Dark Dawn

The Dijinn are back and summoning them shows some pretty nice views. These little cut scenes are also able to be skipped, so if you quickly grow tired of watching them; it just takes another button press to stop it. There are both old Dijinn and new ones in this installment. There are a total of a whopping 72 that you can find and use and a total of 30 summons. You dont need to collect them all and during your first play through you are bound to miss many of them.

If you missed the first two games you can find little books in the game that explain what happened in them. You dont really need this for anything, but it is a nice touch for those who have not played the previous ones.

To go along with the above statements at certain times certain words will be underlined in red. You can add these to your Encyclopedia to learn more about them. Such things as what Adepts are. There is a total of 179 of these.

I really enjoyed the world presentation and the map. They are nothing fancy but are very pleaseing to the the eyes. I find them better than what they where in the first two.

You can set your Psynergy to the left and right shoulder buttons.

I enjoyed the puzzles and use of Psynergy. I am not a big fan of Puzzles in most games. However I do expect this from Golden Sun and really like how whole temples are just one big puzzle. You also get to explore and figure out most temples with little interference from enemies.

Artifacts are back and you dont need to really farm to afford them.

You get to use new characters.   With this there are many familiar faces.

I do want to say I did enjoy the story. However, I wont give anything away.

With different weapons you can master certain abilities

I enjoyed the option to use the stylus over buttons.

Things that annoyed me a bit.

The game starts out very talk heavy and a tutorial of sorts is built into the beginning of the game. This seems to happen a fair amount in the game with some dialogue going on longer than it really needed too.

I found it to be a bit easy, but that is very subjective.

It has points of no return.

I dont like scoring games, so I have no final score.

I think golden sun might be the 1st JRPG i hate.

i own the 1st two

i could never  bring  myself to beat them.

the most obnoxious dialouge i have ever seen in any game, they treat the player like a retard.

in the 1st GS where you get the blue haired girl to join you in that one dungeon. so have this tupidly long conversion with 2 antagonist and i belive it happened earlier where they hole u guys hostage to get so gems or whatevr.

the beginning of GS2 is mind numbing how many times do they tell you to meet at at the palce ur suppose to meet at in that scene

lets not 4get teh stupid ass thought bubbles that slow evrything down too

anyways GS dialouge and story are just absurd

btw magic does not equal alchemy...they couldnt even get that right.

ugh...

sorry for the rant

I really liked all the golden sun games, but DD was without a doubt the weakest IMO.  I felt the game was too easy and music wasn't as good as its predecessors.  I love the whole 'save anywhere' option, similar to Pokemon  though.

I loved Golden Sun's for GBA, and I feel that plot wasn't properly finished. I got into DD, and you're right it starts off very talk heavy. It doesn't feel right to me, so I put it down and started Pokemon. Maybe it will get better, but the start was very very slow, and I really just want to finish the original storyline. I did the first dungeon, it was fun, but the level of difficulty seems dumbed down. I don't think Camalot put the effort behind this game, but I'll probably still enjoy it.

Indeed parts of it are pretty easy and once you get insight that makes it a bit simpler too. Though I did feel my brain working if you you know what I mean by that. Say you study for 2 hours and your mind is just tried. It did cause this feeling in me , which shows that I was having to actually think. So while most of the puzzle elements are not that hard it did  cause my brain to work anyways.

Nothing makes me more happy then to see Quick Save or just save anywhere features in my RPG's

Quick save should be mandatory in all portable games.

This.  The fact that a good 50% of the game was repetative, almost monotonous dialogue is what kept me from finishing the first.  Does everyone on the party have to repeat the same things?  Its part of the same problem I had with Suikoden V.

But more than this, the original Golden Sun had a fun gameplay engine.  But you were hardly in battle for even 25% of the game between all the weak puzzle, platforming and dialogue.  Let's not forget there's actually a way to ski[ getting one of the main djinn powers and no way to go back and get it later.

In short, if you want a concept like Golden Sun that did it right, just play Paper Mario.

I agree with the game's dialouge going on way longer then it needs to at any time. I felt like I was playing a game directed to ten year olds or something the way it trys to hold your hand through it. After five hours in I had to call it quits.

I enjoyed it, though I must admit the beginning was flat out boring and the tutorial was just kinda heavy...I kinda laughed when Issac ask you do you know how to use djinn and if you say yes he still teaches you anyway! lol

I really didn't get the points of the emotacons(mispelled) they really didn't nothing to progress the story other than some different dialogue depending on what you chose.

the story was pretty much thrown out the window: first your investigating those "black holes" that suck psynergy and tranform monsters...then you're stopping some evil civilization from drowning the world in darkness...but the ending did do the story some justice(and I can't wait for golden sun 4!!!) the only thing that made the story decent was metting past characters from the previous golden sun games.

the puzzle were very weak, but some of the battles were a lttile complex(mostly those shadow cretures)

I do like that party member now attack other targets if their has been defeated, also how weapons come with a variety of skills to master.(though I think getting the Gia blade and sol blade in one game was a bit overkill)

and they made a little less of a grindfest that the previous titles were(specailly Golden Sun)

I did love the new artwork/summon sequences/battle sequences/psynergy/ect(hopefully we'll have a dark adept in the next one)

GS:DD wasn't the best of the series(GS:TLA is imo) but I enjoy playing it(on my 4'th playthrough) I think golden sun 4 will be what GS:TLA was to golden sun