Golden Sun Dark Dawn is a great RPG and its let downs will bother some rather then all.
I didn't get very far on the origernal Golden Sun. I think I made it to the second lighthouse. And as for the second game? I got hardly anywhere at all.
This was more down to me being a bit out of practice with gaming in general then anything those games did wrong. Basically, the scale and grandia got a bit much for me, I got lost, and subsequently, lost interest all together.
But even at the time, I appreciated that they were good games.
Thankfully, you don't need to have beaten the previous games to play Dark Dawn, because the game does an excellent job of telling the backstory as well as its own.
Couple that with a deep battle system, accessable difficulty level and a very decent 30-40 hours of play time, and you have yourself a game I would wholy reccommend.
But if I put my critic hat on for a moment, I have to point out that the soundtrack is only average, the graphics nothing special (though the summons are pretty epic) and even now that I have a hell of alot more gaming experience, I still managed to get lost several times. Especially in the second half of the game, when you start covering ground you've already been through. The heavy amounts of text in the cutscenes had me nodding off at times and made me miss important info at times.
Hey, I work for a living. Sleep happens.
Flaws aside, I still enjoyed Dark Dawn. RPG fans can do far worse then this.
~ Inc