Golden Sun: Dark Dawn picks up 30 years after the climactic Golden Sun event at the end of The Lost Age. You control Matthew, Tyrell and Karis, the children of the Warriors of Vale (the heroes from the first two games). After a brief introduction dungeon, Matthew and his friends are sent on a quest to retrieve the mystical Roc’s Feather in order to fix the Soarwing that Tyrell destroyed. Things escalate from this one simple task as Matthew and company get sucked into an evil plot to cover the world of Weyard in darkness. Matthew and his friends must travel to distant lands, meet up with new party members and activate the Alchemy machines in order to save the world from utter destruction. As a whole, the story can be dismissed as your regular RPG story, though it does pick up in the latter stages of the game. For those who have not played the first two Golden Sun games much like yours truly, there are some allusions to those games that might go over your heads, but Camelot does a great job of getting players up to speed with the important plot points. This makes Dark Dawn a great jumping on point for those interested in giving this series a chance.
Over the years, there has been one aspect of the game that has made the Golden Sun series stand out from your average Japanese RPG. That aspect is the puzzles. As all the characters in your party are Adepts, people who can use Psynergy (Golden Sun’s equivalent to magic), they can interact with the game environment in different ways to reach unreachable areas and solve some head scratching puzzles. These puzzles make the trudge through dungeons and towns that much more bearable as there are more things to outside of battling random enemies. Also in your travels you will be collect djinn, elemental creatures that can boost a character’s stats and offer different uses in battle from reviving a party member to boosting each party member’s defense to unleashing devastating attacks. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn’s battle system is very similar to battle systems found in other turn-based RPGs. You select from a menu of attacks, psynergy abilities, djinn, summons and defense, target an enemy and repeat. With Dark Dawn, Camelot has improved on a complaint about the battle system from the first two Golden Sun games. Camelot has included smart combat, so if an enemy is killed before other party members can attack it, now they intelligently attack one of the remaining enemies instead of just switching to defense. This improvement makes combat much more faster and fluid experience than its predecessors and make going back to that battle system a little harder on some.
For longtime RPG fans, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn will be a walk in the park. The easier difficulty makes for a more approachable game to RPG newcomers, but Dark Dawn is easy to a fault. Personally I only died once in the entire game and that was at the final boss, which had an insane difficulty spike. Speaking of the final boss and the ending, they were both a bit lackluster to say the least. It felt as you reached the halfway point of the game, the big twist that would lead into the final hours of the game and the true finale. That does not happen and you are left feeling like Dark Dawn is the first part of a much bigger story. Camelot does wrap up the majority of mysteries brought up during the course of the game, but there are some big plot points left open for the inevitable 3DS sequel. Personally, I did not mind as much, but it will bum a lot of people that after 30 hours you will have to wait a few more years for the actual conclusion to this story.
At the end of the day, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn is an entertaining RPG that any gamer no matter age or experience can pick up and play. The lackluster final boss and ending and the difficulty will turn some people off, but those who stick with the game will be treated to a worthwhile RPG with a cool story, simple yet fun battle system and some excellent puzzles.
I`ve been waiting for this for a long long time
ReplyDelete