"Flawed innovation"

Dark Cloud was touted as a "zelda-killer". The hype surrounding this game made it out to be everything the N64 zelda games were and more. And, in a lot of ways, that description holds true. There are a great many things Dark Cloud does very right, and it really is an innovative game. Unfortunately, the "and more" mentioned previously also includes some design elements straight out of the "things that no gamer considers fun" textbook that detract from the overall gameplay - and I'm not talking about glitches. I'm talking about bona fide design features.

But enough of vague insinuations. Let me start the review proper by laying out the good parts of this game.

- Graphics
The graphics are great, pure and simple. Character animations are smooth. Character designs are interesting. Water effects were unrivalled at the time this title was published. The only negative thing I can say about the graphics is that some of the characters suffer from a little too much planarity when you look closely at them, and the polygons begin to show. But on the whole, very nice presentation.

Sound
Sound isn't great here. While the background music is nice, and appropriate to the situation (it changes on the fly when you're near monsters, safe, in town, etc), there is almost no voice acting. The sounds you character makes are limited to one or two grunts/yells while they attack, and an "I'm refreshed" sound after dunking themselves in water. All talking is done by text menus. What's there is nice, though.

Control
Not flawless, but not bad. The basic dungeon-crawl game is similar in format to the Zelda games on the N64. You run around, hack at things, and occasionally interact with a treasure chest or Atla. However, its all two-dimensional. You can't climb up or down, you can't fly or float. All dungeon floors are a flat map with the third dimension serving only to give the enemies a place to avoid your ground-attackers. I'd call this average.

- Innovative gameplay elements
There are a lot of features in this game that stand out as uniquely fun. First, you have multiple characters, which isn't terribly innovative by itself, but among the six characters you pick up along your quest, each has their strengths and weaknesses. They all have a different flavor, and no one person stands out as useless.
Next, there's the world-building "Atla" system, wherein you delve into a dungeon, gather pieces of the world, then bring them up onto the surface to arrange them in any way you wish. Its a genuinely neat feature which , I'm sure, was the major selling point of the title.
Third, there's the weapon customization system. Weapons "level up" much like characters do in other games - the more you kill with them, the more experience they gain. When they gain enough experience, you can "upgrade" them, which involves a slight boost in stats, plus the permanent inclusion of whatever items you had in the "weapon slots". Weapons have three different types of stats, each of which is upgradeable via weapon slots. When they get powerful enough, you can build them up to a higher class of weapon, with better maximum stats or special abilities.
In a nod to Ocarina of time, there's a fishing minigame which you can play fairly early on. Different types of bait will get you different types of fish, and the fish you catch give you "fishing points", a special type of currency that allows you to buy items that are normally rare (or simply not present) in the dungeons.

These elements, on their own, would have made a 9 game, maybe a 10. Ignoring for the moment the obvious zelda ripoff that the main character is, the rest of the game is refreshingly new. Gameplay from several different games (several genres of games, even) were seamlessly blended to make a great gaming experience. Unfortunately, the innovation didn't stop here.

- Innovative gameplay elements that should have been removed in playtesting
1) Weapon breakage. Along with the weapon customization abilities comes the realistic likelihood of your weapon breaking. This is even more catastrophic than it sounds. Your weapon has hit points (just like characters do), and as you hit an enemy, those hit points decrease. They can be easily repaired with an inexpensive item, but occasionally you'll run into an enemy with especially hard armor that takes off 5+ hit points per shot - meaning you'll be in the middle of a combo, and the warning beep that normally occurs at 10 hp or less doesn't come in time to save the weapon. What makes this really, really bad is that once a weapon breaks, it disappears, no matter how ungodly powerful it was. You can't recover your built-in items, you can't repair it, you can't go on a quest to have it reforged. It is simply gone. Imagine playing Final Fantasy X, and once you use Yuna's last magic point, she is completely and irrevocably removed from the game. Aggravating. Even worse, the characters themselves have no innate strength. The only things you can upgrade on the characters themselves are thirst, hp, and defense - all damage capability is built-in to their weapon. If you spent the entire game using one weapon to make it a universally useful one, you have three choices when it breaks. A) Start over from scratch, B) Never use that character again, or C) Restart from wherever it was you last saved, and redo whatever you've accomplished since then. All are simply punishments that annoy the player should they forget to repair their weapon in time.
In my opinion, nothing aggravates a gamer more than the sudden loss of progress. This is a design feature that should have never made it past playtesting.

2) Restricted world-building. Atla come in only three flavors: Houses, things you put in houses, and independent features (roads, trees, etc). While this does structure the system somewhat, you are NOT free to put things where you choose. Each house has certain things that must go in it, with no variation possible. If the inhabitant wants a lamp,you must put a lamp in the appropriate slot. The freedom, then, is reduced to the placement of the houses and features. Even this, though, gets restricted - in order to get the special bonus item at the end of a level, you must heed the request of the house's inhabitants, which consist of A) don't put me near house X, B) Put me near feature Y, or C) Make my house face direction Z. These requests further limit the freedom of the mode, so its less like "Sim City" and more like "Jigsaw puzzle v1.2". The much touted world-building is not as impressive as hoped.

3) The thirst meter. In another bid towards realism, your characters get thirsty. They have a "thirst meter", and if it depletes, you begin to rapidly lose hit points. There are pools of water in the dungeons where you can replenish the meter, and you can carry around water to replenish it, as well, but really, I have no idea why this was included. Yes, its realistic, but it doesn't tie in with any other game feature. Its simply an additional hit point system. All this feature does is annoy the gamer by forcing them to waste backpack space on water items.

4) The fishing game is too simple. The "Ocarina of Time" fishing minigame involved some amount of skill. You had to lure a fish with movement, then fight the fish when it took the bait. Here, the fishing process consists entirely of (in order) - Bait the hook, throw the hook in the water, wait, press X. That's it. Its a simple timing game. There's no fighting the fish. You don't even have to push X repeatedly. One single button press is all that's required (at least, its all I've ever found necessary). You just need to watch for a certain visual cue, then press a button. A monkey could kick this minigame's keyster, folks.

So, there you have it. Some brilliant gameplay innovations, paired with some completely idiotic ones. Its like the designer was a smart/stupid version of Jekyll and Hyde. Luckily, there are workarounds to the worst problems (with items or practice). I would even consider it fun after you get used to the annoying features. Once you've played the game long enough, they barely qualify as problems anymore. But if you were looking for the zelda-killer this game was advertised to be, you'll be sorely disappointed.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/24/04