Dark Cloud combines many different things. Some good, others that cause it to be repetitive and boring at times.
Our story begins in the village of Norune. Norune Village is a small western village that is looked after by a village chief. Toan, the hero of our story is looking for his friend Paige among the many dancers and performers at the village's Harvest Festival when the unthinkable happens: From the dark skies above, a dark force begins to destroy Norune Village! Toan dives to save his friend Paige from a burning tower that is collapsing but as soon as he does so, his world goes dark.
Toan awakens to see a strange elderly man standing before him. He's both shocked and confused to see that his village of Norune is not laying in rubbles, but is completely gone! The man standing before him introduces himself as the Fairy King and explains that a dark force known as the Dark Genie descended upon the world after being resurrected and began destroying the towns and villages of the world, and in an attempt to save them, he cast a spell that sealed all of the people, buildings, and things into spheres known as "Atla." The Fairy King bestows upon Toan what is known as the Atlamillia, a special blue stone that allows him to absorb the Atla and then 'rebuild' what was lost in the senseless destruction.
Toan discovers that after saving his own village he must set out on an adventure to restore the other lost towns and villages on the East and West continents to finally bring peace to the world again. Toan will encounter many new allies along the way in his quest for restoring the world, and to find a way to destroy the Dark Genie forever.
When you read and hear about Dark Cloud's story, you may think think that all the elements combined into it will make it an excellent game -- if not perfect.
The gameplay of Dark Cloud flows very well. You are able to switch from free roaming to "Arrange Mode", which will allow you to arrange items into their respective slots and then place them onto the town or village's layout to gain access to that building and it's villager(s). Some buildings will have to be complete and events witnessed before you can even progress to another part of the game in some cases, but if you haven't found a piece of Atla yet, it's not too hard to wander back into the dungeon of that current village/town and find it, and then complete the building. In terms of battle system and the weapons system -- Dark Cloud was different when it came out. There's no sitting and waiting for a battle meter to load to choose your option of 'Attack', 'Magic', 'Item', etc., you simply attack when you want and the speed/frequency of each attack is based on how fast your currently equipped weapon is. This sounds like a good idea but at times you may feel like the battle system is a bit slow, but nothing you can't overcome easily.
The weapons system is something that you will have to learn if you aren't used to it. You can upgrade your weapons with various attachments which provide different upgrades when your weapons 'Abs' are full (think of it as an EXP bar for your weapon to reach the next level). Some attachments allow for better attack, magic, better damage against a specific type of monster, or even to up the power of attributes on your weapon (attributes being fire, ice, lightning, etc.). This will prove to be a BIG help if you're battling a lot of a particular monster that is weak against a certain element or that can be damaged by upgrading your weapons effectiveness towards that type of monster, thus allowing you to gain Abs quicker and upgrade your weapons even further. However, if you're looking to upgrade your weapons to a better weapon than it is currently then you'll want to keep a close eye on your weapons stats and see how you need to build it up in order to get to the weapon you're looking for.
The difficulty of Dark Cloud never overwhelms you. Anything you may have trouble with in the game can be overcome by trying different strategies or simply by leveling your characters' weapons up more. Each character you pick up along the way (depending on what town you're in) can either help or not help you in the final boss of a dungeon. Sometimes it's better to use a long-range attacker than a close-range one and sometimes long-range does more damage than close-range, it's all a matter of how you level your characters weapons and how much damage they can do to enemies/bosses at that time.
The characters in Dark Cloud each have their own different attack and weapons and you can level them differently, depending on which direction you want to take each characters stats/weapons.
However fun Dark Cloud may be at the beginning, the end of the game fizzles somewhat as you become somewhat bored with how repetitive and yes, boring, some of the dungeons and monsters can become. You'll encounter different enemies in different dungeons but it doesn't take away the repetitiveness of collecting the same items. You'll be able to collect a map and an item that reveals all enemies and items within a dungeon but the only thing that changes is the name/look of the items you need to progress to the next level or to gain access to the backfloors of a dungeon (some of the backfloor items being very rare, such as in the final dungeon). You'll be able to buy better items from the stores in the game as you progress to the next village but there's nothing too major to gain.
By the end of the game, I personally found myself glad to be done and over with the game. I enjoyed the beginning of the game, had fun with it and the final boss proved to be a lot funner than the majority of the things I'd been doing in the final dungeon and previous town. The ending was a bit of a disappointment for me personally, because I felt I had worked really hard for something that was.. not worth the effort I put into the game.
Overall, if you're looking for a basic, fun game, then Dark Cloud is for you. It's best to go into it with an open mind and form your own opinion of it, and not follow the other things you may have heard about it