Doctor Jaeger
12-08-2010, 09:45 PM
During the days of the Game Boy Advanced, the peaks of handheld RPG games had been briefly realized. The handheld Fire Emblem series and Golden Sun series remain some of the best RPGs ever, even better than most console titles. Golden Sun in particular was a cult classic, spawning it's sequel, The Lost Age, shortly after.
Fans have waited many years for this sequel, but perhaps this was not a good year to be making a sequel. The air was thick with the failures of BioShock 2 and Metroid: Other M. And Ninendo was in a rut, the new Zelda and Mario games being far too easy and cartoonish. Would Golden Sun suffer the same fate?
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn
Developer: Camelot Studios
System: Nintendo DS
Plot: Set 30 years after the events of The Lost Age, Dark Dawn fills us in by revealing that the Golden Sun was unstable and exploded. So the powers of Alchemy, though returning to the world and slowing the decay of Weyward, did nothing to stop the appearance of monsters. And at the heart of it all, strange voids that absorbed the Psyenergy of anyone near them began appearing, one such void referred to as the Mourning Moon causing a massive calamity.
At the heart of where Mount Aleph and Vale once stood, Issac, Garret, and their children Tyrell, Mars Adept and son of Garret and the player character who you get to name. By default it's Matthew, but i would never be able to focus with a Fire Emblem character being involved so instead the game followed the adventures of Hoshi, though bare in mind that i fully meant to insult Matthew as never was a big fan of the original four protagonists of the Golden Sun series and didn't know his mother was Jenna, your Mars Adept from The Lost Age. Aside from Jenna and Issac, you never exactly find out who the other parent is of the main four. You have Karis, daughter of Ivan, Reif, son of Mia, and Tyrell, son of Garret. What's that? What about the other three? Well Felix disappeared, Peirs is still involved though only working behind the scenes, and Sheba...
...
...
...i'll get back to you on that. There is a character named Amiti whose Psyenergy abilities are suspiciously like Peirs, but something Tret states later lead to me casting doubts on that theory.
Anyway, our protagonists are working on studying the strange Psyenergy voids when Tyrell steals an glider that looks strangely like da Vinci's flying machine. Wonder if i should inform Ubisoft because like Ezio on the flying machine during an amateur players first eighty tries, Tyrell crashes the damn thing. After the tutorial stage where you rescue Tyrell, you are set out on a quest to find the materials to make a new Soarwing, only you don't get to see Tyrell strung up by his cajones because you need his help to get the materials. Your first objective is to meet up with Kraden and the two Mercury Adepts he travels with so that you've completed the four element collection. And before you ask, Kraden is over 100 at this stage but the people who were directly exposed to the Golden Sun don't age. This must really suck for Sheba because she's 44 but trapped in the body of a 14 year old. An immensely powerful psychic that has the same rough physical maturity as Konata Izumi.
Anyway, my earlier drawing to Other M might have been more accurate than i realized. In Other M there is a murder mystery subplot that is never wrapped up. In Dark Dawn there are several NPCs who are established but then forgotten about. At one point you find Kraden but not Reif's sister, which is something i out loud inquired about but Nintendo apparently forgot. At some point down the line some writer must have suddenly realized t hey forgot her though because you do get a bit of random closure in the form of a conversation summed up like this:
Reif: Kraden, where's my sister?
Kraden: Uh... we reunited three days ago. You're just NOW asking that?
Reif: There is a reason that Karis is continuously shown to be the smart one...
Kraden: She's with Peirs.
Reif: Okay, where's Peirs?
Kraden: You'll see him in the sequel.
Perhaps that is another comparison i subconsciously drew. Like BioShock 2, Dark Dawn adds in random plot elements with absolutely no grace and that serves only to add more questions than answers. They insist that the new tribe of demi-humans came into existence due to alchemy returning to Weyward but at one point you go gathering ancient pieces of equipment designed for use specifically by those demi-humans. The plot insisted that psyenergy vortexes were appearing everywhere, but you only encounter a few in the beginning stages. And that thing about the sequel... i get back to that.
Gameplay: Golden Sun was the original perfect game on the go. With back-up batteries, the GBA could fuel a portable game with an excess of 15 hours gameplay, even on a speed run. I was afraid that this reputation would be damaged by awkward use of the DS's highly insensitive microphone and touch screen, but you never have to use the touch screen to play. The original formula of gather Djinni to boost power, access summons, and change classes remains in tact but the formula wasn't broke, so why fix it? Weapons combat and integration of Psyenergy into combat was in need of improvement, and improve it did. Instead of simply artifact weapons, ALL weapons have special attacks (Artifacts simply have stronger ones) and unlike the previous games you could put up a decent fight using standard arms and equipment, artifacts being much more harder to come by. Characters have to use a weapon and improve their efficiency with it to unlock more specials, but this doesn't usually feel like much of a chore as weapon XP builds up quickly and seems to in some cases carry over for certain types of weapons. Another thing is that some Psyenergies granted by equipping certain gemstones unlock new attack powers in battle.
Main gameplay makes use of the 3D graphics to add a feel that the world is bigger now, and wandering around has the old Golden Sun formula, but there is one noticeable flaw in that you can no longer zoom out while exploring the world map region of the game, but frequent sign posts keep you from being lost for long.
And one more element i must praise is that there is now a more significant difference between the two teams. You ultimately gather eight playable characters. There's Hoshi, the protagonist whose only spoken line of dialogue is profanity (I kid you not, though sadly it's censored). Tyrell, a Mars adept whose power is severe retardation. Karis, a Jupiter Adept who is more powerful and intelligent than her father Ivan which is a good thing because her father was useless. Reif, one of Mia's two kids who is supposed to be a scholar but who never solves puzzles, that being Karis's deal. And later on you encounter another four. Amiti, a Mercury Adept with a mysterious father who i use instead of Reif because Amiti has better strength and defense growths and a better offensive psyenergy layout. Sveta, a demi-human who had to be made to look young because Camelot quite possibly knew that animal ears on a woman are a major fetish of mine. A pirate whose identity i won't reveal because it is a major surprise that he makes an appearance, though people keep insisting that he's a "Young Warrior" even though at this point he's older than i am. And finally a Venus Adept who dresses like a Miko and who would seem quiet by Gordan Freeman's standards.
Music/Voice/Sound: Some songs were recycled, along with the squeak sound effects used to emulate talking during text conversations, and though the songs were decent the voice effect can !@#$ right off. Sound effects are basic, but very good by handheld standards. The music is also decent, but some loops should have been longer.
Graphics: Combat is beautiful as all equipped weapons have their own unique sprite instead of the character wielding a generic looking axe in battle when an axe is equipped regardless of how much it looked like the out of game illustration. However my praise ends there. Out of battle the character sprites and environments look so juvenile and ridiculous i felt myself flashing back to Wind Waker and afterwords finding myself curious about the flavor of a shotgun barrel. The Lost Age made the best of what it had with limited hardware and though it didn't look realistic, it actually looked well designed. No such luck with Dark Dawn, to be quite frank the level design is highly lazy. Hey, it's not like you had very little time to make this, The Lost Age came out over FIVE YEARS AGO. There's no excuse for it coming off as this stupid.
Programming: Now there are no major glitches that i encountered (Not that you typically have that problem outside of disks), but i do have a complaint. Towards the end of the game you need to collect three treasures and a set of equipment. I picked up all of the equipment BEFORE i got the three treasures, but the mission objective screen kept insisting that i should find the rest of the equipment. I would excuse that, but i won't. I still hold you to a high standard Camelot and Golden Sun, i hurt you and ridicule you and make you desire death because i love you.
Difficulty: Now here is my ultimate gripe. THE GAME IS TOO !@#$ING EASY!! The only time i lost a character outside of a one-hit-kill move is to the final boss, but when i compare him to the Doom Dragon of The Lost Age it really is just pathetic. The puzzles aren't simply easy, any puzzle that would have taken more than five minutes for a solution to be found by a blind drunk would have it's solution shown by using the Insight spell. There is only one slightly challenging boss fight and no hard puzzles. I don't care if the game has it's E rating, even by a child's standard the battles are laughable.
Final Opinion: This game wasn't meant to give closure. It was meant to establish several new elements and prepare you for the sequel which is pretty much inevitable. You saw the beast men, saw Weyward, and now the new batch of kiddies too young to have played The Lost Age are ready for a sequel. To the people who played The Lost Age and wanted closure, Camelot wishes to inform you that you can go !@#$ yourself, they have no intention of meeting the standards they themselves once set. Maybe i'm wrong. Maybe Golden Sun 4 will be as epic as Golden Sun 2. But for now, all i can say is that you are safe waiting for a price drop before you buy Dark Dawn. It's not a bad game, it's a decent time killer, but it didn't even meet the hype it generated half-way.
My Rating: 7/10
Fans have waited many years for this sequel, but perhaps this was not a good year to be making a sequel. The air was thick with the failures of BioShock 2 and Metroid: Other M. And Ninendo was in a rut, the new Zelda and Mario games being far too easy and cartoonish. Would Golden Sun suffer the same fate?
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn
Developer: Camelot Studios
System: Nintendo DS
Plot: Set 30 years after the events of The Lost Age, Dark Dawn fills us in by revealing that the Golden Sun was unstable and exploded. So the powers of Alchemy, though returning to the world and slowing the decay of Weyward, did nothing to stop the appearance of monsters. And at the heart of it all, strange voids that absorbed the Psyenergy of anyone near them began appearing, one such void referred to as the Mourning Moon causing a massive calamity.
At the heart of where Mount Aleph and Vale once stood, Issac, Garret, and their children Tyrell, Mars Adept and son of Garret and the player character who you get to name. By default it's Matthew, but i would never be able to focus with a Fire Emblem character being involved so instead the game followed the adventures of Hoshi, though bare in mind that i fully meant to insult Matthew as never was a big fan of the original four protagonists of the Golden Sun series and didn't know his mother was Jenna, your Mars Adept from The Lost Age. Aside from Jenna and Issac, you never exactly find out who the other parent is of the main four. You have Karis, daughter of Ivan, Reif, son of Mia, and Tyrell, son of Garret. What's that? What about the other three? Well Felix disappeared, Peirs is still involved though only working behind the scenes, and Sheba...
...
...
...i'll get back to you on that. There is a character named Amiti whose Psyenergy abilities are suspiciously like Peirs, but something Tret states later lead to me casting doubts on that theory.
Anyway, our protagonists are working on studying the strange Psyenergy voids when Tyrell steals an glider that looks strangely like da Vinci's flying machine. Wonder if i should inform Ubisoft because like Ezio on the flying machine during an amateur players first eighty tries, Tyrell crashes the damn thing. After the tutorial stage where you rescue Tyrell, you are set out on a quest to find the materials to make a new Soarwing, only you don't get to see Tyrell strung up by his cajones because you need his help to get the materials. Your first objective is to meet up with Kraden and the two Mercury Adepts he travels with so that you've completed the four element collection. And before you ask, Kraden is over 100 at this stage but the people who were directly exposed to the Golden Sun don't age. This must really suck for Sheba because she's 44 but trapped in the body of a 14 year old. An immensely powerful psychic that has the same rough physical maturity as Konata Izumi.
Anyway, my earlier drawing to Other M might have been more accurate than i realized. In Other M there is a murder mystery subplot that is never wrapped up. In Dark Dawn there are several NPCs who are established but then forgotten about. At one point you find Kraden but not Reif's sister, which is something i out loud inquired about but Nintendo apparently forgot. At some point down the line some writer must have suddenly realized t hey forgot her though because you do get a bit of random closure in the form of a conversation summed up like this:
Reif: Kraden, where's my sister?
Kraden: Uh... we reunited three days ago. You're just NOW asking that?
Reif: There is a reason that Karis is continuously shown to be the smart one...
Kraden: She's with Peirs.
Reif: Okay, where's Peirs?
Kraden: You'll see him in the sequel.
Perhaps that is another comparison i subconsciously drew. Like BioShock 2, Dark Dawn adds in random plot elements with absolutely no grace and that serves only to add more questions than answers. They insist that the new tribe of demi-humans came into existence due to alchemy returning to Weyward but at one point you go gathering ancient pieces of equipment designed for use specifically by those demi-humans. The plot insisted that psyenergy vortexes were appearing everywhere, but you only encounter a few in the beginning stages. And that thing about the sequel... i get back to that.
Gameplay: Golden Sun was the original perfect game on the go. With back-up batteries, the GBA could fuel a portable game with an excess of 15 hours gameplay, even on a speed run. I was afraid that this reputation would be damaged by awkward use of the DS's highly insensitive microphone and touch screen, but you never have to use the touch screen to play. The original formula of gather Djinni to boost power, access summons, and change classes remains in tact but the formula wasn't broke, so why fix it? Weapons combat and integration of Psyenergy into combat was in need of improvement, and improve it did. Instead of simply artifact weapons, ALL weapons have special attacks (Artifacts simply have stronger ones) and unlike the previous games you could put up a decent fight using standard arms and equipment, artifacts being much more harder to come by. Characters have to use a weapon and improve their efficiency with it to unlock more specials, but this doesn't usually feel like much of a chore as weapon XP builds up quickly and seems to in some cases carry over for certain types of weapons. Another thing is that some Psyenergies granted by equipping certain gemstones unlock new attack powers in battle.
Main gameplay makes use of the 3D graphics to add a feel that the world is bigger now, and wandering around has the old Golden Sun formula, but there is one noticeable flaw in that you can no longer zoom out while exploring the world map region of the game, but frequent sign posts keep you from being lost for long.
And one more element i must praise is that there is now a more significant difference between the two teams. You ultimately gather eight playable characters. There's Hoshi, the protagonist whose only spoken line of dialogue is profanity (I kid you not, though sadly it's censored). Tyrell, a Mars adept whose power is severe retardation. Karis, a Jupiter Adept who is more powerful and intelligent than her father Ivan which is a good thing because her father was useless. Reif, one of Mia's two kids who is supposed to be a scholar but who never solves puzzles, that being Karis's deal. And later on you encounter another four. Amiti, a Mercury Adept with a mysterious father who i use instead of Reif because Amiti has better strength and defense growths and a better offensive psyenergy layout. Sveta, a demi-human who had to be made to look young because Camelot quite possibly knew that animal ears on a woman are a major fetish of mine. A pirate whose identity i won't reveal because it is a major surprise that he makes an appearance, though people keep insisting that he's a "Young Warrior" even though at this point he's older than i am. And finally a Venus Adept who dresses like a Miko and who would seem quiet by Gordan Freeman's standards.
Music/Voice/Sound: Some songs were recycled, along with the squeak sound effects used to emulate talking during text conversations, and though the songs were decent the voice effect can !@#$ right off. Sound effects are basic, but very good by handheld standards. The music is also decent, but some loops should have been longer.
Graphics: Combat is beautiful as all equipped weapons have their own unique sprite instead of the character wielding a generic looking axe in battle when an axe is equipped regardless of how much it looked like the out of game illustration. However my praise ends there. Out of battle the character sprites and environments look so juvenile and ridiculous i felt myself flashing back to Wind Waker and afterwords finding myself curious about the flavor of a shotgun barrel. The Lost Age made the best of what it had with limited hardware and though it didn't look realistic, it actually looked well designed. No such luck with Dark Dawn, to be quite frank the level design is highly lazy. Hey, it's not like you had very little time to make this, The Lost Age came out over FIVE YEARS AGO. There's no excuse for it coming off as this stupid.
Programming: Now there are no major glitches that i encountered (Not that you typically have that problem outside of disks), but i do have a complaint. Towards the end of the game you need to collect three treasures and a set of equipment. I picked up all of the equipment BEFORE i got the three treasures, but the mission objective screen kept insisting that i should find the rest of the equipment. I would excuse that, but i won't. I still hold you to a high standard Camelot and Golden Sun, i hurt you and ridicule you and make you desire death because i love you.
Difficulty: Now here is my ultimate gripe. THE GAME IS TOO !@#$ING EASY!! The only time i lost a character outside of a one-hit-kill move is to the final boss, but when i compare him to the Doom Dragon of The Lost Age it really is just pathetic. The puzzles aren't simply easy, any puzzle that would have taken more than five minutes for a solution to be found by a blind drunk would have it's solution shown by using the Insight spell. There is only one slightly challenging boss fight and no hard puzzles. I don't care if the game has it's E rating, even by a child's standard the battles are laughable.
Final Opinion: This game wasn't meant to give closure. It was meant to establish several new elements and prepare you for the sequel which is pretty much inevitable. You saw the beast men, saw Weyward, and now the new batch of kiddies too young to have played The Lost Age are ready for a sequel. To the people who played The Lost Age and wanted closure, Camelot wishes to inform you that you can go !@#$ yourself, they have no intention of meeting the standards they themselves once set. Maybe i'm wrong. Maybe Golden Sun 4 will be as epic as Golden Sun 2. But for now, all i can say is that you are safe waiting for a price drop before you buy Dark Dawn. It's not a bad game, it's a decent time killer, but it didn't even meet the hype it generated half-way.
My Rating: 7/10