You would think when making a sequel you would iterate on good ideas and improve on the flaws present in the previous installments but this game doesn't do that
A pesar de no estar a la altura de los dos juegos anteriores, Golden Sun Dark Dawn es un tremendo juegarral. Extremadamente divertido en combate y en las mazmorras, que son más imaginativas y creativas que en los dos primeros. Pero, por desgracia, su gran lacra es la trama y los personajes, que no tienen ni la mitad de presencia e importancia que los anteriores. Aun así, gran juego
waited an absurd amount of time for this game to release back in december 2010 and even though it didn't deliver the same as gs1/2 for many, it delivered personally for me and I love it wholeheartedly, fuck cliffhanger endings it's been 13 year camelot, stop making shitty mario sports games
The best Golden Sun game is still a 2/5, which should give you an idea why Camelot is now regulated to making mediocre Mario sports games whenever Nintendo needs some extra cash.
Ah, Dark Dawn, the black sheep of the Golden Sun series. 13 years on and we still haven't gotten a follow-up to the 3rd GS game, which (of course) ended on a cliffhanger.
I have a lot of issues with Dark Dawn, but I do not think it's a bad game. First, the good: Sakuraba's soundtrack is still top-notch, and the visuals are some of the better looking ones on the DS, though the chibi-style overworld models do not work for everyone. The Djinn system is still here, and is just as fun to utilize as the GBA titles; I had a lot of fun with the battles in this game.
SPeaking of Djinn, the bad: unlike the original duology (outside of not transferring your save), Dark Dawn has points of no return and permanently missable collectibles...including Djinn. And these points of no return are not well-telegraphed, making it easy to screw yourself over unless you look them up ahead of time. I generally do not like permanent missables in games, especially RPGs, and the fact that Dark Dawn has them while the GBA games do not is a big problem to me. I recommend following a guide if you want to play this.
Additionally, the plot feels more aimless that the original games. I honestly don't even recall much of it outside of the final climactic sequence. And it still has all the writing and pacing issues that plagued the orignals' plots. Dark Dawn also has a full party of eight new characters, with some of the originals appearing as NPCs. They're decent overall, but the last few barely get any development as they join you extremely late in the story. At least one of them never even gets the chance to interact with the main antagonists until the literal final boss!
If you liked the originals and are itching for more, it's not a bad game and I do recommend it, but it's a shame that it felt like it took one step forward and two steps back. And damn it, Camelot, give us a follow-up already!!!
I have a lot of issues with Dark Dawn, but I do not think it's a bad game. First, the good: Sakuraba's soundtrack is still top-notch, and the visuals are some of the better looking ones on the DS, though the chibi-style overworld models do not work for everyone. The Djinn system is still here, and is just as fun to utilize as the GBA titles; I had a lot of fun with the battles in this game.
SPeaking of Djinn, the bad: unlike the original duology (outside of not transferring your save), Dark Dawn has points of no return and permanently missable collectibles...including Djinn. And these points of no return are not well-telegraphed, making it easy to screw yourself over unless you look them up ahead of time. I generally do not like permanent missables in games, especially RPGs, and the fact that Dark Dawn has them while the GBA games do not is a big problem to me. I recommend following a guide if you want to play this.
Additionally, the plot feels more aimless that the original games. I honestly don't even recall much of it outside of the final climactic sequence. And it still has all the writing and pacing issues that plagued the orignals' plots. Dark Dawn also has a full party of eight new characters, with some of the originals appearing as NPCs. They're decent overall, but the last few barely get any development as they join you extremely late in the story. At least one of them never even gets the chance to interact with the main antagonists until the literal final boss!
If you liked the originals and are itching for more, it's not a bad game and I do recommend it, but it's a shame that it felt like it took one step forward and two steps back. And damn it, Camelot, give us a follow-up already!!!
If this game has a follow up then perhaps it could've been looked back on as a nice set up game but most of its story is building up to a sequel that doesn't exist. That of course means you will absolutely feel let down by the story aspect of the game, even if you're a fan of the previous games. In terms of gameplay and dungeon design it does actually have some neat ideas but I don't think they're enough on their own for me to recommend this game.
so....
A fun disappointment. Let's get this out of the way; this game is much worse than Golden Sun 1 and 2. I know it and you know it. Yet I had a lot of fun with it.
A lot of the charm from previous entries is still here; music, artstyle, sound effects, the clever level design and specially the gameplay, which has been improved from the previous entries. The jump to 3d is a welcome change, all animations have been re-hauled to be flashier than ever. The flow or finding and re-equipping your party is still just as good, now improved with the weapon mastery feature, allowing you to stack multiple unleashes on one weapon.
I never really played with the class system in previous entries. While viable I never experimented outside of using mono-elemental classes. Boy was I missing out; The strongest classes in the game are available by fooling around with djinn swapping, which only improved the experience.
However, not every aspect shines. Golden Sun has never been a pillar of well written characters, but it's almost as if Camelot went out of its way to write the most bland and uninteresting characters imaginable (Sveta is cool tho). Seriously, your last party member comes in so late into the game that they barely have any dialogue whatsoever. The decision to adopt an 8-party member system, similar to The Lost Age (where your characters developed over the course of two games), feels unnecessary and hinders character development. It doesn't help also that having 8 party members is unnecessary, as this is the easiest Golden Sun so far.
Dark Dawn's weakest aspect is the plot. Many writing decisions caused detrimental effects in the gameplay. Most controversial of all was to add FOUR points of no return, all which don't truly have a good reason to be. This writing choice locks you out of summons and several much needed djinn.
Part of the setup in this game is that the Golden Sun event caused severe continental shifts throughout the world, attempting to fool the player into thinking several new towns and cultures have been around for centuries despite never being mentioned in the past. This leaves you yearning what happened to all the places and characters from past adventures, but worst of all I only met Isaac and Garet from the main old cast. I imagine they expected to explore this in future games as this one ends on a gargantuan cliff-hanger. To my infinite disappointment, it's been nearly 14 years without any news of a sequel as Camelot seems infatuated with making Mario sports games.
Despite these issues Dark Dawn is still an alright game, offering a fun entry for fans of the series
A lot of the charm from previous entries is still here; music, artstyle, sound effects, the clever level design and specially the gameplay, which has been improved from the previous entries. The jump to 3d is a welcome change, all animations have been re-hauled to be flashier than ever. The flow or finding and re-equipping your party is still just as good, now improved with the weapon mastery feature, allowing you to stack multiple unleashes on one weapon.
I never really played with the class system in previous entries. While viable I never experimented outside of using mono-elemental classes. Boy was I missing out; The strongest classes in the game are available by fooling around with djinn swapping, which only improved the experience.
However, not every aspect shines. Golden Sun has never been a pillar of well written characters, but it's almost as if Camelot went out of its way to write the most bland and uninteresting characters imaginable (Sveta is cool tho). Seriously, your last party member comes in so late into the game that they barely have any dialogue whatsoever. The decision to adopt an 8-party member system, similar to The Lost Age (where your characters developed over the course of two games), feels unnecessary and hinders character development. It doesn't help also that having 8 party members is unnecessary, as this is the easiest Golden Sun so far.
Dark Dawn's weakest aspect is the plot. Many writing decisions caused detrimental effects in the gameplay. Most controversial of all was to add FOUR points of no return, all which don't truly have a good reason to be. This writing choice locks you out of summons and several much needed djinn.
Part of the setup in this game is that the Golden Sun event caused severe continental shifts throughout the world, attempting to fool the player into thinking several new towns and cultures have been around for centuries despite never being mentioned in the past. This leaves you yearning what happened to all the places and characters from past adventures, but worst of all I only met Isaac and Garet from the main old cast. I imagine they expected to explore this in future games as this one ends on a gargantuan cliff-hanger. To my infinite disappointment, it's been nearly 14 years without any news of a sequel as Camelot seems infatuated with making Mario sports games.
Despite these issues Dark Dawn is still an alright game, offering a fun entry for fans of the series
el final es una gigantesca patada en el estómago?????? osea cómo me dejan con ese cliffhanger?????? me dan pena los de camelot que los tienen esclavizaos haciendo mario tennis en vez de una secuela de esto
en fin, el juego no es malo pero tampoco es la hostia. si buscas un rpg sencillito para la ds pues está ok, pero en la misma consola hay rpgs mejores
en fin, el juego no es malo pero tampoco es la hostia. si buscas un rpg sencillito para la ds pues está ok, pero en la misma consola hay rpgs mejores
Game was bad, couldn't decide what it wanted to be. Kept a lot of faults from the past 2 games, while also being torn on story between wanting to continue everything the other games set up, and doing its own thing with a generic plot that came in out of nowhere. Key terms needing to be hunted down for a glossary was also a bad call, especially when many are missable.
Despite its many flaws and annoyances, it's still Golden Sun.
Insultingly bad.
This review contains spoilers
Wanted to get to the part where Isaac and friends show up because I transferred over my save data and didn't care about the other characters. Set it down because of that, but it isn't a bad game.
A sequel to the GBA games. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't great either.