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20. Dark Cloud (PlayStation 2)
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At the start of Dark Cloud, some evil rich dude revives the dark genie and commands it to destroy the world. But the King of fairies is having none of that (I'm not making any of this up) and at the last minute manages to trap people and buildings and such in to floating balls called Atla, which are conveniently spread across the dungeons of the land. Our hero, Toan, after witnessing his village get destroyed, is contacted by the fairy King and given a gemstone called the Atlamilia, which will allow him to open the Atla and restore the world.

There are two main sections of this game. The first is going through dungeons, collecting Atla, defeating enemies, and beating bosses. In dungeons, on top of keeping track of your own HP, you must also watch out for your weapon HP and your thirst meter. If your thirst meter is depleted your HP will begin to drain. This can be restored with items or in a healing fountain. Your weapon loses HP through use and if depleted your weapon will break. Weapons can also be customized and evolved in to stronger weapons, so it's important not to break them. The second aspect of the game is town building. Each Atla you find in the dungeons will contain anything from a house to a person to a lamp. The items fit in specific houses and the houses can be placed anywhere in the village you're rebuilding, along with roads and trees and such. The villagers will also make requests as to where they'd like their houses because just saving their lives isn't enough, although a lot of the requests are optional to fulfill and just give you an extra prize if you complete the requests for the whole village.


General impressions:
This is one of the first games I had for the PS2 (along with Jak and Daxter) and I played it non-stop for a good while. I loved it. I loved the town building, the weapon evolving, some of the characters. Something to note about this game is it's a rare case of a game getting much easier the further in you go. The beginning of the game is the hardest part because you don't have a shop, have limited resources, have low HP, WHP, and thirst, little money, and weak weapons. The first dungeon is incredibly frustrating for those reasons but the game gets much easier after that and once you build up your thirst bar enough, it's never even an issue anymore.

Story:
I really like the story although it's not the deepest. I think it's very well told, especially in the beginning when you really feel the lonely desperation of poor Toan and the mayor, being two of the only people left. It's not a character driven story, but it's still very sweet and has some incredibly touching moments, and it did surprise me towards the end when things shifted around a bit. This isn't the deepest or best told of games, but the story is charming and kept me interested.

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The one on the right is a moon bunny

Gameplay:
It's a lot of fun when you get past that initial difficult bump I mentioned. There's a good amount of characters with different play styles so you can find someone who matches yours (although don't neglect the others or you'll regret it!) and I always got super excited when it came time to evolve my weapons to see what new thing would come up. Town building was excellent and I liked being able to play over and over and never have a town be the same.

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I friggin love Steve.
See character section for details


World:
The world is excellent, there's a great diversity in areas and I liked most of them, especially the starting town, the forest village, and the town by the ocean. What's more is you pretty much decide where the roads, trees, houses, shops, all of that stuff goes so they towns are highly customizable. Complaint would be that they're small and I would have loved to see them be bigger with more to customize.


Characters:
This is not a character driven story and the characters beyond their introduction parts get very little in the way of scenes or dialogue. Really they're all pretty disposable. But they were still charming and fun to use and as an added bonus the NPC's were all different and had their own personalities and felt like real people. As did some of the villains.

Favourite character: Xiao 02sYQ2J.png
Honourable mentions: Ruby, Steve vVS0Me3.jpgkE7Hxad.png

Xiao was an adorable cat girl (for once in the non-perverted sense) who made cute slingshot shooting noises and had an adorable run. She was also very fast, which I liked. Ruby was fun to use because I like long distance magic attacks. Steve is a talking slingshot who makes smart-ass remarks and stupid jokes while you fight. Really what's not to love? Also, according to him Xiao has huge eyes53LYR31.jpg

Overall this is a cute game with a charming story and fun gameplay. You can customize the towns, the world is excellent, and even though the characters don't get much time in the sun they're still fun to use.