffen, the bad guy running the whole future ruining thing I mentioned, has killed Jurak (the tree) by destroying his origin point, aka, Max's time. The gang must restore the tree, but to do so need the help of Seven Firbits (Essentially Snow White's Dwarves) who have lost a woman they cared for, who you must find, and in the process restore Jurak. The next area follows the story of a Great Sage, Crest, who has also been killed, but his Apprentice, Lin, is struggling with an illness and saving her could lead to saving Crest. So there has been a great deal of effort to provide a good amount of story, and most of it works, but overall the poor voice acting, repetition of cliques and pointless conversations ruins the development of the plot.
DepthI've shown you all I can in the Addictiveness part of this review, but I'll write a bit more here. Even if you rebuild every village, even if you upgrade to the most powerful weapon, collect every medal, build the most powerful robot, complete the fishing challenges, win every competition, create a perfect future, find every set of clothing, upgrade your characters fully, photograph every idea and scoop, upgrade Monica's Monster Transformations to 100, win every golf medal, build every robot part, collect every character, settle them somewhere, invent every item and complete the game by defeating Griffen... you're still not finished: Because there's a final dungeon more difficult than all those you've faced before with 100 levels, the most difficult enemies and revamped bosses such as 'Metal Flotsam' and that Ultimate Evil from the first Dark Cloud, the Dark Genie, still to defeat! So yes, there's a heck of a lot to do in this game, and this review doesn't even come close to explaining just how in-depth each of these challenges actually are, for example, it took me one whole day to complete five rounds of the golf mini-game. It's just that difficult and frustrating, but the completionist in me demands it!
DifficultyDepending on what aspect of the game you're referring to the game ranges from easy to pretty damn difficult. It can take hours to complete simple tasks and if both characters die, you get a game over and have to start from your last save, each level is about 5-10 minutes long to finish, golf is difficult, fishing slightly easier, but rare fishes hard to find, and difficult to catch. The storyline gameplay has a decent arc of difficulty, with new areas being hard, and old areas getting easier one you upgrade health and defense by finding the related items in the non-dungeon worlds. Leveling weapons is actually a lot easier than some people lead on, but with higher leveled weapons the less Abs there is around. Some challenges are needlessly difficult, and make acquiring unique items more difficult than need be. The invention side of the game is fun and easy, but photography challenges can also be needlessly difficult. Boss battles are also not immediately obvious, like to kill one monster you have to attack what you'd see as a part of the environment first, which only makes sense if you read the Helpful Tips that pop up, but if you miss these by accident then you're not going to win. Some parts of the game are overly complicated and this can make the game frustrating, but really the randomness of dungeons make everything fun, and no single challenge ever plays out the same way twice. Buying things is too expensive, and finding money is too difficult, even with fishing exploits, it can take too long to get the right amount of money. So the game is very difficult, but not impossible... except for the final dungeon.
ConclusionThere's a reason this game still sells for £20 to £25 preowned, it's a classic, it's wonderful and challenging and doesn't feel like a waste of time. I hate how undervalued it has been, with too few people playing past the initial levels, or simply not caring about the game at all. I find it amazing that some people have never heard of Dark Cloud, it's practically unique, and not something that's usually seen within the Playstation game formats. The story and graphics appear childish, but the game deals with some heavy issues, with a magical flair, such as murder, genocide, true love, hatred and depression. The gameplay is varied, and the challenges are attractive, there's some hand-holding, but the game lets you play to your own style, once elements have been introduced you rarely have to go back to them. The game lets you play things your way, and if that means hitting things with a hammer, a robot or a spell then that's just dandy.
Graphics 8 Sound 7 Addictive 10 Story 6 Depth 10 Difficulty 7
Review Rating: 3/5
Submitted: 09-07-15
Updated: 09-07-15
Review Replies: 4
User Notice 
