Slightly Offended, Camelot. Who do you take your long time fans for?
The menu system is extremely frustrating. There's hardly a place where I can see everything a character is holding. I appreciate the fact that they tried to change it up, but some formulas just work.
The idea of the encyclopedia is appreciated, but it is annoying. There's no figuring out the drama as it unfolds. Everything is just spoon-fed to the player. I don't even have to pay attention to what's being said. Not that what's being said is actually interesting enough to grab my attention but still. And I wish I could just not click the underlined terms but they stand out so much it's hard to just let them go, because I don't if I'm going to accidentally miss something essential.
As far as the "puzzles" in the game go, it's a joke. I remember actually having trouble in the original golden sun games. I like the fact that i'll be stuck in a log rolling location for a half hour, an hour, a few days....it just makes that moment when you figure it out all the sweeter. The insight mirror is another way of vomiting all the answers to the player. It's not a game anymore! It's a game and a cheat code all rolled into one! They dumbed down all the puzzles immensely...and it's not an instance of "I've gotten smarter", they definitely tried to make it accessible to younger kids! which moves me to:
SELLING OUT:
golden sun pretty much sold out on this game and it's very disappointing to see such an amazing specialty game be stripped of it's heart. Suddenly Djinn are the new pokemon. The creators didn't know who the audience for this game was at all. They mixed a relatively complex storyline nearly worthy of the golden sun name with dumbed down dialogue, characters, and gameplay. The game just isn't fun. Some conversations take unnecessarily long. Seriously, they talk FOREVER! And that's saying something cuz some of the original golden sun scripts were long, but at least they were mentally stimulating and interesting. These conversations are like blah blah blah garbage garbage garbage cliche cliche cliche. It's a shame that newcomers have to play this bootleg golden sun game, because that's essentially what it is. It's a regurgitation of what could have been an amazing game. KEEP IT SIMPLE!
I just wish they would have respected us as fans. If you create a game for yourself and stop worrying about what the "fans" want, it will come out a thousand times better than this garbage (in comparison to the other two). I don't think Dark Dawn is the game that the creators actually wanted to make. I think they TRIED to make a game rather than just making it. It's similar to a lot of musicians. A lot of musicians TRY to sound a certain way on a cd, and it comes off as unauthentic. But nothing is better than when musicians say "f*** it" and create a cd that's passionate and creative, even if it's not entirely accessible to everyone. I have to give the creators some slack though because this idea was incredibly ambitious, even if they didn't pull it off. And scathing fan reviewers like me don't make their job any easier. But Golden Sun: Dark Dawn has been chalked down to a kids game, and nothing more.