Dark Cloud

System: Playstation 2
Release Date: 2001
Published By: SCEA
Reviewed by: Darien
Rating:

There's a crazy compulsion to rate this game higher than it deserves, since, in retrospect, I remember it being a lot more fun than it was. And, thing is, it could have been a lot more fun than it was, since the system it's built on has some fun aspects; the world-building Georama system is the sort of thing I personally would like to see more of in video games, and upgrading your weapons is fun, though the implementation is lacking in depth.

But there are troubles on the horizon. The first problem is that there are six playable characters, and you can rest assured you won't get through the final area without fighting scads of monsters with all six of them. That means you'll need to spend a lot of time developing five characters you'll barely ever use, either at the expense of in addition to developing your main character. Both paths are frustrating, drag the game out, and deplete too many resources. In addition to that problem, there's the problem of the boss battles. Namely, they're annoying as piss. Every boss has a certain method that you have to follow in order to beat it. They are not always obvious, and, even when they are, they're generally a pain in the ass.

On the town-building side of things, it's fun, though lacking in depth (it's rather like Soul Blazer, except that you can place the preconfigured town pieces and their inhabitants wherever you please). But there's trouble here, too; in order to "complete" the town reconstruction, you need to put it back a certain way. And it gets complex and annoying to figure out as the game progresses, reaching an impressive pitch of lunacy in Muska Lacka (or Muska Racka, depending on which part of the game you ask).

The translation, if that didn't give it away, is weak. We're accustomed after so many years to weak translations in video games, but not, frankly, to translations in this day and age that aren't even consistent. There are several places in the game where the same name will be translated two different ways, and that's just embarassing. But, hey, look on the bright side; at least there isn't incompetent voice acting over the incompetent translation.

Buy this game from Amazon.com!