Gaming Blog Special: Level-5's Forgotten Treasures, Dark Cloud and Dark Cloud 2 · 3:44pm Dec 16th, 2016
Welcome to a special edition of my Weekly Gaming Blog!
This week, I didn't make any headway on any of the current games I'm playing (WoFF, Pokemon Sun, etc) because of being sick all week and spending the week binging Netflix. So instead of the usual progress updates on what I'm playing now, I'm going to devote the entirety of this week's blog to a pair of broadly overlooked games from the early PS2 era that every RPG enthusiast should play through at least once:
In 2016, Akihiro Hino and his company Level-5 Inc. are household names around the world, largely due to the Yo-Kai Watch franchise. In 2001, at the dawn of the Playstation 2 era, Hino and Level-5 were just emerging into the Japanese game developer market, and the first taste of the greatness to come was 2000/2001's Dark Cloud.
Level-5 arrived on the scene with an action-adventure RPG that served as a solid early-era showcase of the PS2's capabilities, if a bit underdeveloped in places (the near-total lack of voice acting is largely due to it having originally been conceived as a late-era PS1 game). Dark Cloud can best be described as a solid, safe game with a lot of trappings longtime action-adventure gamers would feel right at home with, while adding its own distinctive elements to create a unique and memorable experience. It took just the right number of risks in just the right places, while perhaps pushing things a bit too far in others, and not enough in still others. Unfortunately, its confusing marketing campaign and early dismissals as a weak Zelda clone hurt the overall performance of the game, and the sequel was one of those games that develops a cult following almost in spite of itself--Dark Cloud 2 suffered from a near-total lack of promotion in any way, shape, or form when it landed in 2003.
Those of us who were paying attention, though, saw the beginning of the successor to Squaresoft's throne.
But let's get back on topic...
The adventure begins when the world ends
The Dark Genie, an ancient, unspeakably evil, immensely powerful monster is released by an evil man, and his power is used to lay waste to the world. Very little is left standing. However, the King of the Fairies is able to use his power to save most of the human world from destruction by sealing people, buildings, and even miscellaneous things like rivers, roads, and trees into protective spheres called Atla, where no force, not even time, can touch them. In the secluded Norune Village, the Fairy King selects a young boy named Toan (who basically looks like Link with a poncho) to become the savior of the world, entrusting him with a holy stone called Atlamillia. The Atlamillia is the only power that can open Atla and release their contents, drawing them into the Atlamillia so that they can be restored to their rightful place in the world. Toan is tasked with using the Atlamillia to rebuild the world, one town at a time. Throughout his journey, new allies with their own unique skills will join him, and ultimately at the end of the journey Toan will learn the truth behind the curse of the Dark Genie and right an ancient wrong.
The eyes and ears do not go hungry
While certainly not as impressive as modern-era games, the graphics of Dark Cloud are nothing to sneeze at. Smooth, fluid motion, detailed character models for party, NPC, and monster characters, and great attention and care given to making every weapon in the game visually distinct and recognizable, from the humble Kris Knife to the ominous-looking Dark Cloud. (Which has no plot significance; don't let it bother you. It's just one of the stronger weapons you can build up, and not even the strongest.) The game has been criticized for its monotonous dungeon layouts, and it's a fair assessment; also, sometimes dungeon and overworld texture mapping shows ugly seams. On the whole, it's not something you'll be terribly distracted by, concerned as you are with the important aspects.
As for the music...Tomohito Nishiura is one of the great unsung heroes of video game composition. The soundtracks he composed for the Dark Cloud games and Rogue Galaxy are easily on par with Uematsu's entire body of work, and Mitsuda's as well. From oppressive, epic ritual chants to the spirited, airy Norune Village festival dance, every track is a delight...and Nishiura outdid himself in the sequel.
Okay, but what's the game actually like?
Each chapter of the game consists of an open-map area called a "Georama" and a dungeon. The dungeons consist of randomly-generated floors full of monsters, treasure, and Atla. Select floors where certain events (story events, boss battles) occur will always be the same, and certain Atla will always be found on or before certain floors of a given dungeon, but apart from that, the placement of Atla will be randomized by the game. A house you find on the first floor on one playthrough may not show up until the fifth or tenth on another.
The flow of gameplay goes something like this: go to the dungeon, clear a floor, leave, deal with any new Georama pieces you found, search for Miracle Chests in the Georama, return to the dungeon when there's nothing else to do outside it.
In the first game, the Georama is an elaborate cross between putting together a puzzle and building a model. Each Georama contains its own distinctive buildings that can be placed; each building has a number of "set pieces" that go with it. For example, a house may contain its occupants, certain landmark objects, household things like laundry or a sign, and so forth. For gameplay purposes, it amounts to snapping matching tiles into a larger block that goes on the map. There are also separate objects that can be placed on the map, such as rivers, trees, and roads.
After you make certain amounts of progress, Miracle Chests will appear in the Georama. These contain useful items ranging from weapon upgrade parts to health/defense boosts for your party members. Dark Cloud doesn't have a "level up" system for your characters--increasing your HP and defense is handled primarily by finding and using special items from Miracle Chests earned through gameplay.
Also, each time you "complete" a part of a Georama (such as a house), an Event happens there. Some of these events are just there for the hell of it. Some of them net you important items. Sometimes, it's a shop opening up for your use. Other times, it's a key to plot advancement.
Your ultimate goal, of course, is 100% completion of each Georama, as reaching 100% yields special rewards for Toan. In order to accomplish that, however, you must do more than simply find all the pieces and slap them together, because the residents of each town will have their own "requests" that determine how your Georama is laid out. One woman may not want to live near a certain person. One man may want to live closer to the dungeon. Someone else might want their bedroom window facing a certain direction. Getting it all sorted out can be incredibly frustrating, especially in Muska Lacka, whose unique Georama completion condition is infuriating. It isn't strictly necessary to reach 100% completion on every Georama, though you'll certainly want to.
Weapons, or: What You'll Be Spending Most Of Your Time On
The centerpiece of Dark Cloud's gameplay is its weapon customization system. Where your party characters' only actual stats are HP and Defense, weapons have an extensive array of stats, all of which are enhanced by weapon upgrades.
As you battle, weapons gain "ABS". When a weapon's ABS is full, the weapon can be upgraded to its next level. This increases the weapon's base stats, as well as permanently adding any enhancements it gains from items attached to the weapon (such as an attack-boosting item or an Anti-Beast item). Those items are "broken" into the weapon and lost when the weapon upgrades.
Weapons in Dark Cloud have an ungodly number of stats to juggle. In addition to the basic stats (Attack, Endurance, Speed, Magic), each weapon has five Elemental stats and ten stats specific to various monster types you'll encounter. Most of the stats' effects in battle are automatic, but the Elemental stat is an important one, and one of the things that will undoubtedly perplex and annoy some players: every weapon in Dark Cloud can, at any time, be switched from one Element to another, with the effectiveness of that affinity change being directly linked to the stats for that Element. This is done manually by the player in the menu, can be done at any time, and is in fact a vital component of one stage of the final boss battle, where the final boss is only vulnerable to one specific element at a time.
Oh, and weapons can have various abilities too, such as poison, increased money gain, and so forth.
As your weapons grow stronger, you'll be able to build them up into newer, more powerful weapons. Dozens of different weapons await, with branching build paths that force you to choose carefully how you choose to upgrade your weapons. It helps that you can reduce sufficiently levelled weapons (+5 or higher) down to an attachment to fuse with another weapon, resulting in imbuing that weapon with a significant percentage of the stats and most (if not all) of the abilities it carried. This lets you make stronger weapons faster as you find newer, more powerful weapons in chests in the dungeons.
And, of course, there's the thing that vexes and frustrates many a player: in Dark Cloud, weapons break. Every weapon has a "WHp" gauge--the weapon's hit points. These decrease with usage. Weapons must be maintained properly using Weapon Repair Powder; if you fail to repair your weapons before their WHp runs out (and there's really no reason this should ever happen if you're paying attention), they will break...which means any work you put into upgrading that weapon is lost forever, as is the weapon itself.
The good, the bad, and the ugly
The first game's strengths lie almost entirely in its gameplay. There's a lot of wonder involved in exploring this world, in rebuilding towns and watching them come back to life. The combat is engaging, and the boss battles almost all have distinct puzzle boss elements--sometimes obvious, sometimes less so, sometimes very frustrating, but always challenging.
For all its fun and spectacle, for all the great things there are to be found here, there are some things that make the game harder than it really needs to be:
1. As mentioned above, weapon breakage. If you're not careful or run low on WRP, this can turn a dungeon grind into pure frustration.
2. The first dungeon is unnecessarily brutal, due to limited recovery item availability and no shop early on (plus very little monetary gain from early monsters even if there WAS a shop).
3. The Thirst system. Each character has a "Thirst" meter that depletes as you explore the dungeon. You must regularly drink water to quench your character's thirst and refill their meter. Every character's meter starts at a mere three drops, but can be extended up to eight (or was it ten? I forget) by finding Gourds as Georama rewards and from Miracle Chests, allowing for more exploration with less water usage. Still, the Thirst meter is an added annoyance that should have been taken out of the game...and, mercifully, was for the second game.
4. Limited inventory. You can only carry so many items on you. This becomes less of a problem later on, but the inventory screen can only hold so many weapons, attachments, regular items, etc. and items don't stack--if you're carrying 20 Repair Powders, you're carrying 20 Repair Powders. As in, each one fills up a slot in your inventory. There's a warehouse where you can stash extra stuff, but the inventory limit is yet another frustration that makes this game harder than it really needed to be.
5. Repetitive grinding. To get those badass final weapons, you will be grinding a lot, and it gets old, especially when the only incentive to repeat grinding is finding more treasure chests and, well...the final weapons you're grinding to build up.
It should, incidentally, be noted that all of the above was addressed and corrected in...
Hino and Level-5 took everything they learned from the production and reception of Dark Cloud and demonstrated just how rough a pass their first game was by making Dark Chronicle (known as Dark Cloud 2 in North America), a game which easily rivals Chrono Trigger for the title of greatest RPG of all time. With beautiful cel-shaded graphics, a cast of memorable characters, excellent voice acting, another amazing soundtrack from Nishiura, and a plethora of sidequests and minigames, Dark Chronicle took everything the first game did right and did it better, while trimming down and streamlining some of the weaker aspects and getting rid of some of the most annoying things entirely.
A boy from the present and a girl from the future seek to restore the past
The original game's story was a lot like the original Final Fantasy in that its plot was ultimately very bare-bones, with most of the story exposition not coming into play until very near the end of the game, and most of your progress through the game dealing with episodic, scenario-specific events. In Dark Cloud, Toan was on a quest to rebuild the world, "this and that happened along the way", and the whole reason everything happened in the first place wasn't revealed until very late in the game.
Dark Chronicle's main story is always at the heart and soul of every episode of the game, with every subplot and episode having a purpose that drives the overall plot.
Dark Chronicle revolves around Maximillian, a boy from the town of Palm Brinks, and Monica Raybrandt, a princess from one hundred years in Max's future.
The adventure begins when Max, a wealthy but humble boy who lives alone with his aloof father and enjoys inventing and repairing machines, goes to see the circus which has come to town. While trying to find a good spot from which to watch the show, Max overhears the circus' ringleader, Flotsam, threatening the mayor, demanding he hurry up and find a certain stone. Said stone turns out to be the pendant Max wears around his neck--a memento of his missing mother--and when Flotsam spots him and realizes he has the stone, suddenly Max is running for his life from killer clown soldiers.
Max's flight for his life ultimately leads him to grow curious about the most peculiar thing about Palm Brinks: the town has been sealed off from the outside world for his entire lifetime, and nobody ever leaves town. Max decides that he wants to see the outside world, wondering if perhaps he'll find his mother out there. His decision to leave Palm Brinks leads to his friend Cedric learning the truth about the outside world from the mayor: Fifteen years ago, the entire world became a wasteland. All that remains is the town of Palm Brinks, spared only because the red stone was hidden there.
Ultimately, Max leaves town and meets Monica, who has traveled back in time from the future using a blue stone. The stones she and Max both possess are Atlamillia, and possess tremendous power. Emperor Griffon, determined to seize the power of the Atlamillia in order to rule the world, has changed the past to erase every major obstacle in his path from existence. Using the power of Atlamillia and help from friends they meet along the way, Max and Monica work to restore the "Origin Points" of various beings and institutions that, in Monica's time, are instrumental in the war against Griffon.
Streamlining the game to make it bigger and more epic
Having learned from the first game, Level-5 worked to streamline the experience for Dark Chronicle to make it more accessible. The unwieldy pile of stats weapons had in the first game have been reduced to a far more manageable ten stats--still a lot, but much easier to deal with. The Thirst meter was done away with, having proven to be an obnoxious and frustrating gameplay mechanic.
More importantly, there are only two playable characters in Dark Chronicle. Instead of being forced to keep up weapons for six characters, two of which were frankly all but useless most of the time, in this game you only have to worry about Max and Monica. This doesn't mean the amount of time you'll be spending building up weapons has diminished--far from it, as Max and Monica dual-wield! Each character has a melee weapon and a ranged weapon--for Monica, it's swords and magic armbands, and for Max, it's blunt weapons and guns. Max, in particular, has a more varied weapon set, as he has two (technically three) different types of melee weapon (wrenches, hammers, golf clubs) and a variety of different gun types (single shot, machine gun, grenade launcher, laser). As you might expect, Max is a slower fighter, bad against fast enemies but very effective against heavy/armored foes, while Monica is fast, agile, and better to use in cases where speedy strikes and magic damage are critical.
But just having two characters to play as for the entire game is boring, right? That's why Level-5 added some variety...
Mecha and monsters
Early in the game, Max obtains the Ridepod, a customizable Ride Armor type robot which is invaluable in combat against larger and/or armored enemies. While slow and clunky early on, the Ridepod can be upgraded with various weapons and propulsion systems until, by the end of the game, it's a flying laser death machine.
While not as useful as the Ridepod, Monica also brings her own alternative style of combat to the table: Monica has the ability to transform into many different types of monsters by using monster transformation badges. This ability introduces a Pokemon-style sidequest as Monica's monster forms must be leveled up and evolved independently of Monica herself.
Good luck getting all the medals that require using Monica's monster forms...
Georama Drama
Like pretty much everything else, the Georama system was massively revamped and improved from the first game. In this game, you have (almost) total control over what goes into your Georamas and can customize things to your liking. Rather than collecting puzzle pieces from Atla like in the first game, in this game you find "Geostones" in the dungeons, which contain data on how to build Georama elements: houses, rivers, trees, wells, and various other structures. You'll also find (in chests) or buy (from shops) massive amounts of Georama construction materials--fortunately, this game is far more generous with money than the previous game.
To restore the future, you have to fulfill specific conditions in the Georamas in the present. For example, a certain number of houses must be placed, or a certain number of trees, or a church or a windmill. Each Georama has a long list of conditions to meet. The Georamas must also be populated, and the only people around to fill that need are the citizens of Palm Brinks. You'll spend a lot of time recruiting people from Palm Brinks to join your crusade (think Suikoden here), and once it's time to move someone into a house in a Georama, you'll have to build their new home to suit their tastes and needs.
Even with these conditions that must be met, there's a lot of room for free personal expression in the Georama system, and a truly creative player willing to put a lot of time and effort into their Georamas can go completely nuts and create Sims-esque marvels of virtual engineering. (See my blog post of a couple days past for some examples.) While there are only four* Georamas in Dark Chronicle, the amount of time you'll spend on each one will leave you with a sense of accomplishment once they're done.
*There are actually five, but the last one has to be built to precisely match its original appearance.
Amusions, Distractions, and Diversions Galore! Dark Chronicle, or Dark Carnival?
Where Dark Cloud had only one minigame (fishing, and it was incredibly bare-bones), Dark Chronicle was Level-5's first foray into piling on sidequests, distractions, and diversions--and to this day, remains their most epic example of indulgent excess.
Dark Chronicle already features a rich, immersive adventure-RPG experience with its main quest, dozens of hours of dungeon exploration, and hours of Georama building. But Level-5 wants you to spend hundreds of hours enjoying this marvel they've engineered, and they made sure to give you plenty to do other than hack, slash, and build. What better way to enhance an already stellar gaming experience than to incorporate Japan's three favorite hobbies: fishing, golf, and photography! 
Take a picture, it'll last longer
Dark Chronicle features the Photo Invent System, which is occasionally needed for something actually relevant to the game's plot, but primarily serves as a massive sidequest, compulsion, and way to create weapons, Ridepod parts, and other items that aren't available by any other means.
As you travel the world--in towns, in Georamas, in dungeons, and even in the future--you'll find lots of things to take pictures of. In fact, there are almost three hundred photographable objects to be found! Taking pictures of stuff generates "Ideas" which Max can use for a...decidedly quirky process of "invention".
To use the tutorial as an example: once you've taken a picture of a milk can, a pipe, and a belt, you can go to the idea board and combine those three "ideas" to create an "invention"--an Energy Pack for the Ridepod. Once you've "invented" something, all you need to do is build it from the required raw materials. You can make the same invention over and over again (in fact, here's a handy little hint given the scarcity of Attack Crystals for weapon synthesis: you can invent Knight Boots VERY early on, they're cheap to make over and over again, and they provide the same Synthesis bonus to Attack as an Attack Crystal).
There are, of course, pictures you can take that aren't used as invention ideas at all--they're just fluff to pad out this side activity. The bulk of these take the form of "Scoops", unique and rare photographs of unusual things that net a LOT of photography points. Some Scoops are missable, some are simply things of importance to the plot, and a lot of them involve catching monsters (including bosses) in the middle of a specific action--these can be the hardest and most dangerous photos to snap.
Spheda: It's like golf, except with timey-wimey stuff
A minigame available on every dungeon floor, Spheda is unlocked around the middle of chapter three. Once all the monsters on a floor have been defeated, a "Time Distortion" (a red or blue hole) will appear somewhere on the map, as will a timey-wimey golf ball. You'll have a certain number of strokes to get the ball into the hole--but there are some rules. Whenever the ball hits a surface, it changes color, and it has to be the opposite color from the hole when it goes in for the shot to count. Making a successful shot nets you a (usually very useful) treasure, as well as a Medal. More on that later.
In some dungeons (like Rainbow Butterfly Wood and Ocean's Roar Cave), Spheda is pretty easy. In others (like Underground Water Channel and Starlight Canyon), Spheda will drive you insane.
Fishing: Because it's a Japanese game, dammit!
Early in chapter 2, you get a fishing rod and access to the fishing minigame. Unlike most fishing minigames, the fishing minigame in Dark Chronicle is actually pretty diverse--practically an entire separate game unto itself!
Of course, it starts with the basics: bait a hook, catch a fish. That part's pretty simple. The actual act of catching a fish only nets you the fish itself as an item and a number of Fishing Points (FP) for upgrading your rod. And, of course, you can earn Medals for catching fish over a specified size on dungeon floors with a fishing goal.
It's what you do with the fish after you catch them where things get a little wild.
For starters, you can build an Aquarium, where you can keep and raise fish. You can even breed fish if you're into that. In fact, raising and breeding fish is necessary for the Finny Frenzy, a fish race introduced later in the game.
There's also a Fishing Contest which runs periodically based on the in-game clock. When the Fishing Contest is on, you can take up to ten fish ("freshly caught", can't be anything you've fed so much as a worm to) to be weighed in. It's practically impossible to win this contest unless you've upped your rod's stats to the point where you're able to constantly catch either (a) ocean fish or (b) Mardan/Baron Garayan, and even then it's a toss-up. But there's never any harm in trying!
And last, but certainly not least...you can grill them on a camp stove and use them as an HP recovery item.
And Your Reward Is Clothes...or the ISLAND KING!
Fishing and Spheda goals are two of the (up to) four special goals present in every dungeon floor throughout the game. Clearing a goal earns you a Medal. Medals are used to buy special alternate costumes from Mayor Need--including the much sought after "Panther Ensemble" (catgirl bikini) for Monica. Mrrrowr.
But Mayor Need has another item up for grabs on his reward board, and that's the Name Change Ticket. Most people ignore it--all it does is let you rename a weapon, after all.
But see, that's one of the worst-kept secrets of Dark Chronicle.
Let's say you get a Name Change Ticket from Mayor Need. Then you go buy a cheap sword somewhere. Or just have one sitting in your inventory.
Now, use that Name Change Ticket to change the name of that cheap, weak sword to the name of one of the game's final weapons.
Do it right, and you can have an Island King--the strongest weapon in the game--long before it's even possible to build one up.*
Those pointless minigames don't seem so pointless now, do they?
*I never use it to get an Island King. I always use it to get a Dark Cloud. I have a hard-on for that sword.
Okay, so is there anything about this game that's not amazing?
Well, of course. There's no such thing as a perfect game. There's still a lot of grinding, there's a lot of aggravation involved if you're trying to collect every medal. But in the grand scheme of things, I honestly can't think of very many negative things to say about this game, and even if I could?
Any game that gives you something like this can be forgiven almost anything.
Dark Cloud and Dark Cloud 2 are widely available on eBay for PlayStation2. If you have a PlayStation4, they're available in the PlayStation Store for $15 each and occasionally cheaper and have been enhanced with trophies.
I take it you're feeling better now?
And reasons 3 and 4 for getting a PS4, the first two being Crash Bandicoot HD and God of War 4.
*takes careful notes*
Actually, one character with a huge arsenal and one shapeshifter? I'm already getting Threads of Fate flashblacks.
4342039 Kind of. Ridepod and the Monster Transformations outright replace your current human character, so both Max & Mon effectively "transform" into them as necessary. It's just that Monica can transform further into a variety of monsters depending on what medals she has in her case, while Max can only use one configuration of the Ridepod at a time unless you go into the Menu and equip different arm/body/leg parts. Even fully-leveled up monsters tend to be weaker than the Ridepod, though, so what she gains in versatility he makes up for in raw stats.
(Monica can also chat with other monsters while transformed, which is amusing. The Ridepod, named Steve, can be equipped with a voice box to deliver color commentary, but... it's... not really an improvement.)
They both go through quite an arsenal too. Although they each start with one weapon of each kind (one ranged, one melee), these weapons go through a vast variety of forms as they reach their ultimate stages. Sometimes it's a fairly linear path, sometimes it branches and criss-crosses. What's amusing is that Max only has two "terminal" melee weapons, the ultimate hammer and the ultimate wrench, while his gun arsenal has at least four different types... which is the exact opposite of Monica, who only has two ultimate bracelets but many kinds of swords.
One thing that Moth missed is that, in DC2, you don't just recruit citizens to populate your brand new towns --there are also many of them that "join" your dungeon party and provide bonuses, even if they're not actually there during gameplay. Some of them increase Gun ATK, others may boost your magic, others can assist with your minimap, etc. Of course, all recruitable characters have an ideal home somewhere in the world, and you do need to assign them to the town in order to 100% it, but once the georama is done, you can just pick them up again.
If it intrests you, there is a great game (at least in my opinion, think of it as you may) coming out to the PS4 in Q2 2017, a space sim to be exact, and it's called "Elite: Dangerous", the fourth game in a series that began in 1984 with "Elite", take a look at it, you may like it. It's already released for PC (for the last 2 years, actually) and there are videos of it on YouTube, however I warn you that some people don't like the play style, so look out for that. For your convenience, I have attached the latest trailer which hints the PS4 version release date.
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[youtube=YESNObZJTgQ]
Hope you'll find the game worthy of your time!
(BTW my profile picture is a concept art for the game, if you want to see the full image, it's name is "Silent Station" just look it up on google pictures)
4342035 I'm recovering. Still not 100% and the little bit of unexpected housework I did just now probably isn't going to be helpful in the long run.
Intresting. Do you play Skylanders?
4342205 I don't play anything that requires you to spend a lot more money than the game itself costs just to play it. I don't do the Disney Infinity or that new Lego thing either.
I never bothered to get a Name-Change Ticket (maybe that'll change one of these days), but I never thought the minigames were pointless. The extra clothing options are pretty nifty in my opinion, and you can get some fairly nice rewards from Speda chests and for winning Finny Frenzy's Master Class, by feeding & breeding the fish you caught for those dungeon medals.
4342212 Ah. It is a fun game. I've actually started doing reviews of some of the games myslelf recently.
Man, f
Spheda in the Underground Water Channel. I MADE THREE BOUNCES OFF THAT WALL BALL! WHY DID YOU NOT CHANGE TO THE RIGHT COLOR BALL! NO DON'T GO LEFT BALL GO DOWN THE RIGHT! WHAT ARE YOU DOING BALL! AHHHHHHHHHHH!
I actually didn't have much trouble with the Starlight Canyon, or the final dungeon. My main problem with the Underground was the low ceiling (I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say the final dungeon is also inside with higher ceilings). In the Canyon I got very good at shooting over the gaps and getting my bounces just right, in fact I think it was the place I had the most hole-in-ones at and had the most fun playing golf ever.
As for Monica's monster transformation I found them to be mostly useless and nothing but a pain, trying to get the medals for them. It felt like more work was put into the Ride Pod than the Transformations, and said Transformation were tacked on near the end because they needed to give Monica a "second state" like Max had.
Monica over all felt less developed than Max did, considering her weapon selection was a bit more linear as well.
But she did rock that cat-girl outfit.
The photos were neat mechanic and I really liked that accept of the game, even if just constantly combining new photos with your set to see if you made anything new was a bit of a pain. Max's "hints" helped some but I just resorted to an on-line guide for all of the "valid" combinations. It also kinda sucked that one of the "Scoops" needed to make one of the best items in the game was only available at the very end of the game, past a Point-of-no-Return and as such was only of real use in the after game or a New Game that you used the "save some Photos to your memory card and transfer them to another save file" feature.
The fishing was also very fun, i normally don't care for fishing mini-games but Dark Chronicle had it just right. I don't think I ever won a Fishing Contest, maybe came second but rather sure I never took first in one of them. I did win a couple of Finny Frenzies.
As for Dark Cloud (1 if you want) I liked that there was more character to switch between, but they could have trimed it down by a couple.
I also enjoyed the limited inventory, I'm a sucker for Inventory-Management-Gameplay and if I see it in a game it makes me more interested in said game. I do understand why a lot of people don't like it though.
The "break it and lose it" on the weapons was kinda dumb, I'm glad they did away with that last part for Chronicle but kept the "your weapons will break after prolonged use without repair" part. (Moth didn't mention it, but weapons in Chronicle still have a WHP meter and if it reaches 0 the weapon in question "breaks" and now only does no damage until repaired instead of disappearing like in Dark Cloud.)
I actually kinda liked the Thirst mechanic, it gave you an insensitive for switching between the characters since they each had their own separate Thirst meters and I never really had trouble balancing it with everything else, even the Bread. (For those that haven't play Dark Cloud there was a healing item called Bread, it recovered a decent amount of HP but also cost you a small amount of Thirst so you couldn't just load up on it and use it over and over again. In fact I think all of the HP restoring items, except for at least one that recovered both, cost some Thirst. I only distinctly remember Bread doing it though.)
I never did finish Dark Cloud, got to the last area and just got tired of the grind so I never even reached the final boss. Maybe some day I'll go back to it... .
Dark Cloud 2 is one of the few games I actually have beat, at least the main game of. I don't think I finished the after game dungeon.
4342817 The only real problem with Starlight Canyon is when the ball rolls off the narrower ledges. Aiming can be tricky. In the UWC, it's all the little places where the ball can be LOST (gutters, tangled nests of pipes, under catwalks, etc).
4342899 Yeah, all of those were tricky and frustrating as well but I found the ceiling to be my major problem. I favored a high-arching long-shot style of Spheda and UWC was the only place that really interfered with that so I had to learn a whole diffrent style of play to even attempt those courses.
In Starlight Canyon my normal style served me very well as I was able to slice the ball high and have it land with little bounce/forward movement near the hole if not getting hole-in-ones via bounces on the few walls around.
I don't think i finished all of the UWC courses, but I did finish all of the others. That's how frustrating I found them. I'm one of those 100% completion type people when it comes to achievements or medals or what not, so when I give up on something... .
4342966 I hear you.
The bane of my existence was the time clear goals in UWC. They're ridiculous, even when you have Steve upgraded to a flying death ray.
The only thing I wish was done better was the monster transform, they don't get strong enough fast enough. Good luck beating the chapter 7 medals. Maybe it'd be improved if when they move to the next version the exp needed resets to a set amount like the weapons? But yeah fave game of all time. I've sunk over 1400 hours into dark cloud 2.