Hands On Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

While the characters I played with — Matthew, Karis, and Terrell — were new, battles felt familiar. Djinn and psyenergy, elements from past Golden Sun games returned in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

When I encountered enemies I could strike with a regular attack, cast psyenergy spells like Ragnarok or call a Djinni for help. Matthew was imbued with earth Djinn, which gave him abilities like Flint, a stone cleaving blow. Karis’ wind Djinn allowed her to cast Gust, a wind spell that may strike twice, and waft, a sleep spell. Terrell had fire Djinn with Fever, a spell that deluded enemies, and Torch, a fire attack.

In the first fight, I made everyone use a Djinn to attack. This was a demo, so why bother being conservative? After each Djinni was summoned it floated to the top screen. Before the battle was over, two released Djinn were up there waiting for me to call them back or summon them. All of the Djinn were reset after each encounter.

Before I could use the summon command I had to use two Djinn attacks. Ogre Titan, the boss of the E3 demo, was the perfect monster to test this on. I started by hitting the beast with a few attacks to charge up my Djinn. Terrell was ready first and called a flaming Kirin that ran through Ogre Titan. Karis then finished the monster off with a now 3D rendered Atalanta who shot a torrent of arrows. Both summons took up both screens and looked something like the screenshots below.

Djinn appear to be linked to each character’s class too. I played around with the menus and noticed Knight –> Squire on Matthew’s status screen. Karis, the token magic user, had Magician –> Windseer. Terrell looks like the tough guy of the group with Soldier –> Guard. Golden Sun fans should be familiar with this system too.

With Ogre Titan vanquished, I was free to explore a town. The residents of Vale are psyenergy users while the people below the mountain aren’t adept at using it. I spoke to someone else in the pub who said, “Your mothers and fathers, the Warriors of Vale, saved the world from ruin. Unfortunately, the rest of the world only sees the Golden Sun they unleashed as a horrific catastrophe.”

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn takes place 30 years after the events in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. As the bar dweller explained, the heroes in this game are the descendants of characters from the previous Golden Sun games.