The revival to the classic franchise plays it too safe, but is solid enough for fans of the genre regardless.
At the end of the previous Golden Sun, the original heroes had lit the four Elemental Lighthouses and restored Alchemy to the world, thus saving it from dying a slow death…or did they? In the thirty years since the fabled Golden Sun shone, all of Weyard has been wracked with disasters both natural and unnatural due to the Psynergy's violent return, and the heroes have received both praise and blame for their efforts. Players take control of Matthew, the son of former protagonist Isaac, and are soon tasked with plucking a feather off a rare bird so that his friend Karis can repair a device necessary for their parents to continue studying the after-effects of the Golden Sun event. Unfortunately for him, things are never that simple in the Golden Sun universe, as a group of shady individuals soon force Matthew and his ragtag band of heroes into a series of adventures across the continent for their own mysterious goals.
Dark Dawn's storytelling follows the same general pattern as the previous two games, which is both good and bad. It's good in that there is plenty of time to get acquainted with each character and their quirks, and while some of them lack personality, the cast for the most part is likable in their own right, or at least not worth making any "Worst Character Ever" rants over. With that said, the storytelling can also be quite frustrating. Like its predecessors, the plot likes to throw several detours and obstacles into the main story that the heroes must first work around before any real plot development can happen. This can lead to quite a bit of frustration in the first leg of the game, where the initial quests keep getting more convoluted by broken bridges and other contrivances. Even worse is the generally slow speed at which cutscenes unfold. Characters have a bad tendency to draw out plot expositions with a lot of filler, occasionally going so far as to repeat information the player already knows with a different choice of words. It's a shame, as whenever the plot gets moving, it's actually quite engaging. It just requires having to wade through a lot of dialogue and detours to get to the good parts.
One part that is all good about Dark Dawn is its presentation. Just like the first two games, Dark Dawn makes good use of the hardware it's on to create some impressive visuals. The graphics in both battles and the world map are pleasant to look at thanks to bright colors and a fair amount of detail in the polygons and textures. The battles take the cake, however, with well-animated models and a nice variety of monster and area designs. The best-looking part of these battles are the Djinn summons (more on those later), which have the most visual effort put into them and are just plain fun to watch when they launch their hilariously over-the-top attacks. Also quite enjoyable is the sound design. Golden Sun's soundtrack has always been good at evoking the genre's retro roots, and Dark Dawn is no exception. Despite being composed using MIDI (or rather because of it), Dark Dawn's music is generally well-composed and good at creating a sense of nostalgia and adventure. It's not as memorable as the soundtracks in the previous games, but it remains pleasant to listen to while exploring new territory.
The nostalgic charm also carries over into the gameplay itself. Dark Dawn is a traditional RPG through and through. You will travel across the continent battling an assortment of monsters and baddies, buying and selling new items and equipment in each town, staying at inns to fully recharge your party's health and Psynergy points, and exploring a series of elaborate ruins to find treasures and advance the plot. In addition to this, you'll also solve puzzles using your party's Psynergy (the game's word for magic). These puzzles generally revolve around moving pillars and manipulating objects to create pathways to the next room or treasure. They're not particularly big head-scratchers, but they do make for a nice break between fighting and roaming the countryside.
Speaking of fighting, the battle system is the same system used in many a famous RPG: You take turns giving commands to your party members such as basic attacking, defending, or using Psynergy or items. The unique feature to Golden Sun's fighting system is the Djinn. Djinn are small creatures scattered throughout Weyard and are equipped to each fighter to boost their stats much like regular equipment. In battle, you can unleash a Djinn's special ability – Powers like raising your team's stats or damaging and setting debilitating status-ailments on the enemies – but doing so comes at the temporary cost of losing the boosted stats. If enough Djinn have been used, you can also perform a summon, which calls forth a large entity capable of doing devastating damage, but this will force the Djinn on standby to go into an unusable recovery phase for a few turns. Djinn can also be mixed and matched to change a character's class, which comes with drastic changes to their stats and even Psynergy spells.
But the problem here is that there is almost no need to experiment with this. As far as RPG's go, Dark Dawn is pretty easy. Most common enemies can be taken down in one or two turns by just spamming the party's strongest Psynergy attacks, and while a few optional late-game bosses are legitimately tough, the fights required to finish the main quest and see the end credits don't take that much trouble to win. It ends up causing a lot of potential strategies and spells to go to waste; most status-ailment spells are nearly worthless, and just stacking all Djinn of one type onto each fighter raises their stats high enough to eliminate the need for strategic mixing anyway. The difficulty settings from Golden Sun: The Lost Age are also curiously absent, which would have helped to alleviate this issue. Once again, it's a shame that this has to get in the way, since the mechanics to Dark Dawn's battle system are well-tuned and generally fun to play with.
Overall, the problems with Golden Sun: Dark Dawn do hold the franchise's revival back quite a bit, but the game still turns out a solid traditional RPG at the end of the day. Fans of the franchise or cozy RPG's in general are sure to get a good kick out of it, but at the same time anyone who isn't interested in the series won't find any reason to start now. Golden Sun is what it is and isn't what it isn't, after all, but at the same time it does raise the question of what would happen if the series was a little bolder with its take on the traditional turn-based RPG.