The sequel to the original Dark Cloud for the PS2, DC2 carries many of the same features and ideas that the first one had.  The number of characters you can use is less, but they have new abilities to make up for this.  The town building and weapon leveling is still an essential part of the game, however DC2 introduces the new invention system in which you can make anything from common healing items to aquariums.

The Game

Dark Cloud 2 has only two characters that you can fight with in battle, the two heroes Max and Monica.  Max comes into possession of a mysterious red stone, and as expected someone else is chasing him for it.  His journey to escape his town and see the outside world soon leads him to Monica, a girl from the future who possess a similar blue stone and a mission to change events in the past to alter the course of her bleak future.

Both Max and Monica have a special ability to give you a boost in battle.  Early in the game, Max is given a upgradeable robot that can be treated as an entirely different character.  It runs on fuel that slowly drains while the robot is in use, and at the same time it is also a measurement of the robot's health, so it must be used carefully.

Monica, on the other hand, gains the power to transform into monsters through the help of monster badges.  There appear to be at least 12 of them, and each one can be leveled different and have unique attacks.  During the transformation, Monica can talk to other monsters, as long as they are fairly similar types.  For example, Monica can chance into a plant monster and talk to other plant types, but if she heads to the sewers and tries to talk to rats and bats, she'll just get a nice beating.

After a bit of playing the game, Max will have access to a train with which he accesses other areas of the world.  At this time he can go back to his hometown and find people to join his party.  Once a person has been recruited, they can be added as a third member to the group, and although they don't do any physical battling, they can offer extremely useful abilities to the party.  The Mayor Need gives more gold after a battle, the weapon shop owner gives Monica a point bonus when she upgrades her weapon, and so on.  These characters can also do other things when they're sitting on the train or are stationed in one of the towns that you build, such as sell costumes, weapons, and other items.

The Georama, the town building system of DC2, requires several things.  Unlike the first game that called for the finding multiple of orbs (Atla) in the dungeons, DC2 allows you to build as many of the same item that you want once you have the proper plans for it and the proper resources.  You do, however, have to find a Geostone which appears on nearly every level before you can build things.  These stones are what give you the plans for what you can build and also give you a list of tasks.

Monica's mission of saving the future relies heavily on changing the past in which Max resides.  By fulfilling tasks that come with the Geostones, such as places three trees on the map, or building two houses beside each other, new people or buildings appear in the future, and you can travel between Max's and Monica's time whenever you're in the building area.  While you can sometimes fulfill a task without actually knowing what it is, most of the time you'll need to find more Geostones before you can build appropriate buildings or find all of the parts of a specific task.

Like in the first game, Max and Monica need to build up their close-range and long-range weapons by killing monsters.  Leveling weapons earns points that can be used to power-up the weapon's attributes.  The robot Max rides earns experience points that can be traded in for upgraded parts, and Monica's transformations also level up into stronger forms of the original creature.  Unfortunately, this can become a tedious process, repeating the same levels multiple times to level 4 different things (more than four since all of Monica's transformations must be raised individually).

DC2 also includes a new invention feature.  Once Max gets a hold of a camera, he can take pictures of various things in towns or dungeons, including things such as garbage cans, mailboxes, enemies doing specific special attacks, or random people.  After you get photos of three items that are considered invention possibilities, Max can try to combine them to make a new weapon or item.  Unfortunately, most of the ideas seem pretty random and usually you won't come up with an idea on your own.  Combining a bag of flour, a fireplace, and a bakery sign allows you to make bread, which may not seem to far fetched, but a sign probably isn't something you'd think to throw in since all it is is a sign.  Ideas can be obtained all over town and from some people.  Sometimes you'll only get two clues to an invention, but the game will give you a hint to what the third item is when you try to make it.  Getting ideas is only a small part, however, for once you have an idea, you still need ingredients to make the item.  For bread, you need flour, a water elemental, and a fire elemental, but you can make the bread even in a dungeon as long as you have the ingredients.

The last new feature of DC2 is the medal system.  Each level has 3 or 4 ways to earn medals that can be spent on costumes and rename cards when you get Mayor Need into your party.  These ways include beating the level with a specific weapon, using only items to kill monsters, beating the level in a certain amount of time, catching a certain sized fish (yes, fishing again appears in DC2), or playing a new golf-like game (which I haven't discovered yet).  These can be extremely frustrating processes, trying to find all the monsters in a level to kill in a time limit, or using only one weapon which often times is completely ineffective on some monsters without being leveled.  Fortunately, earning medals is entirely optional and for the most part unimportant.

Most of the music in DC2 is mellow or catchy.  The voice actors are also fun to listen to (I think the voice of Max is one of the kids from Digimon).  The story is great, and although the art is cel-shaded, it's done very well.

Conclusion

If you liked playing the first Dark Cloud, then you will definitely like Dark Cloud 2.  The weapon leveling and medal system brings in long playing time and for the most part it becomes more challenging than boring (though doing the same level 6 times to break the time limit medal can get sort of annoying).

Rating: 8.5