Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (Japanese: 黄金の太陽 漆黒なる夜明け, Hepburn: Ōgon no Taiyō: Shikkoku Naru Yoake) is the third installment in a series of fantasy role-playing video games developed by Camelot Software Planning for Nintendo. Speculation of a third entry in the franchise began soon after the release of its predecessor, Golden Sun: The Lost Age, in 2002, culminating in a widely spread hoax game being revealed at a pre-E3 2007 gathering. The game was first announced as "Golden Sun DS" at E3 2009, while the name and release window was subsequently revealed in Nintendo's E3 2010 presentation. Released in late 2010 for the Nintendo DS hand-held console, Dark Dawn was the fifth-best selling game during its release window in Japan.
Dark Dawn is set thirty years after the events of the first two games and follows the path of the descendants of the earlier games' heroes. Players control characters as they travel through the fictional world of Weyard. The game utilizes gameplay elements pioneered by its predecessors, primarily the use of magic (called "Psynergy") to defeat enemies and discover new locations, help local populations and find elemental djinn which can augment the player's powers.
The game was generally well received by critics, receiving a 79% rating on the review aggregation website Metacritic, although its score was lower than both of its predecessors. Dark Dawn was praised for successfully transitioning the 2D-style graphics of its predecessors into 3D for the Nintendo DS and for being relatively easy for newcomers to the franchise to play. However, critics noted that some of the shortcomings in the previous games, such as excessive in-game dialogue, were also present in this installment, and that the features of the Golden Sun series that were refreshing when the original games were released now felt dated.
Category:Video Games