Journal Entry #24: The Dark Cloud Saga

Platinum #24 - Dark Cloud (PS2 port)

While I was in Teslagrad, I found a library full of old books.

"Are you interested in ancient legends of other worlds, sir?" asked the librarian.

"Sort of," I said, feeling my cheeks flush with intrigue.

"Well, here is a book you might enjoy. It tells of a world called Blue Terra." The man handed me a very old book with silver bindings. "Please take it."

"To own?" I asked, shocked. "I couldn't..."

"I am getting old and children these days do not care about the legends of old," said the old man, waving me off. "It would please me to see a young man like yourself take care of this book. The stories in it are unbelievable but very beautiful."

I took the book back to my hotel room and read through it.

"A long, long time ago, when the two moons were shining, there were two continents in the world, living separately but peacefully. In the East there was an advanced civilization; the development of technology had brought prosperity and wealth there. In the West the people lived in harmony with the natural world, co-existing peacefully with the spirits and animals around them. Then came the time of darkness. A great evil was unleashed, and a Dark Cloud overshadowed the Western continent. Whole villages were destroyed. Entire families mysteriously vanished. And a magical adventure began."

I absorbed everything about the boy, Toan, and his adventures to stop the evil entity they called "The Dark Genie." I even found a picture of him and had it photocopied on my computer. I dreamt of the adventures of this boy and his five companions and his fight against the Dark Genie on the way back home and put the picture in my cabinet to honor this brave young man.

Me on the live stream of GE-MA Productions on Episode 22 of the Dark Cloud Platinum Live Stream. ^_^

FINALLY. X(

 

AFTER THOUGHTS: I decided to do this for the Platinum Leap Event on PSNProfiles.com, because I had only a couple of trophies left for it.

When this game and its sequel came in the first wave of PS2 ports on the PS4, I grabbed my cash card and bought PSN cards to buy this. Actually, I bought DC2 but you get the point. Once again this game got second banana to its sequel. ;P

Nevertheless, this is probably the easiest RPG to platinum ever because there are only 30-something trophies, and 1/5 of them are beating the bosses of each of the story dungeons. Dark Cloud is a dungeon-crawler which created randomly-generation dungeons.

The worst and hardest trophy for you to get is Sticky Fingers because it's all luck-based; the only weapons which have the Steal ability, which is needed for this trophy, are in big chests - you cannot buy them. So you have to farm levels in a dungeon a zillion times and pray that a big chest appears and doubly pray that it has a Bandit Slingshot or Bandit Ring - I highly suggest farming Floor 2 in Wise Owl Forest because you only need to worry about getting a blade for Toan or a slingshot for Xiao(who I named Koko after a famous cat in literature that I love ^_^) - if you try for the ring, you also have hammers to deal with at minimum. I was a bit lucky that the Bandit Slingshot appeared after ten farming trips or else I would have been playing Dark Cloud all day.

Anyways, this is still a great and easy platinum if you can get the Bandit Slingshot early - I didn't get it until after I beat the game and then I just save-scummed until the chest with the weapon appeared.