Character advancement is fairly unique in the Dark Cloud world—the characters themselves don’t really level up or gain experience, their weapons do. If you use a sword to kill a monster, that sword gains the experience from the kill. As swords increase in level, they gain attack and durability capabilities, and they gain “slots” for weapon improvements. Almost any inventory item can be “spectrumized”, broken down into a particular elemental effect, and added to a weapon. For instance, lightning crystals will increase a weapon’s “lightning” attribute. It’s not only the specialized weapon-enhancing items that can be broken down and added to weapons, however. Anything from bread to shoes to fish can be added to make the weapon stronger. After weapons get to a certain point, they can be “built up”, and evolve into new, more powerful weapons. Care must be taken with the weapons, however, as using them to bash on monsters tends to add a little wear and tear. Each weapon has hit-points, and can wear out and eventually break. Breakage isn’t as horrible as it was in the first Dark Cloud, thankfully. A broken weapon loses a little of its experience and stops functioning until repaired. Repair is simple, as an application of “repair powder” gets everything back to good-as-new. This weapon building aspect of the game is a great deal of fun, and can certainly eat up a huge share of time to find and make the ultimate weapon.
I see dead people...Now, all I’ve just described would be enough to make a fairly entertaining game. Thankfully, Dark Cloud 2 goes a lot farther, giving oodles of side-quests and mini-games to keep the completist going for a very, very long time. Max, being an inventor, is able to put this talent to good use. Early on Max acquires a camera, and with pictures of the world around him, he is able to brainstorm up new and useful goodies. Many items in the game can be used as seeds of invention, from mundane items like a window or a barrel, to much more exotic things like the attack posture of a particular monster. Max takes combinations of three picture ideas and tries to invent something. There are lots of idea seeds in the world, and lots of invention possibilities. It’s not always intuitive which three things will combine to make something useful, so there’s a lot of trial and error. Once Max invents something, he can construct it using the raw materials purchased in town or found in the dungeons. Of course, if you don’t really like the inventing aspect of the game, most of the items able to be invented are also available for purchase somewhere.
If that wasn’t enough, there’s also a fishing mini-game. If you catch a whopper, you can enter it into a contest for valuable prizes. Or, you can breed and train the little guppies for the fish races, again for valuable prizes. Or, if none of that sounds good, you can just grill the little guys for a tasty (and health-restoring) treat. Fishing not your thing? Well, you can always try your hand at a fun little golf-like game for, you guessed it, valuable prizes. Or why not try to beat the time trials for clearing each dungeon floor of all monsters? Also, there’s someone out there willing to reward you for getting “scoops”, pictures of some of the more unique happenings in the world. Thankfully, the designers realized that some players will want to do everything, while others will just want the basics. And Dark Cloud 2 caters to both types of gamer—most of the mini-games can be all but avoided, without damaging the enjoyment of the main quest in any way.
The game looks and sounds incredible. I wasn’t crazy for the cell-shading look before this, but now I’m sold. The graphics are the best I’ve seen on the PS2, hands-down. Everything seems to run very smoothly as well, as I don’t remember a single time where things got chuggy. Voice acting is quite good, even when the dialogue gets a little questionable. The music, one of my big complaints from the first game, is vastly improved. It’s very good at setting the appropriate mood, and while it may get a little repetitive after 50 hours of play, I have absolutely no desire to mute the entire game as I did in the first Dark Cloud. Game controls are also quite good, and after a little while everything from battle to taking a picture of that latest scoop will feel quite natural. I have a minor complaint about the inventory screen—after a while, the inventory gets quite cluttered and I couldn’t find a way to auto-sort everything there. When playing at 1am and being quite blurry-eyed, it would be nice for all of the items to be grouped together. I can spend almost a minute sometimes trying to find a particular weapon amidst bales of hay and weapon crystals.
Dark Cloud 2 is one of the best games, certainly one of the best RPGs, available on the PS2. I will heartily recommend this game to anyone even slightly interested in RPGs, which is something I don’t usually do. Outstanding gameplay, gorgeous graphics and tons of mini-games and side quests add up to be one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had in quite some time. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I heard about this great fishing spot on dungeon level 7…
A
One of the best games on the PS2. This one is an RPG fan’s dream, chock-full of quests, mini-games, incredible graphics, and amazingly fun game play.
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