Golden Sun: Dumb Dialogue

I was going to give this game six stars, but I removed one star simply for the ridiculous amount of poorly written dialogue crammed in. It's not because I dislike (J)RPGs, it's quite the contrary in fact. I played the first Golden Sun and gave it a 7 here on Senscritique. I sat through every single cutscene of Final Fantasy X and enjoyed each minute of it. I played Xenosaga and didn't mind spending 30 minutes at a time with the controller in my lap. But Golden Sun: Dark Dawn's characters have this incredible ability to transform a two-sentence story or objective into War and Peace re-written by the average 8-year old boy. They simply TALK TOO MUCH without actually saying anything of interest or importance. I have never seen so many text boxes in my life! I almost stopped playing the game two hours in because I didn't want to deal with the senseless jibber-jabber anymore. It ruined what would otherwise be a decent, B / B+ grade game: not better than the original Golden Sun, but still able to hold its own.

The difficulty level during battles, or lack thereof, is also cause for concern. It doesn't seem right that each boss only took 15 minutes maximum to defeat. Not once did any of my team die. Also, the new "emoticon" system that is used often during the game seems as if it was designed to teach very young children about how to use and interpret facial expressions. Disturbing, no? On the positive side, there's lots of sidequests, the puzzles are somewhat entertaining, the graphics are quite attractive for a DS game, and the adorable little Djinni now have individual designs and personalities - which is good for a laugh from time to time.

So, to sum it up: play this game if you can't imagine life without the Golden Sun series, if you have a 10-hour flight, or if you're bedridden for a weekend with the flu. It is playable (and even enjoyable, occasionally), but barely. Otherwise, avoid.