I've spoken before about Sequelitis, the disease that causes good franchises to churn out needless sequel after sequel. However, like all things in this world, there is a Ying for every Yang. The opposite of Sequelitis is the Surprisingly Better Sequel. What makes them opposites? Sequelitis is bad sequels, and the Surprisingly Better Sequel is, as its name states, a sequel that manages to be better than the original work. Maybe the story is better, maybe the characters are more expanded upon, whatever. Today, I want to take a look at a game, and its Surprisingly Better Sequel: Dark Cloud and Dark Cloud 2.
Dark Cloud is one of those games that helped define the early days of the Playstation 2. Intended to be a launch title for the then new PS2, the game was delayed a bit until September of 2001, when it was released to much acclaim by both critics and gamers alike. Dark Cloud mixed three genres into one game: the standard RPG with its epic story, Dungeon Crawling, and City Builder. The best way to describe Dark Cloud is by calling it Legend of Zelda meets SimCity.
In Dark Cloud, you are Toan, a young man from a little village that has been attacked by the evil Dark Genie (I know, not an original story) who has been blessed by the King of Fairies (should I have a cliche counter? I think I should) with a mysterious stone (4 cliches) that will help him restore the world. (5 cliches) In his quest, he will meet new allies (6 cliches) who will help him save the world (7 cliches) from the wrath of the Dark Genie. Among them, they are Xiao, a cat that has been turned into a girl by a mysterious potion (8 cliches), Goro, a proud hunter (9 cliches), Ruby, a sexy genie in a lamp (10 cliches), Ungaga, a mighty, heartbroken warrior of the desert (ok, that's two cliches in one, so 12) and Osmond, a rabbit from the moon (alien ally? 13 cliches).
Toan's stone, the Atlamillia, helps him restore the buildings and people who have been stored in mysterious floating orbs called Atla. (...OK, that's kind of original). Once he collects them, Toan is tasked with using his Atlamillia to restore the towns and villagers to their original state (that's very original, and it's a cool idea). Game play wise, this means that the player is the one that has to place the buildings, roads, rivers, tress, etc by his/her own choosing. And it is here that Dark Cloud really shines.
Story wise, Dark Cloud is not at all memorable. The story is cliche, uninspired, and unoriginal. The characters, and this includes both Toan and the Dark Genie, are two dimensional at best. Most of your allies outright disappear from the story as soon as you recruit them, and notably, Xiao has no personality to set her apart, which says a lot considering that she's the first character to join Toan.
From a game play perspective, however, Dark Cloud is awesome. The dungeons are very deep, challenging, and memorable, with awesome music to accompany your trek. From a gaming perspective, there's nothing new here, as each dungeon is a cliche itself. After all, name ONE dungeon crawler that doesn't have a cave dungeon, forest dungeon, pyramid dungeon, and ominous dark castle dungeon. But it's how the game presents these dungeons that makes them feel so fresh. The forest dungeon, for example, has many streams and creeks from where you will hear many insects, while you'll also see dragonflies and fireflies buzzing about. The levels are beautifully designed, with awesome music and well designed enemies to give the player an exciting experience.
The towns themselves are very beautiful as well. You have your average village, a forest village, a seaside city, and a desert village. Each town is unique, and often I found myself just walking around, admiring my handiwork. The biggest satisfaction of the game, besides clearing dungeons with ease, was walking around a finished town, entering the buildings and chatting with the characters I had rescued.
Dark Cloud was a flawed, but enjoyable game, one where you could have fun just exploring, crawling dungeons and beating evil beasts while getting the best weapons. With Dark Cloud, it's going to be a fun afternoon.
Someone on Level 5 (the company that made Dark Cloud) must have had something to prove, because Dark Cloud 2 was awesome. This game is a sequel done right. This game not only took everything that made the original game good and expanded on it, but it also took the previous game's weaknesses and fixed them.
First off, the story. In this game, you control two characters, Max and Monica, who travel the world fighting off the forces of Emperor Griffon, who seeks to control the Atlamillia, a trio of Stones that, when united together, can summon a giant meteor that will wipe out everything. Also, Monica is from the future and Emperor Griffon exists ten thousand years in the past. Really, this story is so bad ass, that it will take me dozens of paragraphs to summarize it.
The characters, unlike the original game, are three dimensional, with distinct personalities, quirks, and histories. Max is a lonely rich kid who loves machinery, is humble, cheery, observant, and rational. He seeks to find his mother, who had disappeared when he was a child. Max treats the world with awe and wonder, fitting, as he has spent his entire life stuck in the town of Palm Springs. Monica is a princess from the future. She's brave, independent, caring, passionate, cunning, always willing to do the right thing. She is on a mission to avenge her slain father, but she always gives time to help those in need. She is willing to have fun, but forgiving does not come easily for her, as she's also someone who is reeling from the loss of her father. This pain has led to her making some mistakes, such as attacking an enemy head on, or refusing to see things in shades other than black or white. Emperor Griffon himself is a tragic figure. Originally a child named Cyrus, Griffon lost his only friend in the world, the Princess Alexandra, to a pointless war. Angered at the world, the lonely Cyrus had his heart blackened by sorrow and hate, and chose to seek to destroy the world that took his friend away.
Gameplay wise, the game is leagues better than the original. Dungeons are equally breathtaking, but this time they are more original. There is the usual fare: a sewer, a forest, a volcano, and an ominous castle. However there's also a few more memorable dungeons: a canyon, and a shoreline with some underground levels. What's more, there's a day/night cycle that, though purely cosmetic, adds to the feel that time passes while traversing the dungeons. There are also more minigames, including a golfing minigame, a fishing minigame, and a fish race minigame, each with rewards that will motivate the player to try out these minigames. Furthermore, dungeons come with side challenges that reward the player with medals for clearing them, which the player can then exchange for clothes for Max or Monica. That's right, the game allows you to change Max and Monica's appearance! (though Monica's costumes always seem a bit...drafty)
Monica...You might want to consider getting a shirt. And some pants. You know, to keep warm. (My apologies to some_stranger @ gamefaqs, and my thanks as well)
A major annoyance in the first game was that weapons could be destroyed if they got too worn out. Dark Cloud 2 does away with that, instead simply having them deal no damage if they got too worn out and needed repairs. Another thing Dark Cloud 2 did away with was the thirst mechanic from the original. If characters got thirsty, they started losing health, and each character had their own thirst meter. To cure thirst, you needed to have water bottles to drink from, and a lot of the time, these bottles took up a lot of space in your inventory. Dark Cloud 2 wisely got rid of this element, allowing the player to explore dungeons more freely, and freeing up inventory space.
The original Dark Cloud had no voice work, which can be forgiven as Toan himself is a Silent Protagonist anyway, and that would have made the game more awkward (just look at Suikoden 4). Dark Cloud 2, on the other hand, had full, professional voice work. There's quite a few big names in here, lending their voices to this great game. For example, Scott Menville, whom some of you may know as the voice of Robin from Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go, lends his vocals to Max.
The same city building mechanism from the first game returns in Dark Cloud 2, but now it's improved. While the original game had specific buildings, this one has more variety. For example, you can build a hut, a log cabin, a brick house, or even an iron house, have any character move into it, and even paint it any color you want. This gives the player a larger freedom in how to design the towns as he/she chooses, but it must be said, there are some goals that need to be reached in order to proceed.
Dark Cloud 2 is a terrific sequel to a game that had a very clear, very finite ending. The brilliance is that it doesn't continue the story of Dark Cloud at all, instead choosing to be its own story, with its own characters, using simply the same concepts the original had, but expanding on them. Plus, a few surprise appearances by Osmond and the Dark Genie firmly establish this game as belonging to the same franchise, instead of being a Dark Cloud in name only. (Interestingly, the game was originally called Dark Chronicle) Dark Cloud 2 really expanded on the ideas presented by the original, and one could make the argument that had the game been released as Dark Chronicle, it would have been more a reboot of the franchise than anything. Although there hasn't been a new Dark Cloud game in over ten years, and it is unlikely one would ever be made, I've no doubt the series ended on a high note. Dark Cloud and Dark Cloud 2 are great games, and a pair of must owns for any Playstation 2 owner.
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