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Dark Chronicle
Chronicles of Barmy-a
Dark Chronicle was nuts.
Absolute bonkers, we’ll
concede that. That’s
nothing strange in itself, being a
Japanese RPG, but what astounded
us was the enormous depth
and continued widening of the
mechanics. At almost every stage in
the game you’re learning something
new, some new facet of gameplay to
keep you on your toes. This breadth
of gameplay is unsurpassed, even
in RPG terms, and while it could
be considered linear by many
standards, playing through (bearing
in mind that this is a 100-plus-hours
game, at heart) is an unfettered joy.
With hindsight, we probably
didn’t give it the appreciation that it
deserved at the time of its release,
slapping a safe 89% on the review.
It lavished you with the kind of
distractions we’d never seen before.
Once the main mission had died off,
as RPGs are wont to do, you had
a sparkling wealth of diversionary
activities. Photography, invention,
town planning, fishing, synthesis,
golf and weapon upgrading as
well as all the present giving and
morphing you do with Monica.
Importantly, the dungeon crawling,
which featured ranged and melee
real-time combat and randomly
generated dungeons, was a blast.
The range of objectives meant
that retreading your footsteps never
became dull. Ever. Of course, being
of that kind of genre, the narrative
was something pretty strange
at certain points, with the lead
character, Max, looking to find his
mother and overthrow the evil Lord
Griffon. The time-travel element
made that storyline a step above
the norm, and with Level-5 at the
time having focused all its attention
on this and its predecessor,
Dark Cloud, every other aspect
of the game showed the kind of
consideration and balance you
don’t really get in the cash-oriented
videogaming industry.
Even its follow-up, Rogue Galaxy,
failed to re-create the kind of depth
and poise found in Dark Chronicle’s
game mechanics. That, more
than anything epitomised Dark
Chronicle. It was a title that the
development team really cared
about. It had all the maintenance
factors of an RPG done especially
well, and heaped further joys on
us with a slew of well-conceived
accessories and accoutrements.
There will probably never be
another game made that so clearly
displays what happens when
developers actually give a shit and
are offered the time and space to do
what they do best.
We managed to find Dark Chronicle
for £7.70 on eBay, a price we
can heartily endorse. The fact is
though, Dark Chronicle is a title
which offers so very much that ten
times that price would be fair if we
lived in a world where value meant
more than price.
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