grindgrindgrind
For some reason, I decided to replay Dark Cloud 2 recently. I don’t really know why. You know what, though? Having played it a second time doesn’t change my opinion of it one little bit. It’s still longer and grindier and cutscenier than it should be. And holy fuck does it have a lot of awful minigames.
Along with 62% of all video games, it has fishing. But it has like RPG grind-fishing, where you have to level up your fishing pole by catching lots of shit fish and then spend your points on stats you don’t understand, 40% of which don’t actually do anything. If you get really good at fishing, you get big money and big prizes, but the game only makes you do it once, so it’s not as bad as it could be.
The golf minigame, on the other hand, is exactly as bad as it could be. The game still only makes you do it once, and technically you don’t even have to win, since you can make the CPU do it for you. But still, fuck this. It’s the worst minigame of all time, and I’ve played me some terrible minigames.
The world-building minigame is sort of fun, until you get to Chapter 7. In Chapter 7, it’s bullshit and horrible and I’d strongly suggest you look up the solution on the internet rather than jumping through the game’s hoops.
Minigames aside, this game is another one of those games that tries really hard to build up all sorts of sympathy for all the villains, and then gets to the end and realises that it hasn’t left itself with anybody to be the final boss. So you just fight some ghost and then go home. Final Fantasy IX was that way also, but at least that game didn’t couple its overwhelmth of sympathy with boss diarrhoea — the "final boss fight" is actually a sequence of something like ten boss fights.
On the subject of boss diarrohea, the designers of Dark Cloud 2 clearly had desires for bosses well in excess of what they had ideas for, since the game contains no fewer than nine "bosses" that are nothing but pallette-swaps of regular mobs with a bit more HP. Pretty lame, Level 5. In all seriousness, that’s about the same number of fake-o bosses as the game contains actual proper bosses.
I’m not sure if it lost something in the translation or what, but the game’s overpowering quantity of cutscenes isn’t as bad as it could be, mainly because the dialogue is often so stupid you’ll laugh at it. Example: Max and Monica (the heroes) rush up into this burning lighthouse to save some people. They get to the top and discover that the bad guys are blasting at it with a big cannon from their flying ship. Then, absolutely out of nowhere, Max suddenly blurts out "the lighthouse is on fire!" as though he’s only just noticed. It’s priceless. The song, on the other hand? Not so good. Holy shit is that not so good.
Oh, also, localisers? It’s best if you make sure all your voice actors are pronouncing the names the same. I’m just sayin’.
Yeah, I’m not a fan of fishing, either in real life or in video games, which is why, if you see a list of the video games I have, you may notice a conspicuous lack of Super Black Bass or whatever. And yet I still find myself fishing, which is almost worse when… well, I can kind of see the appeal of real fishing, because you’re not trying to do something other than fish. You’re relaxing, and maybe, if you’re good at it and a fish deigns to bite, you have a fish or two to cook up, or have somebody else cook up. But in a lot of video games, it’s like… you’re trying to save the world/the princess/whatever, and here you are, fishing. And maybe I’ll fish for items, but once I’ve gotten the Piece of Heart and the Empty Bottle, I’m done at Hena’s Fishing Hole. I don’t have to catch the Hylian Loach or whatever. That aside, this is the first time I’ve ever heard of a fishing minigame with stats. Who puts stats (other than type and size of fish caught) in fishing, if it’s not actually a fishing video game? The makers of Dark Cloud 2, I guess.
Comment by Nyperold | 3 April 2009
People who think minigames are a whole lot more fun than they actually are is who.
Comment by Darien | 3 April 2009
Also — and anybody who’s played World of Warcraft with me may have trouble believing this — I don’t own any fishing games either. But if I did, it would probably be Shigesato Itoi’s #1 Bass Fishing, mainly because I find Shigesato Itoi hilarious.
Comment by Darien | 5 April 2009