Golden Sun Dark Dawn (DS) - thoughts?

[Jagosaurus]

I never played the 2 GS GBA titles. 20 hours into Dark Dawn & I'm puzzled... ha! Pun intended.

I like the large dungeons. Interesting but I'm indifferent. Fun puzzles & nice battles (great attack animations) but not exceptional in either area.

Thoughts? How do GBA titles compare?

[irixith]

GBA ones fall into the "vastly overrated" category. If you don't like the DS one, you really won't like the GBA ones.

[Jagosaurus]

Yeah, it's not bad but it's not amazing. Ha! One of those.

I really do like the pysnergy (magic) being used to progress through dungeons. Pretty cool concept.

I need to look up some footage of GBA titles on YouTube.

[gtmtnbiker]

I tried the GBA Golden Sun and didn't care for it. Yeah, the graphics were good but I didn't care for the story or the random battles. I'm more of a Zelda guy.

[Jagosaurus]

I actually am one of those who likes random battles.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

I tried to get into the GBA one on an Emulator and just didn't find it that fun, but it was pretty.

Random battles are iffy for me. I'm not minding them at all in SMT: Strange Journey but they annoy me in just about every other RPG I've played. Really I think it comes down to the fact that randoms in SMT aren't completely random. There's the light bar at the top that lets you know when you're getting close to having a battle. It's nice to have a short notice to prepare really I guess.

[Jagosaurus]

30 hours in now & it's getting better now.

Great RPGs grab your attention early. Decent game though. Hope to beat it this week if time permits.

[Nintendork666]

I've only played through the original on GBA, but had a wonderful time overall. A bit generic story-wise, and the puzzles were all too easy - but the combat, music and graphics were top-notch. It's a very polished title. I loved collecting, and combining Djinni for different stats/abilities per character.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

I absolutely adore both Golden Sun and The Lost Age. Sure, Golden Sun has a ridiculously lengthy intro and the yes/no questions are often mindless, but it's a fantastic RPG and one of the prettiest games ever to grace the GBA.

The Lost Age amps things up even further with a much longer, deeper and bigger experience overall, but it isn't really a sequel, more of a continuation. I feel bad for people who buy The Lost Age expecting to get a fun game where they dont need to know who the characters are, but that's really not what you get here. Literally, TLA starts right when the first left off.

On the subject of the third game on DS, the generational gap really hurts it. I would've championed Golden Sun 3 when the DS first came out, but why the hell was it YEARS later? By the time Dark Dawn came out, I had mostly only lukewarm excitement for it and after putting in about ten hours, I decided to go back and play the first game again - and you know what? in my opinion, Dark Dawn aint got nothing on the GBA originals. Even the first Golden Sun is a better game than Dark Dawn.

So overall? Disappointing.

[alienjesus]

I absolutely adore both Golden Sun and The Lost Age. Sure, Golden Sun has a ridiculously lengthy intro and the yes/no questions are often mindless, but it's a fantastic RPG and one of the prettiest games ever to grace the GBA.

The Lost Age amps things up even further with a much longer, deeper and bigger experience overall, but it isn't really a sequel, more of a continuation. I feel bad for people who buy The Lost Age expecting to get a fun game where they dont need to know who the characters are, but that's really not what you get here. Literally, TLA starts right when the first left off.

On the subject of the third game on DS, the generational gap really hurts it. I would've championed Golden Sun 3 when the DS first came out, but why the hell was it YEARS later? By the time Dark Dawn came out, I had mostly only lukewarm excitement for it and after putting in about ten hours, I decided to go back and play the first game again - and you know what? in my opinion, Dark Dawn aint got nothing on the GBA originals. Even the first Golden Sun is a better game than Dark Dawn.

So overall? Disappointing.

I didn't dislike Dark Dawn as much as you did, but yeah, I pretty much agree with everything here. I adore the first two games. Dark Dawn is alright, but feels less polished and like they were trying to force ideas into a franchise theyed already had enough of.