When I saw this game on the Shelf at my local Fred Meyer - I can honestly say it looked like crap. Which was a very shallow assumption on my part. Little did I know that under the dull name and rip-off cover, there was a game that could almost be put into it's own action genre.

Dark Cloud is a very rewarding game, throughout the story you get to collect "Alta" (Strange ... balls ... that contain pieces of the world [houses, people, animals, parts]). With the pieces of.. everything.. that you collect in the dungeons, you can build the towns back how and where you wish, to an extent. I found it kind of exciting finding all the Alta through a level, when you open one up it's like a little surprise! The story unfolds as you restore everything and everyone by finding the Alta that contains them.

In the beginning I found it annoying when you have to change weapons throughout the game. You see... durring gameplay you occationally find a new, better weapon, which of course you want to equip right away. There's a problem with this though, you can level up each weapon, and once it's reached it's max, it breaks down and you can equipt it as an item on your new weapon - giving you a small portion of it's stats. Besides the fact that you have to level up every single weapon to get something fairly powerful, I think this is a very cool concept.

Overall, I think the idea is insanely genius on their part, and I expect Dark Cloud 2 to even be better!