On today's episode of Georama: turban boy loots cool knives, Goro jobs again, the town NIMBYs residents complain about some missing orbs (wait, that's Jak), a gun-toting moon rabbit breaks the game in half, literal "dark Cloud" dumps his backstory all in the final dungeon, and the player runs out of water or weapon health again!
Just a day in the life of Level-5's debut game, a less-than-clever but earnest homage to ActRaiser & other mid-'90s alternative ARPGs and dungeon-crawlers. I keep reading reviews from others who bounce off due to awkward controls, even more awkward mechanics, and truly awkward moments in the story and progression further in. But I think it's that awkwardness which set my expectations to a reasonable level. You're not getting a polished experience here, not in the slightest. This was an experiment, a way for ex-Riverhill Soft veterans to dip their feet in a genre their former employers shied away from. And ever since, Dark Cloud's hung over them, looming in the distance as a reminder of when Level-5 made standalone adventures. They've been chasing media-mix behemoths like Inazuma Eleven, Yokai Watch, and Megaton Musashi since the HD era, but I wish they'd consider making something quaint like this title again.
That said, I don't blame anyone for jumping straight to the sequel, even considering its own jank. A journey around the world rebuilding towns and people's lives sounds great, but you spend most of your time in randomly generated dungeons, dealing with combat and item/equipment management. The game's enemies usually aren't hard to deal with, having just one or two predictable attacks. It's things like weapon deterioration, imperfect hitboxes, and certain dungeon floors forcing you to use a subpar character (ex. Goro…) which sully the fun. At least you get more than enough consumables for repairing your gear or haste-ing through levels. For all its rough bits, the crawling-fighting loop here is competent enough, and often bite-sized in a way that makes it easy to return to at any time.
Dark Cloud shines with its Georama system, where you use the Cool Orbs found in dungeons to rebuild whichever town they correspond to. This means not just placing buildings and land features in ways that make sense, but re- enabling the lives and schedules of others. Norune Village at the beginning sums this up very well, as any opening part of a game should. Talking with each and every villager you rescue from purgatory gives usable hints on how to improve their homes and hearth. Get things wrong and you suffer consequences, such as Gaffer falling from his ladder and only selling a limited shop inventory if you don't add items in order. Maximizing your ratings with each Georama section involves a rewarding loop of conversing with everyone to find that right balance, then scouring the premises for bonus item chests you get from higher ratings. I wish you didn't have some key moments tied to gimmicky quick-time rhythm games, but at least those are over quick.
Much like ActRaiser back in the day, Level-5's game thrives on the symbiosis between two game loops—one consumptive and one creative—with dungeon crawling playing into world creation and then back. Neither part of the game's that complex or involving on their own, but mesh so well in the midst of a playthrough. This works great for most of the game, but then the last two areas (Moon and Gallery of Time) sag in quality by misusing the dynamic. At the same time you're doing more, harder levels testing your character/weapon builds and inventory, the Georama segments get very linear and predictable. What before offered an illusion of a customizable, in-depth experience becomes more obvious, more repetitive. Now sure, I love to upgrade and evolve weapons in this game, but that system works best in service to tangible progress. As mentioned, awkward elements are easier to forgive when the story's active, the world's offering something new, and the end's somewhere in sight.
That leads me to another glaring issue: Dark Cloud's story is comically backloaded, to the detriment of earlier, better designed sequences like Matataki and Queens. It's already a simple tragic tale of an antihero's love interrupted, leading to even greater calamity across time. But shoving the majority of that larger narrative into the final dungeon reeks of "we had to rush this part, sorry!". Until then, you're left with a rather generic "defeat the Dark Genie" plot which gets stuck in the background until Muska Lacka. By contrast, Dark Cloud 2 does a way better job of revealing and twisting the main plot from start to finish, albeit via some more blockbuster tropes and framing. The prequel's so much more about atmosphere and light character interactions up until the last stretch. Again, it's less that the story's bad, more that it's needlessly thin and tangential to what you're doing for most of your playthrough. (What I've heard of the studio's following non-Dragon Quest games tells me Akihiro Hino still doesn't know how to write a rock-solid story or world, honestly.)
However, atmosphere is one way this game rises above that problem. Part of this might just come down to my own nostalgia, having played the game multiple times since the late 2000s, but it's just so charming. Dark Cloud's visual design takes a refreshing turn away from ye olde JRPG stylings, starting with the Weird West village Toan's from. The generally colorful, decently detailed town areas give life to their more sparsely constructed dungeons, both through architecture and NPC designs/dialogue. Tomohito Nishiura offers the first of many great Level-5 soundtracks, with its simple and clean arrangement of melodious multi-genre tunes. I could listen to tracks for locales like the Wise Owl Wood, Shipwreck, Matataki Village, or Queens all day. The user interface shows its age in terms of usability—far from bad, far from ideal—but it's easy enough to navigate and has a comfortable leather-and-parchment feel too. Cozy's an accurate word for this game in general, even during its darkest story moments (some unnerving enemies aside).
If you haven't tried either Dark Cloud game, I'd recommend at least trying this one before moving on to the sequel. It's definitely not as polished, expansive, or impressive, but the original's elegance and much shorter time to completion make it a closer contest. Beating the game lets you play through a very tricky bonus dungeon, ideal for testing out your super-weapons and enjoying that excellent ambiance. Both series entries are available on recent PlayStation systems and can emulate very well. Overall, I'd have a fun time replaying this right now, assuming I didn't have bigger priorities in my backlog. So many of the aspects that define Level-5's better-known, more recent games appear here in a primordial form. At the very least, it's a strong launch-period PS2 release which is worth experience both in that context and on its own merits.
P.S. Make sure to level Ruby towards the back half of the game. The final boss is weak to certain elements which are best targeted using either her magic or the right magic-infused weapon with Xiao or Osmond. Regardless, don't skimp on ranged combat!
Just a day in the life of Level-5's debut game, a less-than-clever but earnest homage to ActRaiser & other mid-'90s alternative ARPGs and dungeon-crawlers. I keep reading reviews from others who bounce off due to awkward controls, even more awkward mechanics, and truly awkward moments in the story and progression further in. But I think it's that awkwardness which set my expectations to a reasonable level. You're not getting a polished experience here, not in the slightest. This was an experiment, a way for ex-Riverhill Soft veterans to dip their feet in a genre their former employers shied away from. And ever since, Dark Cloud's hung over them, looming in the distance as a reminder of when Level-5 made standalone adventures. They've been chasing media-mix behemoths like Inazuma Eleven, Yokai Watch, and Megaton Musashi since the HD era, but I wish they'd consider making something quaint like this title again.
That said, I don't blame anyone for jumping straight to the sequel, even considering its own jank. A journey around the world rebuilding towns and people's lives sounds great, but you spend most of your time in randomly generated dungeons, dealing with combat and item/equipment management. The game's enemies usually aren't hard to deal with, having just one or two predictable attacks. It's things like weapon deterioration, imperfect hitboxes, and certain dungeon floors forcing you to use a subpar character (ex. Goro…) which sully the fun. At least you get more than enough consumables for repairing your gear or haste-ing through levels. For all its rough bits, the crawling-fighting loop here is competent enough, and often bite-sized in a way that makes it easy to return to at any time.
Dark Cloud shines with its Georama system, where you use the Cool Orbs found in dungeons to rebuild whichever town they correspond to. This means not just placing buildings and land features in ways that make sense, but re- enabling the lives and schedules of others. Norune Village at the beginning sums this up very well, as any opening part of a game should. Talking with each and every villager you rescue from purgatory gives usable hints on how to improve their homes and hearth. Get things wrong and you suffer consequences, such as Gaffer falling from his ladder and only selling a limited shop inventory if you don't add items in order. Maximizing your ratings with each Georama section involves a rewarding loop of conversing with everyone to find that right balance, then scouring the premises for bonus item chests you get from higher ratings. I wish you didn't have some key moments tied to gimmicky quick-time rhythm games, but at least those are over quick.
Much like ActRaiser back in the day, Level-5's game thrives on the symbiosis between two game loops—one consumptive and one creative—with dungeon crawling playing into world creation and then back. Neither part of the game's that complex or involving on their own, but mesh so well in the midst of a playthrough. This works great for most of the game, but then the last two areas (Moon and Gallery of Time) sag in quality by misusing the dynamic. At the same time you're doing more, harder levels testing your character/weapon builds and inventory, the Georama segments get very linear and predictable. What before offered an illusion of a customizable, in-depth experience becomes more obvious, more repetitive. Now sure, I love to upgrade and evolve weapons in this game, but that system works best in service to tangible progress. As mentioned, awkward elements are easier to forgive when the story's active, the world's offering something new, and the end's somewhere in sight.
That leads me to another glaring issue: Dark Cloud's story is comically backloaded, to the detriment of earlier, better designed sequences like Matataki and Queens. It's already a simple tragic tale of an antihero's love interrupted, leading to even greater calamity across time. But shoving the majority of that larger narrative into the final dungeon reeks of "we had to rush this part, sorry!". Until then, you're left with a rather generic "defeat the Dark Genie" plot which gets stuck in the background until Muska Lacka. By contrast, Dark Cloud 2 does a way better job of revealing and twisting the main plot from start to finish, albeit via some more blockbuster tropes and framing. The prequel's so much more about atmosphere and light character interactions up until the last stretch. Again, it's less that the story's bad, more that it's needlessly thin and tangential to what you're doing for most of your playthrough. (What I've heard of the studio's following non-Dragon Quest games tells me Akihiro Hino still doesn't know how to write a rock-solid story or world, honestly.)
However, atmosphere is one way this game rises above that problem. Part of this might just come down to my own nostalgia, having played the game multiple times since the late 2000s, but it's just so charming. Dark Cloud's visual design takes a refreshing turn away from ye olde JRPG stylings, starting with the Weird West village Toan's from. The generally colorful, decently detailed town areas give life to their more sparsely constructed dungeons, both through architecture and NPC designs/dialogue. Tomohito Nishiura offers the first of many great Level-5 soundtracks, with its simple and clean arrangement of melodious multi-genre tunes. I could listen to tracks for locales like the Wise Owl Wood, Shipwreck, Matataki Village, or Queens all day. The user interface shows its age in terms of usability—far from bad, far from ideal—but it's easy enough to navigate and has a comfortable leather-and-parchment feel too. Cozy's an accurate word for this game in general, even during its darkest story moments (some unnerving enemies aside).
If you haven't tried either Dark Cloud game, I'd recommend at least trying this one before moving on to the sequel. It's definitely not as polished, expansive, or impressive, but the original's elegance and much shorter time to completion make it a closer contest. Beating the game lets you play through a very tricky bonus dungeon, ideal for testing out your super-weapons and enjoying that excellent ambiance. Both series entries are available on recent PlayStation systems and can emulate very well. Overall, I'd have a fun time replaying this right now, assuming I didn't have bigger priorities in my backlog. So many of the aspects that define Level-5's better-known, more recent games appear here in a primordial form. At the very least, it's a strong launch-period PS2 release which is worth experience both in that context and on its own merits.
P.S. Make sure to level Ruby towards the back half of the game. The final boss is weak to certain elements which are best targeted using either her magic or the right magic-infused weapon with Xiao or Osmond. Regardless, don't skimp on ranged combat!
Weatherby
1 year ago