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Kaku's Rambles 185 - Degrading The Rain

So, it's once again that time of year where someone mentions Weapon Degradation in video games and I stare agape that it somehow managed to fuck it up when a game from the Playstation 2 got it pretty much perfect, and then I wonder what happened to the franchise. Then I stare at my collection and weep a tear for what I have lost by trading a video game in High School for a Yu-Gi-Oh card. So, invariably, that brings us to today's topic which is the lovely lost game of Dark Cloud, at least the first one.

So, let's start at the beginning. Dark Cloud is an RPG from the dark ages of December of 2000 which begins with a world tradegy. I can't remember exactly why or how, but I know it involves a Genie granting a wish. What specifically happens, though, is that said wish causes everything in the known world to get entrapped within crystals that then are dispersed across nearby dungeons for some reason. So, every single thing on the planet itself is now sealed away, I suppose besides the monsters the put the chests wherever, and YOU, the protagonist, finds yourself alone with nothing more than your goofy clothes and a sword. You also find a treasure chest in a cave you were exploring that contains a small man who gives you some form of crystal. You leave said cave, with the man following you and the crystal firmly attached to your wrist.

Of course, this leads you out into a blank field where you're SURE that there was a whole fucking town before you went into that cave, but the old man reveals that you and only you can restore everything to the world around you by going into the deep dungeons to retrieve more crystals of that specific type to rebuild everything. See, every house is kept in a crystal, and up to six important items/people/whatever from the house are kept in those crystals too. After you go halfway down that first dungeon, though, you discover a problem. There's a switch across a gap that presumably only goes down a floor but regardless you can't pass, and you don't want to throw things to miss. So you head home, and put down all your stuff, and finish building your house with putting everything into your house.

Now, just to take a backstep, if you complete any building with all the people or stuff put back into it, you get rewards. I mean you get a couple of treasure chests just for finding a building, but special things happen when you complete a house. Sometimes it's just getting an item or whatever, but sometimes, it's utterly absurd. Back to the story in progress, the specific thing that happens is that your pet cat magically transforms into a meowing only cat girl whom comes with her own slingshot. So now you not only have two party members, but you can continue to progress into the dungeon ahead of you. Granted, I'm only brushing over the story and what sticks out in my head the most.

Hell, I haven't even talked about the gameplay! Jeez, what's wrong with me? So, yeah, you have a sword, and your catgirl has slingshots, but the more interesting thing is that your sword has attributes and can evolve into other things, as can her slingshot and other future weapons wielded by future party members. Regardless, with the power of evolving and leveling up weapons comes the downside of all your weapons have a health bar. Let's put a pin in this for now, because there are other mechanics. See, not only does your weapons have a health bar, called "Weapon Health," but you have three health bars per character. They have a hunger meter, a thrist meter and finally Hit Points. So, while Hit Points are literally in every RPG ever, you lose those whenever you fight with an enemy and they hit you if you didn't know, the Thirst and Hunger meters deplete over time. So yeah, your weapons "Break down" as well as your own body breaking down over time. We'll eventually come back to WHY each of these works in context, but we're just getting rolling on this gameplay elements. Not only can you find chunks of the freaking world in boxes, but you can find materials to upgrade your weapons by clipping them onto said weapons and leveling them up, items you can eat and/or drink, weapons you can use, and finally, you might RARELY find a special item to that dungeon specifically. Said item allows you to activate something that lets you go to a harder side of the dungeon, which is also procedurally generated, but gives you a lot better stat boosting items, better weapons, and generally just cooler stuff with a lot harder enemies. The basic floors just give you plot related stuff mostly, with things that give tiny boosts of like +3 to one stat of killing a specific type of enemy better, but the advanced versions give you gems that boost you by a fuckload in lots of stats, just as an example, with plus ten or above on the various creature type strengths, but also elemental power/resistance increased. So much good stuff and this is only half the game.

The other half of the game revolves around something that I wish more games had. See, not only do you get buildings and stuff that goes in those buildings, but you actually have to rebuild each town. Now, this doesn't mean that each town is pre-constructed, hell no, you get to place each building wherever you want, and every piece of the town wherever. However, as you do this, you learn that the people in the village, given the chance to rebuild, would kind of like some changes. Maybe where there house originally was wasn't quite in the right direction for them, and they want to see the sun in the morning. Or maybe, they hated one neighbor. Simple stuff, which begets harder stuff as the game goes on. Either way, though, it reminds me of another game that's one of my top favorites, but that's for another time and another article, I think.

So, with half the game being a city builder and the other half being a dungeon crawler, why in the hell are we talking about it in an article talking about Degradation? Well, folks, take that pin back out of the thing I told you to pin earlier, here's where we get into the nitty gritty. See, your characters don't really level up or change throughout the game. Hard stop. However, what does change, grow, and become weird are your weapons that you use and gather. Everyone starts with a default weapon that is fairly weak, but in return can ALWAYS be used even when you don't have any Repair Powder to, well, repair them. You can get more powerful, more weird, and more interesting weapons of course throughout your journey for all of your eventual cast. Those have a health bar that goes down with every connection with enemies, of course, and when it hits zero, the weapon breaks. While most people would view this as kind of a kick in the teeth, and it can be, you can repair these weapons. They also gain EXP to level up and will grow depending on what you have equipped to them. In addition, if you get a weapon up to Level 5, which is also the name of the studio that made this game I think, you can choose to break the weapon down into a weapon crystal, which carries over 70% of all its stat boosts to any other weapon on level up. So you're basically Pokémoning these weapons into the ultimate fighting weapon. Speaking of Pokémon, if you reach certain stat plateaus with a weapon, you will be able to evolve it into a new form. Most times, it's a more powerful weapon that hits a bit better, and looks cool, with no drawbacks. I'll get into those in the next paragraph, but basically speaking, you're making bigger and better weapons all the time, of course. You also end up getting, beyond the slingshotting catgirl, a Hammer user (who can eventually get a Frozen Tuna, which used to be a 'weapon' that came up a lot around me), a Genie who technically uses rings to harness her magical powers, a psuedo-African man who uses a spear to spin away dark poisonous air, and finally a bunny man who uses a gun and utterly replaces your catgirl as a character very rudely. Either way, though, each character's still got the same sort of leveling scheme, and yes, you can use one character to level up a weapon, break that weapon into a weapon-gem, and use that gem on another character's weapon, I believe.

Now, just having weapons with stats and the ability to do more damage to specific types of enemies is fine and good, but you also get drawback and pluses using certain types of weapons. I don't remember ALL of them, that'd be absurd, but I do remember the Thrist and Quench dichotomy so imagine that there are others too like this. I did mention the water meter before, and with Quench-element weapons, it takes a lot longer for your water meter to deplete. With Thrist, it goes down a hell of a lot quicker. I can't quite remember all of the others ones, but there were a lot, and I think they all followed a dichotomy like that. One that made it better, and one that made it worse. I also vaguely remember that unfortunately, if a weapon had one of the negatives, like Thrist, on it, you could not just get rid of it by putting a Quench gem on it. You had to actively constantly have a Quench gem on it, or you had to just not use the Thirst weapon. I don't think it carried over on evolution though, so maybe it's for the best.

Either way, I mostly wanted to get it out of my brain for a while that Dark Cloud 1 was a game I owned, loved, and really really regret getting rid of for some cash at some point in my life. I want to get a hold of a copy of it again, just to plow through the game one more time, but honestly, I worry that if I do, it won't be as fun, as immersive, or as good as I remember. I guess it's just a piece of nostaglia I can't get back for now. Next week, I want to talk about something a bit more broad. I hope you'll join me.

Description
Kaku's Rambles 185 - Degrading The Rain

So, it's once again that time of year where someone mentions Weapon Degradation in video games and I stare agape that it somehow managed to fuck it up when a game from the Playstation 2 got it pretty much perfect, and then I wonder what happened to the franchise. Then I stare at my collection and weep a tear for what I have lost by trading a video game in High School for a Yu-Gi-Oh card. So, invariably, that brings us to today's topic which is the lovely lost game of Dark Cloud, at least the first one.

So, let's start at the beginning. Dark Cloud is an RPG from the dark ages of December of 2000 which begins with a world tradegy. I can't remember exactly why or how, but I know it involves a Genie granting a wish. What specifically happens, though, is that said wish causes everything in the known world to get entrapped within crystals that then are dispersed across nearby dungeons for some reason. So, every single thing on the planet itself is now sealed away, I suppose besides the monsters the put the chests wherever, and YOU, the protagonist, finds yourself alone with nothing more than your goofy clothes and a sword. You also find a treasure chest in a cave you were exploring that contains a small man who gives you some form of crystal. You leave said cave, with the man following you and the crystal firmly attached to your wrist.

Of course, this leads you out into a blank field where you're SURE that there was a whole fucking town before you went into that cave, but the old man reveals that you and only you can restore everything to the world around you by going into the deep dungeons to retrieve more crystals of that specific type to rebuild everything. See, every house is kept in a crystal, and up to six important items/people/whatever from the house are kept in those crystals too. After you go halfway down that first dungeon, though, you discover a problem. There's a switch across a gap that presumably only goes down a floor but regardless you can't pass, and you don't want to throw things to miss. So you head home, and put down all your stuff, and finish building your house with putting everything into your house.

Now, just to take a backstep, if you complete any building with all the people or stuff put back into it, you get rewards. I mean you get a couple of treasure chests just for finding a building, but special things happen when you complete a house. Sometimes it's just getting an item or whatever, but sometimes, it's utterly absurd. Back to the story in progress, the specific thing that happens is that your pet cat magically transforms into a meowing only cat girl whom comes with her own slingshot. So now you not only have two party members, but you can continue to progress into the dungeon ahead of you. Granted, I'm only brushing over the story and what sticks out in my head the most.

Hell, I haven't even talked about the gameplay! Jeez, what's wrong with me? So, yeah, you have a sword, and your catgirl has slingshots, but the more interesting thing is that your sword has attributes and can evolve into other things, as can her slingshot and other future weapons wielded by future party members. Regardless, with the power of evolving and leveling up weapons comes the downside of all your weapons have a health bar. Let's put a pin in this for now, because there are other mechanics. See, not only does your weapons have a health bar, called "Weapon Health," but you have three health bars per character. They have a hunger meter, a thrist meter and finally Hit Points. So, while Hit Points are literally in every RPG ever, you lose those whenever you fight with an enemy and they hit you if you didn't know, the Thirst and Hunger meters deplete over time. So yeah, your weapons "Break down" as well as your own body breaking down over time. We'll eventually come back to WHY each of these works in context, but we're just getting rolling on this gameplay elements. Not only can you find chunks of the freaking world in boxes, but you can find materials to upgrade your weapons by clipping them onto said weapons and leveling them up, items you can eat and/or drink, weapons you can use, and finally, you might RARELY find a special item to that dungeon specifically. Said item allows you to activate something that lets you go to a harder side of the dungeon, which is also procedurally generated, but gives you a lot better stat boosting items, better weapons, and generally just cooler stuff with a lot harder enemies. The basic floors just give you plot related stuff mostly, with things that give tiny boosts of like +3 to one stat of killing a specific type of enemy better, but the advanced versions give you gems that boost you by a fuckload in lots of stats, just as an example, with plus ten or above on the various creature type strengths, but also elemental power/resistance increased. So much good stuff and this is only half the game.

The other half of the game revolves around something that I wish more games had. See, not only do you get buildings and stuff that goes in those buildings, but you actually have to rebuild each town. Now, this doesn't mean that each town is pre-constructed, hell no, you get to place each building wherever you want, and every piece of the town wherever. However, as you do this, you learn that the people in the village, given the chance to rebuild, would kind of like some changes. Maybe where there house originally was wasn't quite in the right direction for them, and they want to see the sun in the morning. Or maybe, they hated one neighbor. Simple stuff, which begets harder stuff as the game goes on. Either way, though, it reminds me of another game that's one of my top favorites, but that's for another time and another article, I think.

So, with half the game being a city builder and the other half being a dungeon crawler, why in the hell are we talking about it in an article talking about Degradation? Well, folks, take that pin back out of the thing I told you to pin earlier, here's where we get into the nitty gritty. See, your characters don't really level up or change throughout the game. Hard stop. However, what does change, grow, and become weird are your weapons that you use and gather. Everyone starts with a default weapon that is fairly weak, but in return can ALWAYS be used even when you don't have any Repair Powder to, well, repair them. You can get more powerful, more weird, and more interesting weapons of course throughout your journey for all of your eventual cast. Those have a health bar that goes down with every connection with enemies, of course, and when it hits zero, the weapon breaks. While most people would view this as kind of a kick in the teeth, and it can be, you can repair these weapons. They also gain EXP to level up and will grow depending on what you have equipped to them. In addition, if you get a weapon up to Level 5, which is also the name of the studio that made this game I think, you can choose to break the weapon down into a weapon crystal, which carries over 70% of all its stat boosts to any other weapon on level up. So you're basically Pokémoning these weapons into the ultimate fighting weapon. Speaking of Pokémon, if you reach certain stat plateaus with a weapon, you will be able to evolve it into a new form. Most times, it's a more powerful weapon that hits a bit better, and looks cool, with no drawbacks. I'll get into those in the next paragraph, but basically speaking, you're making bigger and better weapons all the time, of course. You also end up getting, beyond the slingshotting catgirl, a Hammer user (who can eventually get a Frozen Tuna, which used to be a 'weapon' that came up a lot around me), a Genie who technically uses rings to harness her magical powers, a psuedo-African man who uses a spear to spin away dark poisonous air, and finally a bunny man who uses a gun and utterly replaces your catgirl as a character very rudely. Either way, though, each character's still got the same sort of leveling scheme, and yes, you can use one character to level up a weapon, break that weapon into a weapon-gem, and use that gem on another character's weapon, I believe.

Now, just having weapons with stats and the ability to do more damage to specific types of enemies is fine and good, but you also get drawback and pluses using certain types of weapons. I don't remember ALL of them, that'd be absurd, but I do remember the Thrist and Quench dichotomy so imagine that there are others too like this. I did mention the water meter before, and with Quench-element weapons, it takes a lot longer for your water meter to deplete. With Thrist, it goes down a hell of a lot quicker. I can't quite remember all of the others ones, but there were a lot, and I think they all followed a dichotomy like that. One that made it better, and one that made it worse. I also vaguely remember that unfortunately, if a weapon had one of the negatives, like Thrist, on it, you could not just get rid of it by putting a Quench gem on it. You had to actively constantly have a Quench gem on it, or you had to just not use the Thirst weapon. I don't think it carried over on evolution though, so maybe it's for the best.

Either way, I mostly wanted to get it out of my brain for a while that Dark Cloud 1 was a game I owned, loved, and really really regret getting rid of for some cash at some point in my life. I want to get a hold of a copy of it again, just to plow through the game one more time, but honestly, I worry that if I do, it won't be as fun, as immersive, or as good as I remember. I guess it's just a piece of nostaglia I can't get back for now. Next week, I want to talk about something a bit more broad. I hope you'll join me.