Dark Cloud
I Dream of Genie

Review by Chi Phan

Without a doubt the first real rpg for the Playstation 2. It's an action rpg and it's brought to you by Sony themselves to boot. You don't see many rpgs coming from Sony developement that's for sure. When this game first came out, I wasn't too excited about getting it so I passed on it. But as a greatest hits collection? I couldn't pass the chance of getting it. And you know what? I'm glad I got it. A very fun rpg game to play. So check out the review.

In the beginning.. Please let go of me leg! Dark Clouds story begin at a ruin where a group of people under the command of a general from an eastern country unleashing or in this case, releasing an evil dark genie from a very large urn. With the Dark Genie release and under the command of the general, the general then order the Dark Genie to destroy the world. Or in this case the villages of the world. Fast forward to a small village called Norune where the people of the villages are having a festival. Our hero Toan decides to show up to enjoy the festival when all of a sudden the Dark Genie appears and preceeded to destroy the village. During the so called destruction of Norune. Toan lost consciousness. The next morning, Toan awaken to find his village gone but with an ancient figure called the Spirit King standing before him. The Spirit King explain to Toan, that just a few seconds before the destruction of Norune and all the other villages that the Dark Genie destroyed, he casted a magical spell where entire villages from houses to people are encased in spheres called Atla. This is to save them from the Dark Genie. But these Atlas are scattered throughout the world in dungeons and that the Spirit King will grant Toan a magical amulet that will help unseal these various parts of villages trapped in Atlas. Once Toan is successful in unsealing the people and houses from the Atlas, he then must restore the villages to their former self. Once all that's done, Toan then must face and defeat the Dark Genie to save the world from destruction. That's the glist fo the story. It seems to me that the story is built around the gameplay and not the gameplay being built around the story. This is not a good way to make a good rpg story. You have the first part of the story which is the introduction of the Genie and and how the destruction of the world became. You then have the ending of the story which is the origin of Dark Genie and the final showdown with the Dark Genie. But there's no middle part to the story. The entire middle part is you the player going through the various dungeons and unleashing the Atlas. There's really no plot development in the middle of the story at all. Think of it this way, you have a book with numerious chapters. You have chapter 1 and you have the last chapter which is chapter 10. In between those 2 chapters are chapters 2-9. Those chapters are used to build up the story to the very climatic ending which is chapter 10. Now you take away all the middle chapters of that book and what do you get? A book with no substance in the middle. Well the same would apply here. You have no substance in the middle of the story. The story fail to really give us any details of who the Fairy King is and the different regions and history of this world. Or even the characters involved for that matter. Like I said, the story is more or less base around the gameplay. They made the gameplay first then they seem to come up with how the story will evolve around the gameplay. Now I'm not saying it's a totally bad story but one that could definetly used more meat in it. Characters and plotlines are totally under developed here.

Am I not cute? Next to the story, this is another disappointment. There are six characters in the game but really, the game mainly focuses on the main character, Toan. Even then that's very weak. All the characters have little personalities or background development. They also hardly take part in the story at all. Well it's not like there's much of a story to interact with to begin with. Toan, who's character design is so real and life like that during the story, you just wish he would talk or say anything and come to life but all you see him do is nod now and then in the game. The supporting cast have absolutely no point in the storyline at all and really serves no usefullness other than to use their unique abilites in dungeons. In fact during the story you really don't see them at all other than their initial introduction. You hardly think there's even a six party member quest involve in this game. Very weak and uninteresting characters.

Genie in a bottle. For an early Playstation 2 game, the graphic is excellent in terms of 3-D and polygons. The entire world of Dark Cloud is done in 3-D with finely detailed polygons characters and settings. Building and settings are done in a nice texture with excellent colors for each time of the day. Characters are in perfect 3-D smoothly detailed polygon design with an unique anime look to them. The facial expression, especially Toan facial expression is excellently done with eyes and mouth of the japanese animation kind that makes these character look so real. This is one of the best 3-D polygon graphics I've seen. I give this an 8 by Playstation 2 standard. Imagine what can even be more achieve once developers fully understand the Playstation 2 graphic engine.

Transformers, robots in disguise.. I have to say the music is very good. Not great or outstanding but very good. It has that arabian middle east influence in the theme. That's understandable since the game is base on Genies. A fairy tale character from the Arabian Knights story from the middle east. There's no real love tunes in the game but that's expected since this story isn't really about a love story. But each tune is upbeat and in a high tempo that makes exploring dungeons fun. The sound effects in this game is amazing. From footsteps in dungeons to the sound that monster makes. Good overall sound and a nice large selection of middle eastern influence tunes that's perfect when playing this game. Just missing some memorable tunes that will keep you thinking about the music when you're not even playing the game.

I shall free you, Atlas! I am a god! Game Information    Genre: Action Rpg    Publisher: Sony    Disc: 1 Disc DVD    Memory: 390KB    Players: 1 Player Mode    Vibration: Yes    Dual Analog: Yes    Digital Control: No    Rating: Teen    Release: Summer 2001 It's in the game. And that's what this game is about. Dark Cloud is an action rpg game that consists one of the most addictive and unique gameplay around. As stated in the story section of this review. The world of Dark Cloud has been sealed up with people, houses, and accessories of those houses in Atlas (round spheres) inside various dungeons. Your mission should you choose to accept this, is to explore the various dungeons and release the people, houses, ect, trapped inside the Atlas. Once they are release you then have to assembly the villages back together to your own liking. A very cool feature and very addictive. You can assembly the villages anyway you like but if you follow the requests from the villagers on how they like to have their village assemble for them, you can get a cool item for completing all their requests. Now going back to the dungeon exploration. Each dungeon have a certain number of floors to explore. Inorder to advance to the next floor, you will need to find the key that will open the door to gain access to the next floor level. Various monsters inside each floor will hold such a key. Hack, slash, shoot and kill all the monsters to find that key. Now each floor will require you to use an unique ability of a certain character inorder to further explore that floor onward. You can easily switch characters during the dungeon exploration and use their unique attack style and abilities. A very good feature. Overall fighting the monsters and exploring the dungeon aren't very hard. As you explore each floor, an overhead map begins to fill out so you can't get lost. You should be able to complete each floor in no time flat. There's a thirst meter on all your characters so the more time they spend on a floor, the more they will become thirsty. If they thirst reaches zero, they die. You can avoid this by bringing water drops in your bags of accessories. Still a very easy game. So the main glist of it all is to explore the dungeon and rebuild the world of Dark Cloud. Now besides all that, this game feature one of the most unique weapons customization around. It's also a little bit complicated too so I'll try and explain it as best as I can. Each character uses a unique type of weapon. For example, Toan uses sword type weapons. Now weapons can gain experience. They gain experience when the weapon being used kills the monster. Once you reach enough experience, you can then upgrade your weapon. Upgrading the weapon boost it's stats. There are alot of stats on these weapon. Weapon stats comes in three categories. Statistic, Elemental, and Monsters. Statistic is attack, endurance, speed, and mp. This effect the speed of your weapon and the power of your weapon. Elemental is the added elemental effect with the power of your weapon. For example: your weapon can have an added fire attribute to boost it's power even more again monsters weak against fire. And lastly Monsters stats effect the added extra boost again certain monsters. Each time you upgrade your weapon, these stats all go up. Now in addition to the stats level up with the boost from upgrade, you can add gems to help further boost your stats. Gems comes in 3 categories just like weapons stats. You can buy, steal or find gems in treasure chests. You attach these gems, on the weapons to boost their stats further. But it's only temporarily. But once you upgrade your weapon, the gems can then be absorb into the weapon and their stats boost will permanently become a part of the weapon stats. This is all part of the weapon customizing. Now in addition to all this, after upgrading and upgrading, if a weapon has reach a certain point where all of it's stats meets a requirement, you can then build up the weapon into another more powerful weapon. You can repeat this process of upgrading and building up to a more powerful weapon until you get the ultimate weapon at the end of that weapon. A very good feature. Problem is that when you are trying to build up a weapon to another weapon, it's very hard to do so. Even with all the gems. The reason for that is, getting the require particular gem to boost a certain weapon stat is quite hard and time consuming. This is probably the downside of it all. Another problem is that weapons can break during battle usage. Each weapon has a WHP (weapons hit points) guage. Each time you use a weapon, your guage goes down. If it reaches zero, the weapon breaks and is lost forever. This is very annoying when in the heat of the battle your favorite weapon break and is lost forever. You have to constantly carry around repair powders to use on your weapon incase it's WHP get's too low. This is one of the thing I don't like about the weapons feature. But overall I enjoy the weapon feature quite a bit. It just needs to improve on allow players to boost weapon stats a little bit more easier as gems don't really give much of a stats boost. So to break it down. A very basic but fun hack and slash game where you explore various dungeons, recreate villages in to your own liking, and customize your weapons. A gameplay in which I found very addictive and fun to play.

Score: 9/10

Will you bite already! During the story game, there's not much in terms of mini games or extra stuff to do other than the mini fishing games in different part of the region. Basically the fishing game is where you can fish to catch different types of fishes. Each type of fish will give you different amount of FP (fish points). As you accumulate FP from catching fishes, you can then exchange those FP for various items ranging from gem attachments to weapons. Of course each fish will require different types of baits. You can gain baits by buying them, stealing them from monsters, or from treasure chests. Overall the fishing game isn't very good. Most of the time, the fishes would just eat your bait than anything else. And if you do catch a fish, the FP given are very small so you need to spend alot of time fishing. You can however try and catch 2 of the legendary fishes that will give you an enormous amount of FP but that's easier said then done. Personnally, I gave up on the fishing game. So that leaves the Demon Shaft as the only other extra secret stuff to do in the game. But it's a huge one. After you finish the first game, you can then go back into the world map and you will notice a secret section open up to you. By then the story point of the game is over. Here is where the Demon Shaft lies. The Demon Shaft is 100 levels long. Your goal is to reach the 100 level and fight a secret boss and gain the best sword in the game. As you can see the 100 level will take sometime to do but in terms of extra side stuff. It's well worth it and your time. Replay is kind of disappointing as there's really no replay value at all. You don't need to play the game again inorder to get the Demon Shaft as you can just access that once you finish the game the first time. There's really no point to play this again unless you really enjoy the story and game.

I'm glad I finally got a chance to play this game. I enjoyed it alot and am looking forward to the sequel. The only thing that I didn't really like about this game is that it's a little too short and the story is quite dull. Other than that, the gameplay is great. If you love the option to create your own world and customizing weapons in an action rpg environment, then this game is for you. I find it very addictive and fun. Final Score: 6.8/10 Time to complete: about 40 hours for the story game. Difficulty: medium Favorite character: None Best sword: Chronicles Sword 2 Best fighter: Toan Worst overall fighter: Ungaga Best feature: Customizing weapons Also try: Azure Dreams(?) Up next: Grandia Extreme(?)

STORY A super short story that can be told in under 20 minutes if you take out the gameplay.	4
CHARACTERS Characters are dull and don't really interact in the story at all.	4
GRAPHICS One of the best 3-D polygons graphics on the Playstation 2.	8
MUSIC A good selection of tunes with some arabian influence in them.	8
GAMEPLAY A simply but very fun and addictive game.	9
EXTRAS/REPLAY A 100 level bonus dungeon to do for those that finish the game.	8