Dark Cloud is a role-playing action video game. It was released in 2000 and 2001. The game received plenty of positive reviews right from its year of release. Its popularity mainly stems from the fact that it merges many gameplay types. It sold 800, 000 units worldwide. The game begins with Colonel Flag Gilgister trying to awaken the dark genie. He is the colonel of the Lagoon Empire Army of the East. He wants to use the dark genie to gain enough power to control the world. The Colonel asks the genie to attack the West. Before this attack, a fairy king named Simba had cast a protective spell around the land and its people. The genie’s dark power is, however, so strong that it scatters the orbs.

Simba gives Toan the magical stone, Atlamillia. Toan survived an attack which left his home village, Norune, destroyed. Simba instructs him to find the scattered Alta and to bring it back to its original form. Toan later receives a changing potion from a man called Seda. He uses this portion to change a cat into a catgirl called Xiao. The catgirl joins him in his quest. The two have plenty of adventures in an attempt to save Norune. They finally manage to defeat the genie.

The game is played from the point of view of a third party. A player passes through dungeons fighting monsters while collecting whatever they can. Some dungeon levels allow a player to enter a back door. If a player enters the doors, they get more valuable items to collect and worse monsters to fight. Combat is mostly hack-and-slash but in some instances, it involves duels with the enemy. If a player removes Altas from the dungeons, they change into houses, people, or other pieces of the world.