Let's Play: Dark Chronicle

Let's Play: Dark Chronicle

Unread postby JamestheFox » January 24th, 2016, 8:32 pm

"Dark Chronicle's been ported to the PS4? HECK YEAH! LOVED THAT GAME! LET'S PLAY IT!"

(Note - All the gameplay shown is mine.)

So, this is Dark Cloud 2. AKA Dark Chronicle. Don't worry, there are no story threads from the first game you need to know - it's like Final Fantasy. Now, how does this game start?

... Like Final Fantasy.

"THOSE MONSTERS ARE IN MY FATHER'S ROOM? FATHER!"

Wow, that acting.

One of the fun mechanics of this game is that you can pick up and throw enemies that are smaller than you. So. Yeah. Pretty useless in most cases, but hey. You can stun them for a bit. That's nice.

"Let me stand here over your father's corpse for a second. I'm eeevviiiiilll."

"ITACHIII - I MEAN, GUY I'VE NEVER MET BEFOREEEEE (I think, they haven't explained it yet.)"

And fade to black.

Holy framing device, Batman.

HEAVY BREATHING!

This is Maximilian, a young aristocrat with a passion well outside his high class' portfolio, who has a mystical artifact on his person. And an apparent obsession with a woman he can never see again.

... No, not Maximillion Pegasus. Maximilian. Totally different guy. Max is a mechanic, not a card maniac. He loves to build things. And his obsession is platonic, and with his mom. And he's going to the circus. Who is run by Mr. Obviously Not Evil.

Starting at around 5 minutes into the above video I reacquaint myself with the camera controls, and make some adjustments while talking to the townsfolk. I'll put an annotation to skip to further story in the vid and a link here.

"You need a ticket to get in."

"Here -" and then a hobo with Sora hair steals my ticket. "What in Toon World was that?"

"Well, that sucks, kid. Not like I could just let you in, and make sure that brat doesn't get in even with a ticket."

"Why can't you?"

"So you can learn the controls."

"But I-"

"Sucks to be you."

And thus I go around the square again, asking important characters who only get voiced this one time where the boy went.

"It's rude to speak to people from behind." Far as I remember, this message never comes up again. Ah well. I'm pretty sure it's just so that the old lady can do her animation correctly with minimal effort from the developers.

Thus, Max caught up to Hobo Sora - I mean, where was he going to run? Out of the little tutorial area into the rest of the city? Psshhhh... And then Max lets him keep the ticket. I'm kinda surprised at this. I mean, I bet Max didn't even use his fabulously wealthy family's money to buy that slip. He has a job, he probably worked for weeks to save - okay I couldn't say that with a straight face. Then Hobo Sora creates a spotlight, initiates dramatic music, gives vague exposition about passing some kind of test, and vanishes in totally not magical blue light, and leaves behind the ticket. Rendering the above mess - that's right - ABSOLUTELY POINTLESS.

Well, assuming Hobo Sora never comes back. He won't, right? Yeah. Totally pointless.

Oh, also? Those tears in the screen? Totally not in the original game. That's the PS4 porting process screwing up.

Thus, Max goes into the circus, watch some crazy circus acts, such as an elephant performing the Sphere Shot from Final Fantasy X, and two guys practicing their comedy routine in which one beats the ever loving tar out of the other, shaking him down for a magical red stone the beatee... doesn't... have...

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-

This results in a chase sequence in which Max becomes star of the show, shows his superhuman strength and agility, and kills/injures a grand total of eight guys via deadly dodging before bludgeoning four more with a wrench and making his escape by jumping over an entire crowd of people. Look at this kid. This kid has probably never, ever lifted or gone for a jog or anything. And yet he is as good a run-and-jumper as freaking Mario.

And that's not even the end of the chase. That said, I love all of the music used for the next five and a half minutes. First, the Moonlight Tango, theme of the first Dungeon Boss (who is now making a guest appearance as the titanic terror chasing Max). It's just so... perfect for this troupe of clowns.

MORE HEAVY BREATHING.

Kid, if you are winded from just a little running, you are not climbing that po-oh my god he's climbing it. And running across the rooftops.

I am PRETTY sure this is the most acrobatic we EVER see Max, by the way. He never does any of these epic maneuvers again.

Annnd chalk ANOTHER clown down as dead. Today, nine comedians died in Palm Brinks.

Max finds himself cornered by the leader of the bunch, who gives him an offer he can't refuse: give him the Millennium Eye or die.

"Don't do it!" Oh hey Hobo Sora. I thought you'd never come back. "You can't give it to him, it's too important!" Uh huh. Give us one reason why we should believe you. You tried to steal our circus ticket. Now Max. Put some serious thought into this. On one side, there's a red-head hobo (oh yeah, did I mention he was a redhead? Some cultures say some baaaaaad things about redheads. Do you really want to risk them being right?) who stole from you and has been acting all kinds of shifty, and may or may not be a figment of your imagination. On the other side, there's a fat clown guy who is riding a giant clown spider mech. On the other other side, there's the ledge you just sent a clown falling to hell off of. A smart lad would side with the spidermech.

... But Max is not a smart lad. He's a JRPG protag.

OH COME ON NOW, THIS IS A DUNGEON CRAWLER, NOT A PLATFORMER. YOU SHOULDN'T BE CAPABLE OF THESE JUMPS! HOW ARE YOU ALIVE?

And then he escapes into the sewers, guided by his OTHER hobo friend.

"Every boring day had been the same for me." Uh, dude, if that was the case, HOW WERE YOU ABLE TO DO ALL THAT? NO, SERIOUSLY!

And cue the title logo, opening credits, and the award-bait song. Fun fact. There are four, no, five official versions of this song. Allow me to demonstrate.
There's a normal version of this song that you're hearing now, then the "acoustic" version that you hear in the credits.
There are two recordings each of these songs - one in English, and one in Engrish. That doubles the count.
Then there's the techno remix included in a remix album.

That said, I totally love this song.

Now. Back to the game. You'll note that in my video, Max is wearing a red fancy outfit, and then during the credits sequence we see Max in a totally different outfit. The thing about that is that this game features alternate costumes - you pick hat/hairpin, bodywear, and shoes. This has no effect on your stats, so you're free to mix and match.

Also, let's see how many spoilery scenes are in the opening credits... Oh wow, they're starting with a scene from, like, five chapters from now. Geez. A whole bunch of scenes from that chapter. Nothing too spoilery as out of context as you get to see them... Wait, was that a scene from THE BONUS DUNGEON? WHAT.

... Good on you, Dark Cloud 2, for showing us those scenes so removed from context that we can only guess when or where most of them happen.

And thus, Maximillion Pegasus escaped The Joker's Army and the Jokerbot with the help of his sewer-hobo friend. Next time, he progresses into the Obligatory Sewer Dungeon and reminisces about his mom.
GM of Kingdom Hearts VD: Visions of Destiny. You never know who you'll run into next. Until your Vision shows you.
Shinobi in Star Wars GM. Kyo's Data here.
Pokewizard Quest GM. Harry's Pokedex here.
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Re: Let's Play: Dark Chronicle

Unread postby JamestheFox » January 27th, 2016, 6:48 pm

"Well, the mayor doesn't want us going outside, the bad guys come from outside, apparently bad things are happening outside. So let's go outside." Logic.

Also, despite being a sewer-living hobo and a kid, our buddy Donny somehow has a gun and a two way radio setup. Both of which he gives to Max. So now we're packing heat and have a home base to stay in communications with.

And thus, Chapter One: To the Outside World begins, and we explore the Underground Water Channel, which is absurdly spacious. I mean, you could probably even play- Ooooh. I almost gave that away.

We enter the dungeon, and Donny explains how the dungeons work... though really, shouldn't he have told us this stuff BEFORE we were in the dungeon?

TL;DR, every floor has a map and a monster/chest tracker, both in the chests in the dungeon, and a key to the next floor, which is held by one of the local monsters. The shape of each floor, and where all this is, is randomly generated every time you enter the floor.

If THAT was TL;DR, Dark Cloud 2 is a Dungeon Crawler.

You will also notice that each floor has the following, which are NOT randomized: an "Episode Name," which will usually describe what you'll find on that floor, and multiple objectives that earn you Medals (which are unimportant now, but on the PS4 version of the game there IS a Trophy for getting ALL of the Medals). On some Floor Descriptions you can also press Triangle to view what raw materials can be found on that floor.

Going back to the Medals, let's talk about what we can currently do.

First, every floor has a Speed Run Medal. Right now the times you have to beat are BRUTAL. Max can't hope to complete these until we get a certain something later on, so I'm more or less ignoring these.

There's a Medal that's question-marked out, I'll be back for that later. Probably around the time that I start wrecking the Speed Run Medals.

Finally, we have the special rule. This will vary - this first floor's task, for example, is to clear the whole darned floor without restoring health via items or healing springs. They also have tasks like "Damage and Defeat all monsters with Max's Gun" or whatnot. Of these tasks, the hardest is "Damage and Defeat All Foes using only Items." No gun, no wrench. Only the boxes you can find and pick up, and any damaging items you find, such as Bombs. This mission always, ALWAYS sucks, because you have a very limited supply of viable items.

Next, let's talk about the level up mechanics of this game. Max doesn't level. Instead, his weapons level, and like Pokemon, they can evolve. Your basic Battle Wrench can evolve into a True Battle Wrench, which is modified to be a little more wieldable, or you can skip that step and go straight to the Drill Wrench, which has a drill built in, for example. This continues until you hit the end of an evolutionary line, usually WAY down the line. With enough evolutions, you can take your pitiful Battle Wrench and eventually turn it into the Grade Zero Wrench or the LEGEND Hammer.

How do you do this? Simple. First, you level up a weapon, giving it Synth Points. You "spectrumize" items into Synth Spheres, which can then be absorbed into your weapon to boost an attribute based on what you spectrumized. The more of an item you turn into a Synth Sphere, the more stats it gives and the more Synth Points you need. You can even spectrumize weapons. At base level, though, this isn't a good idea - it creates Unstable Synth Spheres, which give you horrible stat boosts. You want to level up your weapons to +5, and THEN spectrumize them, which gives a random amount of Attack and about half of the spectrumized weapon's attributes to the receiving weapon, all for just 5 Synth Points. At a certain point this becomes the most efficient way to buff your better weapons.

Beware, though, that weapons have HP, too, and once that runs out, they "break," and can't do any damage. This is actually better than in Dark Cloud 1, in which a weapon that runs out of HP is gone forever. Uggghhh. Luckily, there are items that heal your damaged weapons, and they're fairly commonly found.

Anywho, Max progresses into the Underground Water Channel, killing yet more clowns, now interspersed with Rodents of Unusual Size and Frogs. Those last ones? Evil. If you are trying to kill everything with a gun, those things will dodge you simply by abusing their walk cycle.

Max also opens many chests, some of which are locked or just plain trapped - locked chests you can open with Treasure Chest Keys, or you can FORCE them open, but then they activate some kind of trap. But non-locked trapped chests are a different story - you must guess which of the three types of traps this particular chest is using. They either bring you to low health and then Poison you, break both your weapons, or the chest will explode. My strategy is simple - always guess explosion. If you're right, the chest opens. If you're wrong, it boots you from the guessing UI and activates its trap. But of the three traps, only the explosion denies you the treasure inside - if it breaks your weapons or poisons you, you can just go open the chest again, and select the trap it actually used. And in my experience I can ALWAYS heal the damage the other two traps do.

Okay, by now, Max has probably made it through the first floor. Let's check on him.

"I had said I want to see the outside world to Donny, but there was another reason why I wanted to go there..."

We watch Max be a grumpy gills at the dinner table, which is totally cool, because his dad refuses to answer a simple question in any actual details. You see, Max doesn't know where his mom's vanished off to, only that his dad has said she's "doing important work far away from here." He doesn't know the name of the town, or what she's doing there. Which is frustratingly vague to a young teenage momma's boy like Max.

Now, what gets me here is that, spoiler alert, Max's dad DOES know the truth, at this point, and he IS telling part of it. But would it have killed him to give some more details, to make his half-truth a bit more believable? Even if the deets were lies, that would have at least eased Max's incessant questioning. "Oh, last I heard she's living in Heim Rada, managing a mining and construction job there. Very important. Can't be troubled by us."
Hell, that's literally the whole truth.
Or something. Also, more heavy breathing. That oughta round all this acting out.

Ignoring that, Max proceeds to push through another floor, and at the beginning of the third floor he spends more time musing about his mom... before he's jarred from his thoughts by Donny giving him some more tutorial advice - telling him that if he looks at the in-game Help Menu, he can view more information about fighting... Which is actually just the same info I just described above.

Now, at this point, I decided, for some unholy reason, to start grinding. Like... really hard. Using just the first three floors of the Underground Water Channel, I uplifted my wimpy Classic Gun into a Trumpet Gun, and from there I went off my usual upgrade path (I prefer the Bell Trigger) and picked the Grenade Launcher. Meanwhile, I turned my Battle Wrench into a Drill Wrench and then into a Smash Wrench. Speaking from several hours later, halfway through the chapter, these weapons are still pretty much wrecking everything. Especially the homing grenades the Grenade Launcher fires. Daaang.

I also triggered my meeting with the Circus Elephant from last time, Linda. I don't seem to have any footage of that, so I'll describe what happens here. Linda is immune to all of Max's weapons, so after a set amount of... time, I guess, Max's mentor, Cedric, shows up, piloting a mech called the Ridepod, and which Cedric has personally named "Steve."

Cedric cleans Linda's clock, but before he can finish her, Steve starts malfunctioning - Cedric hadn't actually finished the fuel container. So you retreat, and Cedric leaves the building of the final component to Max. To THAT end, he gives Max... a camera.

Which begins the first sidequest of the game. First, you take pictures, adding your subject to your list of "ideas." Then you combine "ideas" in groups of three, which creates a blueprint. Then you use the materials the blueprint calls for to make the item in the blueprint.

Fun fact - you can make the blueprints for a second level fuel container, shoes for the princess, a weapon for said princess, and more during the tutorial in which you make the first level fuel container. This is despite the CRIPPLING limit on where you can travel at this point in the game. The area you're in is just so densely packed with things you can take pictures of.

At this point you can ALSO start taking pictures of special places and things for Donny's... um... newspaper, I think? They're called Scoops, after all. As you take more pics of different normal items and of these Scoops, your "photography level" increases, and Donny gives you neat stuff. Another fun fact, you can do your first level up in Photography at this point in the game. You will probably see me stop and take pictures throughout this Let's Play, as many Scoops are, in fact, pictures of enemies (especially Bosses) doing things.

But I digress. You're not here to hear me rattle on about Pokemon Snap-ish things.No, you're hear to see a giant robot beat an elephant to death.

This fight is EASY, basically a tutorial for how to use the Ridepod. I also was reminded, to my disappointment, that the Ridepod has to gain EXP so it can upgrade its core, before I can equip the treads and the upgraded fuel capacity I'd built for it during the photography/invention tutorial.

Meanwhile, Cedric goes off to talk to the Mayor, who is Cedric's childhood friend. This is despite them have very little chemistry beyond attempted melodrama. This conversation continues as Max completes another floor... despite Cedric being in his usual spot so that he can refuel the Ridepod for you when it inevitably nearly dies. Eventually, Cedric convinces Need that the current quarantine this city is undergoing needs to stop, and heads off on a train...

Again, despite this, if you go back to his shop in town, he will be there to repair and upgrade your Ridepod.

This also raises a question - if, by the time you're through the floor "Steve's Battle," Cedric's convinced Need to start up the trains, why does Max have to continue through the Underground Water Channel? He could just hop aboard the train, and Escape from the City that way. Got places to go, gotta follow our rainbow.

Ah well.

Next time, we take on the boss, and we learn why Pegasus' Millennium Eye is so important to The Joker. Also, more pictures are taken, and we meet people.
GM of Kingdom Hearts VD: Visions of Destiny. You never know who you'll run into next. Until your Vision shows you.
Shinobi in Star Wars GM. Kyo's Data here.
Pokewizard Quest GM. Harry's Pokedex here.
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