Bethany Massimilla Community Manager

Now Playing: From the Backlog Collection: Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, Resident Evil 0, Viewtiful Joe Makes Me Weep Just to Look at It: Dark Cloud 2

You Win, Level 5

With all the good and great releases that populate gaming, it's easy to fall behind. I'm one of those people who accumulate games and then end up neglecting a few, creating one of the most onerous curses of the hobby: the gaming backlog. Every so often I find myself with a chance to whittle away at the pile, and I recently went back to a little game called Dark Cloud 2 (which, incidentally, was GameSpot's PlayStation 2 Game of the Year last year) with the firm intention of completing it. I imagined that I had a pretty good idea of what I was in for, derived from my previous experience with the game, and I of course had my unwavering resolve. No game gets the better of me, once I've decided to finish it. No way. I had Dark Cloud 2's number, and that number was up!

Fifty gameplay hours later, I was humbled and broken. It's simply not possible for the human mind to fully comprehend the behemoth of content that this game somehow contains. Dark Cloud 2 isn't the kind of RPG you can power through without distraction, leaving side quests and extras behind for that second swing you promise yourself you will eventually give it. The basic premise is that you've got to reconstruct the present--much of which has been erased by a very unhappy fellow--in order to restore the future. You do that by collecting artifacts called geostones from dungeons and using the templates they provide to place buildings, people, and items until a given area is complete.

All your free time is belong to me!

That's the gist of things, but the Dark Cloud 2 experience cannot be condensed into a single, linear path that allows you to bulldoze through the game. I discovered this the hard way as I fought mightily to burn my way past all the dungeons to my goal. For one thing, each of the two playable characters (Max and Monica) has a melee and ranged weapon that can be regularly upgraded with use. I tried to make this as straightforward as possible, but with 10 attributes to separately level and branching upgrade paths, I found myself unable to resist spending inordinate amounts of time tweaking my weaponry until it was satisfyingly scary. That's one thing, but Max also has a ridepod, a machine that's equal parts vehicle and battle robot, whose parts can be upgraded by means of inventions. You make inventions by taking pictures of just about every single thing in the world around you and mixing ideas to create something new. I ended up compulsively taking pictures of everything I came across, to add to what became an insane album of shop signs and bottles and refrigerators and pumpkins and fireplaces and flowers and stuff that you shouldn't be able to use in inventions, like the sun.

I was both fascinated by and inextricably drawn to the game's minutiae like this, and the time seemed to fly by. The extras seemed overwhelming at the beginning, but in periods where I was tired of slogging through dungeons I'd try everything. Everything from grabbing missed pictures, to playing the golflike spheda, to tackling the numerous varied side quests necessary to recruit people from town, to fishing, to keeping those fish in an aquarium, to weighing fish at a fishing contest, to racing those fish for fabulous prizes. It's insane to think that an RPG can have enough fish-related events to make another game, but Dark Cloud 2 comes close. I almost became lost in its world of better fishing rods and the most succulent, appealing baits.

Forget about saving the world--check out this spiffy fish I caught!

Still, all games must have an end, and I was determined to reach that end, so I made it to Chapter 7 and resoundingly defeated its bosses in what was nearly a full Sunday spent playing. I felt both fulfilled and a little sad as the credits rolled by, knowing that even after all the events I'd explored and things I'd done, I'd only really scratched the surface of what was offered to me. That feeling lasted up until the end of the credits, when the game asked me to make a save for Chapter 8. That's right--Dark Cloud 2 continues even after the main narrative has ended. I unbelievingly created the save file and loaded it up just to see, and when I entered that chapter's dungeon and found something like a bazillion rooms, I finally dropped my controller from nerveless fingers in defeat. Fifty-plus hours, and I wasn't done. I wasn't even close to done.

I have an entirely new level of respect for the developer, Level 5, a respect that is a mix of admiration for its excellent work and fear for the collective sanity of a group that could create a game that's so insidiously deep. The only ones who have a prayer of mastering every aspect of Dark Cloud 2 are bedridden with extended illnesses, and they also don't eat or sleep. I've been playing games for a very long time, and never before have I felt both so satisfied with and utterly demoralized by a game as I have with this one. I know I'll eventually finish that last chapter and go on my merry way, but the memory of that long Sunday, my foolish confidence, and my subsequent defeat will always remain. You win, Level 5. Dark Cloud 2 -- 1, Bethany -- 0.