Dark Cloud/Headscratchers

• In the Zelmite Mines of Chronicle Monica comes back using a Starglass given to her by Crest!Lin to "check up on Max" or whatever. One problem that arises is that because this item returns the user to a time of great signifigance to them, how is she going to get back to the future? Note: After beating the game your Atlamillias no longer exist because you destroyed them in the battle with Sirus, making it impossible for Max to be wearing his (as he claims) at the time of writing his mother. Further compounding this is the fact that time travel was made illegal in Monica's new time. This makes both Crest and Monica criminals. The Lin subplot confirmed that her Starglass use resulted in two instances of her existing at the same time, so wouldn't something similar happen to Monica? Max's existence is sort of established in both the way Monica remembers what is originally history to her and the ripple effects of the "true" timeline somehow keeping Elena aware of both of them. Come to think of it, wasn't time travel illegal in Seda's era too? Perhaps Monica made an arrangement with Osmond, who doesn't seem too fond of rules he doesn't agree with in either game, to pick her up in the Ixion at a predetermined time. Which raises the question of how he'd know when to pick her up.
  • I just assumed she wasn't planning on getting back. She's staying with Max for good.
• (The flavor text on one of Xiao's slingshots: Divine Beast Title. Because this weapon grants the holder the title of "Divine Beast", does this mean that Dran gets demoted when you build up to it?)
• If nobody has been outside of Palm Brinks in 15 years, why are the bridges of the Blackstone One railway in such good repair? Ditto why the station is kept immaculate when nobody's been using it?
  • Lack of use does not mean magic deterioration. Sure, there should be some dust, but there's no reason to expect an apocalyptic train station or crumbled bridges.
    • Even when it was, in fact, magic that put the world in the state it's in?
• If the Underground Channel draws water from a lake outside the city, why are there pipes dumping water out in the Channel Exit/Blackstone One bridge area?
  • Let's say you live in Palm Brinks. Would you prefer that your town be flooded constantly, or that excess water is dumped back into the source?
• Balance Valley: There are no features connecting the plateaus to each other or the land with Lin's house. Max and Monica obviously use the Carpenterion to go to the plateaus. How do the people you place there move between plateaus?
• The same scraps of paper and books tell Max and Monica very different things, depending on which character is reading them.
  • They could be reading the same text but learning different things from them. When two people read a book they don't always pay attention to the same details (a mechanically minded person like Max would probably think about how the technology in the book would work while Monica may spend time looking at the different species in the book).
• In the first game, why are "Fairies" and "Gods" effectively the same word?
  • Blind Idiot Translation?
• There's never any explanation of why we go from a single Atlamillia in the first game to three in the sequel. Fan theories abound though.
  • One primary reason is that "Dark Cloud 2" is really "Dark Chronicle" and not a true sequel. It takes the same premise but executes it differently.
• Wise Owl Forest Back Floor entrances occasionally appear in the Rainbow Butterfly Wood dungeon. They're overgrown with grass, usually not attached to walls, and you can't use them for anything (well, they block your path), but they're there. But why? Unless to say "Yes, this is Sequel not a Prequel."
• In the original game, Back Floor entrances were marked on the map with a Pink Question Mark. The sequel uses the Pink Question mark, but now it marks the miracle springs, which were originally represented by a blue square. Why the change? Are they assuming people didn't play the original?
• Why is Toan the only character who looks like an elf in what is clearly a Mexican-themed village?
  • His father was stated to be an adventurer. Maybe his father was from a village where everyone looked elfy, and Toan got it from him.
• What is this I hear about a glitch destroying my +Health and +Defense in Dark Cloud 2?
• The annoying pixel bitching about where Xiao needs to be standing to make her jumps to the intermediate point of a jump with something in the middle. Shipwreck was cruel about this: not only did you need to be standing the right distance away, you also had to be standing dead center.
• In the first game, if the allies can only be "summoned" in dungeons, how does Toan get to where his ally was standing? Didn't the Fairy King himself say "Mind Connect" doesn't work if there are still monsters?
• Monica Raybrandt can Anime Leap in cutscenes, yet cannot jump even a tiny gap in actual play. It gets really silly in Starlight Canyon when the randomly generated levels produces a piece of land 3 feet from another piece of land with no joining bridge at this point, forcing characters to take the long way around.
• Xiao started life as a cat, right? So why is it in the Back Floor of the Demon Shaft, her radius of light is exactly the same size as everyone else's? Can't cats see in the dark?
  • We could be seeing the dungeon from our own point of view rather than Xiao's.
  • By this logic, she should only be able to go "meow," yet she speaks. We get no indication of just what features transferred over in the change aside from the ears, tail, and agility. She could very well have human vision in her human form.
• Temporal Paradox: If breaking the Life Sphere returns Rando and La Saia to the day they were suppossed to get married and they do/did so, shouldn't the Shipwreck dungeon cease to exist because La Saia never committed suicide?
  • I simply assumed that was a vision of them finally being together in death, rather than being sent back into the past. This is sort of supported by at least 2 characters in the town mentioning Rando and/or La Saia after the boss battle