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| Dark Cloud 2; Anyone tried it? | |
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| Topic Started: Aug 17 2005, 02:52 AM (353 Views) | |
| SocRATes | Aug 17 2005, 02:52 AM Post #1 |
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Big Fat Rat
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I got this game today, from the bargain bin. It's used, and doesn't have a manual, but it's perfectly playable. When I first stuck it in, I was all "Aw, man, an action game--suck!" But after half an hour or so, I was hooked. This seems like a game one could spend AGES tinkering around with, and still not see everything. I've mostly been running about customizing my two default weapons, and looking for things to invent. I only got to play for a little over an hour, unfortunately--work beckoned, so I just had time for a little taste. Anyone else like this game? And, if you did, was Dark Cloud 1 any good, or should I stick with this sequel? |
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| aaron | Aug 17 2005, 08:56 AM Post #2 |
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fastidious planet
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I never played dark cloud 2, but I can sum up dc1 for you... Genie was released and destroys all sorts of towns, usually leaving one person from each town to tell you what happened. You enter a dungeon, kill a lot of stuff, heal your weapons before they break, and pick up spheres that for some reason the genie scattered throughout all of these dungeons. Exit dungeon, place the spheres, which turns out to be parts of the town, i.e. buildings, and hope you set it up to make everyone happy. Repeat countless times, every once in a while finding a new character and the whole time resisting the urge to grab a gun and mimic Kurt Cobain. Get to genie fight- watch an extremely long unskippable cutscene, get massacred, repeat until you throw game out the window. The end. |
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| smiley-o | Aug 17 2005, 05:41 PM Post #3 |
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Open Box
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Dark Cloud 1 really doesn't have near as much stuff to mess with. The town-building was fun and there was a fishing minigame that was pretty cool, but apart from that it was a pretty basic dungeon-crawling game (not that it wasn't a GOOD dungeon-crawler). I rented it once, got stuck on the second or third boss and ended up never playing it again. The thing I liked most about it was all the details that went into the towns, and the way you could zoom out to build anytime and then zoom right back in and walk around, or make a lake anywhere and then plop yourself down right then and start fishing. Also, the sky moves as time passes, which amazed me back then (I had just gotten a PS2). I might recommend renting it because it IS pretty neat. It just doesn't look as pretty or have as much stuff to do, and anything that was amazing about the first game is done just a whole lot better in the second. And story-wise, I'm pretty sure they have close to nothing to do with each other. |
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| The Real Prince | Aug 17 2005, 08:29 PM Post #4 |
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lost cousin
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it suck but i only rented it. |
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| aaron | Aug 18 2005, 11:28 AM Post #5 |
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fastidious planet
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Yea, I never even looked in to dark cloud 2. The first one was so repetitive and had a sucky story line that I didn't think I could handle any more, that's why I traded it. |
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| SocRATes | Aug 22 2005, 12:11 AM Post #6 |
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Big Fat Rat
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Having squeezed in a few more hours on this one, I have this to add: Gameplay - Very nice, I must say. I ordinarily get fed up with this sort of game very quickly, but I'm finding Dark Cloud 2 quite addictive. The invention system is particularly cool: one gets tired of doing nothing but fighting all the time, and searching the surroundings for things to photograph makes a welcome break from the action. I can imagine it might get a little annoying later on in the game, looking around for some well-hidden (yet absolutely essential) photo opportunity, and I can't see myself hunting down absolutely every possible snapshot, but it's a very neat feature all the same. The flexibility and variety of weapon customization is also a plus for me. I love games with lots of stuff to discover and try out. (That was why I kept on buying Star Ocean games, in spite of the nonsensical drivel passing for a storyline: the ability and item creation systems kept me fascinated. Well, in SO1 and 2, anyway. The invention system in "Till the End of Time" was one of the worst game mechanics I've ever seen, in any game, for any reason.) I haven't had time to get to the Georama stages yet, or the fishing/golf minigames, so I can't comment on those yet. I'm not generally a huge fan of totally irrelevant minigames stuffed into RPG/adventure games, so, unless the fishing and golf are seriously impressive, I probably won't have a whole lot to say about them. (I got strangely addicted to fishing in Breath of Fire III and IV, though, so who knows?) Small annoyance: why is there nowhere to save invention ideas? I hate having to write stuff down on little pieces of paper during gameplay. It wrecks the mood. It disengages me from the story. It--it--it gets little pieces of paper all over the living room. There's no excuse for little pieces of paper in this day and age. (If there IS a way of saving invention ideas, and I've just missed it...well, I'm a doofus. Ha, ha.) The level of challenge is just perfect for me. There are some very difficult segments (getting some of the in-combat photos, for example), but most of the time, even a clumsy oaf like me can scuttle by without too much trouble. It keeps me interested without keeping me frustrated. I like that in a game. Music - Not bad. None of the tunes have quite managed to stick in my mind yet, though. The feel of the music reminds me a little of some of the King's Quest music, or maybe even very early Final Fantasy. That should be a good thing, but I'm not quite sold. It's better than mediocre, but it falls just short of memorable, for me. Graphics - Woo, nice! I think this is the best-looking cel-shaded game I've seen yet. I preferred the general style of "Dragon Quarter", but that had as much to do with the actual content of the game as anything else. I prefer a slightly darker aesthetic. But for the lighthearted mood of "Dark Cloud 2", the graphics are perfect. Story - Blech. Augh. Fail. The dialogue is much better than you'll get in the average game script, but the underlying story is shallow, cliche, ridiculous, and cloyingly cutesy to boot. I don't care one whit about these characters, or what happens to them. Nobody's motivation is particularly clear. Events don't always make a whole lot of sense. NPCs have about as much depth as...as Paris Hilton. This is not an interesting game. If the gameplay were as monumentally addictive as Katamari Damacy, the godawful story could be overlooked entirely. But it isn't. It's fun, but it's not SUPER HAPPY SKY-FULL-OF-FIREWORKS FUN. I'll play this game and enjoy it, but it's very unlikely I'll buy any prequels or sequels, unless I see them in the bargain bin again. It's a shame. The mechanics of this game are well-nigh perfect, for what it is. Given some intriguing characters and a well-thought-out story, they'd have a classic on their hands. |
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| aaron | Aug 23 2005, 11:33 AM Post #7 |
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fastidious planet
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It sounds good from what you said. But don't even bother touching the first one. Seriously. It blows |
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| SocRATes | Sep 2 2005, 02:01 AM Post #8 |
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Big Fat Rat
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I think I will give the first one a miss--while I am enjoying this game, I think I'll enjoy it for precisely the space of ONE adventure. Another one in the same vein might prove a bit much. Having progressed a bit further, now, I'd like to share my impressions of the Georama stages, and the little minigames. First off, the Georama. I love the Georama. It's just cool. Arranging the landscape however one pleases, trying to fit the pieces into the prettiest arrangements possible, watching the future world grow and change--what's not to like? The system is intuitive, instantly learned, and attractive to look at. The results are fun. My only complaint is that there's not enough of it. Once you've picked up the Geostones, the Georama goals are incredibly easy to accomplish. You're left wanting more, but there isn't a whole lot to do, once you've satisfied all the necessary conditions. Then, there's the fishing game. I like the fishing game, too. If you combined the fishing game from Dark Cloud II with the fishing game from Breath of Fire III/IV, you'd have the perfect fishing game. I liked being able to SEE the fish swimming around in the water, in Breath of Fire, but I preferred the actual controls in Dark Cloud. However, Dark Cloud's system is just a BIT too easy, and Breath of Fire's gets just a BIT too frustrating (the fact that a fish can sometimes swim about aimlessly for several minutes before letting you reel it in gets old pretty fast). Still, you can't have everything, I suppose. The fishing game is quick, fun, and rewarding. Later on, you can weigh in your biggest fish and win prizes. Neat. Spheda, on the other hand--oh, man. Whoever thought of this needs a bullet in the brain. Reasons I hate this game, from most trivial to most egregious: * In the manual, it says "spheda" is the Italian word for "challenge". It isn't. It's close, but it's not quite there. (The word they were looking for, I presume, is "sfida".) * It's just not very fun. Taking a shot involves lining up your angle, pressing X twice, and hoping your ball doesn't go in the water. (Which it usually does. I was reading "Off course!" as "Of course!" after a while.) This is before you add in the frustration factor, too, when I say it isn't fun. It's just a boring, boring game. The bar that shows you when to click doesn't stand out very well from the background, either (especially if you've got bad eyesight, which I do), so it's very hard to see what you're doing. * Getting good at it takes a very long time. Why? Because some GENIUS decided it would be a GOOD IDEA to make it available ONLY once every monster on the stage has been killed (which, at the point I've reached in the game, generally takes between 2 and 8 minutes), and then you ONLY get one shot. So, you kill a bunch of monsters, try and get used to this horribly-designed game, fail, then kill EXACTLY THE SAME BUNCH OF MONSTERS again, so you can have another go. This isn't even remotely entertaining. When Spheda became available, its sheer rubbishness actually tainted my enjoyment of the whole game. I'm one of those people who likes to see, do, and get absolutely EVERYTHING possible in a videogame. And until Spheda, I had. I'd completed every fish goal, every time trial, and every special goal, for every level. But there's no way I'm going to run through every dungeon again and again till I've also satisfied the Spheda goals. It's just too irritating. Before obsessive-compulsive completion, I play games for FUN, and that is not a fun idea. This means I won't get a lot of rare items and prizes, so it's really put a damper on things. I was frustrated with Final Fantasy X and X-2 for the same reason (well, among other reasons, especially in the case of X-2!). When I buy an RPG or an action-adventure game, I want to see RPG/action-adventure style gameplay. I don't want to play a load of poorly-designed arcade-style sequences. I loved the Chocobo Hot and Cold game in FF9--that was nicely-designed, with a quick learning-curve, instant (and constant!) rewards, and addictive gameplay. I also loved the fishing games in Breath of Fire III and IV. I did not, however, love dodging 200 lightning bolts in FFX, or playing that silly, silly cactuar-shooting game in FFX-2. I did not love the million-and-one OTHER minigames in Breath of Fire III and IV. Why? Because they were HORRIBLY designed. They were boring, irrelevant, and they didn't even look particularly good. They weren't what I paid for--and, worse, they interfered with my enjoyment of what I DID pay for. So, maybe some folks find Spheda entertaining. I do not. I think fishing was enough. There was effort put into that. It looked good, and felt good to play. Spheda, not so much. I think one minigame was enough. I haven't yet got to this "Finny Frenzy" bit. I'll update again once I have. If it's as bad as Spheda, that might be the LAST thing I say about this game! Faugh! |
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4:44 AM Jul 11