Balance. This is an interesting, and complex part of game development. Not only is it one of the most difficult aspects of a game to work out, it's ultimately one of the most important. The 'balance' in Dark Cloud is easy enough to figure out. As in nearly all RPG games, the characters start out weak and fairly powerless. The enemies in the early levels are challenging, yet obviously weak themselves. As the characters grow (in this case, as their weapons become more powerful), the enemies grow in power, and the difficulty of the dungeons increases. For most of the game, the power balance is well done. However, since the general 'level up' system is weapons based, the characters themselves do not become any more powerful. The player can collect 'gourds' to improve their characters thirst meter, but the whole 'thirst' things is more of a nuisance than a challenge. There are also items that can increase a specific characters defense value. The problem is, each character is relatively weak defensively compared to the enemies. The more powerful enemies in each dungeon, no matter which dungeon, can pretty much kill any of the characters in one or two hits. Even when ALL defensive items have been found and used, the gameplay involves mostly hit-and-run attacks by the player, while trying to not get hit themselves; especially in the final couple of dungeons.

Apparently, the original Japan release was quite a bit scaled down compared to the US release. Well, more accurately, the US release had a number of things added before it hit the shelves. Immediately a couple of questions come to mind: Was the Japan version released unfinished? Were the additions put in place to improve gameplay, or to add features to the game? The executives at Level 5 deny that the Japanese version was 'unfinished', but also insisted that the additions are in place to improve the gameplay experience. I came across this information before I had a chance to play the game. I was told that the 'improved gameplay experience' came by way of an additional 20 hours of gameplay (from the estimated 40 hours of gameplay on the Japanese version); a ton of new weapons; and an added 99-level dungeon.

So, I jumped right into the game. I played through seven separate dungeons. All told, about 40 hours of play. I was getting a little bored of the game. Not a whole lot of new experiences after the first couple of dungeons. Still fun, still a good game, just rather repetitive. Then I remembered what I had read about the 99-level dungeon. Hmmm, wait a minute, all the dungeons so far have been around 20 levels or so. I wasn't happy at the prospect of a HUGE new dungeon. Then, suddenly the game ended, I had killed the final boss. Huh? Oh, THEN the 99-level dungeon 'opens up'. So, now that I've already cleared the game, I'm supposed to go BACK and work through another 99-levels of dungeon? Apparently THAT was the 'improved gameplay experience'. Yippee! Well, stupid me, I decided to give it a try. After all, I had already spent over 40 hours playing the game. Plus, that's my job, right? To review video games and report the results to you guys out there. My report is: don't bother! The 99 levels took me about 15 hours or so to trudge my way through. Of course, along the way I managed to max out TWO weapons, in their final forms. But I didn't need weapons that powerful when I killed the final boss, so why would I need them now that the game is over? After 99 levels, there is another new boss, but he's insultingly easy to beat. The reward: a new weapon. Granted, the weapon is really powerful (and in the end, this game becomes ABOUT the weapons), but as I said before, the game is over, so why bother? I went back and tried killing the final boss with the new sword (which I had also maxed out.) The final boss has three forms. Each form took TWO hits from the new sword to defeat. Not much of a climax after 60 hours of gameplay.

If I play a great game and it turns out to be too short, at least in the end I can't expect a whole lot of reward for the few amount of hours I spent playing. However, if I spend 60 hours playing a game, building up my characters and weapons to their most powerful in order to take on the big baddie at the end; said 'big baddie' better be pretty freakin' BIG and BAD. This was not the case with Dark Cloud. Once you figure out how to hurt the bosses, it's mostly a matter of hitting them a couple of times then watching the final animations.

HIGHS:

• Finally a half-decent RPG for the PS2
• Interesting weapons based experience/level system
• It's certainly not too short

LOWS:

• Repetitive
• Did I mention repetitive?
• This game is kind of repetitive

If you're itching for an adventure/RPG game for the PS2, this one is pretty good. Not prefect, maybe not even great, but good. At this point I'd say 'if you like RPG games', wait for Final Fantasy X. 'If you like adventure games', go play Zelda: Majora's Mask, OR buy a GameCube and hold your breath until they release a new version of Zelda for the new system. There's nothing really new here. We've seen each these elements in other games (the world-building goes way back to Act Raiser for Super Nintendo, World Maps like in the mentioned Zelda and Final Fantasy series, and dungeon crawling like in a whole slew of titles), but Dark Cloud handles ALL of these elements in one package. Personally, I really got into the game when I first started playing. I loved the weapons system, the self-replicating dungeons ARE pretty cool, and the story and characters are developed enough for the player to get immersed in the game. My advice is: play the game until you clear it, and don't bother with the final dungeon. While playing the added 15 hours of gameplay, your thoughts will turn from 'this game is pretty good', to 'this game is pretty boring'.

Overall Score: 7.7

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