Review in Parts – Golden Sun: Dark Dawn
Update 3/13/2012: I was disappointed with the game upon finishing it. The only character I developed any emotional attachment to was Sveta, the demi-human princess. The other characters weren’t written well enough to appear to have any internal drive. They felt more like props that moved the plot along. There was very little that was organic in their reactions to each other and what was going on around them.
I’m also still bummed that they didn’t pick up with the original cast and that Isaac became a manipulative ass in adulthood. Since they were going to go with the children of the heroes from the earlier installments, they could have made more distinctions between the two generations visually and in personality. The kids are merely tiny versions of their parents.
The balance of random battles was maintained throughout. There were occasions where they did border on tedium, but the encounter rate never went so high as to cause frustration. If nothing else, this game series has my love for that and for rarely having random encounters in puzzle-solving areas. The battle system, a mix of psynergy (magic), Djinni and summons does become more balanced as the game wears on. Slightly. I never truly felt that any of the psynergy spells were powerful enough to be anything more than a fall back if there were no other options.
This game ended with a cliffhanger, as did its predecessors. But, I didn’t feel invested enough in this game to make the jump to the next one, whenever that may be released. Lord knows, there have been lengthy gaps between releases in this game series. That does make me sad. I really did enjoy the world that they created in the first two games.