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When did you dirst know you wouldn't be a fan of Dark Dawn?

Started by Thunder-squall, 02, February, 2014, 01:00:44 PM

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Thunder-squall

I'm surprised how many of you guys haven't played or don't care for Dark Dawn.  When/how did you guys reach your negative conclusion?

Kioll

About the time the game ended, for me.  It was around then that I realized Himi showed up way too late.  And that was MY only real complaint with the gameplay.
I am the almighty emissary of fire...  the Mars Adept Kioll.  Oh, and did I mention that I'll see you long before you see me?

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

Quote from: Thunder-squall on 02, February, 2014, 01:00:44 PM
I'm surprised how many of you guys haven't played or don't care for Dark Dawn.  When/how did you guys reach your negative conclusion?
I have not decided how I feel about Dark Dawn.  Although, the game continuing 30 years later does seem a bit strange... ; If I drew any negative conclusions about the game, the first one to come to my mind would probably be: Y U NO compatible with emulators?

(Here's me thinking someone is going to say when they found out battles were too easy...)

Not sure what to think of this topic... but here's a list of related topics:

Lessons we've learned from Dark Dawn: http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?topic=1310.0
Camelot insulted us: http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?topic=2223.0
the useless things of dark dawn: http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?topic=1470.0
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

Aile~♥

What I find most annoying about the game is the combination of battle mechanics that encourage grinding (beautiful animations, the new Unleash mechanics, and needing way more money to buy all the current equipment than you'll ever get without grinding) and enemies that give far too much EXP for grinding to be at all necessary. That, and that Karis's base class has area healing at tier 1. I started a run through the game where I didn't use Karis's base class and also didn't grind at all, and the difficulty was actually fairly comfortable most of the time. The other problem is that it's too difficult to run from most random encounters. So difficult, in fact, that it's basically not worth the time to try to run instead of just spamming them to death, which results in me being overlevelled.

Another thing I find annoying is the completely unskippable five-minute-long intro text scroll. Even the Tales series games don't have intros that long! And as for GS:TLA, while that game's intro may have been long, it was also possible to fast-forward it or skip it entirely. And following that with a cutscene that immediately repeats everything that was just covered by the text scroll was really obnoxious. Overall, the game as a whole is like that, repeating facts that were just covered in the previous cutscene. Admittedly, there are times when it makes sense, such as the characters explaining it to someone who hadn't been there for the previous explanation. But there's no way that Isaac had never explained all that stuff to Matthew until the start of the game.

I also hate just how unclear it often is what those emote options are referring to. Like at one point near the beginning, Matthew is looking directly at Isaac and Garet when you get the emote prompt, but Karis is the one who responds as if Matthew was talking to her. And this is a recurring theme throughout the game. Sometimes, they give you emote prompts at moments in which there is absolutely nothing to emote about, like that one time in the Ayuthay throne room.

And then there's Himi, a completely unnecessary character who also has the honour of being the game's most powerful offensive caster as well as having the game's strongest buff spell. High-powered Psynergy does NOT make up for an almost complete lack of any actual personality! She gets like one good line in the entire game. I don't even remember what that line is offhand, but I do remember that it was at the end of the game, and I seem to recall it being a snarky comment at Eoleo's expense. It was also easily missable, as it was during one of the full-party reaction sequences around the final boss where the entire party all talks at the same time.
[sprite=16, 6, 0]:P[/sprite]

Lloyd: Easy as pie.
Genis: Sweet!
Presea: ...Sweetie pie...
Zelos: Let's not start on this again...

[spoiler=epic mindscrew][/spoiler]

Raetah

For many others, including me is not that we didnt played or we dont care about Dark Dawn. Is simply that we didnt liked Dark Dawn at all. Golden Sun GBA (both games) was part of my childhood and is a game that even today i can enjoy and that i replayed many times. I really expected a sequel for long time and when Dark Dawn was anounced i was really happy, checking internet each day for new scans or news. At the beginning when it was released it didnt passed much time when the first complain of Dark Dawn appeared, the points of not return. But i actually decided to wait, to play the game for myself in a neutral position.

That was impossible, im biased to Golden Sun and I TRIED to like the game, but each 5 minutes aproximately i found things that were out of place.
I know that Golden Sun GBA is not perfect, but Dark Dawn have flaws in almost everything, but the flaws that i consider most important to mention are of the history and Gameplay, one of things that annoyed me a lot is the persistance of Camelot to include many new elements (civilizations, kingdoms, races...) that were not part of the original games, they didnt continued Golden Sun they distorsioned Golden Sun and the plot was schizophrenic, with your characters wandering around with no sense at all. Thats something that someone that didnt played Golden Sun GBA would not notice and the gameplay it can be summarized in two things: Too easy, points of not return.

At the point of the Grave Eclipse i was already really dissapointed with the game and i though that i couldnt go to worse, but then Himi appeared to proof me that i was wrong. Dark Dawn is a game that i could have done with 4 characters.

You know that a character is so pointless, when the own character knows that its existance is unnecessary, so it doents bother to talk to waste your time reading completly useless dialogues, thats what i think of Himi, since outside of those "trances" there were situations in where she doents @#$%&*! talk, really i remember a situation in where all the party was being introduced, with the exception of Matthew that cant talk by itself, but the other 6 characters had a part of dialogue, but Himi nothing, literally she didnt even said "ey, im Himi". If the intentions of Camelot was creating a retarded character, then, congratulations they did it perfectly.

In all, trying to find things that i actually liked of Dark Dawn is something challenging but here is a list of all i can found:

*Each Djinn have his own design, something that i really liked.
*The Sun Saga books ware cute and nostalgic at the same time.
*The use of Psynergy outside battle was probably one of the few things that Dark Dawn improved sightly although at the end it didnt maked a great use of it, but thats another history.
*I found Sveta interesting in gameplay, she is different from the other characters.
*The Ancient Devil is my favourite boss of Dark Dawn, explaining why: Demon sign is a move that controls one of characters and the only way to take back your character is killing it, at the end if you defeat the Ancient Devil with one of your characters under the possesion of the boss, that character counts as a death character and it doents earn experience, although that is not a big deal in Dark Dawn. I reacted like "no way, you are not going to do that to me" so i turned off the DS and i decided to beat the Ancient Devil with all my characters alive meaning that i had to kill my own characters and revive them many times, the situation was funny and at the end i completed the challenge.

Misery

I don't remember if I've pointed this out before on this site, but when I first saw the announcement and trailer/teaser video for GS:DD, at the time known only as 'Golden Sun DS', my first impression was: "Oh, so it's a remake? Meh." I later learned that it wasn't actually supposed to be a remake, but I've always thought of this incident as some kind of omen.

I honestly think I might have liked it better if it actually was a remake. What I feel they've basically done is take everything from the GBA titles and made it feel a little less authentic. It's sort of when they make a sequel to this new movie that became a big hit, and the result is a decent movie that is slightly less interesting than the original.

As you have probably noticed, most of the fandom's dissatisfaction with Dark Dawn comes more from it being a bad sequel than a bad game. It is a decent game, but a horrible sequel.