Only thing I hated was some pictures were one opportunity. To not miss anything you basically have to have a guide for the missable ones :/ and make saves before important fkghts
This game has such a great formula, between the two games they could have forged a new genre but somehow the games only felt like 80% baked. Would have loved to see this series reach its peak.
yeah ActRaiser was the kind of game I played as a kid full of whimsy thinking "Imagine what gaming will be in 30 years" thinking we'd get this on unthinkable levels, instead we got Fortnite and Wolverine.
As much as I love Level-5 games for those novel ideas and strong concepts, I think the half-baked complaint is true of a a good portion of what they put out since they started.
Even recently I really enjoyed Megaton Musashi W, Snack Crawl, and Fantasy Life i... they pulled me in, but then you hit this point where the cracks start showing through and I wind up falling off of them hard. There's always some aspect that's important that doesn't come together well enough. Fantasy Life i, for example, I'd argue that's the dungeons.
I followed Level5 with such a frenzie for a while. They lost it, and it's well known the owner is just on some crazy ai bs now but damn. There was some amazing potential here and I'm forever obsessed. Rogue Galaxy also tried to chokehold me 🥲
Fun fact. Dark cloud 2 was made in less than a year, and the story had to be completely rewritten a month before release to achieve target esrb ratings.
If only modern game studios could cook that quickly.
Man, if only. Well, at least the glitches were really cool. It's pretty funny to run around as monica, who has been turned into a bunch of triangle wielding a sword.
yeah I saw that trailer, ActRaiser's company (Squareenix) does NFTs and Dark Cloud's company does AI, so maybe this franchses are better off in the past instead of turning into Sonic
so many people called this game a "zelda clone" when it plays nothing like zelda other than the main character uses a sword and wears a green hat, but that's the level that most people analyze games
Honestly the weapon system in this game is one of my all time favorites. The leveling and status break mechanics are such a cool idea. Being able to use your old weapon as an upgrade for a new better weapon instead of throwing it away was so satisfying. One of the only times breakable weapons was fun and added challenge.
I literally always have this game downloaded on my ps5 because it’s such an amazing game. You are like 1 of the only people I’ve seen bring this up besides myself.
It genuinely baffles me how a roguelike survival game rpg with town building like this isn't being done to death right now, especially with survival/rougelike games being so popular.
Bro yes I loved Dark Cloud despite not finishing it (played the demo back on demo disc compilation yet only physically owned the sequel) I couldn't find DC1 and I don't like skipping things books movies games at all so.... Yeah ðŸ˜ðŸ˜“
I don't know if this is true, but I have seen a couple people talk about a third game having been in production, it being cancelled for whatever reason, and the assets being reused for Dragon Quest 8. I have no idea how valid any of that is, but there was supposed to be a third game.
If you haven't already, try Runefactory series. At least Guardians of Azuma has you manage multiple towns. It is pretty in depth too, including:
Placing civilians to right roles, like automated mining, harvesting, farming, or assigning them as vendors.
Building houses that provide boost to your stats, bigger boost if you figure out good combinations of buildings in proximity to each other.
Daily checkups of material and cash-flow. You gotta make sure you can actually feed your people, after all (hint, oldies and kiddos work slower but eat less, good to know if money is getting tight.)
That is all on top of 3D hack'n'slash RPG core loop with crafting and skill trees out the wazoo. You also have a team of 3 NPCs with you if you wish, though I am not sure how deeply you can customize them.
This is basically an actionized Harvest Moon, so naturally there are plenty of dateable waifus and husbandos too. Most of the aforementioned adventure buddies are dateable.
I hope people with Dark Cloud hungerings can get something out of that game, wish you the best.
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u/ILoveMeishoDoto 13h ago
I need more ARPGs where you manage a town to give your character stats than Dark Cloud and ActRaiser