Dark Cloud 2 is another genre melding game, one which I'd still love to see a sequel for.
Dark Cloud 2 is an action RPG/dungeon crawler with beautiful cel-shaded graphics, voice acting throughout, and great music to boot (or at least my memory believes these things to be true; I haven't played it in over a decade). The dungeon crawling is fairly standard, where you're moving through a maze and battling monsters in a third-person action RPG system while collecting treasure. You get to equip a wrench and a gun (I believe it's a sword and a gun if you play as the female character, but I never did), and can get upgrades to these over the course of the game. What's more is that you get a ridable, upgradable, robot contraption which is totally awesome.
There's a camera in the game you get pretty early on. The camera lets you take pictures of things so that you can use them in crafting. I believe the example given in the game when you start is that if you combine milk jugs, a pipe, and a belt to make a jetpack for your robot. But before you can craft the jet pack, you have to find these individual ingredients scattered around the town and take pictures of them. This photography/crafting system makes exploring the non-dungeon areas a treat, and it really makes you pay attention to the background as you hunt for ingredients to make new items. I seem to recall that you can even take pictures of things in dungeons.
And then, there is a town-building portion of the game. You gain access to blank slate areas throughout the game where you get to build them up. I can't remember exactly how it works because it's been so long since I've played it, but I believe the crafting system feeds into the town building segment. As you build things in your towns (trees, houses, street lamps, etc), you attract NPCs and such. There is also a time-travel mechanic which feeds into this (doing things to your towns in the past causes changes in the future).
Dark Cloud 2 mixes all of these genres so fluidly. It all feels like a very cohesive world with everything interconnected as it should be in real life. There's even a pretty deep fishing system, which includes breeding the fish you catch so you can race them and make them fight against other fish(!!). Seriously, each component of Dark Cloud 2 is big enough to justify a guide of its own, and yet it all feeds into each other to make this one big cohesive game.
Dark Cloud 2 is an action RPG/dungeon crawler with beautiful cel-shaded graphics, voice acting throughout, and great music to boot (or at least my memory believes these things to be true; I haven't played it in over a decade). The dungeon crawling is fairly standard, where you're moving through a maze and battling monsters in a third-person action RPG system while collecting treasure. You get to equip a wrench and a gun (I believe it's a sword and a gun if you play as the female character, but I never did), and can get upgrades to these over the course of the game. What's more is that you get a ridable, upgradable, robot contraption which is totally awesome.
There's a camera in the game you get pretty early on. The camera lets you take pictures of things so that you can use them in crafting. I believe the example given in the game when you start is that if you combine milk jugs, a pipe, and a belt to make a jetpack for your robot. But before you can craft the jet pack, you have to find these individual ingredients scattered around the town and take pictures of them. This photography/crafting system makes exploring the non-dungeon areas a treat, and it really makes you pay attention to the background as you hunt for ingredients to make new items. I seem to recall that you can even take pictures of things in dungeons.
And then, there is a town-building portion of the game. You gain access to blank slate areas throughout the game where you get to build them up. I can't remember exactly how it works because it's been so long since I've played it, but I believe the crafting system feeds into the town building segment. As you build things in your towns (trees, houses, street lamps, etc), you attract NPCs and such. There is also a time-travel mechanic which feeds into this (doing things to your towns in the past causes changes in the future).
Dark Cloud 2 mixes all of these genres so fluidly. It all feels like a very cohesive world with everything interconnected as it should be in real life. There's even a pretty deep fishing system, which includes breeding the fish you catch so you can race them and make them fight against other fish(!!). Seriously, each component of Dark Cloud 2 is big enough to justify a guide of its own, and yet it all feeds into each other to make this one big cohesive game.
Part action RPG, part Pokemon Snap, part town builder, and part fishing game. Dark Cloud 2 is the rare game that manages to dip into many waters and yet pull it all off pretty damn well.
