Publisher: Sony
Ages: ten and up.
Parental
Advisory:
Fighting with monsters
It's the sequel to a solid roleplay game and Sony's Dark Cloud 2 soars to new heights. It's arguably the best role-play game (RPG) yet for the PlayStation 2 (even better than Kingdom Hearts) and one of the best titles on the entire platform. While Nintendo has long had Zelda, Sony can now boast of its "Dark Cloud." The sequel is a vast improvement over the first game that offers a first rate, in-depth and entertaining experience.
As with any RPG, Dark Cloud 2 has players exploring monster-ridden dungeons and lands. Gamers can play as one of two intriguing characters: Max or Monica, who each have their own multiple attacks forms, special abilities and weaponry. The superb fight system offers solid options for blocking, dodging, and executing short and long-range attacks and players can gather hundreds of items that include weapons, magic items, treasure, and vehicles. The game features an interesting upgrade system that lets players apply items to a weapon to increase its power.
After gaining knowledge and treasure in the game's dungeons, players have to develop worlds. For this, Dark Cloud 2 offers a world building system, called the "Georama," that lets players rebuild worlds with a variety of items and populate them. Dark Cloud 2 not only requires players to travel through time to rebuild their present world, but to the future as well. And as players rebuild, they have to perform quests to convince new residents to move in.
The game features an unusual invention system that lets players take photographs of different items and combine the photos to create new items. The graphics and audio effects are excellent and the game manages to create two compelling characters through superb animation and voice acting. As an RPG, the title features lots of fighting, but the combat is bloodless.
In all, Dark Cloud 2 stands above the rest. It not only offers entertaining quests and action, but is a creative game that makes players think beyond hacking and slashing. Because of the integral fighting and violence in roleplay games, we never expected to give an Editor's Choice to an RPG, but Dark Cloud is an outstanding and worthy title.
4/4/03 www.daytrum.com Editorial Staff
