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Amazingly fun adventure-RPG

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 46 / 48
Date: March 01, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Dark Cloud 2 picks up where the original left off - but adds in so many enhancements, mini-games and improvements that it's far more than just a sequel.

First off, the graphics and sound engine have gotten a HUGE revamping. The cel shading used for the characters is stunning, and you can customize the hat, outfit and even shoes your character wears. Playing the game is like watching a movie, complete with a title sequence and music.

There are the dungeons to explore, with multiple levels and various 'medals' to win by doing special feats on each level. You're given incentive to go back and replay them to achieve all of the special requirements.

There are your weapons, which you can customize in various ways, build up into better levels and combine together. There are towns that have vanished that you have to rebuild, adding in an animal crossing/sim feel that lets you wander around the town you have built and admire your achievements.

There are so many built in subgames that the game can literally keep you occupied for months. There is fishing. Sure, you say, you can fish in several other games. But in this fishing world, you can sell your fish. You can eat them. You can put them in your aquarium! Each fish is different. Now you can watch them interact with other fish, or even breed them!

There's picture taking while you explore your world. But the snapshots aren't just used for decoration. There are multiple characters to work together, each with his or her own special strengths. There is time travel.

Highly recommended for any adventure-RPG loving game player!

I was addicted!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 26 / 26
Date: March 13, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Until I beat this game, I was playing it for about 5 hours a day, which is unusual for me. It took me at least 50 hours to beat it. I am a veteran 26-year-old gamer.

While the original Dark Cloud was sort of a Zelda 64 clone, this new one has many new innovations that make it a huge improvement over the first (which was a fun game as well, actually). The two most noticable improvements are the cel-shaded graphics and the fact that the weapons don't break permanently (good news).

The voice-overs are pretty good, although there are probably too many cut scenes. The combat is action-oriented, and fun, for the most part. All in all, this game is more deep and entertaining than you might think. There is not much to complain about, and it is a welcome addition to the Playstation 2 library!

Dark Cloud 2 is a huge improvement over the original

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 30 / 32
Date: February 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I played the original Dark Cloud for several weeks before I grew bored with it. Dark Cloud 1's gaming system was complex, repetitive, and too convoluted to impress most gamers.

Enter the sequel. Dark Cloud 2 takes place in a world separate from the original, and it shows. The game features cel shaded graphics, offering it a very rich "cartoon" look, which managed to impress me. Most cel-shaded games seem like they're engineered for kids, but not this one.

Dark Cloud 2 almost seems like a game from a different series, rather than a sequel to Dark Cloud 1. The storyline is complex, lengthy, and diverse. The gameplay is simplistic, yet satisfying. The in-game music is rich and memorable. There's a plethora of mini-games to keep you entertained between missions.

The best part of this game, however, is the in-game Help system. There's a tutorial for just about everything in the game, and each tutorial provides clear and precise directions for everything. There's even a full voiceover from one of the game's many characters to assist you.

For the [price offered], Dark Cloud 2 is well worth the investment. Fans of the original, plus those that enjoy "Hack and Slash" games like Legend of Zelda and Kingdom Hearts will find their money well spent.

Move over Zelda!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 26 / 27
Date: March 02, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Sony has done a great job on creating a sequel to the first Dark Cloud (which to most was quite a dissapointment). The graphics are outstanding! Although the characters are cell-shaded (which I normally don't prefer), the illustrators have done an amazing job at keeping the detail. The plot behind the story isn't the most original, but the way it plays out is more than fun. You control Max(short for Maximillian) who loves to invent things and at the same time beat things with his wrench/hammer! Early in the game you are given a camera with which you take pictures of certain object located within stores/rooms/dnugeons/etc, and then you create your inventions by combining ideas from the pictures! You can then buy raw materials and create your own items ranging from bread to refill part of your HP(health), to robotic arms that you can attach to Steve, a extremely usefull machine you will aquire later in the game (actually, fairly early compared to the lenghth of the game which is nice and long! :D). The sounds in the game are perfectly mixed with the situation, and the sound great! The controls are EASY to master and the overall game is not too complicated to figure out. Another important piece of information is that the game does NOT have "random battles" like the Final Fantasy games. Its combat system is exactly like "Zelda" games in which you can see the enemy from a distance, and then move closer to it to attack. It is also very easy to run away if needed to ;).Also in the story, there a several mini games such as fishing and a golf type game which are fun (although the golf one can get very frusturating). To sum it all up, my opinion on the game through a rating of 1-10 on all the aspects is as follows (I am an avid gammer, and I spend a lot of time playing RPGs, so I like to tell myself I know what I'm talking about ;)

Graphics: 9.5 (always room for improvement ;))
Sound: 9.5
Controls: 9.5
Story-Line: 9.0
Fun Factor: 10.0

anything else I can't thing of at the moment, I would rate it high ;) Hope this help, and again, if you like RPGs then this is a must have!

I Built It Myself (with a little help)

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 11 / 12
Date: June 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The game uses an ingenious premise. Max is a young man, living in Palm Springs, who discovers that there is a huge world beyond its locked gates. He escapes through the sewers and discovers Monica, who comes from his own future. An evil wizard is destroying Monica's time by changing the past, and it is up to Monica and Max to rebuild in the past to recreate the future.

As the result of this device, the player has a lot more to do besides kill monsters and develop the characters. There are whole towns to be reconstructed from raw materials, and if done right, the future can be accessed via special gems that Max and Monica wear. Max carries a camera that he can use to take pictures of 'ideas' that he can turn into useful inventions and weapons. These processes are a bit complicated, but once mastered, add a lot of fun to the game.

Character development is actually done via weapons improvement, about which I have mixed feelings. The process is complicated, and has to be repeated with each weapon. This gets very time consuming near the end of the game when you are trying to bring four weapons and a robot up to enough power to make the final runs. I would rather that the character developed and used bought or found weapons.

Several other distractions exist to alleviate the drudgery of countless dungeon runs. Spheda is a strange variation of golf that uses time distortions rather than holes. There are all sorts of medals and prizes to be won, and it takes as much ingenuity as it does coordination. And when you are not playing golf in a dungeon, you can go fishing. You can win medals and even enter fishing contests. I started out liking fishing best (it is easier) but spheda gets my final thumbs up for game within a game.

Because I'm one of the senior generation of computer gamers, those games that finish with extended leveling up to prepare for the long run up to the final boss frustrate me. I simply lack the youthful reflexes and ingenuity needed to artfully defeat a series of monsters that have furiously overwhelming attacks. Unfortunately, that is nearly the only real flaw in 'Dark Cloud 2,' so I found it a bit of a spoiler. The game does do an excellent job of making leveling up interesting enough to reduce much of the tedium.

When you add everything up this is an enormous game, which could take as much as 150 hours if you are determined to touch all the bases. Artwork and animation are showstoppers, and the music is good. There is simply too much in this game to like. Well worth the cost of admission.

A definite improvement over the first Dark Cloud

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 11 / 13
Date: March 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

For those of you who have played the first Dark Cloud, the game that started it all, you most likely carry memories of both good and bad. The good being the town-building, weapon-upgrading, fun factor of it all, and the bad being the long, tiresome dungeons and the enemies that seem amazingly easy and uninspired. Let me just say that DC2 is an improvement over the first, but most of the aspects previously mentioned have remained the same, in some form or fashion.

The town building system, or Georama system, is one of the many traits of DC2 that stands out in my mind. Not only has the system been tweaked to near perfection, but there are so many new things added to it, and there is also much more freedom to where you can place your houses, trees, windmills and the like this time.

Also, there's the major change in graphics. For those of you who have seen the game in action, it's obvious to see the cel-shading technique done on the game. Weather you like the cel-shading style or otherwise, it's been done wonderfully and makes the game stand out like no other. There are no complaints here in the graphics department.

There are complaints, however, when it comes to gameplay. Remember the endless dungeon crawling from the first DC? Well, it's back and just as tedious as ever. Sure, the first 3 levels or so of a certain dungeon is a great experience, but after 20 it becomes a bit annoying to the point where you just want to get the dungeon finished with so you can progress with the story. Upgrading weapons, however, can be slightly addicting, and so that may act as an incentive to fight the hordes of enemies within the dungeon.

DC2 has a mixture of the good and the bad. Usually, this would make a game average at best, but in this case the fun factor of Dark Cloud 2 pushes it up to being a game that all RPG fans should at least rent. Although it can test your patience, the rewards of being so will definitely be worth it.

Dark Cloud 2: A Great RPG

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 15
Date: February 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I just bought Dark Cloud 2 a few days ago and I'm hooked! The two main characters are Max and Monica. Max is an inventor/handyman who wields both a wrench and a gun for his weapons. Monica is a swordsman (or swordswoman?) and she obviously uses a sword but also has a magic armlet. The cel shading graphics, areabsolutly amazing and are totally flawless. As for the gameplay, its very unique, and very fun. It may take getting used to but its fairly simple. One of the most uniqiue thing in this game is the Georama system. When using the Georama you can build your own houses and forests and back and forth between the future and the past to see how your building have affected the future. All in all I would highly recomend this game to any RPG fan

Review?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 25 / 43
Date: November 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game hasn't come out yet. But i still can explain what the game is about and who are the main characters. The main characer is a guy named Yuris and he meets a women named Monica. Monica is a great swordsman (or women) and they team up to stop the evil that is spreading through the world. Like in the other game there is a Georama system or something. This allows you to customize your own town becuase some evil villian has taken away everything and onced again, someone has to step in and save the day. This is different alittle bit. You are able to color the houses and add stuff to them. Monica and Yuris are both swordsman, Yuris practiced his swords play in the back of his dads shop and Monica, well no one knows. Monica came from 100 years in the future and can use magic and her long sword. In this game there are many different weapons like a hand gun and so on. Of coarse, what do you expect, this game is either 100 years or 1000 years after Dark Cloud 2. I cannot wait for this game. I am going to buy it the first day it comes out. This game looks awsome!

Beautiful game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: May 19, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The only word to describe Dark Cloud 2 is "lovely". From the rich, colourful cel-shaded graphics to the understated musical score to the solid voice acting, Dark Cloud 2 is an immersive experience. It also plays extremely well; the controls are always intuitive, the challenge curve increases at a good pace, and the infinite things to do in Dark Cloud's massive world are all tons of fun. The gameplay is very similar to Legend Of Zelda's "dungeon"-dwelling. The fighting is in real-time, rather than turn-based, and also relies on hit points rather than a life meter (think of Secret Of Mana for the SNES and you get a feel for what the battle system is like). This keeps the pace relatively high compared to the battles in the Final Fantasy series, without sacrificing that statisical depth that RPG fans dig. The biggest strength of Dark Cloud 2, though, is the vast array of activities to keep you busy. You could ignore many of them and finish the game as quick as possible, but that would be a huge disservice to yourself and the game. You could kill hours just fishing or playing Spheda (a variation on golf) or recruiting Palm Brinks residents to live in the towns you built, without ever finishing a single dungeon floor. The invention system is great, and adds an even further creative element to what is already a game that tests your aptitude for innovation. My one complaint (and it's a big one) lies in the randomized dungeons - while it's kind of neat to never be able to memorize a floor, I would prefer if the dungeons had stuck to one single ingenious design. These dungeons are simply a matter of killing all the bad guys, finding the geostone and making the exit. There isn't really much opportunity to test your grey matter a la Zelda. All of the puzzles come outside of the dungeons themselves, and are mostly of the scavenger-hunt variety. Other than this, there isn't much to complain about. The game is a treat for the senses, and a blast to play. You won't regret this purchase.

Good fun once you get past Chapter 1

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: April 17, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The begining of this game is slow, painfully slow. The game really doesn't pickup until the second chapter. The people who gave this game a bad review did not play it long enough.

Gameplay: I don't like RPGs. I found FFX absolutely boring. I like Dark Cloud 2. I think the real time fighting and lighter storyline makes this work for me. And if I get bored or stuck with one aspect of the game I can go off and do other parts, take photos, build a town, make items, manage my inventory, recruit Non-Player-Characters (NPCs), build up my weapons, go to a fishing tournament, play with my aquarium, play golf,or kill some beasties in the earlier levels with my uber-weapon. It's all fun, and there's so much to do.

Control: The in-the-action control scheme is easy to get the hang of. However the menu system has too many confirmation messages and the inventory system gets a little tough to manage efficiently later in the game.

Graphics: It took me a while to get used to the shaded cell characters after the shadowy graphics of GTA-VC. The shadded cell approach makes this a very bright and colorful game. I did notice a reduction in "moonwalking" from Dark Cloud 1 but still not as tight as No One Lives Forever 2. I also noticed that the background textures don't shimmer like they do in Final Fantasy X. My only complaint graphically is the draw distance in the dungeon is a little short.

Sound: As mentioned before the Palm Brinks (home) music gets repetetive. As is normal these days the music does adapt to your situation, although after 40 dungeon levels the fight music gets a bit old too. Nothing really stands out in terms of sound here.

Worth the money if you have 50+ hours to put into it.

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