A Zelda wannabe mixed with dungeon crawling action and diorama elements, that falls short on all of the three aspects...
Plot: An evil Dark Genie (which is the exact copy of Majin Buu from Dragon Ball) gets released in from his sealing place and begins to destroy the whole world. You, a random non talkative guy by the name of Toan are chosen by the personification of nature itself to put an end to the genie's reign of terror, while in the meantime rebuilding the world. The story is risible, generic at best and the six main characters have no characterization at all, they feel completely out of place and rushed.
Gameplay: You'll do so slumbering through six dungeons, where the spirit hid spherical-like objects containing the essence of all the things in the world: houses, people, objects, animals, plants, rivers, roads, terrain, etc...
The game structure is very rigid, in each of the six places you'll visit, you'll have to rebuild stuff, you'll find a new character to add to your party, you'll crawl trough 15-20 plans of a boring as hell dungeon which will end with a boss. There's no serious decision making in the game, or any kind of freedom of movement. Yes, you'll be able to return to the places you already rebuilt, but that's pretty pointless, especially since there are high chances you'll get everything through your first go in the dungeon.
Once inside the dungeons you'll have to find an object to reach the next level, said object is dropped by one of the fiends populating the place, so you'll have to slaughter basically everything that comes your way.
Now, about the actual fighting... it is a bad ripoff of the 3D Zelda formula: you can lock on the enemies, switch between them, attack with your weapon, block. That's it. There are no dodging moves, there's just one kind of weapon you can use (but each character has his own) and the lock on feature is implemented badly. You got hit? You lose the lock on. You change character? You lose the lock on. You change weapon? You lose the lock on. The enemy dies? Instead than switching to the other enemy, guess what? You lose the lock on... really frustrating.
Enemies are either easy as hell, or extremely annoying. You can just slice and dice most of them but there are some like the cannons are a pain, they deal lots of damage so you'd wish to take them out first, too bad they move at your same speed, that means you'll never get them unless you corner them to a wall, now that's not easy because they change direction depending on where you're facing and in the meantime the other enemies will keep chasing you around.Imagine if there are two or more of those cannons. Example of very bad design. Also the monsters have really uninspired characterization, feel out of place in most cases, and some are downright ridiculous (a fish floating in the cosmic space with a sub mask on? Great). Bosses are decent at best, varying from long and boring, to easy as hell, to really hard; but all use easy patterns of attacks, most of the times involving the use of the latest addition to the party to defeat them.
When out of the dungeons you'll have to rebuild the place you're in with the objects you've found in the dungeon. This is what saves the game from being completely forgettable and pushes you to keep playing the horribly designed dungeons that all look just the same. It is the best part of the game, even though it could've been better implemented: it is fun to create the city as you like, but you'll have too adjust it as the people inhabiting it want, to get 100% done and be presented with a special gift. This rigid system takes some of the fun away from creating your own city.
The only RPG element present in the game is the leveling of the weapons, which can be imbued with different stones and elements to modify their stats, properties and their effectiveness against certain type of enemies. So good so far, but in the weapons reside the single greatest flaw of the game: the weapons take damage over time and eventually break. If it breaks you lose the weapon for good, even if you leveled it up to unreachable levels. That's annoying to say the least, you'll have to constantly keep an eye on the weapons to see when you have to repair them, you'll get distracted from combat and in any case you'll find yourself at least one time to load the last save because you lost your precious weapon.
One mention about the camera: it gets stuck everywhere, annoying.
Graphics: Even considering the time window of its release, Dark Cloud graphics don't impress in the slightest. There's a severe lack of style (but that counts for the whole game), the textures are dull, the animations are nothing exceptional. In the end though there are no bugs or inconsistencies, so the game looks pretty solid from the visual side. However the graphics are just average for the time and are completely outdated now.
Sound: Not much to say here, both music and sfx are nothing special. Especially the music gets very repetitive, since there's just one theme per dungeon and you'll have to spend most of your time in there. There is no voice acting, all the talk is done in comic-like squares full of text.
Longevity/Value: When you'll finish the main quest and get 100% on every village (it will take you no more than 40 hours) there's nothing else to do. You probably won't come back to replay the game due to its repetitive nature.
Final thoughts: If you are in search of a good dungeon crawler with little adventure elements and customization features go straight to Dark Cloud 2 (Dark Chronicles in Europe), which beats this game hands down in everything.