Dark Cloud

Dark Cloud is one of those cult classics that have a sort of cult following. Honestly, do you expect mainstream gamers to go find a copy of Dark Cloud and play it? Well, they may buy it, but they may not like it. That's their problem, this is a true classic. Not in the same sense as other cult classics such as Super Ghouls N Ghosts and Final Fantasy 9 (despite the latter being of a mainstream series, it was only really successful with the more hardcore gamers) due to a decent amount of glaring flaws, but the goods seem to make it a classic regardless. Read on as I tell you the tale of a game that was left in the dust due to the glaring flaws, but became a success in the underground.

To begin the game, you start by reading some blurb about god knows what before you name your main character. His official name is Toan, but you name him what you want (yes, it proceeds even if you call him a vulgar word - you could name him assclown for all I care). Anyway, after naming yourself, you'll be treated to a cinematic of a lot of dancers in front of a large urn. Meanwhile, some big nosed Nazi general and a tub of lard walk by to tell the viewers why these dancers dance their...seemingly...erotic dance (don't get any ideas fellas, aside from one dancer who seems to be the lead dancer and isn't in too many parts of this first scene, they're not female dancers, but all jackals that can walk on their hind legs). These two discuss... Well, they talk about this ritual the dancers are performing, and then they go on about absolutely nothing of any importance. Meanwhile, some grey haired guy is sneaking around, possibly trying to stop this ritual, though there isn't really any stopping happening. All he does is hide behind some column, watching it all happen. Eventually, the ritual is over, and some giant, fat purple Dodoria look-alike called the Dark Genie jumps out of the urn, eats the fat guy who was with the general and, along with the general, leaves the place to unleash hell upon the entire world.

Meanwhile, Toan (main character) is late for this festival in his home village of Nolun Village. Some random chick whose name escapes me reminds Toan that he is late, and she has to go because she's a staff member, as if Toan actually cares. They end up going, however, during this festival, the Dark Genie appears and destroys the village. What catches Toan's attention fully, is the collapsing tower about to crush the chick that reminded him of the festival, as if they're in love or something. Anyway, after this event, Toan gets teleported to some other dimension and speaks with the Fairy King. The Fairy King explains to Toan that the Dark Genie has risen again and has gone around the entire world, destroying villages. The Dark Genie is, apparently, this evil force that is darkness itself, and the Fairy King and other spirits cannot defeat it, so he entrusts Toan with some jewel known as the Atlamillia, which is engraved on one of his gloves. What it does, is that when you eventually find some floating shells in the dungeons known as Atla, you can absorb the properties and use them to eventually restore the villages to normal. How so? Apparently when the Dark Genie destroys villages, the villages and villagers are put in Atla by the Fairy King. After hearing more jibber-jabber about Alta and dark genies, the Fairy King leaves. Your mission is to restore the villages back to their former glories by exploring dungeons, opening up Atla with the Atlamillia. However, if you're sane like me (or at least have the TV volume at an audible level), you would be too deeply immersed in the soundtrack to actually care too much about the story. I sure was. I was most interested in the ritual scene's music, as it is one of my all-time favorite video game songs. It really brings out the atmosphere of that particular scene, though you could say that the other two songs you hear before even playing do the same. I'll go more in-depth with the soundtrack later.

There are other little sidestories that occur in the game, such as having to win the heart of some chick (who, believe it or not, is one of the bosses) who was bitter but now sweet, and trying to find the moon ship to get to the moon, but most of these little plots serve as reasons to get to certain villages in the game before you can stop the Dark Genie. Plus, I play Dark Cloud for action and maybe a little nostalgia. I often feel the latter because this plays a fair bit like ActRaiser for the SNES.

Thankfully, there isn't too much character development in the game. Some of your allies (whether or not you control them) have little backstories to them, and it only lasts until they either join your party or until you've finished the level. For example, Ungaga starts as some guy who feels as if he's useless because he couldn't protect his village from the Dark Genie's attack, which is stupid considering Toan couldn't stop his village from the Dark Genie, yet Toan just picks up his dagger and explores the cave near his village by order of the Fairy King. Eventually, Ungaga gets his confidence back after getting halfway through the temple and joins you, therefore, forcing his character to be fully developed. I had no problems with this sort of thing at first, considering the fact that this is an action game, and character development would be a huge waste of time, plus this game was made in 2000; storylines were barely even a mention outside of the intro and outro scenes, plus the occasional cutscene here and there. I have no problem with this. Some of the character intros and developments may seem stupid and ridiculous, however, I thought they were cool and it at least keeps the game fresh and keeps it moving forward. At least the game doesn't screw around with draggy story nobody truly cares about, because, as I said a while ago, the story is good.

In terms of what you do in Dark Cloud, you just collect Atla shells in dungeons while killing whatever enemy threatens you (or anything that moves in dungeons, really), and at the end, you have a boss to face. Before facing the boss, you have to rebuild the village the way that everybody either wants it or remembers it. Sounds simple enough, and it is actually quite simple. It's so simple that an idiot could play through it no problem.

To start with, there is the overworld, which allows for town building (when you get some Atla out of the dungeons), interacting with active villages (when you get them out of the Atla in the dungeons), and going through people's houses to loot what the villagers put in chests around their houses (when you get entire house sets, like the house, all the people and their important objects, out of the shells). That's all you can really do. Oh, and when you get the shop completed by getting all of its Atla in the dungeons, you can also buy items from said shop. The items are all there to help you survive in the dungeons, and range from health restorers, to weapon health restorers, to thirst meter restorers, to speed enhancers, and other items. Also, in the overworld, if you get certain houses completed but can't seem to proceed in a dungeon, maybe a certain house has a solution? It pays to explore the villages you're rebuilding. This is usually at the halfway point of a dungeon. Once you're done with the event, you gain a new ally and you're able to pass that obstacle. The overworld also offers the boss key as a reward for getting more houses complete in the villages as you traverse through the dungeons even further, almost to the boss floor. However, you cannot proceed because there's no key in the dungeon. It's in the villages! Anyway, rebuild more houses to have them ALL done, then check in with all the houses. They'll want their houses in specific places and/or away/close from/to certain people in the villages. Once you give in to their demands, check in with every house again and get the prize; the boss key and an additional item to help... later on, I guess.

How do you even begin getting these villages back to normal? First off, you must go into the dungeons themselves to actually get the Atla. Once you've got the Atla, go back to the overworld, press Triangle, select Config/Assembly, then you place the right items in the right categories (houses). Next off, select the houses themselves, and place them somewhere in the village. Then simple press Select to start walking around the village. Of course, you must actually talk to the villagers to figure out how the village should be built so you can get the boss key and additional prize. This plays kind of like ActRaiser for the SNES, except YOU'RE placing the houses and determining how the village is built, as opposed to just directing villagers to where they're supposed to build houses and, on occasion, helping certain villagers with little things. You ARE God...of village building, anyway.

What of the dungeons? Basically, you're trekking through corridors/paths of caves, forests, sunken ships, temples, the moon and a castle (a strange castle it is, since it seems to change the time period as you get further through it). By corridors/paths, I mean each floor of each dungeon consists of thin paths, with the occasional circular, large area used mostly for fighting enemies. The structure is about the same every time you go through dungeons, though the little things, such as what direction everything is, enemy locations and the like, randomly changes when you enter floors at any one time. You'd think the structure would get repetitive, would you? Well, yes, but then again, doesn't Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time have repetitive dungeon settings? Yes, it does, but more in the subtle elements, rather than the structure. However the bulk of OoT's dungeons are samey, yet that game is regarded as 'teh bestest thing since sliecd bred'. Surely, Dark Cloud can slide with this too, right? I say HELL YEAH! Because the main meat of the dungeons is finding enemies to kill and Atla to restore the world! As I said, everything is in different positions every time you re-enter the dungeon, and that includes: entrance, you, enemies, Atla, keys, chests and exit.

In order to get through a floor in its entirety, you must not only find all the Atla, but also the dungeon key. What good is finding all the Atla on the first floor, when that is the only floor you can access? Atla doesn't come back when you re-enter (unlike everything else), so you need to find yourself a dungeon key. Where can you find such key? Either by killing enemies or randomly finding it in a chest. This now encourages you to kill everything that moves just to proceed through a dungeon. Fair enough. It's like sneaking into a castle that is locked all around; you need to somehow knock out the guard, take his keys, and use them to enter and exit at will. Don't worry, folks, you're not sneaking through these dungeons. The enemies are not only piss easy to take out, but they aren't very observant of their environment either. True, some enemies will prove to be quite bothersome, but as long as your weapon is strong, you'll defeat many enemies without too much trouble.

There are many elements in the dungeons that Toan cannot do. While he is the only controlled character that can open Atla, he cannot do other things, like jump/fly over a chasm, open a magically sealed door or clear dark fog. This is where the allies that he meets up with throughout the dungeons come into play. Like I said, you meet up with allies at about... the halfway point, I'm guessing? Yes, the halfway point is where you meet up with the newest allies. You gain an additional 5 allies, and most of the time, they are inferior to Toan (with the exception of Ruby, the only good long-ranged fighter - Toan is the best short-ranged fighter just FYI). When you first get these allies, it's to clear an obstacle Toan can't. However, they cannot open Alta because they don't possess the Atlamillia. To actually switch between different allies, you must press Select, then press left or right on the D-pad to select an ally. Press X to make your decision final. However, if just one ally dies and you don't have a single Stand-In Powder on you, you'll be kicked out of the dungeon and back to the overworld, leaving half of your money to donate to the monsters.

One thing in the dungeons that randomly chooses whether to appear or not is a door. This door randomly places itself somewhere in the dungeon, and requires some sort of key to go through it. You need to get through it to get all the Atla, so you better start slaughtering enemies or raiding dungeon chests for one.

Another thing that, sort of, randomly appears, are these 'back rooms', which can be accessed by offering a certain item to a certain thing at a certain location of a floor. The only example of this I can think of is that you need oil in the first dungeon to access the back rooms of said dungeon. The back rooms are like regular dungeons, however, you have access to rarer items and much stronger enemies. If you couldn't handle the enemies in the regular floors, you will be in strife throughout your journeys in the back rooms. The back rooms serve only two purposes anyway; EXP and rare items. No keys are in there, so unless you feel like strengthening your weapon and/or getting rare items, you have no business being in the back rooms. And good luck even getting into the back rooms in the first place! Finding the item is about as likely as finding Jesus! ...I mean, you could slaughter a whole bunch of enemies or randomly find them in chests, but the chances of finding them are slim to none. They are too rare for their own good!

The final thing that seems to be random most of the time are these things called Limited Zones. At times, these will randomly pop up, and it affects the entire floor and will not subside until you're no longer in the floor. Sometimes, you'll encounter a limited zone that actually decreases your EXP as you slay enemies, limiting your killing spree to keep your weapon's EXP high (in which case, switch to another powerful weapon...if you cannot switch because you're cursed, a 'no weapon switching' limited zone is also in effect or only have this powerful nearly leveled up weapon and the crappy default weapon, tough, just limit your killing spree). Sometimes, you'll get thirstier, which will make water a much more valuable resource than even in real life (unless your thirst meter is of a high level, in which case, provided you zoom through the floor, you shouldn't have to worry until the next floor or so). Sometimes, you'll have limited zones that disallow weapon switching. You just can't switch weapons, but there are some times where it is used in conjunction with the "EXP lowering" limited zones, which gets very, very annoying since they come at random times, leaving you unprepared at times. I am unsure if there are any other limited zones that are typically randomized, so you'll just have to expect them while playing through the game. There are some mandatory limited zones that remain in that floor for the remainder of time, such as the first EXP lowering limited zone and certain floors that force you to only use one ally. These limited zones can either be motivation to upgrade your other characters' weapons (your allies not named Toan and Ruby benefit from this) or just piss you off (Ungaga... argh, I hate being forced to use him and only him...). As you can tell, the limited zones are, as it should be suggesting, limiting, however, it increases the challenge just a little (or a lot if you're in an Unagaga-only limited zone). It isn't too tedious to be annoying or game-destroying, so don't let them get to you if you get many of the randomized ones – you just have bad luck.

In terms of actually engaging in combat with enemies, you have a basic battle system; hit X many many times until the enemy dies with your close ranged people, or hit X a decent amount of times from a distance until the enemy dies with your long ranged people. You can deal a much more powerful hit by holding X for a bit, then releasing it thus unleashing a stronger attack. This is useful against stronger enemies who just won't die to a regular combo, or if you just want to quickly dispatch a weaker enemy, whatever works best for you. Quite a simple battle system if you ask me, but it works quite finely. Looking at The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time again, that had a simplistic battle system which required repeated mashing of the attack button, with little variations needed, and look at how much of a success that game is. Surely, Dark Cloud can slide, right? Yes! You do get prizes for defeating enemies. One enemy holds the key to the next floor, a decent percentage of enemies keep money (which you must use to buy items) and (very rarely) some enemies carry back room keys. Score!

But in order to finish a dungeon in its entirety, you must face and defeat the boss of each area. The bosses are usually possessed by the Dark Genie (like the first four bosses. The moon boss isn't possessed, as you actually face him in a coliseum, as his next opponent, rather than possession, and the last boss is...well, the Dark Genie, what do you expect?). The bosses all fight fairly differently. There are also fairly different elements to each boss. But most play out around about the same way; you must use your newest ally (excluding moon boss). The ship boss, for example, requires somebody like Toan or Goro to break her shield, and then Ruby (the newest ally at that point) has to fire blasts of fire at the boss. Or try the temple boss; Ungaga, who is your newest ally at that point, has to use his charge attack to blow the smoke back into the coffin before switching to Toan or Ruby (or Goro or Xiao if you want a challenge or if they're your strongest, or just keep to Ungaga if you think he's strong enough to handle this boss) and wailing on the boss before the smoke comes back out. Point is, each boss requires use of your newest ally (bar the moon and castle bosses). Are they too difficult? It depends on how you handle them and how strong your weapon is. If you weapon can't even cut butter, then train your weapon some more, because the boss will obviously overwhelm you. If you have a strong weapon, with the exception of the ship and castle bosses, the bosses will be of the semi-easy or medium difficulty levels, depending on your skill in general and how you deal with bosses. They are mostly fun fights which really just test your skill and how strong your weapon is.

This game has some slight Action/RPG elements to it not only in the combat system and the existence of currency, but also in the form of experience points your weapons get. As you defeat enemies, your weapon gains experience points. How can you tell that your weapon is about to "level up"? There is a blue bar underneath the red bar (which is your weapon HP bar). When that fills up completely, press Triangle, go to Weapons, select the currently equipped weapon and select upgrade. Prior to upgrading, you could add different things you find in the dungeons to weapons. Some of these items can increase basic stats such as how much damage they do in general, how many times you can hit enemies with them before they break and how fast they attack. There are also elemental stats like fire, ice, thunder, wind and holy/light. Then there's some which I think is just nitpicking, like dragon, undead, marine, rock and the like, which is basically how much more damage it does against that sort than normal. That is just nitpicking and unnecessary. Inexplicably, some people have been fooled into actually finding this useful. More power to them, I guess.

Among this, weapons can upgrade into new weapons... Well, the major differences are statistics and a new name. The appearances slightly change along with name and stats. How they evolve is actually quite simple. You need to first upgrade certain statistics. What these statistics are, is often random (that, and I tend to forget), but once you figure it all out, you can get yourself a super weapon eventually. The last thing is that you need to have the weapon at a certain level. I believe it has to be a *insert weapon name*+5 before it evolves. This is actually a good way to "level up" in a game. Some may find it weak that the characters, themselves, don't level up, but screw them, I think it makes just as much sense to have the weapons level up over time as opposed to the people.

Now, this has to be the main problem with Dark Cloud in general (more specifically, the weapons), and I think this is the ENTIRE REASON people don't like it - your weapons break after a while of attacking enemies. Now, of course, there was a trend of trying to be super realistic back in 2000 and unfortunately, it still stands today in 2008, though not as bad. Anyway, there is a line between realism and plain f'ing annoying. Guess where this element crosses the line into... Give up? The annoying side, that's what! This is, what I would consider, a lazy challenge. There is far more annoying lazy challenges in other games, but seriously, why must this be included? All it does is add tedium to the game, especially since you need to constantly buy Repair Powder (which repairs your weapons), then open up the Items menu, select the Repair Power and repair your weapon, which you would imagine would get tedious after some time just repeatedly opening up the menus and... Well, you get it. It's just annoying. Imagine if you will, you were upgrading your Drain Seeker, trying to get it to its strongest form, but while slashing a bipedal wolf, lo and behold, it breaks! All that hard work breaks away, along with the shards of the weapon that cannot be put back together! If you found the concept of limited zones or only being allowed to control a pathetically weak ally for a whole floor quite annoying, the concept of weapons breaking will prove... well, even more annoying. I don't exactly consider this a game killer, but it is rather annoying having to keep an eye on the weapon HP bar while fighting. I guess it was really to add a challenge to the game, but what was meant to be a challenge became the most tedious element of Dark Cloud that turns away many gamers. That is just pathetic. I wasn't turned off from playing the game due to this, however, it did get quite tedious and took some getting used to. To rectify this, put some Auto-Repair Power into one of your three active item slots (at the top of the screen). This will automatically repair your weapon when it breaks, so buy these as often as possible. Thankfully, every weapon has different HP bars.

Another pseudo-realistic element of gameplay that was added was the thirst meter, represented by a group of water drops underneath the thin, blue weapon EXP bar. Over time, you and your allies will get thirsty. Once the thirst meter runs out (there's no more drops of water), you'll begin to lose HP. To remedy this, drink some water you may have or find a spring (of water) and walk in that. Everybody has different thirst meters to one another thankfully. You can upgrade your maximum thirst by finding yourself some Gourd and eating it, although this will only increase the thirst meter of whoever eats it. These aren't that rare (not nearly as rare as the back room keys), but you still might want to give priority to the characters you feel you'll use more as Gourd are somewhat rare. Where to find Gourd? Check around peoples' houses, or people who are quite content with their house and surroundings.

I made mention of active item slots, am I right? What these are, from what you may have gathered, are quick access to items. You only have three active item slots, so use these sparingly. Using them requires the Square button, but to actually select them, you need to press the D-pad either left or right THEN press Square on the item you actually want to use. To actually put the item in the slots to begin with, you need to access the Items menu, and then drag the items from the pouch to the slots. Great suggestions are Revival Powders (which will revive you when you're dead), Dran's Feather (which allows for quicker movement) and, as I've already mentioned, Auto-Repair Powder (for obvious reasons).

While exploring the dungeons, you'll eventually be inflicted with a status problem. Enemies will be the ones inflicting these to you. You can get poisoned, which eventually decreases your HP as you stay in the dungeons, unless you either die or give yourself an Antidote. Some enemies will inflict your with a curse status, which forbids you from switching weapons unless you give yourself some Holy Water. There is the "goo" status which slows you down unless you apply some soap on yourself. You can buy these items at shops for a decent price. This adds to a sort of realistic survival feel to the game, having to deal with status inflictions whilst dealing with thirst. These can be annoying to deal with, but just roll with it. Get the right items and you should be set, really. It's not as annoying as your powerful weapon breaking on you, forcing you to use the crappy default weapon. Plus, you shouldn't be afflicted with these too commonly since the enemies who inflict the problems aren't all that fast and can be quite easy to defeat if you have a decently powerful weapon.

I could go on all day about the various elements of Dark Cloud's gameplay, but I think we should move on because you, the reader, are supposed to be buying this game and experiencing it for yourself. Plus, I have yet to cover the one thing that makes Dark Cloud more impressive, and without this part, Dark Cloud would just be another Action/Adventure game with some ActRaiser and Zelda influence; the soundtrack. In a word - mesmerizing.

From the first logo advertising one of the creators, up until the very end of the outro scene, you will be mesmerized by the soundtrack. Every single song in the game is suiting to the time and place they're played in, and they are composed ever so brilliantly with very little errors, if any at all. With games that start a new series, there is no room for any margin of error, and while the gameplay has a few little irks, there are little errors there, and hardly any errors in the soundtrack, if there's any errors at all (essentially, to point out any problem with the soundtrack is to nitpick at every little thing about it, which is not actually the point of playing a game, the point of playing a game is to actually play the game, the soundtrack is background music...if you want to nitpick soundtracks, get the OSTs/official soundtracks). Basically, what you have here is suitable music which is composed very, very well. The cave, for example, has a few acoustic riffs playing, while other background noises are occurring, which is suiting to a cave dungeon. The forest town and dungeon have calm, soothing music (the dungeon, I cannot seem to stop humming, it is actually the second most catchy dungeon tune, second only to the moon dungeon). The enemy music isn't exactly pulse-pounding, but it gives you a sense of danger, thus alerting you of the enemy's presence if you're too blind to see them from afar. Boss musicks are typically a combination of 'to the theme', 'a sense of danger' and uplifting, to keep you awake. Overall, the soundtrack is quite impressive, and don't be too surprised if you cannot stop yourself from humming these tunes whilst playing or even when you're not playing; if anything, you should be put into a mental institute if, after playing, you are not humming the tunes. Seriously.

There are often complains about the lack of voice acting, but I think a bit of reading doesn't hurt anybody, plus I think voice acting would wreck the experience, and back in 2000, voice acting wasn't really an easy task to do, in terms of adding it into the game without stuffing up the quality of the clips. There are grunts after attacking, screams after getting hurt/dying and...Wow, I guess that's it. But really, I think voice acting would wreck this game. Look at Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time, there was only the occasional grunting and such, but that's it. Voice acting isn't needed in every game anyway. If you think this game needs voice acting, that's your opinion. Here's mine; only if the game is being re-released, as voice acting quality has increased dramatically over 8 years, however, the actors better be doing a good job, because I don't want them killing these characters. They're too good for bad voice acting...Look at Sonic and crew as of late, their voice actors are dreadful. They hurt my ears! I'd hate Dark Cloud to have voice acting that bad. It'd, for one, contrast terribly with the soundtrack, and it'll make the characters easier to hate. Think about it...

Last and certainly least important, the game looks impressive for an early, early PS2 game (what was the year again...2000? I believe it was in development since 1999...wasn't the N64 out at this time?). The textures, for the most part, are kind of minimal for this time period, but they're at least there. The color schemes are well done, though a couple of dungeons feel dull contrast-wise. I'm not asking for a crapton of contrast, but a bit more would make these dungeons more... appealing. The character models just look amazing, enough said. Special effects are also quite nice to look at, and look like they had a lot of effort put into them (don't be fooled though, everything else is done with much more effort, and it shows...play the game to verify my point). Just amazing.

How this game got underrated the way it is, is just criminal. Just because there were some annoying aspects that forced you to actually pay attention instead of just blowing up everything in sight or headshotting everyone you see, doesn't mean it sucks. You most likely just suck at the game yourself if you think this game sucks. It had a lot of elements which were similar to Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time (hence the many comparisons throughout this review), yet while that game gets praised as Jesus running on water, this game is left in the dust. I feel that this game is superior yet inferior (and not just graphically superior), but either way, it deserves a playthrough of longer than 20 minutes. Go find yourself a copy of this game right now. You will not regret the amount of money you'll spend buying this over Ebay or a second hand store. Amazingly unforgettable soundtrack, ace gameplay, good graphics and a decently compelling story is what you're getting here, so don't miss out on Dark Cloud.