Golden Sun: Garet's Porn Star Mustache

[oooog]

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

Seeing as how I've been randomly popping in my two cents on the latest of lesser known games, I see no reason to ignore this gem of a series.  Golden Sun: Dark Dawn is the third in line of Golden Sun games originally started on the GBA, and takes place 30 years after Golden Sun: The Lost Age.  In what at first seems to be a desperate attempt to milk as much out of this world as humanly possible, Camelot does a surprisingly well job of convincing us that they intended to have Isaac and their original protagonists pass the torch of heroism to their children.  The player will follow [DEFAULT NAME] Matthew through what originates as a simple quest to find a legendary item as it slowly transforms in to a quest to save the world from being engulfed in darkness.  Really; clichés aside it has it's own unique charm to it.  Being adepts like their parents, Matthew the son of Isaac, Tyrell the son of Garet (who now sports a peculiar mustache as mentioned before), and Karis the daughter of Ivan join together to battle foes with their mysterious powers, find other adepts, and collect Djinn to summon powerful entities.

Summary aside, the game has a powerful start.  I was enticed the moment I started playing, but something was nagging me behind the screen.  It was only a few hours in that I realized that this game is ridiculously easy, even compared to it's predecessors.  The dungeons often times are limited to move this pillar over here.  You have solved the puzzle!  Every now and then a puzzle worth solving is thrown your way, but ultimately a little bit of planning on the map displayed on the top screen is enough to solve them.  The battles seem to suffer even further with the easiness parasite.  Throughout the course of the game, I did not need to revive a single party member.  Admittedly I have but 4 secret bosses left to eliminate, one of which is the much feared Dullahan which enthusiasts of the series should remember, who will hopefully present a challenge.  At the most, I expect no more than 25 hours of game play to be found within this cartridge which is mildly disappointing, but considering what the game has to offer, it is probably best to complete the game before it's gets redundant.

Those drawbacks aside, this game delivers for those of us who have been craving a sequel for the last 7 years.  Seeing the world with the DS engine offering wonderful aesthetics including beautiful battles to behold as well as stunning landscapes to travel.  The equipment ability system is also a welcome change, albeit not too much different from the original system seeing as how weapons take around 4 battles to master yielding many abilities.  Also, one of the greatest game composers in the business,  Motoi Sakuraba has returned and offers his genius which very effectively captures the environment.  A wonderful adaptation from GBA to DS accomplishing both familiarity while changing drastically.

In conclusion, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn could very well have been one of the greatest RPGs I've played to live up my expectations gained from playing the original two, but fell short on many accounts.  Still a worthwhile play, and I'm happy I have beaten the game, unfortunately within the first couple of days from it's initial release.

I'll spare the details, so if people would like to go in completely fresh...
There will definitely be a sequel with the way the main story ended.

[Prpl_Mage]

7 Years? Jeysis, seems like I was slow to play the GBA games then.
I think I played those like 4 years ago. Guy I borrowed them from never told me that critical strikes was gained through timed button presses.

[oooog]

I didn't really believe it was 7 years either, until I saw the release date was back in April 03 for the U.S. release for Lost Age.  Truly an underrated series I feel.

[MissingName]

I really wanna play this.  I've been waiting for such a long time...

[FFL2and3rocks]

I preordered my copy, it will probably arrive tomorrow.

[SaiKar]

Has anyone played it that HASN'T played the first two? People keep recommending this game to me, but they're always people that are familiar with the series.

[oooog]

My brother played the first one, but got to the game-ender dungeon Airs Rock in The Lost Age and well, the game ended for him.  However they make it somewhat easy to pick up the game what with the encyclopedia system that lets you look up keywords and information for the previous game, as well as collect the very nicely done story books which tell you the summary of the previous games.

I honestly wouldn't play it without playing the first two though.  It sort of pales in comparison to the previous ones, due to it's simplicity.