Dark Cloud 2

"If this is an rpg then Madonna is a good actress."

First of all, this IS NOT an action/rpg. This game is just a Zeldish action adventure/dungeon crawler title, like Kingdom Hearts, that was said to be an action/rpg and in the end it turned out to be a horrible Super Mario 64 clone with some awfully implemented rpg elements.

I couldn’t wait to play when I heard it was an action/rpg, and even in the back cover of the game said “not only an rpg”, man, if the back cover says so, then at last it has to have some rpg elements. I knew the first Dark Cloud wasn’t an rpg and I’m so stupid that even knowing that I bought this game, (the lack of rpg in this damned Europe is what makes people do this kind of stupidities).
I don’t know what people think nowadays an rpg is, ok, if this is an rpg, then where are the towns?, where are the weapon and armor shops like in any action/rpg?, where are your companions like in any action/rpg?, where are the experience points?, where is the action/rpg combat system?.. I can go on forever.

Plot 5/10:
The big problem here is not the plot itself but the game’s structure, which makes everything go on so slowly that ends up being very boring. The characters are also a problem, Monica is ok, but Max is terrible as the main hero. The enemies are also very stupid, a blue guy with ridiculous teeth, a fat clown... bad bad.
Anyway, the plot follows the adventures of Max, a young McGiver that wants to find his mother and that suddenly meets a young girl from the future (Monica) that has come to try to defeat the evil mad man we find in every video game because he is messing up everything in the future.

At the beginning the game rocks, the first twenty minutes are really something, and they makes you think that this is going to be something deep, involving and very well done, but the truth is that the story is pretty lame, Max and Monica’s relationship is not very well developed, they just met and immediately agree to help each other, the only good parts are the battles with some bosses and some cut scenes, and as these are very few this game has little to offer for those seeking for good story.

Graphics 9/10:
They look great, undoubtedly, but they aren’t perfect. If you use the first person view you will see that nothing is as detailed as it seems, specially the first town and the town’s people, but as I said before everything looks great, and that is the most important thing.

Music 8/10:
Very nice, maybe not remarkable, but quite good, specially the songs played when you are in the future.
The voice acting is good enough, Max’s voice can get a bit annoying sometimes, but in general is nice (or maybe not, who knows after having played Grandia II for so much time, the game with the worst voice acting I’ve ever heard, after that everything seems good).

Gameplay 5/10:
As an “almost dungeon crawler”, everything consists on finding items and killing enemies to obtain more items.
The dungeons are randomly generated like in most dungeon crawlers, but saying that this way you will never see the same stage two times is ridiculous, in every dungeon all the stages look “e-x-a-c-t-l-y” the same, there is not a single difference between them, so once you’ve seen the first stage you have seen them all, why not using at last two or three different backgrounds for each dungeon?, and all the dungeon have tons of levels making some of them a true pain to complete. The enemies do change, but I think that is not enough.

Upgrading weapons by synthesizing items is stupid, boring, and tedious. You are never going to buy new weapons because it is useless, and you are never going to buy armor because you simply can’t. The main characters both had a secondary weapon, a gun for Max and a magic bracelet for Monica, but I have only used them a few times, they are basically useless because they do from almost nothing to absolutely zero damage, and it is really hard (and again, useless) to improve this weapons.

Inventing things could’ve been something great too, but, what is the point of inventing thins that can easily purchased in every shop?, for example, making bread costs you 30 bucks, and after inventing it you will need three different kinds of elements useful and necessary for that Georama system and that cost you more than 30 if you buy them. I know some things can only be obtained by inventing them, but most of the inventions are useless.

The Georama system is fun and it could’ve been a nice mini game, but you are forced to use it every time in the same way. Once you get to a new place there is a problem that can be solved by finding Geostones to restore everything and to the next area to do the same thing all over again. This way of playing may be fun, but it also makes the game slow and the plot uninteresting, and that is a fatal error.

Replay Value:
Lot’s of replay value, in each stage there are a lot of medals that are needed for the game’s extra features, then there are two mini-games (very boring by the way), finding all the inventions, all the medals… there are so many things to do that I can’t even remember.

So:
Even if at the beginning I shouted and cried and wanted to throw it trough the window, I have to admit that I ended up enjoying the game... for a few hours, this game is worst than Kingdom Hearts, because at least Kingdom Hearts wasn’t monotonous.
I would say DC 2 is like a roller coaster, it goes up and down a lot, sometimes is good and sometimes boring. The worst part is that this game could’ve been great as an rpg. However, I strongly recommend this game to anyone, because it seems that I am the only one that doesn’t think it rules, what I’m never going to assume is that this is an rpg (or an action/rpg it is the same), because it is NOT.

””My lack of vocabulary and grammatical errors (if there’s any) are because I’m not from an English speaking country, sorry.””

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 10/02/03, Updated 11/17/03