Golden Sun, I am disappoint.

I was a little disappointed with Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. Seven years after The Lost Age was released, and all GS3 brings to the table is better graphics. Camelot is the video game developer who gave me Shining Force 1 and 2, and they certainly didn't disappoint with the first two Golden Sun titles. Perhaps too many golf and tennis projects have turned their brains to mush. As the third half (ignoring logic) of the story goes, everything takes place thirty years later. Things seem to occur most frequently in numbers divisible by ten, ensuring that the next group of adventurers would be old enough for fappable fan art, but not too old to be adults, because adults saving the world would just be stupid. I'm not a fan of the time jump in sequels. It usually becomes an excuse to explain everything over again in the form of teaching the new characters about all the basic stuff they need to know for their upcoming journey. I was treated to all the yawn-inducing lectures of Issac and Garet as they accompanied me through the terrifying woods filled with leaf bats and the iconic blue slimes that like to inhabit the weakest spots in all JRPGs.

"Um... Mr. Slime, is it? We need you to not smile during the battle. Oh, no no no! It's a great smile, but, you know, we don't want Enix to sue us."

I especially enjoyed the parts where Garet began overreacting to how I moved a block that was in front of me and applied fire to a plant. 

This whole bit in Goma Plateau and Tanglewood is a long-winded tutorial for those who never played the other two games in the series. It's also punishment for those of us who did. See, it's all unavoidable. Garet even tells you how to use the aptly-named psynergy Move after you've already figured out how with the first block that you shoved into the hole that was perfectly shaped to fit it, while terrific father figure Isaac watches his kid jump across these pits, ignoring the "what if..." situation of Matthew missing a step and falling to his death. There's also the tutorial about the djinn, an encyclopedia, Sun Saga issues to collect, and even a training course that summarizes the other two games in the form of an obstacle course, because everything else I mentioned, along with the introduction that began right after you ignored changing Matthew's name (which loops at the title screen), just wasn't enough hand holding.

I would like to point out that the script, much like my blog, is rather verbose. I wouldn't mind if all the chatter was actually worth reading (kinda like a subtitled episode of Kitanagatari), but it's just your usual "blah blah" storyline with little more than that to maintain the player's interest. Occasionally, you get to choose one of four emotional responses to answer someone, but it doesn't always provide a reply you were expecting, and none of them will alter how the conversation will continue.

It was so dull at the start of my journey that I barely made it to the 30-minute marker before saving and turning off the DS to find something else to occupy my time. Eventually, I'd pick up where I left off, and, within another 30 minutes, grow tired of it again. Midway into the game, however, I began putting in some legitimate effort. When I found myself sailing around to various islands for a bit of side-questing I grew world-weary. At that point, I actually put the game down and played those Yu-Gi-Oh! titles I bitched blogged about earlier.

I put so little effort into combat. All mobs were beaten with simple attacks. Once in a while, I'd stop and heal. Repeat when necessary. Bosses were essentially an onslaught of summon spells at the start, then use Djinn until I could cast summons again. Chaos Chimera and Dullahan were the only exceptions to all of this. It was after I lost twice to the chimera that I began to realize that I hadn't bothered to do anything with the crafting material, nor had I bought any other basic equipment to replace the low-level bits I had found in chests throughout the game. Once my junk was up to snuff, that thing didn't even merit a Water of Life. Dullahan, however, is an evil bitch. Abilities such as Charon and Condemn tend to succeed at the worst moments, dropping my party members right when I get things together. After a bit of research, it seems he follows a simple attack pattern and can be defeated by a low-level group so long as one pours all his strength into Matthew and knows when to use defensive Djinn, like Ivy, Shell, and Doldrum. What I found to be more interesting was reading about how he is considered to be more powerful in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. I didn't have any problems against him in the second game. When I thought about why, I could only speculate that it was because I was actually interested in the previous sequel. Here, I just wanted it done so I could collect my summon tablet of Iris the Goddess of (Puking) Rainbows.

"Taste the painbow, mortals!"

I bought this game out of respect for the series, and a desire to see how the next part of the story would play out, but Dark Dawn just isn't all that impressive. The characters lack any sort of charisma, the story is just a long, boring read, and the new psynergy abilities Slap, Thermal, Track, and Third Eye added little to nothing to the (non-existent) complexity of the puzzles. 

So cryptic! How will I ever figure out... already done. 

It's a mediocre addition to something that was an amazing throwback to the glory days of RPGs on the SNES. It felt like Camelot stripped Dark Dawn of this and just made it pretty. I appreciate the visuals, especially the animation of the summons, but not at the cost of everything else. Even the box art is kinda blah. The cover of its instruction manual is much better, and I can't believe it wasn't used instead. You're online right now. Look up the box art for the first two games and compare it to that of Dark Dawn. I know, don't judge a book by it's cover, but this is the sequel to something that hadn't been around for seven years. Trying to grab the attention of those who may not have played the previous Golden Sun games starts with that cover. Even I stop to look at titles that catch my eye, and, in a few cases, have purchased them. Still, there is something about seeing Matthew on that box that reminds me of greatness...

"I'm not just a boring main character... I'm A SUPER BORING MAIN CHARACTER!"

If I was to score this game, it would be a number out of a bigger number, and I'm being generous about that. 

On a positive note, I adore Sveta. She reminds me of my first video game crush:

Katt's the muscle in the party, speaks her mind without qualm, and she wears no pants. What's not to love?

Dark Dawn's ending doesn't go into any sort of detail about the psynergy vortexes, so I'm going to assume the adventure will continue with them in the fourth game. Perhaps there will be a similar connection between it and Dark Dawn as there was with Golden Sun and The Lost Age. I want to hope I won't have to imput another super fucking long password, but, since I have no friends, I doubt there will be an alternative for me to transfer the information. When it does arrive, the game better be more difficult. The hardest thing I had to deal with in Dark Dawn was trying to stay awake through the conversations. 

It's still a better sequel than Bomberman: Act Zero, for what little that's worth, which tried to bring a new "look" to the Bomberman series.

Even the characters wanted nothing to do with it. 

To be fair, the game isn't really as bad as I seem to make it out to be. It's just not all that good, either. It certainly doesn't do anything befitting the franchise. I want to compare GS3's situation to how Chrono Cross could never live up to Chrono Trigger's success, but I saw the effort put into making Cross. In its own right, Cross is still a great game. Dark Dawn, on the other hand, is a garden-variety RPG that is easy on the eyes.