Game Review: Golden Sun - Dark Dawn

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I'll admit that this is one game that snuck up on me. I loved the original Golden Sun games for the Gameboy Advance, but I thought the series had died, since there hadn't been even a rumor of a new game that I'd heard of in years. Then suddenly, I walk into my local Gamestop, and there are displays for preorders for a new Golden Sun!

Fast forward to now, and I've just finished my first playthrough of the game. And it was everything I'd hoped it would be, and more. Fans of the original games will find the core mechanics virtually the same. Newbies to the game will find helpful tutorials early on, but really the controls are easy enough that anyone familiar with turn-based RPGs like the original Final Fantasy games should be able to figure them out with ease.

As in the earlier Golden Sun games, the name of the game is Djinn hunting, and finding the more powerful summons. Some of them are easy to find (more than one Djinn literally comes up to your party and asks to join) but some take creativity to reach, solving puzzles. And some are scattered around the world map, as random encounters. Likewise, you have to hunt for most of the powerful summons. My only suggestion is to follow every path, and see where it goes.

The story takes place 30 years after the events of Golden Sun - The Lost Age. The return of Alchemy to the world has issued in new challenges, but the credit (and blame) for saving the world is given to the legendary Warriors of Vale (the PCs from the first two games). Isaac and Garet live in a cabin overlooking the remains of Mt. Aleph, and the ruins of Sol Sanctum, but when the soarwing they need to cross the volcanic wastes between the cabin and the sanctum is destroyed, they send their children, who have inherited their Adept powers, to get a Roc's Feather that is needed to repair it. And thus the kids are launched into their own adventure, which soon becomes a quest to save the world, just as their parents did thirty years ago.

One thing that is different from the original games is that your Psynergy Points (PP) will renew themselves over time as you're walking around. To me, this made the game much easier through large stretches of the game, as I would simply use Psynergy to heal my characters as I went around leveling up and getting the gold I needed for the best equipment. Items like vials and herbs seemed largely pointless, until you hit a Boss encounter and the healer went down.

Speaking of boss encounters, there are several of them in this game, and for the most part they are challenging, though not impossible encounters, especially if you've leveled up enough first. The final Boss, of course, is another matter entirely, as he has an insane number of hit points, does massive damage to one or more of the party members four times every turn, and is largely unaffected by anything other than djinn summons. Fortunately, when he beats you (yes, I said WHEN, not IF), you revive a little ways away, and can trek back to try again.

Golden Sun - Dark Dawn is a solid, enjoyable RPG, and I recommend it for anyone who is a fan of the genre. In addition to providing dozens of hours of entertainment searching for the djinn and summons, while progressing the detailed and intriguing storyline, Dark Dawn is one of the games that definitely falls into the 'workplace friendly' category. By which I mean that you can be playing it at work, and set it down in an instant, even in the middle of combat, and you can rest assured that you won't get destroyed while you actually do your work.

I rate it a 4 out of 5.