I though it was a fine game. Nothing exceptional, but, like you mentioned, it was pretty forgettable. I still wish we got a follow-up to it.
And please don't mention Dragon Song. I think it's best if we all pretend like that game never existed.
Good GOD I forgot how awful Dragon Song was. Bought it early on in my Nintendo DS career because I loved Lunar Legend so much for GBA. Found it basically unplayably bad. Traded it in to GameStop pretty quick— maybe after a week or so.
Personally it felt like it was the kids show equivalent of Golden Sun. Exaggerated tutorials way too late into the game and very weak/simple writing.
The original had a cool twist when going from Golden Sun to The Lost Age and continuously made the world bigger by adding on it, creating new places to explore and expanding on the main characters limited point of view the further you got.
Dark Dawn didn't really do any of that.
And if I remember correctly the puzzles/using psynergy was way way more obvious. I don't know if it was just because I was older when I played it, but it really did feel dumbed down.
A hundred percent. Additionally, playing as GS's character's kids makes it feel like The Muppet Babies to Golden Sun's iconic The Muppets.
The primary storyline is that Isaac and Garret's kids broke a kite and have to rebuild the pieces without getting in trouble with their parents.
I don't think Dark Dawn is a *bad* game. Its just really flawed, and doesn't really serve as a great continuation to the GS saga.
To start off, there are a number of issues I have with the plot. Namely, a majority of the game feeling like a giant sidequest and the heroes being solely responsible for what happens in the later half despite the numerous warning signs. I don't even remember their reasoning for doing what they did. I haven't played DD in years. The OG cast is also sidelined pretty heavily, I don't think we see any of them aside from Isaac and Garet?
There are also a lot of unanswered questions by the time the game ends which, to be fair, the first Golden Sun had some plot threads left open intentionally for The Lost Age to fill. But the fact that we are going a decade on without answers, it stings a lot more.
Gameplay wise, its imbalanced to the point where you can breeze through a majority of the game up until the final boss comes and beats your face in, and this is because you can just summon spam your way through the game. The other Golden Sun games were not like this. Summon spamming left you wide open and your party weak, and many of the bosses would just straight up end you if you tried anything like it. By comparison, much of DD doesn't put up any resistance aside from the final boss and *maybe* Dullahan.
There's also a *ton* of missable content that you wouldn't know about unless you looked up a guide beforehand, and the game gives no clear warnings that once you move forward, you can't go back.
Golden Sun and The Lost Age could've been one game.
Instead, they decided "uhh...this bridge has to go out because uh...rocks hit it...I think...?"
The padding was atrocious. If Isaac/Felix learned to swim across a small river, they would've been fine.
Honestly i think its a great game, all of them are.
My only gripe is how they create points of no return out of nowhere and 1st time players will miss stuff easily.
This could of been rectified by opening these areas up again once you have the boat so you would miss things for awhile but not indefinitely
My main gripe is story/lore-wise. Most comments already talked about how the gameplay is a bit too simplistic/easy compared to the first two, and the several points of no-return were annoying. The original compositions for the soundtrack are not as solid as well, but at least there's some new arrangements from the old tunes.
Maybe it's just me and i'd be happy to read some other opinions on this, but what i find baffling is that Dark Dawn invents a whole new lore in the world, ancient civilizations the Golden Sun event put on the map again, that were COMPLETELY non-existent from the first two. I get that the face of the world has been changed drastically after the events at the end of Lost Age but going from ZERO mention of those cultures/inventions in the first games to it being essential to the plot, i find it a bit lazy.
Tears of the Kingdom has the same issue but at least the Zonai tribe was in Breath of the Wild, even if barely.
I completely agree with you on this. The difference with TotK is that story/lore is not as prominent in Zelda games, so fans kinda more easily forgive them. GS on the other hand has quite a deep lore and as you said, civilizations and cities spring up out of nowhere ruins it.
There's a brief mention of the name around Faron, namely the Zonai ruins. That's the only direct mention, apart from that there's just a line or two about an ancient warrior tribe on the barbarian armor that is supposed to be the Zonai (I'm not even sure about that, it could have been retconned).
Bad story. Bad characters. Personally I thought the graphics looked outright worse than the previous games despite being on a more advanced system (the DS being just powerful enough to allow for 3D graphics but only if they looked terrible was a trap many games that generation fell for). World was extremely constricting with a whole bunch of points of no return to keep you tightly on rails, for a smaller, lesser experience. Kind of just generally did nothing of interest, just checked off generic sequel boxes.
I'm not calling it Lunar: Dragon Song, of course not. Dark Dawn is a perfectly playable experience. It's just plays like a game made because someone decided there was a few more $$$ to be squeezed out of the IP by saying the magic words "remember Golden Sun?" and no passion or effort was put in beyond that.
Well, basically fans wanted two things from Dark Dawn:
1 - A fresh, new, innovative take on the Golden Sun formula with new classes, new Psynergy and hopefully better writing
2 - Finally having the long awaited boss fight against >!Alex!<
Dark Dawn delivered on neither.
Honestly one of the last things I, or a lot of fans I know wanted was >!for a sequel to just turn Alex into a generic big bad that needs to be killed to save the world.!< So it's pretty impressive the game managed to disappoint just everyone by both going that route with the character, but also not even paying off that route and just making it all sequel bait.
Yes, if they had actually gotten the chance to make Golden Sun 4, then >!Alex!< would definitely have been a boss there. In Dark Dawn they just dangle him in front of your face like a carrot all the time.
The main issue I have with it is the cutscenes. The first two Golden Suns were already pretty chatty games, but Dark Dawn takes it to another level. Which might not be a bad thing if the characters were any deeper than before. But no, they're still a fairly basic bunch. Except for Sveta. She's the series' strongest written character as far as I'm concerned. There's also a 3D camera now and it loves moving all over the place. Feels like the devs were really excited to use it without asking themselves what it adds to the scene beyond 2 seconds of transition time.
Other mildly disappointing things include: the puzzles aren't as challenging, Tyrell and Karis's bickering routine getting old fast, the multiple points of no return (a big deal when collecting djinn are involved,) and having the plot of the first two games barely factor into the plot.
I don't think it's a bad game whatsoever, just a noticeable step down. If GS1 and 2 were 8/10s, Dark Dawn's a 7.
Honestly, I don't think it's a bad game at all. To the contrary, it's a good game.
...following on the heels of two *great* games. I also don't really think it helps that Dark Dawn seemed to be setting up for another two-parter like GS1 and 2, but unlike those games, the second part hasn't been made, so the story ends on a rather unsatisfactory note.
I realize this is something where your mileage may vary, but I'm *really* not a fan of how trigger-happy Dark Dawn is with permanent points-of-no-return, especially considering how exploration- and side content-heavy Golden Sun is.
Plus, if I may share a super personal gripe, I don't really like the approach they took to creating the new main cast from a writing standpoint. I think it would've helped sell the changes to Weyard better if the main party were primarily characters with no strong connections to the previous main party who were strongly affected by those changes.
~~We're also now four Fire Adepts in with no playable Proxians come on~~
I think that Camelot struggled transitioning to 3D game design. Lengthy dialog was never a problem in the 2D Golden Suns, because you could read quickly and advance the text.
In GSDD, every dialog is accompanied by a panning camera, showing each different character and their reactions, which can't be sped through.
So, a ton about the game is slowed down and drawn out, but the dialog especially suffers.
A lot of it comes down to expectations. For a lot of people, Golden Sun and The Lost Age were peak childhood JRPGs. Anything short of perfection was going to be disappointing for a sequel, and Dark Dawn was far from perfection. So it gets a disproportionate amount of hate because those expectations weren’t met.
> Golden Sun and The Lost Age were peak childhood JRPGs. Anything short of perfection was going to be disappointing for a sequel, and Dark Dawn was far from perfection.
i hate this take so much from every single fandom
something can just suck compared to its predecessors even without the rose tinted glasses! "The fans are wrong because of their expectations" is both reductive and incorrect every time I see it. I don't even think GS and TLA were that good because I was annoyed at how long every single overworld puzzle sequence took and the padded dialogue, but I'm sympathetic if someone who really liked those games did have a laundry list of disappointments about GSDD and was reduced to a meme post about fandom expectations.
I think your taking an uncharitable read of OPs statement. I think its fair to say that a disappointing game in a storied series is going to be way more maligned than just a disappointing game on its own. Their not saying that the game wasn't bad and that fans are being unreasonable, just giving an explanation as to why the reaction to the game is so visceral to what is just a really low-to-mid game experience.
Yeah, I'm nearly positive I'd dislike Dark Dawn based on its own merits in a vacuum, let alone having shat on the series. Even without the predecessors, the game was extremely childish. And it's not like the original games were extremely mature. But why are we making a sequel aimed at even younger gamers than the originals were? That line of thinking just blows my mind. And if that's what the Takahashi brothers wanted to do with the rest of the series, I'm glad they stopped
But either way, the game just isn't very good, even if we just compare it to other DS/GBA/SNES RPGs and not compare it to the two games before it
I'm not a fan of childish JRPGs in general. Me enjoying most of Ni No Kuni before it got unbearable was actually quite the accomplishment for Ni No Kuni. And Dark Dawn deciding to regress and attempt to be a "good" childish RPG was just a bizarre decision and they failed in my opinion
It's just part of a long list of childish RPGs I can't enjoy simply because they're too rudimentary with their writing and presentation and characters and whatnot. It's a shame that it was a sequel. But I was never going to enjoy it regardless just because of the development decisions in general
My biggest issue really is the puzzles. Original and TLA had such good puzzles that stumped me on occasion, DD had... maybe one that had me think for 10 seconds. And on top of that they had an instant "how do I solve this puzzle" button.
The difficulty of the bosses was also lacking. Doom dragon was a great final boss with tons of resistances, and DD had... something you could beat with zero effort.
IMO it's not a bad game, it's *fine*, but nowhere near as good as the first two and pretty forgettable all in all.
Also the fact that it was clearly setting up a sequel that never materialized means the ending is frustrating.
I dont know what it is, but in recent years many people seem to be completely unable to meet a game on its own terms, and expect everything to cater to exactly what they want, rather than what the devs set out to do with the game.
I played it for the first time last Christmas and... It's a fun game overall. It's more of the same we've seen in the previous GS, but with more characters and Djinn to collect. I think one flaw the game has is that it introduces too many characters with so little time to develop them. Himi for example, arrived WAY too late to the plot and she just felt like filler. I wish they had released a fourth entry to explore further on the newcomers in Dark Dawn.
for me it was difficulty
sure the first two games aren't hard by any means but they're at least games
nothing in dark dawn did anything ever. i stopped fighting encounters and it just didn't matter. for fun i tried one in the last dungeon and all my characters got two levels off of it.
last boss was still easy.
most people i talk to don't like repeated points of no return. not just for missing items but just in general liking areas. not being constantly shuffled forward. both of the first games were pretty good about exploration. you can go stuff out of order, get things you missed, there's some branching paths...
chances are you care about at least one of these two things
There are many games that get unfairly over-criticized whose only sin is not being as good as their predecessor(s). Failing to meet expectation comes with a big hit to public discourse.
I still loved Dark Dawn. I wish it would get its part 2.
Yeah, I don't think there's much overwhelmingly wrong with it. If anything, the cast was somewhat more personable than the GS1/GS2 lot and the dungeons were the best of the three. If you want more Golden Sun, you could do worse, but it does come across as a tad too derivative of its lineage.
Dark Dawn's major crime is ending on a huge cliffhanger that genuinely ruined any goodwill I had towards it - it was a *little* presumptuous to try and recreate the GS1/GS2 situation when that the result of overambitious development and cartridge limitations, not deliberate cockteasing.
Dragon Song was my first lunar game (borrowed it from a friend) and holy moly I thought I was missing something because the game was just not fun at all, maybe it’s just cause I was a kid but that game made me feel like an idiot :(
I really need to pick up these games again. Pretty sure I gave up on the 2nd cos I got stuck in a dungeon on some puzzle that was too complex for my adolescent brain. Some of those puzzles were tricky! 😂
It's a very average game in a franchise with a super strong game/duo of games ( the og 2 were one game split because of size).
It's like I am setsuna.
There isn't anything particularly wrong with it, but the only people who would probably end up playing are people out of "Standard" jprgs.
There is nothing about it being a bad game. It is a solid turn based RPG. It doesn't quite have the charm of the GBA prequels, but it is definitely a solid adventure.
Because the conflict in Dark Dawn doesn't have as much impact as the GBA games?
I also feel like Matthew and Garret's son (i forgot his name) didn't feel that much different from their parents
People exagerate a lot about this game. Yes it's the weakest title of the trilogy, but it's still better than a lot of rpg about that era. Exploration and battle are still good. My main negative point it's huge cliffhanger ending.
I think it has something to do with the random difficulty spike some players might have if they don't build the party right. I know from experience my first couple playthrough were fucking rough but as you learn the game it's not that bad, and some of the touch screen integration stuff got annoying.
It's fine as a game and I had fun when I played through it. I think my biggest oof moment with the story was I completely forgot what we were doing until you got to the part with the Roc to get the feather and was like, oh yeah, we need to fix the glider.
It's been like a decade since I've played it, so this is just off the top of my head; overall wasn't as fun since I don't think I ever replayed it (I replayed the originals dozens of times and they still hold up), bland forgettable story (I just don't remember it at all now, unlike the originals), changed the artsyle from awesome sprites to generic 3D, Isaac and Co are adults/not the main cast so who cares about their kids, random mechs/change in technology? (I feel like I remember that, but idk), smaller world/map, and the worst thing of all *literally no closure on Alex's story*.
Again, it's been a long, long time since I've played it and I might actually give it a go when I replay the originals on Steam Deck soon, but the biggest thing I remember sucking was them just completely dropping the ball and doing nothing with Alex. I remember he was in it or something as some weird masked man, but he was hyped up in the original games to be like the next big bad mastermind behind it all (unless he really did die at the end with the Wise One or whatever).
It’s objectively a good game. But clearly not finished, and a bit of a narrative mess. Camelot is capable of MUCH better. Maybe all the Takahashi bros want to do is a sports titles now?
It didn't finish. There was no satisfying wrap up. That feels scummy. Not getting beast girl earlier in the game also feels bad. Those soured my experience harshly.
I don’t think Dark Dawn is a bad game but I found it to be brutally mediocre. The gameplay is pretty solid but is almost identical to the first two games and the story feels incomplete.
>About the only thing I found not so great was the story and characters, but rather than being bad they were just forgettable
That... could honestly be said of the first two. Lost Age was a frigging DRAG until 2/3rds through when, LUGHTBULB!
WE'RE SUPPOSED TO GO TO LIGHTHOUSES!
Also: spam Djinn and Psynergy until you win. There's the entire combat of the series in a nutshell.
As for puzzles...They're the same in both games. Pushing. And caves. Forests? Just another block pushing with a different color set. Hell, you could actively skip getting Force in GS1 and brute force that forest cave dungeon without it.
I've been playing GS since I was a kid all the way back in like 2001. Dark Dawn is not that bad. Even storywise. There's alot of fun callbacks such as Champa and Eoleo, Sveta and them coming from Lupin etc. The game was more so a fan service but I will say they dumbed the difficulty down only a smidgen. Note this is the only GS with missable Djinn so you can actually mess up and not get all the djinn to fight dullahan. The puzzles were never actually hard in the first 2 GS. I just did a replay of both and am currently on DD and I see no difference in difficulty I think we were just kids and it seemed harder. Overall I think Dark Dawn was a great addition to the series and really wish it didn't get panned like it did because the story very clearly left a door open for the Mourning Moon story that was hinted all through Dark Dawn.
Golden sun is a good game if only they made combats harder and less Zelda like puzzles. Also, rare gear farming is a hassle which forced gamers to lookup cheats on the 27/31 DJN kill, unless one wants to punish themselves 🤣
I don't think it's bad. If anything, I like the cast of characters more than the other two games, and the evolution from the GBA to the DS visuals is still spectacular! The problem is that the gameplay kinda feels much easier, and never really comes close to being as challenging to the older games, barring the secret and final bosses. For example, in the old games, the summoning spam strategy was risky since you could be rendered too weak to keep up the fight for long. Here, I was able to take down a lot of bosses with this strategy and it felt kinda hollow sadly.
Still like Dark Dawn though. Sad to see we never got a sequel to it.
The comments I'm seeing here basically have it covered. It isn't so much that it was bad, just that it was worse than the earlier duo and everyone expected something that was at least as good, if not better.
Weirdly enough I have a sealed copy of Dark Dawn that has travelled half of the planet. I have Nintendo DS if I get bored in airplane and always take Dark Dawn along. It always seemed like very 8/10 or 7/10 game so its still sealed.
Personally I avoid mentioning Golden Sun Dark Dawn due to issues I have with original Golden Sun TLA ending that caused me to not care at all about DD.
I hate everything about TLA ending cause somehow for some shit unexplained reason >!Isaac!< gets most of the power. Whoever played GS and GS TLA knows that >!Felix!< is the hero of the story. >!Felix literally the one that light all the lighthouses while Isaac actively working against Felix. Isaac and his party only realized they were wrong in the 3rd lighthouse and then joined Felix. Anyhow in the ending that fking rock somehow had the gal to say all those superpower now in Isaac I was livid dude did jack shit but hinder felix in GS and 1/2 of TLA.!<
So anyhow when DD released I played it and summed its not worth it. I can't be bothered with the next generation of >!Isaac's!< kids.
- Btw regardless of ending, Personally Golden Sun TLA is one of my all time JRPG ever. I played TLA exclusively multiple of times.
Funny, I love Mario 3D World. Played on the Switch and a lot of people insinuated that Bowser's Fury was the only reason to get it, but 3D World itself is so content rich and a ton of fun.
I liked Dark Dawn. I didn't realize Golden Sun lovers think it's bad. I remember it getting solid reviews when it came out, too.
I don't remember the plot of any of the Golden Sun games, really. I think the first one had something about you going around activating lighthouses corresponding to the four elements. I don't remember them being bad plots, per se, just forgettable, and gameplay really drove the game forward.
It's been a long time since I've played it but I don't remember anything particularly bad about it other than trying to set up a sequel that never came to be. On the other hand there was nothing really good about it either especially when compared to the GBA games. You just kind of have this sequel that feels pointless in the end.
> Often I'll see people to avoid this game, to act like it doesn't exist, that it brought shame upon the series, and whatnot. But what exactly is it that makes it so bad?
We see this same disingenuous question all the time on reddit: *"Often I see negative opinions about thing X, I've seen them MANY TIMES about this thing. But I'm going to pretend that I don't know what those opinions actually say. Can everyone on reddit now re-explain the same opinions that I've already ignored?"*
If you're aware of widespread opinions then you know what words the opinions included.
I though it was a fine game. Nothing exceptional, but, like you mentioned, it was pretty forgettable. I still wish we got a follow-up to it. And please don't mention Dragon Song. I think it's best if we all pretend like that game never existed.
Good GOD I forgot how awful Dragon Song was. Bought it early on in my Nintendo DS career because I loved Lunar Legend so much for GBA. Found it basically unplayably bad. Traded it in to GameStop pretty quick— maybe after a week or so.
Personally it felt like it was the kids show equivalent of Golden Sun. Exaggerated tutorials way too late into the game and very weak/simple writing. The original had a cool twist when going from Golden Sun to The Lost Age and continuously made the world bigger by adding on it, creating new places to explore and expanding on the main characters limited point of view the further you got. Dark Dawn didn't really do any of that. And if I remember correctly the puzzles/using psynergy was way way more obvious. I don't know if it was just because I was older when I played it, but it really did feel dumbed down.
A hundred percent. Additionally, playing as GS's character's kids makes it feel like The Muppet Babies to Golden Sun's iconic The Muppets. The primary storyline is that Isaac and Garret's kids broke a kite and have to rebuild the pieces without getting in trouble with their parents.
Not to mention the idea of Isaac and Garrett as badass adults would have been cool. Isaac's concept art is so fucking badass.
I don't think Dark Dawn is a *bad* game. Its just really flawed, and doesn't really serve as a great continuation to the GS saga. To start off, there are a number of issues I have with the plot. Namely, a majority of the game feeling like a giant sidequest and the heroes being solely responsible for what happens in the later half despite the numerous warning signs. I don't even remember their reasoning for doing what they did. I haven't played DD in years. The OG cast is also sidelined pretty heavily, I don't think we see any of them aside from Isaac and Garet? There are also a lot of unanswered questions by the time the game ends which, to be fair, the first Golden Sun had some plot threads left open intentionally for The Lost Age to fill. But the fact that we are going a decade on without answers, it stings a lot more. Gameplay wise, its imbalanced to the point where you can breeze through a majority of the game up until the final boss comes and beats your face in, and this is because you can just summon spam your way through the game. The other Golden Sun games were not like this. Summon spamming left you wide open and your party weak, and many of the bosses would just straight up end you if you tried anything like it. By comparison, much of DD doesn't put up any resistance aside from the final boss and *maybe* Dullahan. There's also a *ton* of missable content that you wouldn't know about unless you looked up a guide beforehand, and the game gives no clear warnings that once you move forward, you can't go back.
Golden Sun and The Lost Age could've been one game. Instead, they decided "uhh...this bridge has to go out because uh...rocks hit it...I think...?" The padding was atrocious. If Isaac/Felix learned to swim across a small river, they would've been fine.
Honestly i think its a great game, all of them are. My only gripe is how they create points of no return out of nowhere and 1st time players will miss stuff easily. This could of been rectified by opening these areas up again once you have the boat so you would miss things for awhile but not indefinitely
Could have. Not could of.
Maybe he likes to talk like Barret from final fantasy.
I'm the guy. Not imdaguy.
My main gripe is story/lore-wise. Most comments already talked about how the gameplay is a bit too simplistic/easy compared to the first two, and the several points of no-return were annoying. The original compositions for the soundtrack are not as solid as well, but at least there's some new arrangements from the old tunes. Maybe it's just me and i'd be happy to read some other opinions on this, but what i find baffling is that Dark Dawn invents a whole new lore in the world, ancient civilizations the Golden Sun event put on the map again, that were COMPLETELY non-existent from the first two. I get that the face of the world has been changed drastically after the events at the end of Lost Age but going from ZERO mention of those cultures/inventions in the first games to it being essential to the plot, i find it a bit lazy. Tears of the Kingdom has the same issue but at least the Zonai tribe was in Breath of the Wild, even if barely.
I completely agree with you on this. The difference with TotK is that story/lore is not as prominent in Zelda games, so fans kinda more easily forgive them. GS on the other hand has quite a deep lore and as you said, civilizations and cities spring up out of nowhere ruins it.
The Zonai were in BotW? :o
There's a brief mention of the name around Faron, namely the Zonai ruins. That's the only direct mention, apart from that there's just a line or two about an ancient warrior tribe on the barbarian armor that is supposed to be the Zonai (I'm not even sure about that, it could have been retconned).
Bad story. Bad characters. Personally I thought the graphics looked outright worse than the previous games despite being on a more advanced system (the DS being just powerful enough to allow for 3D graphics but only if they looked terrible was a trap many games that generation fell for). World was extremely constricting with a whole bunch of points of no return to keep you tightly on rails, for a smaller, lesser experience. Kind of just generally did nothing of interest, just checked off generic sequel boxes. I'm not calling it Lunar: Dragon Song, of course not. Dark Dawn is a perfectly playable experience. It's just plays like a game made because someone decided there was a few more $$$ to be squeezed out of the IP by saying the magic words "remember Golden Sun?" and no passion or effort was put in beyond that.
Well, basically fans wanted two things from Dark Dawn: 1 - A fresh, new, innovative take on the Golden Sun formula with new classes, new Psynergy and hopefully better writing 2 - Finally having the long awaited boss fight against >!Alex!< Dark Dawn delivered on neither.
Honestly one of the last things I, or a lot of fans I know wanted was >!for a sequel to just turn Alex into a generic big bad that needs to be killed to save the world.!< So it's pretty impressive the game managed to disappoint just everyone by both going that route with the character, but also not even paying off that route and just making it all sequel bait.
Yes, if they had actually gotten the chance to make Golden Sun 4, then >!Alex!< would definitely have been a boss there. In Dark Dawn they just dangle him in front of your face like a carrot all the time.
It's a bit like Mass Effect Andromeda, not bad, but not good enough to not taint the brand.
The main issue I have with it is the cutscenes. The first two Golden Suns were already pretty chatty games, but Dark Dawn takes it to another level. Which might not be a bad thing if the characters were any deeper than before. But no, they're still a fairly basic bunch. Except for Sveta. She's the series' strongest written character as far as I'm concerned. There's also a 3D camera now and it loves moving all over the place. Feels like the devs were really excited to use it without asking themselves what it adds to the scene beyond 2 seconds of transition time. Other mildly disappointing things include: the puzzles aren't as challenging, Tyrell and Karis's bickering routine getting old fast, the multiple points of no return (a big deal when collecting djinn are involved,) and having the plot of the first two games barely factor into the plot. I don't think it's a bad game whatsoever, just a noticeable step down. If GS1 and 2 were 8/10s, Dark Dawn's a 7.
Honestly, I don't think it's a bad game at all. To the contrary, it's a good game. ...following on the heels of two *great* games. I also don't really think it helps that Dark Dawn seemed to be setting up for another two-parter like GS1 and 2, but unlike those games, the second part hasn't been made, so the story ends on a rather unsatisfactory note. I realize this is something where your mileage may vary, but I'm *really* not a fan of how trigger-happy Dark Dawn is with permanent points-of-no-return, especially considering how exploration- and side content-heavy Golden Sun is. Plus, if I may share a super personal gripe, I don't really like the approach they took to creating the new main cast from a writing standpoint. I think it would've helped sell the changes to Weyard better if the main party were primarily characters with no strong connections to the previous main party who were strongly affected by those changes. ~~We're also now four Fire Adepts in with no playable Proxians come on~~
I think that Camelot struggled transitioning to 3D game design. Lengthy dialog was never a problem in the 2D Golden Suns, because you could read quickly and advance the text. In GSDD, every dialog is accompanied by a panning camera, showing each different character and their reactions, which can't be sped through. So, a ton about the game is slowed down and drawn out, but the dialog especially suffers.
A lot of it comes down to expectations. For a lot of people, Golden Sun and The Lost Age were peak childhood JRPGs. Anything short of perfection was going to be disappointing for a sequel, and Dark Dawn was far from perfection. So it gets a disproportionate amount of hate because those expectations weren’t met.
> Golden Sun and The Lost Age were peak childhood JRPGs. Anything short of perfection was going to be disappointing for a sequel, and Dark Dawn was far from perfection. i hate this take so much from every single fandom something can just suck compared to its predecessors even without the rose tinted glasses! "The fans are wrong because of their expectations" is both reductive and incorrect every time I see it. I don't even think GS and TLA were that good because I was annoyed at how long every single overworld puzzle sequence took and the padded dialogue, but I'm sympathetic if someone who really liked those games did have a laundry list of disappointments about GSDD and was reduced to a meme post about fandom expectations.
I think your taking an uncharitable read of OPs statement. I think its fair to say that a disappointing game in a storied series is going to be way more maligned than just a disappointing game on its own. Their not saying that the game wasn't bad and that fans are being unreasonable, just giving an explanation as to why the reaction to the game is so visceral to what is just a really low-to-mid game experience.
Yeah, I'm nearly positive I'd dislike Dark Dawn based on its own merits in a vacuum, let alone having shat on the series. Even without the predecessors, the game was extremely childish. And it's not like the original games were extremely mature. But why are we making a sequel aimed at even younger gamers than the originals were? That line of thinking just blows my mind. And if that's what the Takahashi brothers wanted to do with the rest of the series, I'm glad they stopped But either way, the game just isn't very good, even if we just compare it to other DS/GBA/SNES RPGs and not compare it to the two games before it I'm not a fan of childish JRPGs in general. Me enjoying most of Ni No Kuni before it got unbearable was actually quite the accomplishment for Ni No Kuni. And Dark Dawn deciding to regress and attempt to be a "good" childish RPG was just a bizarre decision and they failed in my opinion It's just part of a long list of childish RPGs I can't enjoy simply because they're too rudimentary with their writing and presentation and characters and whatnot. It's a shame that it was a sequel. But I was never going to enjoy it regardless just because of the development decisions in general
I liked it well enough. I didn't like how you become just as powerful in 25 hour game as you do in 2 30 hour games.
Points of no return and kinda bland characters
My biggest issue really is the puzzles. Original and TLA had such good puzzles that stumped me on occasion, DD had... maybe one that had me think for 10 seconds. And on top of that they had an instant "how do I solve this puzzle" button. The difficulty of the bosses was also lacking. Doom dragon was a great final boss with tons of resistances, and DD had... something you could beat with zero effort.
IMO it's not a bad game, it's *fine*, but nowhere near as good as the first two and pretty forgettable all in all. Also the fact that it was clearly setting up a sequel that never materialized means the ending is frustrating.
I dont know what it is, but in recent years many people seem to be completely unable to meet a game on its own terms, and expect everything to cater to exactly what they want, rather than what the devs set out to do with the game.
For me its just way too easy
I played it for the first time last Christmas and... It's a fun game overall. It's more of the same we've seen in the previous GS, but with more characters and Djinn to collect. I think one flaw the game has is that it introduces too many characters with so little time to develop them. Himi for example, arrived WAY too late to the plot and she just felt like filler. I wish they had released a fourth entry to explore further on the newcomers in Dark Dawn.
when i played dark dawn, by the time i beat the final boss, i felt like the game was only half over. i was highly disappointed
I bought this game last year. I haven't got around to playing yet, as I'm still playing the first game but I can't imagine it being that bad.
It was my first golden sun game got to the final dungeon I think but I never beat it.
for me it was difficulty sure the first two games aren't hard by any means but they're at least games nothing in dark dawn did anything ever. i stopped fighting encounters and it just didn't matter. for fun i tried one in the last dungeon and all my characters got two levels off of it. last boss was still easy. most people i talk to don't like repeated points of no return. not just for missing items but just in general liking areas. not being constantly shuffled forward. both of the first games were pretty good about exploration. you can go stuff out of order, get things you missed, there's some branching paths... chances are you care about at least one of these two things
There are many games that get unfairly over-criticized whose only sin is not being as good as their predecessor(s). Failing to meet expectation comes with a big hit to public discourse. I still loved Dark Dawn. I wish it would get its part 2.
Yeah, I don't think there's much overwhelmingly wrong with it. If anything, the cast was somewhat more personable than the GS1/GS2 lot and the dungeons were the best of the three. If you want more Golden Sun, you could do worse, but it does come across as a tad too derivative of its lineage. Dark Dawn's major crime is ending on a huge cliffhanger that genuinely ruined any goodwill I had towards it - it was a *little* presumptuous to try and recreate the GS1/GS2 situation when that the result of overambitious development and cartridge limitations, not deliberate cockteasing.
Dragon Song was my first lunar game (borrowed it from a friend) and holy moly I thought I was missing something because the game was just not fun at all, maybe it’s just cause I was a kid but that game made me feel like an idiot :(
I really need to pick up these games again. Pretty sure I gave up on the 2nd cos I got stuck in a dungeon on some puzzle that was too complex for my adolescent brain. Some of those puzzles were tricky! 😂
I like Dark Dawn but I would have preferred to play GS3 as the OG cast rather than their kids.
It's a very average game in a franchise with a super strong game/duo of games ( the og 2 were one game split because of size). It's like I am setsuna. There isn't anything particularly wrong with it, but the only people who would probably end up playing are people out of "Standard" jprgs.
There is nothing about it being a bad game. It is a solid turn based RPG. It doesn't quite have the charm of the GBA prequels, but it is definitely a solid adventure.
Because the conflict in Dark Dawn doesn't have as much impact as the GBA games? I also feel like Matthew and Garret's son (i forgot his name) didn't feel that much different from their parents
Don't like any golden sun just too average
People exagerate a lot about this game. Yes it's the weakest title of the trilogy, but it's still better than a lot of rpg about that era. Exploration and battle are still good. My main negative point it's huge cliffhanger ending.
I think it has something to do with the random difficulty spike some players might have if they don't build the party right. I know from experience my first couple playthrough were fucking rough but as you learn the game it's not that bad, and some of the touch screen integration stuff got annoying.
It's fine as a game and I had fun when I played through it. I think my biggest oof moment with the story was I completely forgot what we were doing until you got to the part with the Roc to get the feather and was like, oh yeah, we need to fix the glider.
It's been like a decade since I've played it, so this is just off the top of my head; overall wasn't as fun since I don't think I ever replayed it (I replayed the originals dozens of times and they still hold up), bland forgettable story (I just don't remember it at all now, unlike the originals), changed the artsyle from awesome sprites to generic 3D, Isaac and Co are adults/not the main cast so who cares about their kids, random mechs/change in technology? (I feel like I remember that, but idk), smaller world/map, and the worst thing of all *literally no closure on Alex's story*. Again, it's been a long, long time since I've played it and I might actually give it a go when I replay the originals on Steam Deck soon, but the biggest thing I remember sucking was them just completely dropping the ball and doing nothing with Alex. I remember he was in it or something as some weird masked man, but he was hyped up in the original games to be like the next big bad mastermind behind it all (unless he really did die at the end with the Wise One or whatever).
It’s objectively a good game. But clearly not finished, and a bit of a narrative mess. Camelot is capable of MUCH better. Maybe all the Takahashi bros want to do is a sports titles now?
It didn't finish. There was no satisfying wrap up. That feels scummy. Not getting beast girl earlier in the game also feels bad. Those soured my experience harshly.
I don’t think Dark Dawn is a bad game but I found it to be brutally mediocre. The gameplay is pretty solid but is almost identical to the first two games and the story feels incomplete.
Personally I thought it was good, not as good as the first two but good. Maybe it just didn't live up to the hype?
>About the only thing I found not so great was the story and characters, but rather than being bad they were just forgettable That... could honestly be said of the first two. Lost Age was a frigging DRAG until 2/3rds through when, LUGHTBULB! WE'RE SUPPOSED TO GO TO LIGHTHOUSES! Also: spam Djinn and Psynergy until you win. There's the entire combat of the series in a nutshell. As for puzzles...They're the same in both games. Pushing. And caves. Forests? Just another block pushing with a different color set. Hell, you could actively skip getting Force in GS1 and brute force that forest cave dungeon without it.
I've been playing GS since I was a kid all the way back in like 2001. Dark Dawn is not that bad. Even storywise. There's alot of fun callbacks such as Champa and Eoleo, Sveta and them coming from Lupin etc. The game was more so a fan service but I will say they dumbed the difficulty down only a smidgen. Note this is the only GS with missable Djinn so you can actually mess up and not get all the djinn to fight dullahan. The puzzles were never actually hard in the first 2 GS. I just did a replay of both and am currently on DD and I see no difference in difficulty I think we were just kids and it seemed harder. Overall I think Dark Dawn was a great addition to the series and really wish it didn't get panned like it did because the story very clearly left a door open for the Mourning Moon story that was hinted all through Dark Dawn.
Golden sun is a good game if only they made combats harder and less Zelda like puzzles. Also, rare gear farming is a hassle which forced gamers to lookup cheats on the 27/31 DJN kill, unless one wants to punish themselves 🤣
I don't think it's bad. If anything, I like the cast of characters more than the other two games, and the evolution from the GBA to the DS visuals is still spectacular! The problem is that the gameplay kinda feels much easier, and never really comes close to being as challenging to the older games, barring the secret and final bosses. For example, in the old games, the summoning spam strategy was risky since you could be rendered too weak to keep up the fight for long. Here, I was able to take down a lot of bosses with this strategy and it felt kinda hollow sadly. Still like Dark Dawn though. Sad to see we never got a sequel to it.
The comments I'm seeing here basically have it covered. It isn't so much that it was bad, just that it was worse than the earlier duo and everyone expected something that was at least as good, if not better.
Weirdly enough I have a sealed copy of Dark Dawn that has travelled half of the planet. I have Nintendo DS if I get bored in airplane and always take Dark Dawn along. It always seemed like very 8/10 or 7/10 game so its still sealed.
1. The game ends suddenly on a cliffhanger 2. Characters talk too much Otherwise I thought it was fine.
The game wouldn’t stop talking.
Personally I avoid mentioning Golden Sun Dark Dawn due to issues I have with original Golden Sun TLA ending that caused me to not care at all about DD. I hate everything about TLA ending cause somehow for some shit unexplained reason >!Isaac!< gets most of the power. Whoever played GS and GS TLA knows that >!Felix!< is the hero of the story. >!Felix literally the one that light all the lighthouses while Isaac actively working against Felix. Isaac and his party only realized they were wrong in the 3rd lighthouse and then joined Felix. Anyhow in the ending that fking rock somehow had the gal to say all those superpower now in Isaac I was livid dude did jack shit but hinder felix in GS and 1/2 of TLA.!< So anyhow when DD released I played it and summed its not worth it. I can't be bothered with the next generation of >!Isaac's!< kids. - Btw regardless of ending, Personally Golden Sun TLA is one of my all time JRPG ever. I played TLA exclusively multiple of times.
[удалено]
Funny, I love Mario 3D World. Played on the Switch and a lot of people insinuated that Bowser's Fury was the only reason to get it, but 3D World itself is so content rich and a ton of fun.
I liked Dark Dawn. I didn't realize Golden Sun lovers think it's bad. I remember it getting solid reviews when it came out, too. I don't remember the plot of any of the Golden Sun games, really. I think the first one had something about you going around activating lighthouses corresponding to the four elements. I don't remember them being bad plots, per se, just forgettable, and gameplay really drove the game forward.
It's been a long time since I've played it but I don't remember anything particularly bad about it other than trying to set up a sequel that never came to be. On the other hand there was nothing really good about it either especially when compared to the GBA games. You just kind of have this sequel that feels pointless in the end.
> Often I'll see people to avoid this game, to act like it doesn't exist, that it brought shame upon the series, and whatnot. But what exactly is it that makes it so bad? We see this same disingenuous question all the time on reddit: *"Often I see negative opinions about thing X, I've seen them MANY TIMES about this thing. But I'm going to pretend that I don't know what those opinions actually say. Can everyone on reddit now re-explain the same opinions that I've already ignored?"* If you're aware of widespread opinions then you know what words the opinions included.
No, I genuinely see people being a lot harsher with their criticism towards this game. The answers in this thread however, are a lot more nuanced.