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Okay, I'm going to be completely honest here: I don't know how I even ran into playing these games.  Normally I have some story about how I played a demo of it, or how I saw trailers and thought "Golly gee these look exciting/terrible!" Or just something where I stumbled across them before picking them up.

But no, nothing like that here.  If I remember correctly, when my Grandma sent me my PS2 for my birthday/Christmas (one of those things), both of these games were in the collection of titles that she sent (which included Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy (which I'm shocked I haven't reviewed yet), Kya: Dark Lineage, Maximo, and several others).  So it's a series I really knew nothing going in.

Man, am I really glad about that.

Dark Cloud and Dark Cloud 2 were my introduction to Level 5's games (And coincidentally Dark Cloud was their first game), and let's just say that I've been a fan of the studio ever since.  So much so that in my first impressions of Ni No Kuni II, I heavily panned its Kingdom builder as being a watered down version of the Georama system from these games.

The games not only had this charm when they released, but they introduced some difficult changes to the dungeon crawling aspect, as well as some innovative systems (mainly the Georama system) to make the games more engaging.  They also really reveled in the random-level system where the dungeon maps, loot, loot locations and whatnot were all randomly generated outside of the event/boss areas.

But which was better?  Was Dark Cloud 2 an improvement, or a misstep?  Well, let's answer these questions and maybe more.



Released in May of 2001 (December of 2000 for Japan), Dark Cloud was originally intended as a launch title for the Playstation 2 when the console launched.  Does it show? Ehhhhhh kinda.  The title was reviewed somewhat favorably, pretty much to where it was given PS2's Greatest Hits repackaging later down the line.  It's one of those games that looks like a launch title in certain ways such as graphically (but even then it still has charm to it), but plays wonderfully even today...despite being a little difficult in the gamplay area if you're new to RPGs (well, hybrid-ish RPGs).

Story
You're a young boy named Toan (Can be changed), celebrating a festival in your small village.  Unbeknownst to any of you, that festival is about to be cut short.  Elsewhere, a despicable man named General Flagg has used his money to round up the necessary people to perform a dark ritual...one that would unleash a terrible force known as the Dark Genie to do his bidding.  What's his bidding? Why, to completely annihilate the world of course!  Naturally, the ceremony is successful, the genie is released and agrees to do the General's bidding.Coincidentally your village is his first target, and coincidentally your character saves someone and thus ends up being the chosen hero to restore the world, and of course the Dark Genie is going to do what they can to stop you at every turn because they see a young boy with questionable fighting experience as a threat and...you get where I'm going with this.

It's a harmless story, but the plot is also something that's become very cliche, and was even cliche when it released.  Thankfully, I will say that despite some off areas where you can tell translation was botched (which is thankfully rarely), the dialogue sprinkled in to keep the story at least somewhat original is refreshing.  Characters for the most part are charming, and despite it being text-only with no voice, they still just burst with personality...eh, the player characters anyways.  Some NPCs do, but many end up being pretty generic or forgettable with the exception of a few.  Overall though, it's about as cliche as you can expect: Save the world with your special power.

I will say there was a small twist thrown in there which honestly I should have expected, but didn't.  So kudos for catching me slightly off guard with it!

Gameplay
Alright, now let's talk about the area that actually does make an impression, and that's the gameplay.  First off, battles in this game are surprisingly grueling.  At a glance, it's a random dungeon crawler where you run through and attack enemies in real time.  Sounds simple enough, right?

Actually, no.  Before you enter the first dungeon, you check out the only place left standing, talk to the guy, he gives you items, and you go to the dungeon.  The minute you open up your inventory and look at the different stat bars as well as items, there's a slight feeling of "Yikes."  First off, yes, you have your general health bar that goes down if you get hurt.  You also have the typical RPG status varients, such as being poisoned, cursed, frozen/petrified, slow, things like that.

But on top of that, you also have 2 crucial stat bars: Your thirst meter, and your Weapon Hit Points.

At first, you'll think "Oh I'm okay with Durability, I've dealt with that in games like Breath of the Wild...and there's a lot of games that use Stamina bars which I imagine the thirst bar is like."

And for that first bit, yeah...Breath of the Wild is probably the one game that is most similar when it comes to weapon usage.  You attack an enemy to the end point of your weapon life, it breaks and becomes useless.  Aside from your starting dagger which has been "enchanted," that's basically how it works in Dark Cloud: Use a weapon and forget to repair it when you hear that annoying warning beep, it'll break and disappear from your inventory.

But let me stress that the Thirst Meter is absolutely nothing like a Stamina bar, which gradually refills over time in games when you don't use it.  In actuality, you could be standing perfectly still, and the thirst meter in a dungeon will continuously go down.  The minute your last drop disappears, it starts slowly pulling your health down too, which is obviously not a good thing.  And if you're unfortunate to be in a limited Zone (I'll explain these in a bit) that makes your thirst go down even faster? Well, hopefully you either brought lots of tasty water, or that there's an area in the dungeon with water (marked by a light blue square) that you can jump into for a refill.

Let me also stress that games that normally deal with durability have a big difference: You have multiple ways to hurt things to avoid destroying your degrading weapons.  With Dark Cloud, aside from changing your character (unless you're in a specific limited zone) or changing your current weapon (assuming you've collected more than just your dagger), you're pretty much stuck attacking with only one option.

There's also other factors that will really hurt your weapon: certain enemy types such as mimics, stone golems, dragons, and other varying types will chip away anywhere from 3 to 10 WHP with every hit, even with your weapon fortified with enough endurance gems at its maximum.  This is especially rough when you're in the middle of a combo, get the warning beep, and your weapon breaks before you can even break away from the combo.  I can't tell you how many times I lost a great weapon I was building up for ages because of a combo gone wrong since the enemy proved to be a WHP sucker (and this was after I'd just repaired it).

Items like Repair Powder and Auto Repair Powder (meaning you put it in one of your 3 active slots, and it'll auto-repair one time for each that you have) are when you'll use to fix your weapon, and I cannot stress how incredibly important these are for characters like Ungaga, whose weapons 9/10 times end up having the worst durability.

In this game, there is no traditional level up system for your character.  Instead, your weapons will build up ABS (literally just short for Absorption) for every enemy you kill.  Once your ABS are full (which it'll tell you every time), you can synthesize any current attachments (Jewels, crystals, stat gems, stones, synthsphered weapons) into it to make it stronger.  Meet a certain threshold with certain weapons (excluding any character's starting weapon), and you can evolve it into a stronger type.  Each weapon with the exception of Steve (which can only evolve into Super Steve) has various branches they can take in the weapon evolution process, eventually leading to one of their strongest forms.

Buuuuut, along with the good is also some bad.  Along with general stats, there's also some great abilities you can get for your weapon, such as Poison (potential of poisoning an enemy on touch), steal, stop, and Durable (which helps with keeping your weapon strong).  However, there's a flipside in horrible abilities your weapon can get, such as Poor (lessens money gained), Thirst (makes you thirsty faster), and Fragile (literal opposite of durable).  So if your super awesome weapon has one of those (but especially fragile), you'll want to find a way to get rid of it.

As you progress through the game, you'll pick up other members for your party (6 total).  Each has a different weapon and thus handles durability differently.  3 of your characters will be melee fighters (you with the sword, one with a hammer/axe, one with a spear), and 3 will be ranged fighters (slingshot, magical energy ball, gun).  The ranged will obviously be a sight more ideal because their durability doesn't vary on hit so much as it does every time they use their weapon, so it's more set; get their weapons strong, and durability is cake.  You'll also occasionally hit areas of a dungeon that are inaccessible by your character...whether you have to hop on a small rock-like area in the middle to get across, hit a floor-switch, light up a crystal, blow away black smoke, or literally just fly over.  Even though your character is the only Georama collector, your party members will also have their use in other floors outside of the limited zones, and thankfully it doesn't curve-ball you by giving you inaccessible areas for use of characters you don't currently have.

However, the game loves to throw a random curveball known as limited zones.  So, alright, I haven't explained how dungeons even work exactly, so let me explain that first.  You walk into the dungeon area, and are shown the floor numbers up to your current floor, the number of Georama Spheres in it (if any), the number of enemies killed, and that's it.  When you enter, your entry spot is green on your map, and you're to look through the dungeon and fight enemies until you find that yellow spot on that map which is the dungeon exit.  You'll also see a ? spot on all maps, which I'll get to that in a bit.  Now, before you can leave the current floor of the dungeon, you also have to find and kill the monster that has that dungeon's version of the key or object to unlock that exit...which you basically just have to keep killing monsters until one of them drops it (If there's new monsters on that floor, always go for them first).  When you leave, you have the option to move to the next floor (not taking you back to the list, just automatically pushing you to the next floor), or to leave and come back later, and you can access the new floor when you re-enter.

With me so far?  Okay, good.  Now limited zones are basically a regular dungeon floor with, well, limits on certain aspects.  Sometimes your thirst meter will decrease at a faster rate, sometimes killing monsters will actually decrease your current amount of ABS, and sometimes a character will be forced to do that floor alone without you being able to switch characters.  I should also note that your character is the only one that can access the Georama Spheres which are crucially important to get on floors that have them.

FINALLY, there's the Backfloor area, which is what those ? areas on the map lead you to.  They're a somewhat more difficult area where the enemies do more damage and start off in aggro state (meaning their attacks hit even harder and usually will KO you right away).  However, there's also potential for greater rewards that you can't find elsewhere, such as Jewels which will boost multiple stats and resistances for your weapon, as opposed to one thing at a time like Stat gems, crystals, and stones will do.  Unless you plan on building up your weapon immensely only to turn it into a Synthsphere (which is arguably the best way) and put it into a stronger weapon (giving that weapon a certain % of the snythsphered weapon's stats...which increases depending on the level of the weapon before you made it into a Synthsphere), jewels are definitely the second best thing that you can grab.

There is a catch for the backfloors, however.  In order to access it, you need to by miraculous chance obtain the correct item from that dungeon in a treasure chest.  In some dungeons such as the first dungeon as well as Sun and Moon Temple, you'll see that item pop up fairly often if you're lucky.  In Shipwreck, the item can actually be bought in town, but is a pain to get it to the dungeon to use in time (since it's a fish that has to be right next to an ice block in your inventory that will gradually melt, and with no ice the fish rots and becomes useless). In some such as the Wise Owl Forest, it's actually more rare to see it pop up.  In the final dungeon, it's literally impossible because the item granting access was removed from the English release due to it apparently causing bugs.

Oh, and some event areas have a short button-bashy movie thing.  You know, like how Resident Evil 4 or Tomb Raider Anniversary had you waiting till the right moment during a scene to press a button?  Sorta like that, only you have a bar that appears on the bottom of the screen, along with a light vertical bar near the end and two slightly darker vertical bars on each side of it, and button prompts make their way along the horizontal bar.  If you haven't guessed, you have to press the buttons within one of those vertical bars (dark blue ones will earn a "good" and light one will earn you a "Great!").  Do these flawlessly, and you'll be rewarded usually with a jewel.  Do it just good, and you get nothing (tough luck).

So that about sums up battle: It's difficult since you have to really pay close attention to your weapons unless you plan on killing things with your starting weapon (which gets impossible quick since their stats cap is really short), and likewise have to pay attention to your thirst meter as well as the normal making sure your HP and status are okay.

Now, the other most important thing is the Georama aspect.  I mentioned earlier how in the dungeons, you'll come across Georama Spheres that your main character (and him alone) can access.  When you touch a sphere in the dungeon, you'll be told what was inside it...be it a person, house, item for the house, natural item, and what have you.  When you leave the dungeon and go to a specific part of the current field area, you can access your Georama menu, with various options such as Analysis (where you can see the total % of Georama Spheres left to find versus what you have, completed requests, and whatnot), and the Georama Config section.  In the config section, you'll be greeted with a list of buildings/natural items you picked up on the left as well as a menu full of the side items/people that you picked up as well.

Each building will have anywhere from 2-6 slots, some visible for you to see what they need, some hidden by a question mark.  Your goal is to put items and people in the correct slots for their specific place.  Once you've done this (or before if you want), you can click the building/natural item and pick where on the field you want to put it.  Once a building you put down has the people back in it, you can go out of your Georama menu and go over to their house and take their requests.

There are two types of requests the people will make: items for their house, and ideal location.  Item requests will remove those question marks for their building in the Georama Config menu, so that you can place the items there.  Ideal location is simply just putting their house/building where they want it specifically.  Some will be as easy as "Just so I can see the morning sun rise when I wake up" and some will be crucially specific in not wanting to be next to a certain character, near the water, facing a certain object, etc...

Putting together certain items through Georama is necessary to progress the story, as you'll only get access to boss keys or even needed party members this way.  Getting 100% completion (meaning you've fulfilled all requests exactly) will reward you with a skill or a rare weapon.

On top of that, every completed area will yield various small red chests.  In these chests you'll find a variety of items ranging from stones, to health items, water, and more importantly you'll often find Fruit of Eden (increases max HP for one character), Gourd (increases thirst meter by one drop for one character), and a treat for a specific character (which will raise their defense slightly).  Every time you add an element to the building (or even just randomly after buildings are complete), you'll find these chests popping up both in the restored towns as well as outside of important areas (such as the entrance to the Sun and Moon Temple, or around Yellow Drops).

I will say switching to Georama mode makes things quick for traveling as well.  As much as I love viewing the field areas even after they're completed, it turns a few minute walk from one area to the other much easier when you can use Georama mode (which is completely top down and your location is an arrow that moves as you move around to place items) to get there in seconds.  Some areas such as Queens have some confines in which you can only set yourself down in the field part and nothing else, but I still find it incredibly convenient.

Graphics
Alright, now remember how I said that it shows that it was intended to be a launch title? This is mainly where I'm meaning that.  This is by no means an ugly game at all, but to put it nicely, it looks like a basic launch title.  Sure, there's definitely moments where the sprites look lovely, and as I said they made the party characters unique enough to where they have distinct personalities even without anything more than battle-vocals.  But the environments, levels, other characters, everything is just lacking in some way.  I don't know if because there was such a big emphasis on you being the ones restoring everything and the random dungeon floors to where the game designers didn't care to put a horrible amount of effort in or what, but man, looks wise it could have been a lot better (and amusingly was one of the first better areas in Dark Cloud 2).

Now, I say all this, but the game does have something I prefer over Dark Cloud 2: The art style.  Sure, everything looks pretty basic and somewhat uninspired, but the overall style was actually very lovely to look at.  Characters like the Dark Genie, General Flagg, some of the monsters and bosses, I absolutely love in this cartoon-realistic hybrid look that some games go for, and this is no exception.  I just wish that they were able to really go even further with it, since I do feel like this game only had pieces of it.  Though I do understand they were a new studio at the time, and potential limitations for it originally being a launch title may have existed.  But...it's like Spyro versus Spyro remake for me.  Spyro was fine enough on the console even though it definitely had limitations from being able to hit its true potential, whereas the remake was able to realize those 10-fold.  Dark Cloud is one I'd love to see have that same treatment because I feel its potential in this area just wasn't able to really be tapped...though it was definitely improved in ways in the next game.






Music
Alright, this is me being picky, but I absolutely hate when games stop the music when it hits nightfall.  Especially games that actually have a decent soundtrack working for them, like this one does.  Dark Cloud doesn't have an amazing soundtrack overall, but it has some really lovely tracks, and occasional really awesome ones such as Brownboo Village, Yellow Drops (the city on the moon), Gallery of Time, and even the first song you hear after the prologue and name choice for your character.  Like, damn this game had some great tracks that I can still remember even without playing.

The towns also have nice music, I think.  It's hard to tell because Dark Cloud does that progressive time system of day to night (which is exceptionally annoying in town because it rises up and announces it in letters every time when it hits a certain time of day), and it goes surprisingly fast.  The minute it hits night, the music fades out and goes quiet until late morning.  And if you're lucky like I am, by that point you're already back in the dungeons doing stuff, and by the time you come out it'll be night again.

But the dungeons themselves have nice songs, and the two villages exempt from the no-night-music also have lovely tracks.  The overall theme music is pretty nice too...overall from what I could hear, the music was at least decent.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL37347BD7EE891CD6

Sounds and Voices
Alright, I normally don't comment here much since I really have no gripes in this area.  But dear god that beeping sound when your weapon is low on WHP is friggin annoying.  It's even worse when it's closer to breaking because the beeping gets quicker.

Voices weren't an issue.  They don't actually talk vocally and the game is mainly text, but you get to hear them in the dungeons in a sort of Link from later LOZ games way.

Time/Side Content/Replayability
Ehhhhhhhh.  So all of the side content such as fishing or backfloors exploring isn't enough to really hook someone into a second playthrough.

There's technically a post-game dungeon, but well...here's the problem:
The reward is absolutely useless.  It's 100 floors of enemies you've fought before, only accessible after beating the game.  At floor 100, you fight the game's most difficult boss which is hinted to be someone you know by developers, but there's really no story content to it.  The reward? The best sword in the game.  But, you've already beaten the game once, and you've already beaten the most difficult boss to get that sword, so what was really the point of getting it again?

Overall, it's not one I see that has a lot of replayability unless you're just really wanting to enjoy those dungeons.

On top of that, the game isn't actually incredibly long, either.  Realistically, the game length comes from 3 things: Weapon maintenance (grinding to level it up as well as constantly leaving to get repair powder), dungeon floor lengths (starting at 15 floors for the first dungeon, ending at 24 for the last), and perfecting requests for Georama (but you can easily speedrun that and do the bare basics to power through).  Actual time spent on the story itself is fairly minimal in comparison aside from the bits you pick up from Georama completions.  But in whole, there's a total of 6 dungeons, 5 Georama sections (the final dungeon technically has Georama elements, but it's putting together a story as you progress through the dungeon, rather than actually recreating something like with the previous areas.

Overall
Overall, I hate talking bad about this game, because in ways it's a great title.  It sounds nice, looks decent despite it being able to look better, has a decent story despite being pretty cliche especially nowadays, and has some great party characters that actually get use.  And like I said...despite it looking basic, the style itself was actually somewhat welcome.  The Georama system was an absolutely welcome new mechanic as well despite it also being pretty simple (but in some ways I actually prefer the simplicity of it in this game).  And even the unique battle system was nice despite it being sometimes hair-pulling.  It's still one I recommend for the experience.

Speaking of Georama and battles, how were they in the sequel?  Well, I'm glad you didn't ask!



As I'm sure you've guessed by the clashing titles on the two above images, Dark Chronicle/Dark Cloud 2 is in fact, not a sequel to Dark Cloud.  Yep, that's right, it's another case of Tales of Eternia being called Tales of Destiny 2 in the US despite it having nothing to do with the original game (and there being a proper ToD 2, but I digress).

So as you can imagine with that kind of introduction, you can guess that no knowledge of the previous game would be needed, and you'd be correct.  Aside from a post-game cameo which is played more for "Oh, he was in the last game!" as opposed to actually meaning anything, this game is like Final Fantasy versus Final Fantasy 2: There may be similar enemies or characters with similar names (Like Steve the "talking" Slingshot in DC1 versus Steve the Ridepod you can make talk in DC2), but overall it's completely different in every way possible.

With all that, I'm sure you're asking "So is this better than the original game?"  In many ways, absolutely.  In some ways...it's debatable.  But overall, this is a bit more of the Dark Cloud experience I was really hoping for with the first game...mostly.

Story
So, tell me if you haven't heard this one before: Bad guys are looking for important item to take over all of time and space (and naturally the world), protagonist stumbles them upon hearing about this and does something stupid to get caught, and just happens to have convenient plot device already, leading bad guys to chase him into hiding as protagonist learns that said object will save the world and make for a better future.

Sound familiar? Yeah, remember what I said in the past game about how cliche it sounded?  Well, this game didn't exactly fix that problem, and it's a cliche story.  However, I will give it much credit that it actually went a lot further with it.  Whereas the first game felt somewhat basic in its telling outside of specific moments, this one really went a lot more all in with its story elements and actually was surprisingly a bit more engaging.  Remember how I said at the end "as the protagonist learns that said object will save the world and make for a better future?" I actually meant that part literally.  Now it's not only about putting everything back in its proper place in your time, but also making sure that you're fixing the currently broken future by doing said actions.

Not gonna lie...that's actually a pretty cool idea.  Now not only are you rebuilding towns to fit the criteria, but using your even more important stone (which now lets you time travel instead of being used as a Georama opener.  Your red stone lets you travel 100 years in the future, your party-mate Monica's stone lets you travel 100 years in the past...or in other words back to your present)...but now you can pop on over to the future and see how you've affected it when you meet those different criteria.

Okay, I'm actually pretty on board with that.  So how's the rest?

Well...Dark Cloud 2 really gets into sappy territory.  There's some emotional moments, but they feel like they were meant to be emotional for kids rather than the intended audience (which was Teens).  In fact, the whole game feels like one long kids cartoon movie because of the dialogue, the (slightly more apparent) translation issues, and just overall how the game even looks and feels...which I'll get into in a second.

Oh, and I should mention the game has a couple of twists, both of them incredibly predictable.  One of them you'll figure out pretty early one, and the other is one of those "Out of left field" types which you've seen games like Final Fantasy 9 do to where you wondered why they decided to do that.

But okay, I've talked about how the story is both better and "uhhhh" but mostly better, how's gameplay?

Gameplay

Okay, for the most part, I dig the gameplay here more.  It's a bit more simplified and less hair pulling, for starters.

The thirst meter is completely gone, thank goodness.  Instead, you can get hit with a Thirst affliction which will make you unable to eat any healing items (bread, cheese, premium chicken, and double pudding are the main ones) until you use Tasty Water or Mighty Healing.  So gone is the worry about having to stock up on a bunch of tasty water and scour the dungeons for that helpful water spot.

Weapon maintenance has also been made a bit easier.  WHP is still definitely a thing, but now your weapons don't magically disappear when broken.  Yes, that's right, if you break your super special mega weapon, you won't lose it forever and can bring it back with some repair powder.  On top of that, weapon stats have been reduced to: Attack, Flame, Lightning, Smash, Beast, Durability, Chill, Cyclone, Exorcism, Scale.  Gone are the various enemy resistances as well as other various stats.  Attack and Durability will normally increase with each level, but there are still crystals for both of them (as well as for every other stat).

Any item in your inventory that isn't a key item can be broken down and synthesized in your weapon with some few exceptions.  Bread can be broken down and put toward your flame stat, Glass material can be broken down and be put toward your chill stat, and so on.  So now aside from your crystals which are still around (which give 3 points toward a stat each), you can also use basically anything you pick up (which will normally give 2 points toward a stat each).  This actually makes it a bit easier to level up items, so it's not as long and annoying of a process.

Partway into the beginning, you'll also get a robot named Steve that you can use.  He can only be upgraded by purchasing or inventing items he needs (which I'll get to that bit in a moment), and he runs on fuel rather than HP.  He's usually stronger than using Max or Monica at first, but his fuel will gradually decrease even when not fighting, so unless you're stocked up on fuel in your inventory...he's pretty limited.  He also doesn't build up weapon XP like Max or Monica do...but he does use the ABS that he snags to build up a counter you'll see at the top of the screen when using him.  That counter is sort of a currency that you can put towards buying upgrades specifically from Cedric, whom will be with you throughout the game to sell you upgrades.

One difference is that this game has only 2 actual characters that you play as...mainly Max and Monica.   Each of them do have a different variation as well...mainly Max has his Ridepod Steve, and Monica has Monster transformation.  Other than that though, it's mainly just the two of you fighting through dungeons as opposed to Dark Cloud's 6.  In some ways, I'm actually okay with this since they really did something I liked: they gave Max and Monica both a melee and a ranged weapon (Max has his wrench/hammer for melee and gun for ranged, Monica has her swords for melee and magic bracelet for ranged).  I'm personally okay with the fact that they did that since they balanced it out to be less hellish of a ride with only two characters.  Even the character specific inaccessible areas are gone, and only the occasional locked off area on a floor is still around.

On the downside though, I'd be okay with this if they were the the only party members.  Yes, you read that right: They're the only ones fighting in the dungeons, but they're not the only party members.  As soon as you can start recruiting people from your town to travel with you, you can put one of them in your party at a time.

What do they do?  Well, it depends on the character.  While they don't actually fight and kinda just chill there in that party slot, each character aside from a select few will have special skills they can use while in your party.  One character can create Premium Chicken using some skill points, which Premium Chicken is an item that restores all HP for a character.  Likewise, one character can show you all important spots on a map, while another will show you all the mimics on a map, and another will...

You get the idea, the skills are mostly pretty useless unless you're needing the extra help, and the extra help ones don't appear until later when you really don't need their help anymore.

On top of that, there's no real reason for them other than to shoehorn in some extra help that you'll barely ever use.  Especially story-wise it makes absolutely no sense because when you go through a time portal to and from the future, they'll be with you.  But when it cuts to a story point in the future, they're suddenly not there.  When you come back from the future, it's just never talked about.  Like, really the only reason to recruit them is to fit certain criteria for Georama restoration that requires them specifically, or because some will sell you great stuff when they're not in your party.

But hey, I could go on about that, so let's talk about that Georama thing, shall we?

So, this is an area that was both improved and...uh, made more tedious in this game.  First off, the menu and way Georama is done in this game is 10x better.  Starting with partly into the 2nd dungeon, you'll eventually find a small flame stone floating on most dungeon floors at that point (it'll be a purple dot on the map).  This is the Georama stone replacing all of the Georama Spheres from the first game.  In this title, Georama stones hold information from past civilizations on buildings, structures, and whatnot.  Pick up a stone, leave the dungeon, go to the field/build area and enter your georama menu, and you'll download the contents of the stone which include structure types, natural elements, and important info related to meeting the criteria.

Yes, that's right.  No longer do you have to ask citizens what they want or how they want their places.  Instead, information to making a better area is given to you via a list on the far-right option of the menu that starts off as question marks, and each Georama stone you grab will unlock those question marks whether it'll be what the met criteria for the section will do, or what that criteria you need to meet is.  Every time you finish a section (which you'll see one of the circles on that criteria list light up when you meet one of the criteria) and leave the Georama section, a small note will appear saying "Something has changed in the future."  Which means little (mainly that something appeared, but sometimes can mean that a shop has appeared...you can tell what it is by seeing what the complete section says).  If you changed something that's important to progressing in the story, the notice will instead say "Something has changed in the future.  Maybe something will happen."

But, here's where it gets tedious.  In Dark Cloud, the menu for rebuilding was a set list of buildings, and items/people that you had to put in their correct slots.  In Dark Cloud 2, there's no such thing as correct slots.  Dark Cloud 2's Georama is much more free building where you can put buildings where you want and put items how you want so long as there's conditions met.  Certain character will only live in a house with a fence, or they'll want a cart outside, or they'll want specifically a brick house.  All of which are fine and easy things to do really. The tedious part is that you don't just pop out items for free, but instead are limited by materials that you have to either find in dungeons, or spend your gold on to purchase.  Wooden houses require a certain amount of Rolling Logs, Glass Materials, and other such items for you to make, fences and mailboxes and even chimneys require a certain amount of scraps of metal, and so on.

They're not hard to find in the slightest, as most can be bought on the train from your Firbit friend.  But material hunting does get tedious, and it doesn't just stop at Georama building...but also inventing.

Oh hey, now I can talk about that.  Yeah, so Max is an inventor in this game, because a kid who obviously comes from an extremely wealthy family is definitely going to work in a maintenance shop despite still being at home in his mansion, and is totally going to be into inventing things in his pastime.

But I digress on that confusing chain of things I just said.  So when you first get your Ridepod, you're given a camera to go get some ideas so you can invent a new fuel pack for the thing.  After you finish that, you can start taking snapshots of various things you see all over the world, and certain items you take pictures of will give a pleasant little sound, and the name of the item will appear below the picture with a little yellow lightbulb to let you know that you just took a picture of a potential idea.  On top of that are things called "Scoops" in which your friend Donnie (whom saves you from being chased at the beginning) will throw you some picture ideas in your Inside Scoops notebook.  Unlike your normal picture craze of every day items, scoops involve you taking pictures of rare items, certain enemies when they move around, or even bosses performing an action.  While most of these can be gotten at any time (and will both contribute towards inventions as well as get you excellent rewards when giving Donnie certain amounts of em), the boss/event ones are easily missable, and can prevent you from getting some really excellent invention ideas.

You can only take 30 pictures maximum before you have to delete them, but all invention ideas can be saved to your notebook so that you can access them even after deleting your pictures.

Once you have some ideas for things to make (which you can find literally all over the world both in the present and future in various books/computers/notes on the wall), you can go to the Make section of your menu.  From there, you'll see your current invention list, or you can just go into the top area where you can create something new.  When you do that, you'll have to click 3 picture ideas saved in your notebook and then hit the button to come up with an idea.  If all 3 choices are correct, you'll make something new ranging from Ridepod parts, to weapons, to food items.  If 2 of the choices are correct, you'll get a 2-letter hint on what the 3rd correct item is.   Anything less, and Max will do the flustered symbol and you'll have to start over.

After you've successfully come up with an invention, that list that you saw at the beginning of the Make section will update with it.  At that point you can click on the item, and it'll tell you what items you need to make it...usually mimicking items you'd need in your georama building.  However, some of the best weapons/ridepod parts will require some pretty rare items such as an ability coin (coins that give your weapons an ability like the ones in DC1), so if you're wanting some nifty weapons, hold on to those coins.  There's also a specific Ridepod weapon that requires a Ruby (since jewels still exist in this game too), so definitely hold on to one of those if you get it...although both rubies and coins can be purchased at a shop for the post-game dungeon.

There's also a new side game that pops up about...I want to say 1/4th way into the game called Spheda, which is literally just golf.  Hit the ball into the hole (which in this game the hole is a rip in space/time and the ball is a broken off fragment), win a treasure chest as well as a medal.  Sounds simple, but there's 2 caveats:
1) The ball and portal/hole have to be opposite colors of each other.  The ball when hit will change to blue or red when it bounces or hits a wall.  Basically think of it like magnets: Opposites attract, samesies repel.  This is the same concept with Spheda; if the ball is red and the portal is red, they'll repel each other.  If the portal is blue and the ball is red, the ball will go into the hole and close the distortion.
2) You have a limited number of shots before the ball disappears, and it's limited specifically on how many the game expects it'll take for you to get there.  Closer-ish shots with a red ball/blue portal will only allow you a single shot, for example.  If you don't get it within the number of shots...as I said the ball disappears and you're basically SOL until you leave and try it again in the next run.

The game also lets you know when you've defeated all the monsters (unlike DC1).  You'll get some kind of "mission accomplished" type of music as the message appears, you'll get info every time on what you can do and where to go to end the level, and the dungeon music will be changed out with something tranquil until you leave that floor (or less tranquil in Rainbow Butterfly Woods' case since the music for that dungeon is damn relaxing).  That's also the only point in which you can play Spheda if the floor allows it.

There's also a bigger emphasis on fishing, it actually being required for a small event in one of the dungeons.  But on top of that, you can put your fish in an aquarium, will need a specific one to recruit a character, and can even put them in competitions.

Let me also just say that I very much love the level structure in this game so much more.  While the levels themselves are still randomly generated with everything, you aren't wandering into a dungeon with a drop down list anymore.  Instead, you get a dungeon layout to give an idea of how the dungeon structure is overall, how many different levels of it there are and where the boss room could be.  Some levels now have branching paths (usually inaccessible until a certain point in the game, but some require both paths for story purposes), and each level now has a name which hints at some monster that will appear in that level (or a gameplay hint).  On top of that, it'll also give you conditions to meet to earn medals, such as "Defeat all enemies using only the Ridepod" or "Defeat all enemies without healing" as well as giving you a level time to beat for another medal.

Overall, it's just been a bit more refined so players can know more of what they're walking into and prepare.  Before you ask, Medals can be gathered and given to a character for special items.

Limited zones exist in a very much smaller form called Seals.  There are 3: Blue, Red, and White seals.  Blue seals prevent Monica from being used in the level, and red seals prevent Max from being used.  White seals meanwhile prevent characters from healing until all monsters are dead (though technically all seals do that when all monsters are dead).  Max and Monica can both pick up the Georama stones which...thank god because I hate switching characters just to do that (though Monica can't be a monster and Max can't be on his ridepod).  And even the seals themselves aren't a permanent thing, since at not even the halfway mark you can buy Seal breaking items in the shop, making the levels with seals absolutely pointless (and some even encourage it by making it, say, a level that prevents Max from being used, but a medal condition is killing all enemies using only his gun).

And that's about it on that.  Overall, it's very much improved in gameplay.  Is it a little more simplified in battle? Definitely, but I'm alright with that myself.  The improvements everywhere else, even the somewhat tedious but more free usage Georama building more than made up for it.

Graphics
So I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with these graphics.  I have nothing against cel-shaded cartoon graphics, as Windwaker and games like Ni No Kuni are lovely to play.  It's really hard to explain, but there was just something I really loved about the style that DC1 was trying to go for despite not going hard enough, that I was disappointed that DC2 didn't try to go more balls to the wall with it.

But at the same time, there's literally no way this game could have worked with a different style.  Overall, the tone of the game as I said has this kind of kid's cartoon vibe which I'll explain more in the voice section, so despite me not being a fan of it character wise, it's really the only direction they could have gone.

And let me stress that I do only mean character wise on this.  The environments themselves are gorgeous, as are certain bosses as well.  Level wise alone, despite it being still randomly generated....this was a big step up from Dark Cloud's basic looking dungeons.  Every dungeon just had much more to them that gave them a bit of personality, the Rainbow Butterfly is still one of my favorite looking bosses ever just because of how visually stunning they made it in its complete form, and overall I was absolutely digging the look...it's just the characters that bugged me slightly in how they looked, but again there was really no other way they could have done it, so I'll just shrug it off.






Music
Once again, this is an area that has improved greatly, and again I'm digging it.  The only town that fades out in its music during night is the main starting town, Palm Brinks.  But once you start recruiting people, you're barely there as much if you get most of them right away (since at least one requires you to be at a later point in the story).  All of the georama fields, however, don't have that problem and will be playing their music day or night for you.  Dungeons have arguably better music overall as well aside from the final dungeon...which I felt was a bit of a downgrade compared to DC1's kickass final dungeon theme.

My favorite non-vocal ones are probably Rainbow Butterfly Wood, Starlight Temple, Mount Gundor, and Gundorama workshop.  Starlight Temple actually gets used for an emotional moment in the game as well, and...yeah, it definitely works.  It surprisingly made me a bit more sad at that moment hearing that playing in the background as the event was happening.  God the game is sappy af, but I still enjoyed the sappy music.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7704DD431172739B

Sounds/Voices
So, sounds.  Well first off, the annoying beep when your weapon is low on WHP is gone...that I know of.  Really, this game makes it more impossible to be low on WHP since, unless you have a weapon with the Fragile ability, they can usually take a bit more punishment.  Many of the sounds from DC1 are still here though on top of the many, many new ones.  They're all either pleasant or unobtrusive types of sounds, though.

Voices though...man, where do I start.

First off, I must be the only one that is weird about having the guy who voiced Robin in Teen Titans as title characters for fantasy games.  Mainly because for Robin, the voice really fit...but it just sounded so distracting to me in Tales of Symphonia, and sounded just as distracting here...for the most part.  But, I will say that for a character that's supposed to be 13, he does at least sound like he'd be that age...so kudos on that I guess?

Monica's voice is...interesting.  For the most part, it's perfectly fine, but at other points she sounds like she belongs in an Educational game more than a fantasy adventure type.  I don't know what it is exactly, but she just has that voice that I feel like was suited better for that type of genre as opposed to this type.

The main Antagonist known as Griffin, I'm completely baffled with their choices.  In his normal form which is that of a rabbit creature (who normally come from the moon in Dark Cloud 1 lore), I'm pretty sure they went with the VA for Phil from Rugrats (that laugh is pretty recognizable).  The voice for an antagonist is incredibly disjointing/distracting (even though the game makes you sympathize with him), especially when the same VA is dual-roling as the main protaganist's mother and sounds very different.

But on top of that, part way into the game, Griffin changes form into something more menacing, so you have this:



Now being played by Mark Hamill doing a kinda Joker voice (it was an almost weird mix between that and his Eraqus voice.  Think kinda his Darksiders voice) , which was equally distracting and hard to take serious...and I'm talking Mark Hamill of all people, one of the best VAs that I can think of out there.

Oh, and TIL that Jennifer Hale also had a short (and I mean 1 short scene short) appearance.  Woulda been nice if she had a bigger role.

Outside of that, characters either sounded okay such as Pau and Osmond, "ehhh" such as Gaspar and a few others, or grating such as Mayor Need and Flotsam (but more because he was just so goddamn loud and had weird inflections in his speech).

Side Areas/Replayability/Time
Alright, so this is an area that was definitely improved overall.  I already mentioned fishing and Spheda, which are the only two side things in the game along with Scoop hunting and inventing items, but they're decently done side things to where they're less of a throwaway than DC1 was with fishing (mostly).  Backfloors are gone, so there's no secret dungeon exploration in this game.

Time wise, even if you were to cut down the dungeons, the game is still a pretty decent length because it still gives you much to explore when it comes to the past/future areas and overall bigger story and overall content.  Unlike DC1 that felt like it could be a quick hop and skip if you cut down the dungeon size, DC2 actually did cut down the dungeon size for the beginning ones, making them progressively longer with each new one.  The first dungeon you encounter is a simple total of 8 floors, and the final dungeon pre-end game dungeon having 27.  On top of that 4 of the dungeons have floors that are inaccessible until a certain point in the game where you revisit them (but you don't have to go through the entire thing again, just that previous branching floor +3 new ones + a boss room for each dungeon), so it in a way does space things out a bit better as well rather than overwhelming you all at once.

The post-game content is absolutely better as well.  First off, it's only 38 floors/sections, so let's give a hand for not having to slog another 100 floors.

Second, the game gives you a story purpose for visiting it rather than it just appearing on your map when you load up your finished game save.  I mean, it's a silly reason to access the game's most difficult post-dungeon, but it tried.  Remember that mine entrance that you passed in Palm Brinks multiple times to get to the lake? That's the post-game dungeon, and you go there to collect a special crystal that your train can use as fuel to expand its operation world wide.

Okay, cool, simple enough, so why the slog of monsters to get through there?

Well, surprisingly the game actually gives reason for that, and for Monica suddenly reappearing despite leaving at the end of the game.  Which I also think is great that she wasn't just suddenly thrown in without reasoning as a character, kudos on that as well.

You can also get the best weapons for your ridepod during this dungeon getting pictures of the mini boss, rather than as a reward at the end.  You also can get your best weapons during the final pre-end dungeon as opposed to the post-game dungeon, so you don't have that dangling over as a useless reward.

So what's the reward for making it to the end of the post-game dungeon? Well, you get not only a great mini-boss encounter from your favorite circus master who disappeared pretty early on, but you also get an equally amusing cameo from another character from Dark Cloud 1 as the dungeon boss...and likewise an equally amusing boss battle with them that is also difficult if you don't pick up the method right away.

Other than that, you're treated to a scene at the end, and that's it.  Yeah, you beat the post-game dungeon and got treated to a lovely little scene at the end, and now the game is officially over.  What? You wanted more, like some kind of weapon or item that'd be absolutely useless unless you played the game again? Okay, you do you weirdo, I'll stick to enjoying the extra story.

Overall
Overall, the game was a definite improvement to DC1.  The story was much more compelling despite it being more cliche and sappy than the previous game, the music was definitely a step up (and I personally enjoyed the vocal track played partly at the post-prologue intro and again at the end in different but full form), and overall it was enjoyable.  Was the battling system made simple? Sure, but I'm actually okay with how the system was altered, made it less strenuous.  Did the voice acting get distracting or grating? Oh definitely, but I'll concede that finding amazing voices for games that actually fit their roles seems like a really tough task.  Did the cartoony characters put me off a bit? A little, but the overall style of the game was still lovely enough to where I kinda forgot how ugly some of the characters look after a bit...and again, there was no way I could have seen them making this game without going into that style, sort of like how I can't see Dragon Quest games being anything more than the cartoon-hybrid graphics that they do, or how I can't see Ni No Kuni ever succeeding without its cartoon-emphasized style.  Even if I personally don't mesh with it, there are just some artistic styles that make a game work.

And this is a game that I definitely think worked despite any flaws that I felt it had.