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Golden Sun Dark Dawn


SuperLink

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Easily the biggest surprise of E3'09. While we all knew MGS would eventually land on Thrixbawks, and it's not like S-E haven't been known to make 2 FFs at once, I honestly had given up all hope for the Golden Sun franchise after the only Brawl inclusion was a rather awesome looking Isaac assist trophy, a trophy of said item, and not a single sticker.

Years of hoaxes, rumours, and iffy comments from Camelot later: the wait is over. Finally the main story of the series can actually begin. Golden Sun 3 is on the way.

Huge E3'09 art featuring the new protagonists

So who're these guys? Isaac, Garet and Mia? Or a group of reincarnations or descendants?

By the way, to anyone who hasn't played the Golden Sun series, this is as big a deal for me as the reveal of Shenmue III would be. And a bigger deal than the reveals of a possible ViewtifulJoe3, Okami2 or EarthWormJim4 (which is actually happening anyway lol not anymore, but atleast Okamiden is)

I know the series isn't immensely popular, but I blame marketing and sales. The grand majority of GS players love it to bits. So while I don't expect many posts, I expect the people who do post to give it some serious loving!!

2010 Edit

Well the game was shown at E3 again, with the new title, a new trailer, and more info on the game and characters.

- The game is set 30 years after The Lost Age, it features the direct descendants of the previous titles

- The main character Matthew, is Isaac's son

- The other characters have similarities with some of the old cast

- Motoi Sakaruba is composing once again

Matthew

GSDDMatthew.jpg

Tyrell

GSDDTerrell.jpg

Karis

GSDDKaris.jpg

E3'10 Trailer:

Gameplay from E3 Floor:

Quite nice quality all things considered. The feel of the music perfectly matches that of Camelot's previous titles. After all this time away from Camelot working on Tales series and Star Ocean, Sakaruba still knows perfectly how to compose Golden Sun music. God tier soundtrack pretty much confirmed.

Edited by SuperLink
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I never tried GS, but it sounds great. Im buying this......when I have the money :P (Metroid Prime Trilogy & Pokemon HG & SS).

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Well the new protagonists have been confirmed as descendants. What I want to know now is if they're direct or distant. If they are direct, maybe we'll get canonical shipping!! :lol:

GS2 spoilers:

Considering Alex was never fought or confronted as an enemy by the party, I'm thinking he may return somehow as a major protagonist.

After all, if the GS plot is as big as I hope it is, the events of the first two games will be pivotal to what happens here. I hope we don't just get a brief cameo of what happened billions of years ago Star Ocean style, but rather more direct cause and effect.

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  • 1 year later...

Epic fucking massive huge bump.

I've updated the first post with the info revealed at E3'10. I've also made it look a bit more clean and spiffy.

I refuse to believe I'm the only Golden Sun fan on SSMB.

Who else is really fucking stoked for this? (The sequel to one of the best modern new JRPGs there is)

I've yet to play a JRPG with puzzles as great as Golden Sun's.

Edited by SuperLink
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This is one of those games that, if the rest of E3 hadn't happened, would have me bouncing at the edge of my seat in eagerness. I haven't played either of the GBA Golden Sun games in (lost) ages, but they were definitely fantastic, and when I first heard news of a third game in the series I was really, really happy. As it is, though... there are tons of games I need to buy, and while Dark Dawn is definitely on the list, it's not the highest priority. After Black/White it's definitely my most-wanted DS game, though.

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Kinda wishing it was on 3DS right now, but it can't be helped.

I think I'll go through the first two again before I play this, but I'm definitely looking forward to it.

The soundtrack too, of course.

I'm wondering if they have plans to continue the series after this, also.

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Kinda wishing it was on 3DS right now, but it can't be helped.

I'm wondering if they have plans to continue the series after this, also.

I'm sure they do. If the original two games were just testing the waters, not to mention the additional support this title will get from its culmination of fans, and internet exposure, they must be planning some kind of new saga, or atleast have the ideas for another game.

Which is one of the reasons I'm glad it's on DS and not 3DS. Development of the DS game will finish this year, allowing Camelot time to think about and try out the 3DS hardware for their next title. Maybe that way we won't have to wait so long for the next title, whereas if they had to restart GS3 development we wouldn't have it on 3DS for another 2-3 years (they are a small studio afterall)

In which case we wouldn't be seeing GS4 until Nintendo's 9th gen handheld. Probably.

Also it gives the DS one final hurrah before it dies. And what a hurrah it'll be.

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I'm pretty excited about this. I wasn't very good at the fighting, but I loved the puzzles and stuff. I haven'T beatenm either of the other ones, though. In 1 I'm on the last boss, but I'm too weak. I f I remember correctly afzter you beat them they come back fully heale dor something :-/. In 2 I'm totally lost and have no idea where I have to go. The last thing I remember doing is killing a dragon, bu tI might've done stuff after that and just can't remember xD

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I refuse to believe I'm the only Golden Sun fan on SSMB.

Who else is really fucking stoked for this? (The sequel to one of the best modern new JRPGs there is)

Dude, you're so not. I adore the Golden Sun series and am extremely looking forward to Dark Dawn. Golden Sun is my absolute favourite RPG next to Skies of Arcadia and Chrono Trigger. The series get's so many things right and is so original.

Curious how there's so far no party Mercury Adept shown. There's Mercury Djinni on the hints screen at the very beginning of that gameplay vid and there's a new summon that is obviously of the Mercury element (Woman on horse summoning a tidal wave)

Love it that old Djinni are returning like Waft, Fever and Steel. I hope Geode returns because that Djinn attack looked awesome on the GBA unless I missed it in the vid. I also hope that the Coatlicue summon returns too.

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Dude, you're so not. I adore the Golden Sun series and am extremely looking forward to Dark Dawn. Golden Sun is my absolute favourite RPG next to Skies of Arcadia and Chrono Trigger. The series get's so many things right and is so original.

It's great to see other GS fans. When I made this thread last year it got 2 or 3 posts and then died altogether, but it's a bit more active this year :D

Curious how there's so far no party Mercury Adept shown. There's Mercury Djinni on the hints screen at the very beginning of that gameplay vid and there's a new summon that is obviously of the Mercury element (Woman on horse summoning a tidal wave)

Piers didn't join the GS2 crew for quite a while into the story, and he kinda came out of nowhere, so there probably will be a fourth main party member at some point.

Love it that old Djinni are returning like Waft, Fever and Steel. I hope Geode returns because that Djinn attack looked awesome on the GBA unless I missed it in the vid. I also hope that the Coatlicue summon returns too.

Speaking of Djinni, wouldn't it be awesome if the connection bonuses were present? That way we could start with all those glorious Djinni we'd collected before, and maybe even some of the summons.

Or atleast get them all at some point along the way.

The only problems with connection bonus are that Nintendo may not want to support the use of the GBA slot anymore... :/

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Speaking of Djinni, wouldn't it be awesome if the connection bonuses were present? That way we could start with all those glorious Djinni we'd collected before, and maybe even some of the summons.

Or atleast get them all at some point along the way.

The only problems with connection bonus are that Nintendo may not want to support the use of the GBA slot anymore... :/

That'd be so good. Especially if ou could transfer swords/armor or copies of swords/armor like the Sol Blade or the Erebus Armor. Imagine seeing the Megiddo unleash from the Sol Blade in 3D :blink: especially consdering the graphics are looking pretty amazing by DS standards. Or Dreamtide from the Pirate's Sabre.

Seems very sensible to think of sending over Summons via the cartidge method, especially summons like Iris and Charon, which were insanely hard to unlock in The Lost Age.

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Can anybody help me with Golden Sun 2? I'm in this cave by Taopa Swamp and at the bottom theres this glowing spot. Every time I click on it, Felix says he see's something glittering in the ground. I've tried all my Psynergy's but nothing happens! I really thought it would have to be Scoop :-/

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Can anybody help me with Golden Sun 2? I'm in this cave by Taopa Swamp and at the bottom theres this glowing spot. Every time I click on it, Felix says he see's something glittering in the ground. I've tried all my Psynergy's but nothing happens! I really thought it would have to be Scoop :-/

Is there a red-hot glowing rock? If so, douse it and a glowing spot in the darkness will appear. Use scoop where the glowing spot is in the darkness is and you'll get some Star Dust. It's a rare forgeable material you can take to Sunny in Yallam to forge into artifacts.

Star Dust is cool but I'd say the best forgeable material is Orihalcon. There's a tiny chance that if you take an Orihalcon to Sunny, he may forge it into Excalibur, which has one awesome and potentially very powerful unleash.

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I've tried that, but nothing happens :-/ Do I neef something before going there? My characters are all around level 30, if the level is important..

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  • 4 months later...
  • 1 month later...

Seems like my topic was locked once again. I got this game back in Christmas and have been playing it since. I may be in the beginning but I am getting there, and I will complete it eventually. What can I say, it is fantastic.

Edited by Vulpine
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  • 7 months later...

Sorry for bumping the topic, but as a big fan of the Golden Sun series, I shall do this). I haven't beaten the game yet, but I played for about 27 hours as of now. What can I say? the game sure is great, but unfortunately it lacks so much that The Lost Age had. New Game+, Hard Mode, Boss Battle etc. What's more, it has these cursed Points Of No Return!(( And it is VERY easy. My party haven't died not even once. The puzzles are also pretty easy.

Aside from that, the game is great! It keeps the fantastic atmosphere of the first two games despite the fact that it is now using 3D graphics. The story seems to be great, the characters are lovely and there are a LOT of throwbacks to the previous games.

As I've said, I haven't beaten it yet, but looks like the ending is open for a fourth game. I'd LOVE to have a new Golden Sun game! =^_^=

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  • 7 years later...

This game came out eight years ago.

I've been meaning to replay it for a while, actually, as it's become increasingly likely that Golden Sun as a series is dead.  My memories of the game were vague - I remembered barely any of it, as opposed to the originals - but had a negative tint; but it was still Golden Sun, a series I'd replayed the other entries of multiple times, and so I thought it was high time for a revisit, to try and assess what went wrong.  Actually, overall, I was pleasantly surprised.  This game is pretty good!  What it isn't is as good as the originals; or, to put it another way, what it isn't is good enough.

Spoiler

Broadly speaking, the game takes too long to come into its own; it's patterned too closely on the preceding titles, and inherits many of their flaws, too, along with a few of its own.  I genuinely think the opening of the game is pretty bad, and is one of the few things which I distinctly remember being bad then and still believe is bad now.  The characters are at their least likable, the dialogue at its most circular and waffling.  The main characters are the identical clone children of the original cast only less interesting, you spend the tutorial dungeon being babysat by the original game protagonists who now sport some truly ugly facial hair, a bunch of Djinn are thrust into your lap entirely too easily, and the motivating incident is one of your key party members behaving like a five-year-old.  It's not a good look.

The game only really starts to pick up when you're sent off on your own and enter the first major dungeon, and it's there that you remember what was really good about Golden Sun: Puzzles.  Truth be told, the "puzzles" are honestly pretty linear lock-and-key stuff, but the feeling of using your powers to actually make a tangible difference to the world remains compelling, and if the game probably doesn't ever get as complex as the originals, at least it never shies away from this crucial element.  As your story continues, you acquire newer and fresher characters who... um, strictly speaking are three-out-of-four still the children of characters from the previous games, but they actually have unique reasons for joining you, personal motivation and history that isn't just copy-pasted from their parents. 

A number of things hold the plot back.  One is, again, the lengthy dialogue scenes - something people complained about in the original, but I never felt they were that bad (could just be rose-tinted spectacles, I acknowledge), while here they seem to take far too many speech bubbles to say something comparatively simple.  The addition of dynamic camera angles to cutscenes livens them up, but objectively probably only lengthens them; ditto the emphasis on the emoticon reactions from the original, many of which seem to bear no relation to the dialogue being spoken.  (Related to this is the way the game heaps frankly a bit too much lore on you; the introduction of an in-game Encyclopedia feels less like a handy aid and more something they used as an excuse to pack the narrative with a lot of names which aren't really important to remember.)  Although the main setting has been considerably reshaped, and we ignore a lot of the locations from the first two games in favour of new ones, the game still feels like it's repeating the plot beats and structure of the originals rather than trying to take on its own identity.  And then there are the infamous points of no return - something the previous games never featured beyond the tutorials, but which here repeatedly and often arbitrarily cut you off from large chunks of the game forever, regardless of whether you picked up all the Djinn and summon tablets along the way.

Other narrative flaws are subtler.  The actual original point of your quest is frequently forgotten in favour of the increasingly lengthy diversions - and in a way this feels like it's with good reason, for as the game proceeds it becomes increasingly clear that the urgent task of going out and grabbing a new Roc's Feather was always a near-impossible task, requiring illegally hunting down an officially non-existent and extremely powerful creature.  Why Isaac thought this was remotely plausible for your characters to accomplish, I can't imagine; why nobody ever suggests talking to Ivan, the person who actually makes soarwings in the first place, is inexcusable.  And while you do eventually acquire a new and considerably more epic objective, this is somewhat undermined as the denouement reveals that everything in the game has been a convoluted just-as-planned plot by the villains - for reasons still unclear.  This, to me, is the game's final crime: It's all just the set-up for a future game... which was never made.  It's not even Part I of II; the story is more-or-less self-contained, with multiple plot strands unrelated to the main narrative left hanging.

What's sad is that that next game actually seems like it would've had all the originality that this game desperately needed, with the game's finale introducing new Light and Dark Psynergy, Sol and Umbra.  Something which actually makes a mechanical difference would've been genuinely exciting; too many of this game's mechanics are, again, content only to repeat what the previous games did.  There are a handful of new field psynergies, a few new Djinn - though I genuinely applaud the decision to make each and every Djinni visually unique - and exactly one new summon tablet, but broadly speaking the actual gameplay is the same.  The problem there is that Golden Sun's battle system is... unnecessarily deep and complex, I suppose you might say?  It has a lot of dimensions and systems you'll never need to interact with.  The class system, for instance, which unlocks different Psynergy per character depending on their combination of Djinn elements is entirely redundant.  Additionally, almost every random battle (a wildly uneven encounter rate, sometimes sky-high but other times bizarrely low, is another issue; but a sequel would just use symbol battles at this point) is beatable just using normal attacks, and only a handful of bosses require anything resembling an actual strategy.

In a way, there are too many options.  You have a good four or five means of attacking; normal weapon attacks, which come with a variety of randomised Unleashes, Psynergy, Djinn, and Summons.  There's simply too much; and it's actually the Psynergy, ostensibly the game's main feature, which often falls by the wayside.  Summons do far and away the highest damage to bosses, so all boss battles are just a balancing act of using up Djinn and then throwing out a summon, with only the occasional use of Psynergy as a filler.  Psynergy just can't compete.  So if there is ever a new Golden Sun, I hope they'll take an irreligious look at the battle system and wholly rework it.  Unleashes are fun, but their randomness makes them less strategic; perhaps you could select different Unleasahes each turn, but which of course have a chance of only emerging as a normal attack.  I'd probably also fuse Psynergy and Djinn somehow; maybe each Djinn move would actually be a Psynergy, you could unleash a stronger version at the expense of "sealing" that move until a summon is called...  Something like that; just a way of balancing out all your options so that there isn't always an obvious right answer.

It's rather sad to include only as a kind of afterthought my response to the music.  I was genuinely surprised to look up the composer and find that the same person did the music for all three games, because the music in Dark Dawn feels like a lacklustre imitation, with none of the energy and originality of the pieces in the original games.

 

Well, that's my overlong retrospective.  But what I can't resist is something that you might call prospective; an attempt to figure out where the plot was actually meant to be going.

Spoiler

As I see it, we have a number of plot points outstanding:

  • Psynergy vortices exist, miniature black holes which drain Psynergy from the surrounding landscape and apparently cause physical damage as well;
  • An enormous Psynergy vortex called the Mourning Moon has appeared every ten years since the Golden Sun, apparently making its third appearance at the end of the game;
  • A mysterious military nation called Tuaparang, ruled by a High Empyror, presumably made up of Mars Adepts, and situated aboard a giant airship, is interfering with the protagonists' lives;
  • Alex (who may have some degree of prophetic ability now) is working with them for his own reasons;
  • The even more mysterious Umbra Clan of Dark Adepts have infiltrated Tuaparang to the highest levels, though not to the level of the High Empyror;
  • Tuaparang's technological advancements include at least one machine which interacts with Psynergy vortices in some way, either starting them or siphoning energy from them or something of the sort;
  • They're also active around the Sol Sanctum area;
  • They spent the entirety of Dark Dawn engineering the Grave Eclipse in order to get Matthew to fire the Apollo Lens;
  • The Apollo Lens caused some of the citizens of Belinsk to acquire Light Psynergy.

So, in other words, the baddies are actually three different factions - Tuaparang, Alex, and the Umbra Clan - who all want the Apollo Lens to be fired.  The Umbra Clan's plan seems to be made plain at the end of Dark Dawn; they wanted to betray Tuaparang and fire on the mothership, or possibly on Tuaparang experiments at Sol Sanctum.  But what on Earth do Alex and the High Empyror get out of manipulating this random kid into firing the Apollo Lens?  Given that they also manipulated him into beginning the Grave Eclipse, the entire plot feels self-defeating and circular.  All I've got is the following: Let's propose that the Apollo Lens is one-use, or at least there no longer exists the Alchemical know-how to repair it in order to be fired again; and that firing it at the Mourning Moon would have destroyed the latter.  This explains the plot of Dark Dawn as a necessary preface to a hypothetical "Golden Sun: Mourning Moon" by eliminating a major threat to the Mourning Moon's existence, and ties in with the Tuaparang's Psynergy vortex experiments.  Light Psynergy is an unintended side-effect, or possibly a deliberate counter to the resurgent Umbra Clan.  What exactly Alex and the High Empyror - who apparently trusts Alex more than his own commanders, which suggests he's either really stupid or really clever - get out of the Mourning Moon is unclear, but I'm guessing they want to control it and use it as a weapon or drain its power into themselves or something like that.

I'd also suggest that Nowell (Rief's sister, puts in her first and only appearance near the beginning of the game) and Takeru (Himi's brother, unseen but sailed off on a mysterious quest of his own) were being set up as playable characters for the sequel.

So I'd say that not all hope is lost for a Golden Sun 4, as it seems to me that Dark Dawn's largely self-contained nature is actually a boon to a sequel, as there's very little need to spend time recapping what's come before.  But the end of Dark Dawn also sets up a clear direction for a sequel with an obvious objective.  I think the field is more or less open for a creative and ambitious team to make more or less any kind of sequel they want while still being able to present it as an entry point for new players.  We can only hope.

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