Dark Cloud

 PlayStation 2
User Score
8.0

Generally favorable reviews- based on 152 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 113 out of 152
  2. Mixed: 24 out of 152
  3. Negative: 15 out of 152
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  1. Theimminent26
    Mar 21, 2003
    5
    I give this pathetic piece of "entertainment" five merely for the georama and the deep weapon system. However every single other aspect except for the usually entertaining music is worthless and should be eternally forgotten the day this game is someones favorite is the end of the world. Plus since the combat is inept it cancels out the deep weapon system. Maybe if you enjoy going to teh I give this pathetic piece of "entertainment" five merely for the georama and the deep weapon system. However every single other aspect except for the usually entertaining music is worthless and should be eternally forgotten the day this game is someones favorite is the end of the world. Plus since the combat is inept it cancels out the deep weapon system. Maybe if you enjoy going to teh exact same dungeon over and over with different "random" floors over and over and over and over for every dungueon you might enjoy this waste of time. ANd as a last note to many characters with useless purposes......I hate this game but you are entitled to your .....opinion...i guess. … Expand
  2. JimC
    Jun 10, 2009
    5
    The combat is boring and repetitive, the plot is terrible, and the soundtrack is dull. I personally find half the characters worthless, and they also add nothing to the story. The game is so empty that every main character could die a horrible death and I'd be indifferent. However, I love the weapon system and rebuilding the villages so I might just be able to finish it.
  3. llamayarmybar
    Jul 21, 2011
    6
    More repetitive than watching the tour de France. Serious collision detection issues, boring enemies, cheap attacks, no ability to buy items until portions of the village have been set down, no interesting characters, no continuity, poor camera, useless item breaking system, tedious town re-building, and many other things. You know that feeling when you've just leveled up that bad-assMore repetitive than watching the tour de France. Serious collision detection issues, boring enemies, cheap attacks, no ability to buy items until portions of the village have been set down, no interesting characters, no continuity, poor camera, useless item breaking system, tedious town re-building, and many other things. You know that feeling when you've just leveled up that bad-ass sword forever and it suddenly breaks in combat? That is essentially what describes the reaction I have to most of this game. Its bland, the environments are repetitive, the combat is boring and it uses those methods to elongate a game that has essentially no story line. I thought things would change up when I was about half-way though the game- but they stayed exactly the same. Although the one positive thing that happened- they made a sequel that fixed a lot of these problems that I still haven't picked up, but I will. Since what I liked in this game I did actually like a lot- its just disappointing that they made so many mistakes the first time.… Expand
  4. LopsterPopster
    Sep 26, 2012
    5
    This game at first felt like a blatant Zelda ripoff, then I picked it up again a couple years later to try it out again. I thought I might have judged it too quickly.
    Nope. This game is just not that fun. What is the point of having my weapons break every five minutes if the game doesn't give me the availability of the repair powder? You have to find the shop in the dungeons before you    This game at first felt like a blatant Zelda ripoff, then I picked it up again a couple years later to try it out again. I thought I might have judged it too quickly.
    Nope. This game is just not that fun. What is the point of having my weapons break every five minutes if the game doesn't give me the availability of the repair powder? You have to find the shop in the dungeons before you can buy anything, which means no help in getting healing and repair supplies. The game is also very tedious. Why did Sony think it was a good idea to have randomly generated dungeons? Overall, very monotonous, story doesn't make much sense to me, gameplay is aggravating and the controls are awkward.    … Expand
  5. Nexus-Del-Morte
    Aug 7, 2013
    6
    when i was much younger, this game pretty much was my child hood. but looking back on it now it is not really as amazing as i thought.
    don't get me wrong, it's still a wonderful game with great graphics, memorable characters and an interesting story. but the writing is a bit iffy, the gameplay can become rather dull and there are some game breaking glitches that cause major problems.    when i was much younger, this game pretty much was my child hood. but looking back on it now it is not really as amazing as i thought.
    don't get me wrong, it's still a wonderful game with great graphics, memorable characters and an interesting story. but the writing is a bit iffy, the gameplay can become rather dull and there are some game breaking glitches that cause major problems.

    while it was not as super amazing as i thought when i was little. returning to it still left a smile on my face during the experience    … Expand
  6. Rox22
    Sep 11, 2013
    5
    While I do give the game credit for trying to do something new, it is far to slow paced and repetitive to enjoy in the long run. It's starts off alright, introducing you to allot of new (at the time) gameplay mechanics. However as the game progresses you notice that each new section more or less does exactly the same thing as the section before. The narrative is also far too disjointed inWhile I do give the game credit for trying to do something new, it is far to slow paced and repetitive to enjoy in the long run. It's starts off alright, introducing you to allot of new (at the time) gameplay mechanics. However as the game progresses you notice that each new section more or less does exactly the same thing as the section before. The narrative is also far too disjointed in order to be invested. You spend too little time with each character and you really end up not caring to much what happens to them.

    Overall:

    A decent idea that is perhaps to rough in its overall design. With a bit more polish and development this game could have been allot better. Still worth a try, but I would recommend playing this in small doses.    … Expand
  7. KillaRiku
    Jul 17, 2016
    7
    Dark Cloud is an RPG with Sandbox- and Dungeon Crawler-Elements. You can build villages and cities, find, combine and upgrade weapons, explore Dungeons and fight the Evil Genie. On the one hand it's a really good game and it's lovable but on the other hand it has many flaws. Let's start with the flaws:
    The story is mediocre. Nothing good nothing bad, just how you'd expect it from a Level    Dark Cloud is an RPG with Sandbox- and Dungeon Crawler-Elements. You can build villages and cities, find, combine and upgrade weapons, explore Dungeons and fight the Evil Genie. On the one hand it's a really good game and it's lovable but on the other hand it has many flaws. Let's start with the flaws:
    The story is mediocre. Nothing good nothing bad, just how you'd expect it from a Level 5 Game. It could've been made more interesting.
    The controls and the camera are a complete disaster. It's like they made both things differently, because they don't fit. When the character moves to the left or right, the camera moves too fast. Combine that with the manual camera, with which you can't fight against the automated camera and the thousand camerabugs, that's just really bad.
    Other than that there are some unconvenient Designchoices. For example building cities can be a pain in the 'youknowwhat' because you probably need to rebuild them and moving and destroying buildings as well as trees and roads etc. doesn't just work in one motion. Everytime you wanna remove something you have to open the menu, select remove, select the item and start all over again.

    But for every flaw there are at least 3 good things. One thing that I like is the weapon system. If you forget to repair a weapon, it breaks and you lose it forever. You can equip Gems on your Weapon, to give your Weapon better Stats and when your Weapons EXP-Bar (Abs.) is full you can upgrade your weapon and make the gemchanges permanent in exchange for the gems of course. There are Legendary Weapons and they are unbreakable until you completed their task. And there's even a talking Slingshot named "Steve".
    The musical arrangements are all very good and you could listen to them for a looong time. Every song underlines the atmosphere of what's going on on screen. The citybuilding-part is really fun, too. Even though I would've wished for a little more freedom (there's a basic layout for every village that you can get a bonus for if you build it like it) it is quite fun to design your own village and walk through it.

    The Dungeons are what you would expect from a Dungeon Crawler. Different Dungeontypes with randomly generated Floors, filled with treasurechests, monsters, secret Rooms and Duels (which are basically QTE-Battles). Overall I have to say it's a pretty decent game. Most of the Flaws are either minimal or easy to get used to and the positive things just overweigh the negative things.    … Expand
  8. AKthaBeast
    May 5, 2018
    7
    This game was ok to me and nothing entirely special. I was very young when I played this game and at the time I felt it was lacking a lot of different elements to it that made this game feel flat compared to games like Ocarina of Time or FFX
  9. SebbyPlaysMusic
    Aug 2, 2021
    7
    A decent game with procedurally generated dungeons. Mostly pretty straightforward. Though I consider the sequel MUCH better, this game does add context to that game. So if you already played DC2, this might be up your alley. Try that one first.

    The biggest problem with this game is that your weapons are destroyed if they run out of weapon health points (WHP). DESTROYED. That means that    A decent game with procedurally generated dungeons. Mostly pretty straightforward. Though I consider the sequel MUCH better, this game does add context to that game. So if you already played DC2, this might be up your alley. Try that one first.

    The biggest problem with this game is that your weapons are destroyed if they run out of weapon health points (WHP). DESTROYED. That means that if you've been building up a weapon for hours and randomly come across an enemy that makes your WHP drain faster, you're probably going to reset your game in order to not lose the thing you've been building up for hours. I must've reset the game at least 20 times in the first chapter just because I ran into a dragon or rock monster that drains like half of my weapons HP. IT'S SO ANNOYING. And it definitely makes the game feel more repetitive than it already is.

    Aside from that, the main character seems to only exist to look surprised.
    The other characters are pretty interesting, but could still be fleshed out more. The story works well enough. The soundtrack is mostly pretty decent.
    Controls function well enough. Nothing too complicated or clunky.
    Not a bad game. The set-up is kind of addicting, but it can get frustrating.
    A lot of aspects of this game are WAY better in the sequel, though.    … Expand
  10. quietgrave
    Aug 17, 2021
    6
    It was really fun to play as a kid but coming back to it as an adult was a mistake. This has been obliterated by the passage of time, even a nice modern controller couldn't make the combat any less obtuse and awkward, the boss fights are all incredibly gimmicky and detached from the core combat of the game, it expects you to navigate through menus far more often than you want to because ofIt was really fun to play as a kid but coming back to it as an adult was a mistake. This has been obliterated by the passage of time, even a nice modern controller couldn't make the combat any less obtuse and awkward, the boss fights are all incredibly gimmicky and detached from the core combat of the game, it expects you to navigate through menus far more often than you want to because of the transition lag between screens, the city design is incredibly and ironically restrictive for something that is supposed to be a modular experience, the weapon synthetization is cryptic and unexplained, requiring a walkthrough or some kind of external source to utilize properly, the one and only side quest is bugged in a way that most people will encounter a soft wall and will be unable to complete it without starting over completely. This honestly feels like an RPGmaker 3 game with how clunky the combat and player controls are and it completely fails in a number of basic game design concepts.

    I loved it as a kid, it's still got a lot of charm in its art design and music, people can find something to like about it even today but it is by no means a timeless game and can't hold a candle to even its sequel in terms of playability.    … Expand
  11. neojotic
    Aug 28, 2020
    7
    Dark Cloud is a good game but it isn't any more than that.

    It borrows elements from other genres of gaming and loosely borrows off other franchises which gives it the feel of a unique game but without taking the risk of the innovation.

    A fun RPG game for PS2 but it's a fairly average title.

Awards & Rankings

46
#46 Best PS2 Game of 2001
15
#15 Most Discussed PS2 Game of 2001
7
#7 Most Shared PS2 Game of 2001

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
80

Generally favorable reviews - based on 27 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 23 out of 27
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 27
  3. Negative: 0 out of 27
  1. Hot Games
    80
    It’s a captivating run for about the first ten hours of play, then dungeon levels become too mechanical. Still, for all its shortcomings, the game also has its share of charms.
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  2. Absolute Playstation
    91
    Crawling through hoards of dungeons in search for more, and more pieces to your missing world never got old for me. I was always driven to go on.
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  3. All Game Guide
    70
    The game could not have survived as a dungeon crawler alone, and thankfully the many side diversions offer hours of fun by themselves.
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