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Saturday, October 29, 2011

Dark Cloud: First Impressions

Like I said earlier, I haven't decided if I'm going to play Dark Cloud for review, but I've been revisiting this old favorite for a few days, so I might as well say what I think of it so far.

The game is fun. Really, really fun. It's kind of simple- the story is pretty bland, the music is cheery and the atmosphere is generally lighthearted and upbeat. What the game is, essentially, is a combination of Zelda, Sim City, and Mystery Dungeon. You play as Toan, a young boy whose villiage is destroyed by an evil genie. Toan is told that he can rebuild the world by finding the scattered pieces of it sealed inside stones called 'Atlamilia'. By traversing randomly generated dungeons, you open the Atla and claim something from the old world, which you can then use to rebuild the town you're in.

I'm only on the second dungeon, but so far the game is pretty fun. Because the layout of each floor is always different, each dungeon entry becomes an enjoyable puzzle- you have to find the Atla, any treasure on the floor, and the key to the next floor, all while battling whatever monsters ended up spawning on the floor. Combing the dungeons makes for an enjoyable enough timesink as it is, but the 'Georama' townbuilding feature seems to be where the majority of the game is. You use the parts you find in the dungeons to rebuild the town you're in however you like. You're rewarded, however, for following the requests of the NPCs.

I don't know if this will be the next game I play all the way through, but so far Dark Cloud is a really fun roguelike/zelda clone. Hopefully it doesn't wear out it's welcome later in the game.

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