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Hell, it’s about time…

 
I cleared half the levels of the gallery yesterday, and the other half this morning. It took me about one to two hours to do that. Then it was time to fight the genie. He kicked my ass, several times. I could only attack his hands that rose out of the ground for a second or two and only with one element, indicated by a symbol on the hand. He takes more than half my health with each hit, and I can hit him for about 100 or so damage. I believe I took close to 3000 and still nothing changed.
 
This is way I’ve spent most of the day leveling my weapons up. I did some fishing until I ran out of bait, exchanged the points for gems, then went and cleared some of the back levels of the Shipwreck for more gems and Abs. points. It took me the entire day to level Toan’s sword into a 7th Heaven and to level Ruby’s Crystal Ring to a Secret Armlet. I pretty much maxed out all of the attributes on most weapons. I did this from around 10 in the morning, to about 30 minutes ago (17:00).
 
My second attempt against the genie went much better. I sold all the gems I had left and spent it all on premium chicken and repair items. It turns out the genie had three phases in total. The first one with the hands was where I noticed the nice change. Instead of doing 100 damage at a time, I did around 1100.  It took me just a few hits to go to phase two. The genie stopped attacking me with his hands and instead started shooting some giant beam from a third eye on his forehead. I had to dodge the beam and shoot at the eye when the beam stopped.  A few 1000 damage hits later, phase 3 started. He turned into some giant insect like thing and summoned to skeleton monsters. First I tried to kill the skeletons, but then their corpses kept blocking me and he resurrected them again. I decided to ignore them and focus on the genie. He would send a shock wave in my direction by stomping his foot, so I had to dodge that. Right after the shockwave, he opened his mouth and something came out that I had to hit. Every now and then he would also shoot a tracking laser beam at me, this time a bit stronger than in phase two. A few hits at the thing in his mouth, and he was dead.
There was a big ending scene where I resurrected the king’s wife and then Toan disappeared. The credits started rolling and after that there was a scene of Toan running towards his village where a party was happening. I got the “The End” screen and a notification about unlocking a new dungeon. I guess the point of that one is to do more grinding, but that is not something I’m looking forward to.
So, what do I think about the game? All in all, I would give it a 6-7/10. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun game. Some of the humor was decent and the weapon system looks good on paper, but there were a lot of things that could’ve been done better. First of all, the controls are really bad. The camera spins like crazy and it’s really hard to hit anything properly from melee without taking damage. Most of the difficulty in this game comes from bad controls. Also, the forced grinding is just bad game design. All the other bosses in the game could be killed with minimal leveling in advance, but the last one took 6-7 hours of grinding before I could kill him. The fact that the last dungeon had 25 levels instead of the usually 16-17, including levels where you were forced to use each of the characters is not even worth mentioning.  The story itself could have been good, but the presentation was just bad. At times I wasn’t sure if the game is supposed to be funny, serious, bright or dark. It’s just completely inconsistent.
 
All in all, if you like grinding and don’t care about the story to much, go for it. Just don’t expect that you will like it nearing the end just because you liked the beginning. The game tricks you like that. Oh well, they say Dark Cloud 2 was way better, so I will try that one next.

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I haven’t played anything for the past few days, but today I had a Dark Cloud marathon. I’ve been playing this game for majority of the day.  Last time I stopped playing at the Sun & Moon Temple, so this is where I’ve found myself when I started the game today.
 
I decided not to leave the dungeon after every level and instead to go through a few levels at a time to make things faster and less annoying. I managed to rebuild most of the city, including the house of the three sisters. Ungogo was in love in one of them so when I did this, he stopped being emo and joined my team. One of the levels after that was a Goro only level, and a few levels after that an Ungogo only level if I recall correctly. Anyway, after all this I managed to rebuild most of the city, get the keys needed to open the king’s tomb and defeated the boss which was extremely easy compared to the last one. I had to use Ungogo to beat him, but he barely did any damage to me.
 
I managed to start the Moon Ship and then continued to the Moon. In the process, I’ve discovered that the moon people are actually space bunnies, so that’s what I’m going to call them now. When I arrived at the moon, one of the space bunnies was waiting for me and told me he will be my guide. Five seconds later he got a call from his girlfriend and realized he forgot about their date, so he left me there.  I explored the city myself and found out that they have a factory that can build anything. Their boss built some giant machine and went to cross the Moon Sea.
The Moon Sea is actually a dungeon so that’s where I had to go next. Around level 8 or so, I’ve found the boss of the space bunnies and he joined my team. His name is Osmond, and he can fly and use machine guns.  Osmond told me they all forgot how to seal the Dark Genie, but also mentioned that his giant robot machine could probably defeat the genie if he gets a special power source which is available for victory at the nearby Coliseum. A few levels later, around level 15 or so, I arrived at the Coliseum and easily defeated the boss named Minotaur Joe. He wasn’t easier than the last boss, but he was pretty close.
 
I managed to rebuild the giant robot thing called the Sun Giant, so Osmond, me and the rest of the piloting team went on to fight the Dark Genie. He got his ass kicked but then something terrible was discovered. The Dark Genie isn’t the Dark Genie at all. It was just a mouse that was near the urn when the genie was freed. The real Dark Genie was actually possessing the general during all of this and controlling everything. He destroyed the Sun Giant and that would be it for all of us, but Dran, the Divine Beast arrived at the last minute and saved us all. He took us to the castle where we met that grey haired guy. He told us that he was the one who created the Dark Genie and has been trying to destroy him for the last 400 years. Now the Genie is about to take control of him so we have to travel back in time to stop him from ever being created.
 
We can do this by traveling through the gallery of time and collecting time fragments to recreate memories. This means that the Gallery of Time is the new and hopefully final dungeon. I managed to clear the first six levels of this dungeon and this is where I took a break. There is no city building in this part. I can just use the fragments of memories to recreate events from within the dungeon. 

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I continued to explore the shipwreck and reached level 17. There was no hook on this level and what was supposed to be the level transition area only contained a musical box. I decided to leave the dungeon and go back to Queens. I realized I have all the parts I needed to completely rebuild it, including the random requests from the villagers so I did it. As a reward, the sheriff gave me the macho sword. After that, I went to the cathedral, where the cleric told me about a curse that causes everyone that marries there to split up eventually.  There was a queen ruling Queens (!?) 100 years ago that fell in love with a commoner. They agreed to secretly marry at the cathedral but he stood her up. Because of this, she threw herself in the ocean and that is how the curse began.
 
The cleric told me to go to the fortune teller so I went and did that. I asked her to tell me about the curse and I’ve found out that the man the queen fell in love with was the harbor merchant. I went to his store and found the key to the musical box. This allowed me to go back to the shipwreck and open the box, transporting myself to the boss level. You know that one “hell hath no fury”? Well, indeed it hath none. This was definitely the hardest boss yet. First she traps me in a block of ice and then she throws another huge chunk of ice on my head. Her spells are homing and extremely fast, and she gets immune after I hit her a few times, forcing me to switch characters.
 
In the end, I used Xiao to hit her with a wind based slingshot for 7 points until she went immune, and then I switched to Ruby to hit her with a shot from her fire based ring. This would cause her to go immune immediately so I would have to switch back to Xiao. It took me a while, but after I took about 400-500 health, the fight was over. The merchant entered the room and told me he had the moon orb all along and was just using me to get to La Saia. I can’t really be mad at him, because, if I really think about it, pretty much everyone is using me.
 
I got the orb and went back to the Moon People village. They tried to use it to control the ship, but it didn’t work. It turns out, the ship was stored at the Sun and Moon temple, but they didn’t’ really take care of it at all so now I have to fix that. I went there and, of course, it’s filled with monsters and the nearby village is completely destroyed. I also met a new potential ally, so at least that’s a plus.

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For some reason, I haven’t played at all yesterday, but I somewhat made up for it today. I managed to clear a bunch of levels in the Shipwreck and reached level 16. The town is now almost completely rebuilt. Also, I have spent some time training Ruby on the back levels. I started looting some decent gems from the chests there, so I’ve been using those for upgrades. Still, I think I need to build up one of her rings before I can do some real damage. Among others, I have freed the fortune teller. Can you say “Pumpkin Panty Fortune Telling!”?  Don’t ask…

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You know that awesome sword I was building up from the start of the game? Well, you probably don’t, but I was and it was awesome. It’s gone! I was going through a dungeon, my sword got to 10 WHP, and I was going to do a few more hits before I repair him. I had to leave the game for a minute, so I suspended the game, and when I came back, I completely forgot about it and proceeded to smash it on the behind of some mimic. Know what I did next? It took the next best sword, the Serpent Sword and did the exact same thing.

Short story; Xiao is now my strongest character. The good news is, you can actually buy the back level key for the shipwreck in Queens, so I might actually do some grinding here. Anyway, I cleared a few more levels, including a back level or two and now Xiao is really kicking ass. Also, after doing some more rebuilding, I got Ruby, the Genie to join my party. She’s pretty much just like Xiao, except she uses rings and casts spells with them. I think I’ll find a nice level in this dungeon and just grind away until I really up weapons on all of my allies. Also, I will make it a habit to buy some of those auto repair items. It seems I’m too stupid not to use them.

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After finishing up some houses in the village, I’ve found out from the villagers that Goro’s father was killed by the Killer Snake. What a coincidence, the next level of Wise Owl Forest was the killer snake level. I used the flute that the minstrel gave me after completing his home to lure the snake out, and then I used the sword that Trent gave me to defeat it. It dropped a necklace that a brought to Goro. It contained a message from his father explaining everything. The villagers never betrayed him. He got sick so he wanted to die in battle and not from a disease. That is why he went to battle the snake and that is why he lost. He asked Goro to help me save the village and the rest of the world. Goro said he hates him for what he did, but he decided to help me anyway for his own sake, so now I have a new ally.
 
He sucks! Seriously, he completely and utterly sucks! He is slow, weak and useless. On level 12 of the Wise Owl Forest I was forced to control him alone and it was the worst level I’ve encountered. He can barely kill anything with his slow and awkward hammer attacks. Maybe it’s just me, maybe I can’t control him properly, but I never intend to use him by my own free will, ever again.
 
Anyway, I cleared all the levels of Wise Owl forest, managed to completely and properly rebuild the village. As a reward, Trent gave me a Power-Up Powder and a Battle Ax for Goro (big deal…).  The last boss of the forest, I was forced to use Goro again. It was a giant ape thing called Masterutan (how imaginative). I had to use Goro to smack the boss’s feet with the hammer and then I would switch to Toan to use a charged up attack while the boss was down. It took me a while to figure it out, but when I did, the boss went down fast. After breaking the mind control, he told me that the village of the moon people is “right behind this rock here”, so he cleared the rock and I entered Brownboo Village.
 
This one was more of a filler area. There was nothing for me to do here gameplaywise, I just had to go through a bunch of cut scenes. I tried to get to the elders, but they knocked me out because they don’t trust humans. Once I woke up, I tried to tell them that the Dark Genie is free, but they wouldn’t believe me until one of them checked the magic crystal. When they realized I was telling the truth, they decided to help me. I was to take their ship and fly to the moon to get the magic needed to capture the Genie again. The problem is, one of these idiots sold the ship controlling orb to Queens thinking it was a piece of fruit. Now I have to go to Queens and get the orb back.
 
Off course, Queens is completely destroyed so I have to rebuild it using the pieces I get from the Shipwreck, a local dungeon. In any case, I managed to clear the first two levels of the dungeon and already built a house for the sheriff. This is where I took a break.

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Again, I am posting what happened a day later. I didn’t play for too long because my head was being a little bitch again. I managed to clear a level or two and unlock a few more village elements. I extended the river from the pond but the water is not flowing and I can’t find a switch on the dam. I guess I need to unlock something else in order to open the dam. I’m about to go play again, so hopefully, we will find out soon.

EDIT: I cleared a few more levels and managed to completely rebuild the shop as well as some other houses. I’ve found out some stuff about that boy in a bear costume. It seems his dad was a great hunter, but five years ago he just left with no warning and never came back. This made the kid pretty hard on the outside so I need to find a way to reach out to him. Maybe I can find out more stuff about his dad in the dungeon.

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I played some more and managed to clear all the levels of the first dungeon and defeat the Divine Beast. After defeating him and returning to the village, it turns out that the arrangement of buildings that I decided on was optimal, so the Divine Beast taught me a new special attack.  He also gave me a map which allows me to travel to other locations in the world. I could only go to the next village, so that is where I went. I have to talk to a trent there, but he doesn’t have any water so I need to somehow divert the river to him. This means that I need to explore another dungeon and get more parts.
 
On the way to the second village, I also met a boy in a bear costume who looks like I will be able to recruit him later. In any case, I explored the first few levels of the new dungeon and already got a couple of buildings. I still haven’t built the local store though, so I have to travel to the first village for supplies.
 
Keep in mind, all of this happened yesterday. I still haven’t played today, but I’m about to.

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I just realized that a new version of the PCSX2 emulator is out so I decided to try this game based on a recommendation from a friend. I must say, it’s running perfectly. The frame rate is steady at 100% and there are no glitches that I could see.
 
The game is about a kid who is chosen to save his village and the rest of the world by rebuilding it and defeating the Dark Genie in the end. You do this by exploring level after level of randomly generated dungeons and collecting items that you then use to build your village. The more you build, the more items you get and the deeper you can go. You do not gain levels yourself, but your weapons van level up as well as be upgraded with various gems. You can also recruit allies and switch between them at will to traverse obstacles.
 
I managed to clear the first then levels of the first dungeon. This includes defeating two bosses and recruiting my first ally, some sort of cat girl. She uses a crappy slingshot so I only use her to pass some obstacles which include jumping. I’m liking this game at the moment and I will probably play it a bit more over the next few days.