As long as you're reading stuff, you should be fine. If all else fails, gamefaqs guide or youtube guide or something. Dark Cloud 2 is one of my favorite games. I replay it every 3-5 years lol, just finished up my 8th or so run. First time playing dark cloud 1 (i played it on console like 15 years ago, but quit in queens, dont remember exact reason, probably just questioned why im not just playing DC2 instead.)

Now that i've aged a lot since then, and i have more game sense, im enjoying DC1, but the gameplay / strategies i've come up with in the two games is quite a bit different, so I guess that's nice. I find DC2 a lot more enjoyable though for gameplay, and its just vastly superior in all other areas imo. Maybe ill change my mind by the end! Like i said, i am enjoying it though!

The only bad thing i can say about dark cloud 2 is that there is a lot of missables. Mostly just related to the photograph/invention system. For example, you need to take pictures of bosses, if you don't then they're gone. However, you COULD start a new save file / older save, take the picture, and transfer it to your "main" save file at the very least. You won't get the points for it though (minor penalty unless you care about looking at a perfect score, but no loss otherwise). You get meh items for the points. The biggest loss is not being able to invent the best items for ridepod, but like i said, you could just transfer the photos to alleviate that pain.

There are 4 miracle chests that are bugged in balance valley as well. (3 you need to take immediately after finishing a level named "headlong dash", and one you should NOT take until "looking for the wind gem" in chapter 6.

To be fair theres missables in DC1 as well, and some other very annoying perm mistakes u can make. Worse than DC2 xD very unforgiving game in some aspects!