Game Reviews

Dark Dawn does a great job of clearing up several of these issues from the outset. The original Golden Sun's pokey pacing is nowhere to be seen -- the story begins by throwing you immediately into the thick of action with a rescue mission. It's a softball mission to be sure; the heroes of the older games accompany their young protégés, alleviating any chance of failure. As mandatory tutorials go, though, it's excellent: not only does it make perfect sense for the old guard to walk the new generation through the rigors of adventuring, it also serves as a seamless passing of the torch for fans. It sets up the dynamics of the new cast, explains the basics of the backstory, fills in the 30-year gap between the end of the last game and this sequel, and explains the mechanics of both the combat system and the in-dungeon puzzle-solving.

Also unlike the GBA games, Dark Dawn looks fantastic. In fact, it boasts some of the highest production values ever seen on DS. Its world is colorful and vibrant, crammed with detail throughout both towns and dungeons. Motoi Sakuraba's soundtrack is spot-on: Action themes are energetic but never shrill, while more sedate tracks manage to create an interesting atmosphere without being dull. The game particularly shines during combat, with vivid graphical effects that never grow tedious or overblown. The summon animations do run fairly long, but they work much better in Dark Dawn than they did in something like Final Fantasy VIII; the convoluted process of calling a summon makes them rare and valuable assets, so their over-the-top animations simply lend to their impact. Where Dark Dawn stumbles is...well, everywhere else. There's no single element of the game that's genuinely bad, but despite all the advances on display this is very much a Golden Sun game, for better or worse. Camelot clearly loves this series, and they've invested it with an elaborate mythos.