Dark Cloud: A Silver Lining

Dark Cloud was acquired on the back of a trade-in for an abysmal game - I foolishly purchased purely on the basis of anime cover art. The offending game was Ephemeral Fantasia, a half baked RPG with anime characters and way too many "Loading" screens. The graphics were sub standard, the battles only climbing above tedious, the town was characterless and repetitive with painfully dull navigation. Did I mention the overuse of the "Loading screens"? Why? There was nothing stunning at the other side? Anyway, this rather drab and dreary cloud, had a dark but silvery lining. A week later, Dark Cloud, one of most anticipated RPG's on the Playstation2 arrived and Ephemeral Fantasia was promptly swapped using Electronic Boutiques 10 day “no quibbles” return policy.

Dark Cloud comes across as infinitely more polished. The startup FMV, pleasures the eye, and hints at an epic storyline revolving around the summoning of a particularly evil dark genie. Dancing tribeswomen abound. The game unfolds gently, with tuition from a wise and stereotypical Fairy Wizard. The premise for your adventure is based on the fact that the dark genie has run amok through the villages of the land. Eating and destroying all he can. The Fairy wizard managed to save a number of villages and villagers, by trapping them in protective spheres called Atla. These spheres were strewn amongst the monsters in a dungeon. The wizard equips you, and only you, with a wrist band called Atlamillia – this can break open the Atla and release the contents within. You collect the pieces of the village and assemble them according the the citizens requests. Restoring the village and making it even better than before (paying mind to each villagers request thus making everyone happy). This makes for some very interesting twiddling. Not only do you get to romp through dungeons and hack and slash quite outrageous monsters, but you take part in a kind of collecting game that lets you build a village and re-arrange it endlessly, and then run around said village in glorious 3d. Several buildings in the village you create open up sub-games or “things to distract you even further” such as fishing – you also need some of the buildings to advance in the dungeon, or to be able to restock your supplies from. Once you have built the whole village – you get to fight a boss and then move on to another village/dungeon combination.

The battling has been likened to PSO, in as much as you are traipsing around a dungeon, locking onto monsters and then slashing at them with a weapon. The dungeons are fairly monotonous, and there isn’t really a lot of character to them. Although they are randomly generated and can provide a level of replayability – when you need to trawl through and collect gold. The “lock on” mechanism is directly ripped from Zelda 64 – there isn’t a great deal complexity to the battle – you have a button for slash and a shoulder button for block. Having said this, each mob usually has its own attack pattern, and different mobs sometimes need quite different tactics to dispatch them easily without lots of loss of health points. There’s a huge bloated frog-like creature in the first dungeon, that throws a wall of shimmering (and painful) light at you, this is easily dodged, however to get at swipe at him, you have to go in close, and he has a habit of flopping forward and doing a good chunk of damage when he lands on you. It’s best to attack him from afar. There are allies to be found in the game, who will join your fighting group. You can switch between these allies and battle the horde with a different character- with different skills. One of the first allies you encounter is a girl who has a penchant for ranged catapult skills. She is quite adept at dispatching the flopping frogs from a distance. There are barriers in the dungeons where only a particular character with appropriate skills can get you through to the other side. Only the main character (Toan) can collect the Atla though.

The interesting thing about Dark Cloud is that the weapon levelling mechanism is much more advanced and complex when compared to character levelling. Subsequently, the weapons are much more fragile than the characters. You often find a weapon nearing breaking point, mid-battle, so a constant supply of repair powders is essential. The amount of tweaking and twiddling that can be done with the weapons is almost obscene – you can level (upgrade) each weapon dagger+1, dagger+2 etc with use – you can enhance the weapon by inserting gems and powerups into the weapons slots. When you upgrade a weapon – those elements in the slots are taken in to the weapons new level, and the slots are empty again, ready for more enhancements. You can turn the whole weapon into a sphere which can be inserted into another weapon, yielding its special abilities – allowing you to craft fine weapons and carry them on when you find newer more powerful weapons in later levels. The statistics and modifiers for the weapon system belittle the simplistic dungeon battling mechanism.

Weapon wear and tear is both novel, interesting and annoying. You really need to build endurance into your weapon or you’ll be plagued with carrying a sackful of repair powders with you wherever you go. Another novel, interesting and annoying aspect is the constant necessity for the character to be hydrated. If your character hasn’t had water in a long time their health will suffer, and they will indeed lose health points. Treasure chests dotted around the dungeons can yield valuable trinkets, food and water bottles – but on most levels there are one or two waterfalls where you can replenish your level of hydration and also your health.

Some large treasure chests can be found, that are usually booby trapped, if you have a treasure chest key you can avoid any nastiness – or if you guess the type of trap (poison, explosion, curse) – you can diffuse it successfully. If you spring the trap, you take the damage and then can defuse it by selecting the damage type. These larger chests usually yield weapons and other rarer items. The exit from a dungeon level is usually gained by killing a monster with an appropriate item, in the first dungeon it is a crest, in the next one an apple etc. You can leave a dungeon by “mind connecting“ with the Fairy wizard, if there are no monsters mentally blocking the transportation, or you can use an escape powder from your inventory. You should collect all the atla in a dungeon, to give you a fighting chance at rebuilding the village properly.
Dungeons have several levels to them, and often these levels hold a mini-boss or special levels such as the “limited” level or the “back door” level. The mini-boss fights tend to be keypress timing events, where several key strokes will pass at the bottom of the screen and you have to press the right combination at the appropriate time to succeed. These can get trickier later on, but add another layer of sub-game to the dungeon crawl. The “limited“ levels are tricky, because they limit you in some specific way, disable an ability, force you to use a specific ally etc. These levels are compulsory and mean that you must level all you and your allies evenly. If you neglect an ally and then find you have to complete a limited level with them, it will be a very tough level indeed. It’s also wise to have two or three weapons on the go for each character. The “back door” levels are optional, needing a specific item to unlock them. They are much harder than normal levels, although they yield much better items and equipment. My advice would be to avoid taking on a back door level off a limited level. Very tricky. Again, these bonus levels add another layer onto the dungeon gameplay. At the end of a dungeon there is a boss level, that require specific tactics and is quite an achievement to overcome. Much like PSO.

Overall, this game is very polished, has a gentle but noticeable progression and gives you so many things to play around with that it will keep you busy, even if the fighting is basic and isn’t as stimulating as it could be. The storyline is standard fare, the characters are not as well rounded as some other RPG’s – but they do the job, and the villagers have specific requests which adds a modicum of personality to them. Some folk may gag at the fact that the game doesn’t seem to go into any depth in any of its game modes (apart from weapon customisation) – however, I think it does a very good job of melding all the modes into a pleasureable gaming experience where there is always something to be thinking about, always something to be aiming for, and always something to be doing. The game infrastructure allows you wander off and explore one aspect or the other, and with the random dungeons and rescued villagers different requests this Dark Cloud will give you a smokey hideaway where you can tinker with your swords, village layout or fishing for many an hour.