Action RPG? City building? What do I call this? Great!
Attacking monsters in randomized dungeons, collecting spheres, and building towns sums Dark Cloud up quick. There is a targeting system that is quite simple, press circle to lock on the enemy and press X to attack it. Hold in on X to do the characters special move. You can strafe left and right around the enemy when you are locked on by pressing the left and right buttons. As you progress through the game your character will get thirsty so you will have to buy, find, or drink some water from a pool to replenish your thirst. You can find attachments for your weapons that will add more power to it. Once your weapons have got a certain amount of power you can upgrade it to a better weapon. Be careful, as you use your weapons its durability will decrease. You can repair your weapons with repair powder. If your weapon’s durability reaches zero it will be broken and lost forever. There are five playable characters that you will meet along your journey that each have their own special technique and weapon. A mini game that you have the option to play is fishing. With your fishing rod you can attach bait that you find or buy to catch many different breeds of fish including two legendary fish.
The game’s graphics are well done. There are some jaggies around the edges of the characters and the worlds you explore. The game is well textured and laid-out so you can see very long distances and move around towns, houses, and dungeons with ease. I found that the playable characters have much more detail and better textures than the non-playable characters. I like the little extras that were put in the game that didn't have to be put in the game such as the characters blinking and breathing. When you play the game, time will progress naturally so when it is dawn or duck you will see some great lighting and shadowing effects with the trees, rivers, houses and people.
The sound suits the game well but it gets annoying. You will continuously hear the same noises coming from your characters, weapons and enemies. On the good side when you are in the towns you can hear birds singing in the day time and owl hoots at night time. This adds a lot to the game. The music suits the game very well. The game plays cheerful tunes that may or may not get on your nerves. I personally don’t mind it but I know many people where it does. When you encounter monsters in real-time the music will change to something more upbeat to suit the action of you killing the monsters.
Dark Cloud will take the average player about forty hours to finish their first time through. You could easily rack up ninety if you build the towns so everyone is happy, max out the stats on some weapons, and complete the extras that you unlock once you beat the game. So the play time is good in this game but I feel the replayability is a little low. I didn’t have any reason to play through it again once I was done. I would recommend buying this game if you like action role playing games and want to have the twist of building cities. I wish that this game had more moves for your characters instead of just two to make the game’s battling more technical and interesting.