"You'll likely enjoy this mammoth of a game"

I have fond memories of the original Dark Cloud. I remember just how unique the game felt when I first started it and how much I enjoyed it. I also remember that as I progressed, the game acquired many faults. It became repetitive, I had to constantly repair my weapons or lose them for good, it had too many characters to maintain, and it had a weak story for a lengthy RPG. For the most part, Dark Cloud 2 has cleared up these faults. Weapons no longer break forever when they lose their health, and they don't lose quite so much health from each hit. There are only two characters and maintaining them becomes so much easier. And it improves slightly on the previous game's story, but only slightly.

Story – 6/10

The story has a few interesting perks, but doesn't do enough with its ideas. Each of the game's characters has no real strong personality traits to work with, nor any depth, and all of them seem way too nice. Even the enemy bosses change their ways once you've defeated them. After fighting off hundreds deadly, and rather silly-looking, monsters it would seem that the game's heroes Max and Monica wouldn't maintain their rather optimistic attitudes. Any kids playing this might think that the world has no actual bad people, and that even the predators and kidnappers are willing to change their ways. Fortunately, kids will more than likely sheer away from this game because of its length and complexity.

The story starts out with Max who wants to find his mother. He writes letters for his mother and reads them to the gamer. I'm sure you can imagine how it might feel for a youngster missing his mother (except for teenagers, they would most likely party), so it's easy to empathize with Max. But considering that the search for Max's mother consists of repetitive dungeon crawling and a very strange conclusion, you probably will drop the empathy. After an estranged clown chases Max through the town, he begins his dungeon crawling. He fights off enemy after enemy, earning medals on the way and fighting an elephant. Finally he meets up with the more experienced fighter, Monica. She comes from the future in search of Max. The reason she wants Max is because the world is in trouble. His mother gave his father who gave Max some medallion called an Atlamilia stone. Max's stone allows him to travel to the future while Monica's allows her to travel to the past. This makes for an interesting story element since what you do in the present affects the future, though in strange ways. Unfortunately, developer Level-5 does nothing interesting with this feature.

Gameplay – 8/10

The game can brag that it has all kinds of variety: fighting, leveling-up weapons, fishing, spheda (golf), taking pictures, inventions and the georama or town building. The only problem is that everything is connected to combat. In order to level up weapons you must kill enemies; in order to fish you must clear the area of enemies; in order to play spheda you must do the same; and in order to build towns you must collect georama elements and georama parts which you get from dungeons. And the combat grows repetitive and tiresome after a while. It's just like the combat of the first game or any other hack ‘n slasher, but with less depth. You'll enjoy leveling up your weapons because there are so many and at first they level up rather easily. After gaining a certain amount of elements they can build into something stronger and much cooler looking. But after a while you realize that you have to put in a ton of time in order to build up those weapons to even higher levels – and I mean a ton of time. Max and Monica each have two weapons plus a special ability each. They each have primary weapons, which start out strong and remain strong throughout. They have secondary weapons which start out weak, are a pain to build up, and get strong only after a lot of work. Then they have their special abilities. Max's robot is fun, powerful, and useful; Monica's monster morphs, on the other hand, are weak and take forever to level up. The biggest mistake Level-5 makes is assuming that people will actually want to spend a lot of time on their game.

The fishing has improved greatly over the original game. Now there's a little more technique to reeling in fish and you don't have to look for fish in the water, they come after time. I doubt you will spend much time fishing after the first few areas. The spheda comes along later and seem like fun at first. You'll realize right away that the game doesn't give enough time to practice shots. Often you'll need to judge the distance just right so the ball doesn't fall into a hole. The worst courses are the early ones, and only one course is any fun because you can bounce the ball off walls and not worry about pits. If you played the first game, you'll most likely remember the georama, one of the first game's most memorable parts. It's more fun now because you get to customize everything and build everything instead of searching for homes, people, etc. You feel more like you're the one building the whole town and not just setting up the blueprint like in the original game.

I suppose I made the game sound like somewhat of a stinker, but it's not. If you look at the reader reviews here you'll see that the majority of gamers gave the game 9's and 10's. That has to say something. I enjoyed this game, despite its flaws. It's addictive and has the right idea. Whereas leveling up characters in most other RPG's is an uninteresting affair, since you just watch your character gain stat increases, leveling up weapons in the Dark Cloud series becomes much more fun. You control what stat increases and by how much. You also get to see your weapon evolve into something much more powerful than it started out as. Other RPG's can learn a thing or two from Dark Cloud 2's level-up system.

Graphics – 9/10

Level-5 has become infamous for its new style of cel-shading and palette of colors. Their cancelled MMO, True Fantasy Live, as well as the upcoming Dragon Warrior VIII utilize this cel-shading. I like the graphics quite a lot. The original Dark Cloud had nice-looking, but boring graphics. I like it when developers do something creative and unique rather than something that looks “realistic.” Because of restricted movement, the animation looks awkward at times. While the game has a unique flair, I feel animation is integral in bringing the game's universe to life, and Dark Cloud 2's universe doesn't quite come to life.

Sound – 10/10

While Dark Cloud 2 has some nice voice acting, the music upstages everything in the sound department. You'll even hum to the music that plays while you save. I can't say that the music has the classic status of the Zelda 64 series, but it's pretty darn impressive. Each dungeon's tune suits the dungeon perfectly. Maybe the music is the reason I enjoyed this game.

Longevity – 10/10

I've never spent so much time in my life on a single player game as I have with this game. Many of you might quit after about forty or so hours, and many others might try to fly through the game in order to beat it in about fifty or sixty hours. But for those of you who want to level up your weapons and Monica's monster transformations, you have a good hundred plus hours ahead of you. It's addictive enough to play for hours on end and lose yourself in the game's world.

Fans of the first will enjoy this, and fans of lengthy games will love this. It's difficult to recommend this to everyone, though, since many gamers might get bored by the repetition and offended by the story.

Score – 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/15/04