Interested in Dark Cloud but haven't played it yet?
Maybe it’s an all-time favorite and you want some more history?

Check out this “Prep Kit”, full of pre-release coverage, interviews, advertising and merchandise to get you in that Launch Day mindset!

https://goatedquest.blogspot.com/2024/04/068-dark-cloud-prep-kit.html

Let me help make every game you play feel brand new, no matter how old

This game was p awesome and finished it a couple months ago, but holy shit that final boss fight was atrocious. Having to pause, switch to whatever element the boss was hitting you with killed the mood. Getting to finish it was cool since i had seen my older cousin play this game back in like 2005 made my little kid self want venture the world that was dark cloud. The cover art had a sort of a mystical aura that I HAD to play it. Putting towns together after going dungeon crawling to get the Atma orbs and listening to how the townsfolk wanted things arranged was nice! All the playable characters were lovable but only found myself playing as Toan, Ruby, Osmond and Xiao. Ungaga and goro were literally useless lmao and weapon customization was cool but I hated that they had a durability meter and having to pause and fix your good weapon would kill the action, i know there were auto fix powder but that shit was expensive and I don't really know if there was a better way to get money. Could've done better but this was the first game in the series and they probably fixed some of the flaws of the first game.

I'm rating the game 2.5/5 but I don't hate it.

Dark Cloud is a charming gaming that strikes a niche I really enjoy. It's one part dungeon crawling and one part town sim with puzzle elements. It is fun to develop weapons, fulfill requests for villagers, and roam the dungeons. The problem is that is all the of the gameplay, that loop over and over again. I finished the 5th dungeon/town in about 30 hours and I knew there was at minimum 10 more hours of this game. I really did enjoy it but by the end of the first dungeon you've experienced everything Dark Cloud has to offer.

I hope to return one day and finish it.

Played it as a kid and recently replayed it to completion. A fun part city builder part dungeon crawler that fully welcomes the PS2 graphics. I remember back then this was marketed as the PS2’s Zelda and while not as engrossing story wise as one I felt like I enjoyed it as much.

The combat isn’t too annoying and is pretty straight forward with many different styles to fight. As the game goes on and you make the villages “perfect” it feels not only rewarding but cool because you can just plow through dungeons. While there’s the novelty of it being an early PS2 title I’d highly recommend the sequel over this as it just expands on everything better.

i liked this game quite a bit when it came out. not sure why now, but it was probably the collecting of town pieces and rebuilding of towns. scratches a similar itch to soul blazer, one of my all time faves.

that said, that's about the best aspect. this is very clearly an early ps2 title. battles are beyond jank, bosses are borderline nightmare battles of attrition, they kinda just said "yeah this is good enough i guess" and left them all semi-broken. how many "survival" mechanics did we really need here because they thought the base game wasn't challenging enough? thirst and weapon durability are honestly mostly just annoying. i feel like these mechanics only really work in actual survival games because you know what you're signing on for when you play those.

also every character has like one base attack and maybe a powerful attack and that's pretty much it. switching out characters for the simple reason of traversing a puddle or hammering a peg, also a tad annoying and just there to be there, much like the survival stuff. please make sure you use this meh character for two seconds then immediately switch back!! please!

i wish i could say the nature of finding new town pieces and placing them makes everything worth it, but not really. the sequel is a huge improvement and also added a camera mini-game feature which makes it a lot more fun. get that one, maybe try this out as a curiosity if you havent yet.

dark cloud is an amazing rpg. really. was a journey to play through last year.
basically you help rebuilding destroyed towns by collecting several lost pieces scattered in dungeons.
and its really fun!
the dungeons have really nice music, the designs are incredibly cool (my faves being the owl forest and the sunken wreck) and as a whole this game really tried to bring this genre in a nice new direction. crafting weapons, looking out for your weapons breaking status and your own thirst is a mechanic that somehow even added little survival elements to it.

however, its sad this game doesnt really embark in its world. it feels a little soulless, the teammates and characters in general have no real human feeling to them. they are just kinda there. we get some backstory on goro and the elder dude from the desert but other than that the game just wants you to treat them like a abillities more than real team mates. its sad because this is a big minus in depth for this game. it seems shallow at times and at certain points, especially the boss battles, you can notice this was level 5 first game. some bosses dont work at all, some are just incredibly weak and others, like the final boss, are just unfair.
dungeons having two parts, the front and back, was also a nice idea. just not really great put into work, not to forget that in the final dungeon, in the pal version of the game, the item which lets you go to the back of the dungeon simply doesnt spawn at all.
its also sad they forgot about the quick time events as the game progressed, i always love these kind of things.

but other than that this was a great entry into the franchise and still a really cool, magical journey! cant wait to play the second part :)

Finally finished this game, 21 years since I first got it. For a PS2 launch title, Level 5 knocked it out of the park. Is it perfect? Of course not! The story is extremely weak for an RPG, having your weapons break and be gone is devastating, and the bosses are either laughably easy or annoyingly hard. However, the combat is satisfying when you discover how to swap characters and statuses to counter enemy types. I also finally understood the point of status breaking weapons and adding them to other ones to counter the XP grind, which I regrettably never understood in either this or it's sequel when I was younger. Finally, the base rebuilding is fun, and I like how it's tied to upgrading your character stats.

Dark Cloud gets a lot of extra credit from me for a couple reasons. For one I grew up watching my brother play it, so it has a nostalgia buff. Second, I went in knowing it has some shortcomings that can be mitigated with a little foresight. The weapon system is really cool but it's also a little overwhelming and leaves many doors open that could potentially lead to endless grinding. The level of commitment required to make a decent weapon is so high that breaking your main weapon is a reloadable offense. That said, the game isn't nearly as grindy as I was expecting and you can build up at least a couple decent weapons on your favorite characters that will float you through most of the challenges. The post game is a whole other beast though which I don't dare approach.

Just gonna rattle off some of my gripes now. Weapon durability is really just a pointless mechanic. I came to terms with it but in retrospect it's just a money sink since you just hoard repair powders. Some enemies just annihilate your weapon and you can't always just ignore them. There's way too many mimics and they are both costly and unrewarding to kill. Xiao's attack sound is wildly annoying. The battle music is laughable and your stuck with it the whole game. This especially sucks because I think the music is mostly excellent otherwise. Duels are underutilized. The boss fights are the worst parts of the game and are truly abysmal in their execution.

I thought there was a good chance I'd get filtered out by this game but the gameplay loop was fun enough that I actually found myself excited to play more. As far as I know there's really nothing else like it. It's not something to recommend lightly but there's enjoyment to be had, especially with a guiding hand.