Dark Cloud 2

"A deluge of pure enjoyment, you will fall in love"

Simply put, Dark Cloud 2 is perfection on every level. It is engaging, diverse and utterly charming, with so much content that you could play for 50 hours or more and still be discovering something new. Every element of the experience has been so well put together that you will lose months of you life even after completing the main quest nurturing your perfect weapon, trying to take that ultra-rare photograph, raising the fastest fish, building a killer robot, or reconstructing your perfect town.

You play as Max, a wrench-wielding young inventor from Palm Brinks, and Monica, a girl from the future, who both spend the game trying to save the world from the evil Emperor Griffon. On paper, it might seem a little generic, but in execution the game is far from boring. Griffon destroyed the world of the future by destroying the world of the past, and it is your job to save the world of the future by rebuilding the world of the past. This RPG delivers such innovation and creativity by the bucketload, and is a ray of light among the Playstation 2's huge catalogue of quality RPGs.

The graphics of Dark Cloud 2 have been almost universally acclaimed, and arguably for its time, it was the best looking game on the Playstation 2. For the most part, the characters and monsters are imaginatively designed, and the cel-shaded look is truly charming. The flawless animations make the entire game look somewhat like a cartoon. The environments are just as stunning: ranging from the sleepy town of Palm Brinks to the massive industrial complex at the Gundorara workshop, my eyes were constantly glued to the screen. The dungeons, though randomly generated, have enough interesting features to keep them from becoming boring. In particular, the quality of the graphics in the sprawling celestial palace near the end of the game beggars belief. The look of your characters remains consistent throughout gameplay and cutscenes, which is a nice touch, and some of these cutscenes are remarkably impressive. The only issue is with some of the monster designs, which quite often get recycled later in the game in different colour variations, but this is not a huge problem in the grand scheme of things.

The graphics are complemented by excellent audio. The game has voice-acting, which is of a high quality, if a little grating. The dialogue itself is a little childish, but this all adds to the charm of the experience. Besides, there is nothing stopping you mashing the X button to skip it if you find it that offensive. The sound effects are suitably satisfying: a hammer sounds like a hammer, a sword sounds like a sword. Nothing to write home about, but solid nonetheless. The background music is subtle and pleasant for the most part, and battle/boss themes are suitably dramatic. Not many tunes really stand out from the crowd, but they do the job and they do it well.

Like in other Level-5 games, the story consists of a series of small but engaging quests that are barely connected at all, but good enough to encourage you to keep going. The pace picks up towards the end of the game, but not by much, and the ending is just horrible. Really, words cannot describe how awful the ending is, but it is not the story that will keep you playing. The gameplay is engrossing, complex, varied, and delightfully fun to play, so good that the weak story barely matters.

Some of the gameplay mechanics survived from the original Dark Cloud, most significantly the world building aspect. This is the aspect the original was best remembered for, and it has been improved in every way in this instalment. At a basic level, each area consists of a wide, open space and a connected dungeon. Your task is to explore the dungeon, collecting Geostones. These stones contain information about how to build houses, fountains, churches, and other landmarks, as well as how to rebuild the town to its original layout. Everything else is left to you, and the process is an addictive one. First you need to collect the info, then you need to collect the materials for the building (either through finding them in dungeons, inventing them, or buying them), then you need to recruit a character to live in the building (often involving a nice little sidequest), and finally you need to decorate the house enough for it to make an impact on the future version of the town. It's a very involved and wickedly immersing process, and different every time you go through it. But there is so much more to the gameplay which really makes Dark Cloud 2 shine.

First there is the combat, which is thoroughly enjoyable with plenty of depth. The controls are spot-on and make the flashiest of moves a breeze, and a delight to perform. Experience is gained on your weapons, not on your characters, and the system of levelling them up is absolute genius. You can upgrade your weapon's stats by combining it with items you've collected, or with a bit of work you can combine it with other weapons for a much greater reward. By exploiting the intricacies of this system (and there are several) your characters will become powerhouses in no time, but only if you work for it! Then there is the Ridepod, a huge mechanoid that gains experience of its own. The more you use it, the more you can customise it to your liking, with laser canons, motorbike wheels, or even a clown body. If that does not take your fancy, then you could transform into some of the monsters you encounter, use them to defeat (or even have a chat with) your enemies and reap the rewards.

But that is not all. The fishing minigame is still here, and there is so much to it. As you catch fish in any patch of water you can find, you level up your rod, allowing you to catch bigger fish and reap even bigger rewards in both the Fishing Contest (catch as big a fish as you can) and the Finny Frenzy (fish racing!), provided that you have raised your fish properly in your aquarium. Another sidequest is photography, which you can use to invent rare items, or to collect rare photographs which have rewards of their own.

Add to all of this the fact that you can play mini-golf in any of the dungeons you explore, collect medals by completing dungeons under certain conditions, recruit characters to you party for a number of beneficial effects, and you get a huge game that can last literally hundreds of engrossing hours. With so much to it, the game might have been in danger of becoming fragmented and incoherent, but Level-5 have integrated everything with such mastery that makes it all such a rich, wholesome experience. Everything you do, every sidequest you take part in, every fish you catch, every medal you earn, every photograph you take, contributes to your progress in the game as a whole. Every minute you spend taking part in a sidequest is a minute spent towards making your life easier in the main quest. Absolute genius.

The amount of content is bewildering at first, and can take a virtual lifetime to complete, but it never feels that way. Everything is so well put together that no amount of the time you put into the game will feel like a chore. It is possible to plough through it in about 30 hours, but in doing so you would miss out on so much of the joy that the game has to offer. Dark Cloud 2 offers a deluge of pure enjoyment for hundreds of hours, and I could not ask for more. Do not pass it by.

Graphics: Stunning and enchanting, 9/10
Sound: Subtle music and satisfying effects, 9/10
Gameplay: Perfection, 10/10
Lifespan: You will lose yourself in it for months, 10/10
Overall: 10/10

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 08/17/09

Game Release: Dark Chronicle (EU, 09/12/03)