DARK CLOUD (PS2)


Putting the "Gee" back in RPG

By WILLIAM BARKER

Dark Cloud is Sony's answer to The Legend of Zelda, but includes a number of innovative features that elevate it beyond that of Nintendo's popular RPG.

Upon picking up the controller and first playing, I was about to write the game off as an uninspired Zelda clone. How deluded I was…

The game centres on a fella called Toan. You take on this alter ego and have been hand-picked by none other than the Fairy King (no, not Vanilla Ice) to right the terrible wrongs committed by a malevolent Genie.

The intro shows the Genie being awakened by two sycophantic explorers, watching in horror as the Genie gobbles them up after waking from a few thousand years of slumber. The evil Genie then proceeds to systematically eradicate your world. Bloody genies…

Anyway, despite the utter carnage and indescribable acts of atrocity, the Fairy King was clever enough to foresee this and so saved many buildings and people by storing them in magical floating rocks. These 'atla' are your primary concern in the game, as they allow you to rebuild your entire world, made up of multiple villages.

To get a basic idea of how the game develops, try this on for size. You start the game after watching a funkadelic intro, complete with one of the best synchronised dancing scenes ever.

After that, you'll be standing in the middle of a field, with only one structure and a cave to go to. You find out from the Mayor that the town's been sucked into oblivion and the only way to save it is to find 'atla' which can be stored in a strange bracelet attached to your arm.

Head into the cave, kill some baddies and find the 'atla'. The 'atla' contain trees, roads, fences, specific structures like a mill or someone's house and so on and so forth. Head back to the open area, push select and all of a sudden you get to play god and re-create the village any which way you see fit.

It may sound strange, and at first it is, but this extra dimension, combined to fairly solid RPG base makes a world of difference. Not only have you got the customary level ups, better weapons, and finding new party members, but now you can create a number of groovy villages to boot!

The game progresses in this fashion - conquer a dungeon, completely rebuild a village - then move on to the next village/dungeon. Sure, it may sound a bit formulaic, but combine solid controls, vibrant graphics and plenty of stats and you've got an RPG that just begs to be played.

Interestingly, the more of the towns you build, the more of the plot you'll uncover by talking to the new inhabitants. So, in essence, the game is this never-ending knot of gaming goodness. Oh wait, there is an ending actually…

Controlling Toan is a piece of cake. Anyone who has played Zelda should be right at home here. You can even lock onto enemies, a feature Sony 'borrowed' from Miyamoto. The combat is in real-time and is greatly rewarding (albeit somewhat repetitive), with players able to perform charge-up moves, combos, dodges and even blocks. The lock on feature works flawlessly and you'll rarely get shafted thanks to a bodgy camera angle or such, common in many 3rd person adventure/RPG titles.

Level ups are kind of weird in Dark Cloud, but kind of cool too. Intrigued? You should be, as Toan himself doesn't actually pass levels - his weapons do. Every time you defeat an enemy, a little bar will fill up, indicating how long until you can next upgrade your weapon.

Upgrading your weapon is pretty cool, as its statistics go up, but it also changes in appearance too. Starting out with a crappy-looking dagger, it'll look more like a jagged sword of suffering +2 after a dozen upgrades. Weapons can also be given special attributes by inserting Diablo-esque talismans into them.

But with the good comes the bad and perhaps the games' only sour point, for me at least, was the deterioration of weapons. You constantly have to use repair powder to stop them from disappearing into the digital ether. It really sucks to have a weapon you've been tenderly shaping into an amazing Broadsword suddenly disappear, with all the runes and jewels, all the blood and sweat you've incorporated into the weapon.

Dark Cloud's visuals, while good, don't impress as much as the sterling gameplay. Still, they do the job nicely, even if Toan does look like Link wearing a poncho. The dungeons can be a little dull at times, due in part to repeating textures, but in spite of this there's always something captivating, like an exploding cadaver or such.

The villages are a little more impressive, particularly so because you build them from a top-down perspective, later exploring them in full 3D.

The polygon count could have been increased on some of the monsters, and it would be fair to say that Dark Cloud wouldn't overheat the PS2's CPU, but then you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, and this rings true in the case of said title.

There are some 15 dungeons to explore, all with multiple levels and, in another homage to Zelda, you can even find the map, the boss key and something very similar to the compass in most dungeons. The replay value is very impressive, as the game will take even seasoned dungeon crawlers some time to clock.

Dark Cloud is a damn fine game, with some of the most enjoyable and addictive gameplay elements yet, mixing aspects of Diablo, Zelda and even The Sims. If you've got a PS2 and you like console-based RPGs, you'll find weeks of joy in Sony's new title. Kudos to Level 5 for creating something a little unorthodox.

ORIGINALITY 90%
SOUND/GRAPHICS 85%
PLAYABILITY 85%
ADDICTION 95%
ENJOYMENT 90%