[PS2] Dark Cloud 2 Discussion (Rate it too!)

Gah, I can't believe I missed this thread. Dark Cloud 2, for me, is one of the best PS2 games ever. This is the game that, when I found out Dragon Quest 8 was done by Level 5, made my decision to purchase DQ8 final. Any game Level 5 creates I will buy.

Dark Cloud 2 has amazing visuals, first and foremost. Everything is bright, colorful, and active. The environments are beautiful (especially Veneccio) and fun to explore, which you'll be doing a lot of.

The characters are also really cool, and there's a broad range of personalities. You can recruit a good number of the NPCs to perform speciality tasks for you, and you can "take" one of them with you into a dungeon and make use of their abilities. For example, one of the NPCs, if you take her with you into a dungeon, will cure any ailments you get, such as poison. Others will sell you stuff in case you run out of items, but one of them (and the best one, IMO) reveals which treasure chests are mimcs, which enemy holds the door key for each level, and reveals the whole level's map.

Battles are fun as well. Everything's on the main field, like Zelda. Max and Monica each have one ranged attack and one melee attack. Max uses wrenches and hammers, in which he swings them slowly but causes more damage, and can charge up and use a spinning attack. He uses a variety of guns for long-range combat.

Monica uses swords which she can often swing faster and hit more often, but they're not as strong. She has a few different variants on her sword-swinging. For ranged attacks, she uses magic by equipping armbands. Whichever element she uses is dependant on the element that is most powerful on the armband which can always be changed by synthesizing it, so in truth all of her armbands can be any element.

The story's quite a charming one as well. It starts off kind of typical and ends the same way, but it's a fun ride nonetheless. You'll be taken in, treated to a few surprises and plot twists, and end spectacularly.

Speaking of endings, there's also an epilogue quest you can undertake back in the first town. Be warned -- you'll need to be powerful.

So, you'll be spending a good portion of your time (or if you enjoy it, a great portion) rebuilding the cities. It seems like a fairly mundane task at first. You're given a set of requirements to get 100% of the rebuilding completed, however it's up to you how you go about getting that 100%. It might say "Build 3 houses" but how you decorate them, etc. is usually up to you. Plus, let's say that "Build 3 Houses" is your only goal -- after that you can do pretty much whatever you want to the whole area! That's fun in itself.

Trust me, when you get to Veneccio, you'll really have a good bit of space to work with and very minimal requirements to get 100%. It's so great. I wanna look at my city again.

Anyway, along with all of the minigames (like inventing, the fishing contest and the fish race) and the amount of time you can spend building stuff, this game should last you about 100 hours. If you played the first Dark Cloud, you'll find similarities, but only about skin deep. Some of the dungeons in the first game were ridiculously long, but the ones in this game aren't so bad, at least not in comparison.

I would've given this game a 20 out of 10, but that option wasn't available. 10/10.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I didn't realize it at first, but Spheda (on certain levels) has got to be one of the coolest minigames ever conceived, just beneath Blitzball. And yes, the fishing aspect was extremely addicting, although you wouldn't believe it until you actually play it. I was really into making a racing fish. By the time I actually entered him into the race, he could lap the other fish!

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Kostaki

Dark Cloud 2/Dark Chronicle is a pretty decent game, a nice step forward from the original Dark Cloud in terms of the action sequences and what you could do in battle. They did strip down the Georama sequences a little bit and made them almost to where it forced you to build a town a certain way instead of being able to do whatever you wanted.

I gotta disagree with you, because after I got 100% in Veneccio, I went on to make additions and played around with a lot of stuff. I did the same in the Rainbow Woods town as well, since both had enough of those creation points left over. Balance Valley and Heim Rada were the exceptions, since they left little room for improvements. Still, minor things could be added to deviate from the 100% completion minimum.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.