Title: Golden Sun: Dark Dawn Genre: RPG Developer: Camelot SP Publisher: Nintendo Ratings: PEGI - 12, ESRB: E (10+ Rec) Formats: DS Exclusive
Synopsis: 30 years after the events of the previous game, the Golden Sun event has healed the world of Weyard. Continents have been formed from the healing powers, races have mutated into newer, advanced forms. But for all the good that has happened, Weyard is under threat from the Psynergy Vortexes, strange black holes that suck in Psynergy from around them, causing most living things to suffer greatly, and generally inducing comas in Adepts that are exposed to them for too long. The tale begins with the children of the protagonists from the GBA game Golden Sun: The Lost Age, Matthew, Tyrell, and Karis. Tyrell has been up to his usual tricks, and is in the middle of "borrowing" the Soarwing, a kind of jetpack. Unfortunately for him, being a Fire Adept, he's unable to control it properly, with the usual results of him crashing into the forest. Matthew, Karis , Isaac and Garret then hurry through the forest to save Matthew, who has crash landed in the densest area, filled with hostile monsters. After his rescue, it turns out that the Soarwing is completely wrecked, and needs another feather from the mythical Mountain Roc, a beast known to eat the tallest soldier whole. Tyrell, being feeling guilty for breaking the Soarwing, offers to fetch another feather, with the help of Matthew and Karis. The parents reluctantly agree and send word for an old friend to meet with them to help. Meeting up with Kraden, the Alchemist, they are separated in a trap set by a group of unknown mercenaries, hellbent on making the group of Adepts into pawns in their immense game.
Matthew, Tyrell, Karis and Rief then embark on their quest to recover the Mountain Roc's, repair the Soarwing, and find out just what is happening to the Alchemy Forges around Weyard.
Dark Dawn is the kind of game that you'd be forgiven in thinking that it's "just another hack RPG on the DS". Which is largely what it is. The game itself poses very, very little in the way of a challenge, instead of driving the story through character development, which is somewhat of a standard fare for RPGs, it chooses to drive the story forward through the story itself. Although, without the concentration on character development, this then draws the game out massively, with combat encounters being little more than the smallest of speedbumps, and bosses posing only slightly higher difficulty, but still barely registering as a threat.
Magic is obviously a standard fare, with the powers themselves being linked to both the characters themselves, and the combination of Djinn that are equipped. More Djinn of a particular element, the stronger that character is in that field. Unfortunately, the "pure" classes are so immensely overpowering that any attempt to make a hybrid are futile (although probably adding about 5 minutes of fight onto the end boss per hybrid). Another big flaw with the Djinn are the summon abilities. Now, these require a specific number of "unset" Djinn on standby, and offer a reasonable spike in damage. The only problem with this is that the summons that give enough damage to be worth it require a silly number of unset Djinn. Obviously you lose some damage from the characters in the meantime, but more worryingly, you lose significant amounts of stats, and several key skills by unsetting Djinn from your characters. This basically relegates Summons to your opening gambit, either killing the enemies outright, or doing their thing, and never being called again in the fight.
Combat is the gloriously overdone speed-centric turn-based combat. Characters with higher Agility will strike first, going down the list accordingly. Nice for building your Air-based healer, with a huge Agility pool, will always strike first. That by itself generally kills off any problems with critical health levels, even on the last boss, with using 2 healers (and you'll have 2 healers by then as well) meaning you can weave in whole party targetting heals between skills in some cases, but always before and after a main spike of damage. Non-bosses can be rushed down with nothing else needed but melee attacks from all 4 party members, leaving magic relegated to boss use only. But then saying that, magic is only really needed for healing, as in a large number of cases, physical attacks will do more than their magical counterparts. Further adding to the case of melee, are the weapon-specific skills. These take the form of anything from guaranteed critical strikes, to a whirlwind effect that hits everything on the screen for an absurd amount of damage, way beyond anything that I could get a caster-only character to do.
Coming back to the story for a small time, without character development to drive it forward, the story basically attempts to drive itself forward at all times. Unfortunately, this ends up doing nothing more but dragging the whole thing along at a snail's pace, with battles being all the more annoying. Overall, the game actually felt as though it was about 10-15 hours too long for the content.
Graphically, while the DS isn't the most powerful thing on the market, people have worked wonders with the graphics. Sadly, Dark Dawn isn't one of those titles. Being a direct sequel from its predecessor, and having the same graphical style, and almost identical sprites makes a huge amount of sense, tying the whole thing together very nicely.
Combat visuals are on the same lines, with heavily aliased sprites taking the forefront, with an overexcited combat camera, this is obviously needed to help the DS render everything and keep up with the camera demands. Summons, the few times that you'll use them before realising that they were practically useless, are immensely out of place, with impressive visuals in comparison with the rest of the game.
On the sound side of things, JRPGs have traditionally been amazingly strong in this area, but this is something that Dark Dawn has got missing. Even with being on the train back and forth, with headphones in, the soundtrack really didn't offer anything in the way of immersion, which was shocking to say the least.
Overall, Dark Dawn isn't a bad game, by any stretch, but it's not all that good either. It does wrap up a few loose ends from The Lost Age, but the way that the game concludes leaves a massive bad taste in your mouth, clearly paving a way for a sequel, possibly around the Mourning Moon, which is mentioned in a few cases in passing, but never gone into detail. But then the game clearly moves towards this at the end...
Not really a game to recommend to a new joiner to the Golden Sun franchise, one for those who *really* want to find out what happened after the Golden Sun event fired off.
Scores!
Gameplay: JRPG stylings, story driven through the story itself, with unlockable weapon skills, and a strong-yet-weak class customisation system. Summons are basically useless without degrading your character too much, and a last boss that appears cheap, but is actually very predictable further drive down the score - B
Sound: Traditionally the strong point of JRPGs, this is quite lacking in a number of places. Not a good thing either, as the weak narrative is let down further by the weak soundtrack - C-
Replay: Shockingly bad in Dark Dawn. Nothing is really offered as an incentive to replay the game, other than collecting all the Djinn, which I managed to do on the first playthough without trying. Superbosses are present and correct, but are incredibly hard to find, and in many cases, really not worth the effort needed to kill them, especially with the last boss being so easy - F
Overall: Badly played out sequel to a fairly successful franchise, let down by weak narrative, poor combat mechanics, and a serious lack of fulfillment during the end credits, other than a big "thank fuck that's finally over..." - C
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