• RPG action, real-time strategy and a unique storyline combine to offer a unique cross-genre gaming experience

• Innovative new Georama feature allows players to build customized worlds and interact with them in real time

• As your world builds up and life flourishes, clues and pieces of the storyline unveil

• Offers imaginative, vibrant and detailed gameplay complemented with a strong character-driven storyline

The main thrust of the game is that you're trying to rebuild a series of homes destroyed by the Evil Enemy. To do so, you go slogging through nearby dungeons, finding home-bits like beds, lamps and so on, on your adventures. When you bring them back to town, you have to figure out which items to where to please the people. In addition, the houses themselves have to be placed so that the people are happy. Some people want to live near a stream, some want to have morning sun in certain windows, and so on.

Your weapons can be customized as you go, and need to be maintained. This gives you a bit of RPG-like control over your life, more in fact than most Zelda games provide to you.

In addition, there are some fun mini-games which help break up the dungeon crawling, and give you a bit of variety.

The game's provides much longer gameplay time (usually several weeks) than many other PS games on the market, meaning it's a good value for the price. Perhaps the only downsides are the graphics, which aren't top-notch, and the dungeon crawling being a bit tedious after several hours. Still, it's a good, fun game to play. Grab one for your PS library!

39 of 47 found the following review helpful:


Shut up and read this!  May 06, 2001 By C. Sonata
Whatever the people who gave this game 3 stars or less, TOTALLY IGNORE THEM! It's not necessarily their fault,though, for they have only read the Japanese reviews. The people who made this game didn't have time to include all of the details that they wanted to, in the Japanese version, because they had to make a deadline. But since the U.S. release wasn't for 6 more months, they added a lot more to this game. Such as: 35 additional weapons, nine new items, 18 new monsters, two new bosses, an additional form for the last boss, one new duel/event battle, 11 new fish for the fishing minigame, a revised lock-on targeting system, a new chest quiz character that offers you a choice between items, mystery circles that can help or harm your character, new expanded combo attacks for Toan and Ungaga, enhanced enemy AI, an enhanced weapon system, a bonus 100 floor dungeon called Demon Shaft, and lots of other minor changes. How do i know all this? Cause i have a subscription to the sweeeeetest PS2 mag out there, O.P.M.(Official U.S. Playstation Magazine)! Anyway, what's not to like about fighting through dungeons to collect Atla pieces which you use to build villages any way you want to? And who cares if the main character has a hat that looks like a turban with tube socks stapled to the back? There are 5 other playable characters in the game. I don't know about you, but I AM SO BUYING THIS GAME!

11 of 11 found the following review helpful:


A fun game with some minor flaws  Jul 14, 2001 By Stephen Morrison Lewis
To look at this game, your first impression might be to compare Dark Cloud to the Zelda series. You would not be far off the mark in doing so. Fans of the Nintendo series will likely feel right at home in this dungeon crawling environment.

It also harkens back to the days of Actraiser, a game where you fought to reclaim lands and then build them using your magic. Don't be fooled, the premises may be form other games, but DC is great in its own right.

It is Toan's task to rebuild his world from pieces called Atla, found stashed away in various levels of the dungeons you encounter. Enter the dungeons, tackle the flow of monsters, and reclaim the pieces you need to restore your world, but don't run out of water, and don't let your weapon break.

The combat system is a bit awkward, but nothing that can't be dealt with. The realtime system, weapons damage/upgrade system, and the water system are all interesting concepts. At points the can be tiring (The heroes getting tirsty every few minutes...Take a drink before you enter the dungeon or something...), but also fun concepts.

Wepaons can be upgraded and merged, strengthening in the process, provided you don't break them in combat first. The in-game tutorial is boring and unskippable, which is annoying to those of us who actually read the manual and know what to do.

Do not let minor flaws distract you, this is a fun game, perhaaps one of the best I've played in the RPG genre

10 of 10 found the following review helpful:


An Addictive Dungeon-Crawling Experience  Jun 14, 2001 By Christopher
We've all heard it: previews of Dark Cloud by people and magazines hinting at the possibility of it being the "Zelda killer." But come on! Did anybody really believe that? Is that even possible? Maybe (a BIG maybe) Square or Rare could make such a game, but Sony? Not a chance! And it's true, Dark Cloud isn't even close to Zelda. But wait, don't think that it's a bad game; in fact, it's the best RPG for the PlayStation 2 so far.

I'll tell you right off not to expect much out of this game except for gameplay. Graphics are just average for what the PS2 can create, and there are no lighting effects whatsoever. Sure, you have a good looking shadow in the shape of your character, but the positions of torches and other external lights have no effect on its movement. Music, too, is average and sounds okay; it's just bad when the music doesn't quite fit the situation. For instance: early on, your village is being destroyed to the accompaniment of music that almost seems heroic or cheerful. Finally, the game has a simple and boring story with characters that are only briefly developed and dialogues hampered by careless translation. One minute you think her name's Gina, and the next minute someone calls her Xena (warrior princess?).

Now with all the bad out of the way, let's go on to the good--the gameplay. Okay, this is going to sound bad: Dark Cloud is about 90% dungeon-crawling. But hey! so was Vagrant Story, and it was phenomenal. Okay, so it also had a great story to back it up, but hear me out. Your mission is to travel through deep dungeons looking for "Atlas" which hold parts of destroyed villages that you get to recreate. I'll get to the village creation part shortly. In the dungeons you'll find a good variety of monsters to do battle with, and each time you hit a monster your weapon will take damage. If it takes too much damage, make sure to repair it with some "repair powder" or it will break, and then you have lost it for good. Also you'll want to keep an eye on your thirst gauge. If you don't use an item to quench your thirst or find a pool of water before your thirst meter empties, you'll start losing health (if you've ever played a Dungeon Explorer, you'll recognize this as similar to the food element that game imposed upon its players). These two things make the game kind of addictive, like watering your crops and taking care of your cows in Harvest Moon.

Similarly to Vagrant Story, you get to customize your weapons. You'll get items in your quest such as "Attack +1" or "Endurance +3" that you can put on your weapon to increase its attributes (attack, of course, determines how much damage the weapon inflicts, and endurance determines how much damage it takes each time it hits an enemy). The five elements--fire, ice, wind, thunder, and holy--can also be found and attached to a weapon to increase its elemental strength. Ice-based enemies are weak against fire weapons, undead are weak against holy weapons, etc. Other items such as "Beast Buster" and "Stone Breaker" will make the weapon more powerful against ordinary beasts and stone or rock enemies respectively. After so many battles, weapons will be able to upgrade and absorb any items attached to them, giving you the option to put items on them yet again and power them up even further until the next upgrade. So, if I want the ultimate weapon against stone enemies, I could keep putting on "Stone Breakers" and maybe slip in an "Endurance +3" every now and then (because stone enemies really damage your weapons). And let's say I wanted to make another one of my weapons super against the undead; I could keep giving it "Holy"...but I don't have any more! Time to do some treasure-hunting!

Exploring for treasure in the game is really fun thanks to Dark Cloud's random dungeons. Even if you revisit a floor of a dungeon that you have already cleared, its layout will be random, and all new treasure chests will have regenerated. If you're lucky, you may even be able to visit "Back Floors" of dungeons, where rarer treasures await but greater enemies lurk.

Remember those "Atlas" I spoke of? Well, in each one you'll find a piece of a destroyed village such as a house, river, or any of several miscellaneous objects that go inside the houses. With these pieces you can start to rebuild a village any way you want it...well, kind of. You are restricted somewhat by what the villagers want. Some like the smell of food, so you put them near the house of a good cook; others enjoy fishing, so you put them next to water; others just don't like a person, so you keep them away. But if you please the villagers, you'll often get a reward. I found it kind of neat to decorate the villages, and it gives a nice break from all the dungeon-crawling; the restrictions imposed by the villagers' requests even give a kind of puzzle element to the game.

Zelda is still king of Action-RPGs, but for now Dark Cloud is the PS2's king of the genre. I wasn't expecting a Zelda when I purchased Dark Cloud, so I wasn't disappointed, but if that's what you expected, you probably won't be too happy. Give it a chance, though, and its addictive gameplay will hook you.

9 of 9 found the following review helpful:


Perfect!  Jun 05, 2001 By James L. Byrd
I awaited this game for months! When I finally got it, I tore it open read the instruction book and was devistated! The magic system looked very complicated and other elements--like needing water, food and keeping weapons repaired--made me think that this game would be too complicated to be really enjoyed. I WAS WRONG! Once you start to play, you are lost in a three dimensional world of your own making. The graphics make you wish that Zelda had lived up to it's potential. This game is suited to all ages and playable for hours, especially if you have kids like myself. Dark Cloud is a cross between games. Like SimCity in that you can build your own world, that is, arrange elements (houses and rivers and trees and such) and collect items that affect the outcome of the story. This is well combined with the combat style found in Onimusha and magic systems as intuative as those in the better Final Fantasy installments. The camera angles can be tricky at first, but soon become second nature. The same with keeping your weapons upgraded and repaired. Everything blends with breathtaking imagery and FULL and CONTROLLABLE panoramic view.

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