Level-5's first game was 2001's Dark Cloud, a dungeon crawling JRPG with combat mechanics inspired by 3D Zelda games. The game also offered a unique building system that allowed the player to rebuild towns and return its destroyed world to the way it was, or as the player wished it to be. With great gameplay and a great soundtrack by Hino's close friend Tomohito Nishiura (who would later become the head of Level-5's sound department), Dark Cloud received critical and financial sucess. The extremely thin story was there just as an excuse for the gameplay, and it's not really worth talking about. Despite being a good game today, it hasn't aged all that well, mostly because of the complete lack of story.
Two years later, Level-5 created a spiritual sucessor called Dark Chronicle, for which Sony gave them more creative freedom and a bigger budget. It took what worked in the first game and expanded upon it, fixed most of the flaws, and added a more developed story. This is the game we're taking a look at today:
The Story:
This game tells the story of Max, a young man who lives in a huge city called Palm Brinks. No one is allowed to leave for reasons unknown to the inhabitants. Max, who dreams of going out to the world to find his lost mother, manages to get out one day. After that, he realizes the cruel truth: The world is now an empty wasteland. Shortly after that, he meets Monica, a girl from a hundred years in the future, who has come to Max's time on a quest to prevent all this from ever happening. Both of them join forces to stop the one responsible for this and restore the world to it's former state.
The story is very good, with a good amount of heartfelt moments and great payoffs to each subplot.
It is not without its flaws though. Max is a great character, but Monica barely gets any development. She has enough personality to make her likable, but she needed some backstory. The biggest strength of the story, however, is the characters you meet throughout the game's eight chapters. Most of them are quite charming and have really good stories of their own to tell.
It is a story with its share of problems, but what works really works. Also, since it's Level-5's first attempt at actual storytelling, I think it deserves a bit of slack..
7.5/10
The Gameplay
Dark Chronicle is a dungeon crawling JRPG, so most of the time, you will be battling monsters in a dungeon. The combat is very reminiscent of 3D Zelda games. It all takes place in real time and you can lock on to enemies, but you have only two primary means of attack: A short-ranged weapon and a long-ranged weapon. Each enemy is weak against one of them, so it's up to you to figure out what to use. Combat also involves guarding and dodging against incoming attacks and using one of three battle items to heal yourself or do damage. Both Max and Monica have their own alternate ways of attacking. Max has a robot that you can build yourself, with various weapons. It is very effective against machine monsters and required for a later boss battle, so I recommend putting work into it. Monica can turn into monsters and communicate with them to find stuff, and you can also level up your monster forms for alternate ways to fight. After you finish off all monsters in a dungeon floor, you can play a minigame reminiscent of Mario Golf that can grant you rare items. Outside the dungeons is where you will find more variety. You can take pictures of anything you find and use them as ideas in an invention system. Through this system, Max can invent various items like an aquarium that allows you to breed fish, which you can catch yourself in the fishing mechanic that becomes available when you get a rod. There also various NPCs in Palm Brinks, each with their own side-quests.
But, of course, we have to talk about the most unique feature of Dark Chronicle: World Rebuilding. In order to create a better future for everyone, you need to use the Georama system to repopulate the world. In dungeons, you can find Geostones, which give you information on what to do to rebuild civilization and how to make town buildings, trees etc. Following a list of tasks, you need to create cities and bring people from Palm Brinks to them in order to restart the chain of time for that place. Do that and you can change the future and find out how much of an impact you're having on history.
The only real problem I have with the gameplay is that the dungeons have way too many floors. Aside from golf, combat is the only thing you will do in them, so the dungeons can feel drawn out.
Overall though, the gameplay is fantastic, mostly thanks to the big amount of variety.
9.5/10
The Audio
Level-5's musical guru, Tomohito Nishiura, made the music. Even back in his early career, he already had his trademark style more than formed. The accordion tunes coupled with strings create a great atmosphere and do a great job of enhancing the story. The vocal song "Time is Changing" sung by Barbara Cohen is quite soothing and really catchy. The voice acting is also pretty good, especially for its time.
9/10
The Graphics
As usual with Level-5, we have cel-shaded graphics that create an animated movie feel. The animations are pretty good and there's full lip-syncing. There's also quite a lot of attention to detail, like Monica's hair and Max's necklace moving realistically depending on their motions during gameplay and cutscenes. Character design is also quite charming and very reminiscent of fairy tale characters.
9/10
Overall, Dark Chronicle is a beautiful gem that offers a unique take on the genre that is still unlike anything else and remains one of the best games on the console.
Final Grade: 9/10
It's been years since this game came out, and fans still hold out hope for a third game. There are fansites, forums and a facebook dedicated to make Level-5 aware of how much they want it. Me? I would definitely be interested in a third game, but Level-5's following games would prove even better than Dark Chronicle, so at this point anything they make will be fine with me, as I know it will be amazing.
