Golden Sun: Dark Dawn by Nintendo

OMG, GS:DD is an RPG on the DS! It's also the most recent installment for the Golden Sun series. As a fan of the series, I picked up Dark Dawn hoping to revisit the world of alchemy and psynergy I enjoyed in the preceding games: Golden Sun and GS: The Lost Age (both for the GBA). While it does improve on the series in a number of ways, there are times I feel it didn't improve ENOUGH on the previous games.

Breaking it down:

Gameplay and Control:

Control can be done handled both with the stylus and with the d-pad and abxy buttons. The game definitely wants you to use the stylus, though. There's even a couple quick access spots for heavily used psynergy (either by using L or R or clicking on the picture in the top left of right with the stylus).

Overall, the control is fluid and natural. There's a few issues when it comes to trying to point at specific items on the screen, but it's largely due to the use of 3D graphics making it sometimes difficult to pinpoint where you're supposed to actually click.

As for gameplay - it's an RPG with a lot of standard RPG elements (customizable character classes, leveling up, etc). Very much like the Final Fantasy series, it also has random battles, turn based attacks, magic (which they call psynergy), summoning and the like. But this is no different than the previous games.

In relation to the previous games, there's a lot of interesting new psynergy and Djinn's (small equipable monsters that are the source of the magic and can change your character class), as well as some old favourites to go along with the new set of characters who are confusingly all direct descendants from the first game's characters (more on this later).

There's even a few new weapons and weapon classes (the bow and arrow) - but this is marred by the way too many old weapons returning. There's something distinctly distasteful about finishing a game that's supposed to be a sequel and having a large assortment of your weapons being the exact same weapons you had in the previous game.

A few other sore points for gameplay are the unupdated battle system, which still requires you to "click" or otherwise "tap" past every single iteration of battle text, and the myriad of forced tutorials that clutter the first parts of gameplay. Game makers would do well to remember they should always, ALWAYS allow for people to skip tutorials - especially when the game is a sequel to an existing series, or if you want people to reply the game ever.

I'd also like to make special note of the weapon forging, since the weapons you get are determined by chance, resulting either in a lot of save-scumming (returning to previous save points), or the acceptance of lower tier or undesired weapons. As a result, forging is nothing but a painful chore... just like it was in the last game.

The most frustrating part of gameplay is probably the "lag" that occurs when casting psynergy; this if of particular issue when it comes to psynergy cast on moving targets, like using mind read (or as this game calls "spirit sense") on an NPC (non-player character). The issue is that the lag only affects YOU. The NPC can, and often does, move out of the way in their random walk-around-in-a-single-spot motions. The only way around it is to either get lucky or force the NPC into a corner so they can't escape their inevitable mind-reading.

The lag isn't as much of an issue when it comes to stationary targets, but it still makes me wonder why Nintendo couldn't just make the entire world stop moving when you're casting psynergy.

Graphics and Musics:

Full use of 3D graphics and very good music selection. Some people say that the graphics of Squarenix' remakes are better, but Squarenix didn't have a fully 3D world: just 3D characters in a 2D backdrop world, so the discrepancy in graphics is not just forgivable, but understandable. No complaints here.

The music selection is good and a lot of the songs are even entertaining to listen to for many minutes on end. None of it "overstays its welcome" as the saying goes.

Story:

The story is you're trying to get a Roc's feather so you can fix the device your idiot companion broke in the intro. That's it. Everything else is just the trials and tribulations that go along with getting a Roc's feather, apparently, that ends up thrusting you into the responsibility of saving the world.

My biggest qualm with this is for the most part you never really know where you're going next. For most of the game you don't have an overarching goal - just a series of small goals that eventually lead you to the ending of the game: fix this device, meet this person, learn that psynergy... they all end up being useful in the end, but almost out of a sort of "coincidence" from the characters' perspective.

This wouldn't be such an issue except there are a number of "points of no return" that can really sneak up as a result. I, being a "100% completionist", ended up restarting the game after 20 hours in because I stupidly didn't keep a backup save file and walked right into a point of no return.

There's a lot of interesting set up for the problems that have arisen in the world since the events of the previous games, but nothing's really done with it except for the ending's sequel-hook. That felt like a bit of a cheat.

Characters:

I'm not going to go into each and every player character and villain - there are some good ones and some less good ones. Sadly, Nintendo seems fond of the "rescue this guy and he joins your team" plot device. So much so that when you're not rescuing someone to make them join your team, they're just joining your team for no reason at all.

As I said earlier, there are so many PC's (player characters) that some get no development at all. There's also the incredibly confusing issue of every character being related to characters from the first game - even to the point that it makes no sense. The first character you get, Mathew, the main character and party leader, is the son of Isaac, hero of Golden Sun. The next character you get it Karis, daughter of Ivan, wind adept of the first game. Then there's Tyrel, Garret's son. And Rief, Mia's son.

But there's no reason for these characters to be related the way they are - it's just like Nintendo was trying to force the connection to invoke some kind of nostalgia from the last game. I don't mind that the characters are "the next generation", as it were, but by the time I got to Mia's son, it just felt so forced!

On the plus side, the many characters allow you to mix and match your party to have characters you prefer over those you do not.

Final Thoughts:

Overall, I thought the game was fun - just not as fun as a sequel to Golden Sun should have been. There's a lot of improvements, but a lot of things stayed the same as well. The characters are either unexplored or uninteresting in their own right and the story is oddly, little more than a protracted fetch quest.

However, I still enjoyed the game for what it was. All the RPG elements are there; there's a good deal of customization in character classes that I, oddly, never bother with (but I'm sure others do), impressive magic and summons, and a quest to save the world that can last hours. The "points of no return" were an unwelcomed addition but I guess there's nothing wrong with them in the general sense.

Overall, I'd say this game is a B. It's fun while you're playing it and you'll want to see how things turn out, but leans a little too heavily on the previous games for nostalgia than trying to define itself as something new.