Dark Cloud series

[Reprise]

Hey, so I've always been intrigued by this series. Even when I was a huge Dreamcast fanboy back in the day and I was cursing the, at the time, unreleased PS2 console, I remember seeing screenshots and information about Dark Cloud and being really interested in it.

So fast forward to 2012, and being aware that the first one, whilst good, was apparently rather flawed, and that Dark Cloud 2 (called Dark Chronicle here in the UK) is allegedly far superior (plus I love the art style), I've finally got round to buying Dark Chronicle (or Dark Cloud 2). Hopefully I should have it in the post soon.

Anyways, I was just wondering with it being a sequel, do I need to play the first one at all? Are the stories related? Are they completely separate games? I can't seem to find much information regarding this. Also, even if they are completely separate games, is it worth picking up the first one too?

One final question BTW, what's the whole town building thing all about? That sounds really interesting, and something I've never really seen in an RPG or Zelda-clone/Adventurer.

Thanks.

[neilencio]

Be wary of the white screen bug with Dark Cloud 2. Some parts of it will not let you continue and will just freeze to a white screen (happens with some cutscenes).

There's also a lot of minor glitches: http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/3751/t1 ... gs-issues/

It's a problem with the game itself, since even PCSX2 encounters the same problems but the program doesn't throw out any errors on its log (normally, PCSX2 throws out EE miss or CRC error codes when using a bad dump/rip)

[noiseredux]

weird you brought this up. Just last week I was wondering the chances we'd ever see a Dark Cloud 3.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Good games, play them both!

The town-building reminds me more of ActRaiser than anything else.

[Xeogred]

Loved the first one, never finished it though. The repetitive nature did get to me a bit after awhile, but I still played a big chunk and overall look back on it fondly. I always heard the second game made a lot of improvements, never got around to it back then though.

[Reprise]

Thanks for the responses guys. I'll look out for those glitches, thank you for making me aware. Hope they're not too frequent/bad.

[(-_-)]

I'm about 15 hours into the first one. It's very repetative but it's quite charming and just fun to pick up and play. A few people I know praised Dark Cloud 2 who don't typically play rpgs, but I'll get on that once I'm done the first.

[Nintendork666]

The first Dark Cloud was hard for me to get into, but I had a pretty good time with the second game. The gameplay was much deeper, story was better, and the cel-shaded visuals were certainly more interesting.

I don't think the games are connected much at all, but it's been so long since I've played either one.

[Reprise]

Oh damn it! I was just casually checking CEX's stock online and just saw that they have the first Dark Cloud game in my local store. They sell it for half as much as the cheapest Ebay listings, and I was just in town in CEX today. Can't believe I didn't see it. Oh well...

[Dakinggamer87]

Good games, play them both!

The town-building reminds me more of ActRaiser than anything else.

Yep, solid PS2 RPG's