Golden Sun: Dark Dawn/YMMV


  • Alternate Character Interpretation:
    • Volechek - Easily Forgiven despot or ruler pushed to the edge by unrestrained Fantastic Racism? You be the judge.[1] Fantastic Racism as a start, he had to chase out Sana (led by warmongering Emperor Ko at the time) in a bloody campaign to ensure the Morgal beastmen their own kingdom, only for Bilibin to march in during their moment of weakness, forcing him to close the border and put that dispute at a stalemate. Had no clue Eclipse Tower would unleash a neverending monster-empowering night and trigger a body count like none other. Clearly regrets the ensuing massacre and his role in unleashing it. Knowing well that the Eclipse's end would be his as well due to the Tuaparang's "augmentation", takes his sister's place in firing the Apollo Lens and dies to fix the problem his actions sparked. Even the public executions are described to be a method of venting the populace's frustrations and preventing riots when the full moon screws with their heads</ref> and makes them unusually violent.</ref>
    • Not quite as drastic, but there are some who think Amiti is a lot sharper than Karis suspects, and may have personal reasons for his strong opinions on piracy. Notice how close Champa is to Ayuthay, for instance?
  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: "Saturos Theme", one of the most popular tracks from the original games, being revealed as part of the Dark Dawn soundtrack ( It is used for the bonus bosses, including Star Magician, who appeared in TLA and yoinked Saturos's theme there).
  • Angst? What Angst?: Amiti gets over learning he wasn't born thanks to his mother being an incredibly powerful Adept giving herself an immaculate conception (she had no powers whatsover, his father was the Adept) very fast.
  • Awesome Music: Apollo Ascension. Why this played on your way to the final dungeon instead of in it is beyond me.
  • Best Level Ever: Can anyone deny that the Belinsk Ruins and Apollo Sanctum are pretty amazing? The astronomy-themed portion of the Belinsk Ruins culminates with Sveta slapping the sun.
  • Complete Monster: Blados and Chalis, a first for the series. To elaborate, they kidnap a kid, smash the mountain path that leads back to his home so he can't return, manipulate the party into fighting a gigantic sacred bird (to get a Power Crystal from it so said stone can fire up an ancient tower that covers half the world in monsters), trick a conflicted king into helping them before turning him into a mindless monster, try to take control of a massive laser cannon to attack Tuaparang and use the aforementioned transformed king to fire it while knowing that the intense light around it will kill him afterwards. Why? Well, in Blados' case, apparently just because he could. And his partner possibly wants to off him afterwards, as well. Neither of them has the slightest trace of good intentions or sympathetic reasons for their actions. Is it any wonder they completely avert Draco in Leather Pants? YMMV on which of the two - if either - is worse.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: It is the perfect time to test out your kids' knowledge of Psynergy when your best friend's son is in danger of dying. Sure, let's drag the kids along through the deadly forest, and keep making them do all the work despite how dangerous this could get! Also who cares if you didn't actually have anything to do with breaking the glider, get out of the house and don't come back until you can fix it. Adventures build character! Lampshaded thoroughly by Garet, Karis, and Matthew himself, none of whom think Isaac has hit the second line yet... Of course, depending on your decisions, Matthew has no qualms with it whatsoever.
  • Demonic Spiders: After the Grave Eclipse is activated, players can start encountering shadow monsters whenever they venture into the shadow of the eclipse. If you haven't been leveling properly, these things can rape you senseless within a few turns. They also have a much higher Random Encounter rate compared to non shadow enemies of the same strength until you start leveling up past the 40s, and like to hit you with annoying status effects. Some even have One-Hit Kill moves. I repeat, mooks with One-Hit Kill moves. On the other hand, if you're high enough level to deal with them, they're quite good for Level Grinding, as they give the second highest experience for randomly encountered monsters (the highest experience monsters don't appear until right before the final boss).
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Averted in the case of Blados and Chalis, thanks to a kill count easily in the thousands, including at least one well-beloved character, via the Eclipse, played straight for Arcanus.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Karis, Sveta and Eoleo.
    • Sveta is notable because her being a Bare-Fisted Monk Action Girl - of the Wind Adept variety, no less - is part of what created this reaction prior to the game's release. She's definitely well-liked, though she turned out a more major character than expected. There was also the group of people who thought she was going to be from Garoh, and were making some high-pitched noises about that.
    • In a lot of polls this troper has seen, Amiti and/or Matthew were the most popular.
    • Himi is insanely popular for someone who literally got no on-screen Character Development, and Nowell enjoys a good fanbase for a One-Scene Wonder. For a game generally seen as the weakest in the series, Dark Dawn spawned a lot of very popular characters.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Chalis.
  • Flanderization: Amiti in fanon tends to be incredibly dippy, particularly about sex. In canon, he's less upset that he was concieved the natural way and more upset about being raised under a cover story (probably to protect his mother's virtue) and that nobody knows who his sire was.
  • Game Breaker: The shadow soldiers you fight as a Random Encounter before the Final Boss. They give between 20,000 to 50,000 EXP points per fight, which is enough to level up the party in a very short amount of time in order to make the final fight less difficult. On top of this, they ALWAYS drop a Water of Life (an item that revives downed allies). If you fight these guys for several minutes, your levels will be so high and you will have so many Water of Life that you can't lose the Final Battle.
    • Karis's cheap multiheal, the Fresh Breeze series, is often seen this way because it doesn't require any set Djinn and only a relatively small amount of PP to cast. To the point of making Rief, a pure healer, basically useless.
  • Good Bad Bugs: NOTE: THIS BECOMES A Game Breaking Bug IF SAVED OVER YOUR MAIN FILE, UNLESS YOU CAN USE IT TO GET BACK TO TONFON, BECAUSE THE TRIP FROM THE ENDLESS WALL IS ONE-WAY. USE A SPARE FILE. Anyway, there's a bug accessible very late in the game (look up "Endless Wall glitch" on YouTube; it's better to see how it's done because it's hard to describe) that involves saving the game at the part of the Endless Wall where it forks between the entrance to Apollo Sanctum and and a dead end that basically functions as a one-way walk-through-walls code without an Action Replay or similar device needed. The beginning parts of the game and Morgal can be accessed with it as well as... Bilibin? Well, only the Bilibin side of the Border Town can be accessed (and bizarrely enough, going into it from the Bilibin side results in Matthew entering that side instead of defaulting to the Morgal side accessible during normal gameplay; could Camelot have Dummied Out a Bilibin plotline involving Border Town?); nothing else in Bilibin is in the game, and the Bilibin side of Border Town is devoid of NPCs. Still, it's nice to be able to say, "Screw you, Point of No Return!" for once.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Many characters in the first game think Isaac's party are a bunch of muscle bound bearded warriors. Now they (or at least Isaac and Garet) are.
  • Idiot Ball: The official Nintendo-backed game guide makes a point of reminding players to "go back and get all the Djinn" before they hit the final dungeons. Someone didn't tell the guide makers about the Points of No Return...
  • Iron Woobie: Lost your parents in the war? Surrounded by paranoid warmongers on all sides? Brother got manipulated into destroying the country? If you're Sveta, your response to this is about ten minutes of angsting, then rallying a bunch of teenagers, a surly murderous criminal, and Kraden to save the day. Then comes the ending...
  • ~It's Easy, So It Sucks~: Many of the reviews made mention of the game's relatively low difficulty level, and the absence of a Hard Mode like TLA had didn't help.
    • To put this into perspective, the Grave Eclipse and its sudden swarm of shadow monsters are a noticeable Difficulty Spike from what you encounter prior -- but all that really means is they've stopped scratching you for negligible damage and bothered stepping up to what the first two games considered par for the course throughout. Unfortunately, realizing this can kill the moment's tension somewhat.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks: Averted. No, seriously. Dark Dawn is exactly the same as the first two games, just with better graphics. Thing is, the fanbase doesn't care--it's like Zelda.
    • There are some who consider it a bit of a step down from the first two, mainly on account of the plot being a little awkward and forced at times. Even then, the worst Dark Dawn gets is So Okay It's Average, because the first two were excellent games.
  • Memetic Badass: Isaac's beard.
    • Kraden's badass status has apparently leaked into canon, according to some characters. Rief and Karis remark that if Kraden has to get somewhere, he will make it there, no matter what is in his way. Considering the Random Encounters and puzzles/traps in the game franchise...
      • Almost, nothing, he travels through the apparent war zone between Bilibin and Morgal to join you.
    • Dullahan, who is even harder in Dark Dawn than in The Lost Age.
      • YMMV on that one. Bum-rushing him with summons works just as well as last time, and with the right djinn setup and game plan, Dullahan is completely doable in your mid 40's without even resorting to that. If anything, Himi having Revive in her base class and an instant max-attack buff, Sveta being Sveta, and a few more key Djinn that can stall for time during party-switch transitions actually make him considerably easier to outlast in a protracted battle than he was the last time around.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Chalis. Hot damn, Evil Is Sexy, and she knows it. Multifunctional navel and boob window (depending on whether you are looking at her character art/battle model or overworld model), fur collar, Too Many Belts, and thigh-high boots paired with a skirt for which "Psynergy" is the only feasible explanation...
  • Mr. Fanservice: Prince Amiti is mentioned in-universe to be very popular with the girls of his homeland. Considering he's a sweet, polite, occasionally vulnerable, frequently-shirtless Bishounen Warrior Prince (with the body that implies)? They're not the only ones.
  • Moe: Sveta, so very much. Amiti as well.
  • Nightmare Fuel: In the second half of the game, after you trigger the Grave Eclipse, you start seeing dead bodies in plain sight. This is especially jarring when you visit Kaocho and Champa, where the bodies are decaying, especially in the former where you visited it in the past even talked to several of the now-dead people. To make matters worse, Spirit Sense can be used to read the minds of these corpses, so you can see what their last thoughts were before they died.
    • And the music in a certain way doesn't help either. In the affected parts by the Grave Eclipse in the overworld, the music is very somber, as if a monster would attack to you in any moment (the only part that has a different music is when you walk across the Endless Wall), the battle music indicates that you're fighting with evil monsters that appears from the nothing (but it's an awesome track, by the way), and even worse, the music used in Kaocho is really dark and depressive (the karma by their actions really affected them), and all that complemented by the things previously mentioned. The only possible exception is the music used in the affected cities (other than Kaocho), which evokes a sad feeling instead. Motoi Sakuraba really showed his musical abilities there.
    • While not nearly as bad as the Eclipse-related horrors, this one deserves a mention: you know the Djinn? Those cute little things that help you out in battle and otherwise seem to be silly, adorable cuckoolanders (although that might just be Flint and Pewter)? Some of them are, quite honestly, terrifying. Like Chasm, for instance, a Venus Djinni with a miniature black hole in the middle of its horribly gaping, misshapen mouth that takes up almost the entire front of its body. Which it sucks enemies into. Another one is Fury, who looks fairly normal and cute... until you read its description and realize that it attacks enemies by summoning up the souls of those who died in anger.
  • Nightmare Retardant: The dead bodies you can read the spirits of lampshade everything and seem more or less okay.
  • The Scrappy: Some players have rather a lot of ire for Ryu Kou. In case you have to ask why, he's a constant Jerkass to the player party while you're working in Te Rya, grabs up the Magma Orb from inside the Mountain Roc (even though this is what you-know-who wants) without even trying to concoct a countermeasure, and uses it to restart Eclipse Tower without an ounce of hesitation (he probably would have done it unrestrained even without Alex's intervention). The only time he changes his behavior is when he gets Hou Ju out of prison, but it doesn't really kick in until Hou Zan saves both of their lives at the Icicle Outpost at the cost of his own. He may be a stealth Take That at the old "Friend or Idol?" Decision and Always Save the Girl, but damn if he doesn't rub people the wrong way for not even attempting a Plan C.
  • Scrappy Level: The Craggy Peak Ruins, a zodiac-inspired dungeon. Half an hour of kindergarten puzzles (save for the infamous Capricorn tiles), no boss fights, and no dialogue or story development altogether.
    • The Capricorn tiles are not even that hard if you use the Insight Glass which reveals the route.
    • Yeah, but the tablet was no help at all.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: God DAMMIT, Djinn are STILL hiding on the overworld.
    • And let's not get into the whole problem people are having with the points of no return, which permanently block off a fair number of Djinn and summons if you didn't get them already.
  • Shipping: Golden Sun fandom's always been notorious for shipping and Ship-to-Ship Combat, and just got a bunch of new characters to play with. So, yeah.
  • So Okay It's Average: Seems to be the general reaction to the game at this point. It plays to a large extent like if Golden Sun 1 and 2 were welded together, while not really managing to capture the charm of either of them.
  • Squick: When your party defeats the Mountain Roc, you enter its corpse to retrieve the magma orb and exit out the back end...ew.
  • Tear Jerker
    • Briggs, sails his ship to Belinsk to pick up Eoleo and your party after you rescue Eoleo. However, the Grave Eclipse occurs, and monsters attack him, killing him. Eoleo then buries him at sea and vows vengeance on the ones who caused the situation to occur. (On the plus side, he isn't alone when he does finally get back at them since he gained some allies after this happened. It helps that one of them, Matthew, happens to be the nephew of Briggs's old enemy, Felix, from his first appearance in The Lost Age.)
    • And even before that, there's Crystallux, the chandelier dragon of the opera house who loves music. The girl who brings him food every night tries to protect him from the monsters, who then kill her. Her last words are to protect him and let him help your party to save the world.
    • The very end of the game. Volechek, who has been corrupted by the Dark Psynergy and will likely die once the Apollo Lens activates, stops his sister from sacrificing herself in activating the Apollo Lens, taking her place instead. His last words are a goodbye to his sister.
  • That One Attack: Djinn Burp from Dim Dragon Plus comes way too early to be a threat, but it's the first in a line of Djinn screws. The Chaos Chimera can use Djinn Blast, and it's lost no power since its last incarnation, while the Star Magician's Ghoul Balls can deny recovery by eating your Djinn, by the way, they're gluttons, too. And let's not forget that Dullahan can use Djinn Storm, the souped version of Djinn Blast.
    • The Ancient Devil has a power called Demon Sign that forces one of your party members to fight alongside him--and the only way to snap them out of it is to KO them (in fact, beating the Devil will cause anyone under Demon Sign's influence to be downed). Making matters worse is the fact that they can use any items they have in their inventory (e.g. Bramble Seeds), and they can use your own standby Djinn to fuel their own summons. Worst of all, it's programmed to pick the most useful character to hit with Demon Sign-- if she's on the field, Sveta is the number one target.
      • Dullahan now has the Crucible technique used by Valukar in The Lost Age. Crucible is the power to use your Djinn to launch your summons into your face. Dullahan also gets the Charon summon for free, and his attack pattern means that he usually follows that with Djinn Storm, which is its own That One Attack.
  • That One Boss: Remember Dullahan? He's back, with several all new attacks!
  • That One Puzzle: "THE GOAT LEAVES NO TRACE BEHIND."
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The general consensus regarding Himi's storyline role.
  • Tier-Induced Scrappy: In their base classes, the only advantage that Rief has over Amiti is that he learns Wish earlier...except Karis's heals mean that is not needed at all. It wouldn't be so bad for Rief if Amiti, a more combat-capable Water Adept, didn't come along just a couple dungeons after getting Rief in the first place. As it is, he's getting some hate for being pretty much useless.
    • Himi doesn't have it quite as badly as Rief, but still gets some flack for being not nearly as powerful as Matthew. As with Rief, this can be affected by class changes.
  • Useless Useful Spell: One Hit KO spells in your hands are still useless. And for all that it's played up, Insight's only really useful for the goat puzzle.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: Amiti was subjected to this, and his rather androgynous appearance coupled with Spell My Name with an "S" certainly didn't help. Many gamers, and the official European site, made the mistake. Finally solved when a trailer gave him a shirtless scene).
    • Rief/Crown as well, which wasn't at all helped by his initial unveiling not using any gender specific language and the masculine English name. He was seemingly confirmed to be female with this trailer due to female Voice Grunting, but on further examination, an extremely similar pitch was used for male children in the first two games. Rief has since been confirmed to be a guy, although a girly one.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: Much like the GBA games, Dark Dawn goes all out with battle effects, particularly the summons, which are even more flashy and over-the-top than ever.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: "Where's the mouse" happened in-verse with Rief finally noticing his sister is absent.
    • CHAUCHA. Briggs specifically told us to look for her, and then... nothing!
  • Woolseyism: The European version makes a few pragmatic changes from the US one, from minor things like changing "mom" to "mum", but it's most noticeable during the finale. The American release mentions that "Arcanus" sounds like the most important card in the tarot deck, but no such card exists. The line makes more sense in Japanese where Ace really is one of the most important cards in the deck. The European version changes the dialogue completely to imply that Alex chose the name "Arcanus" because it refers to the entire deck. Karis theorises that he'd chosen the name because "(he's) holding all the cards".
    • They took out the Symbol Swearing though. WHYYYYYYYYY??!
      • Because it wasn't there in the original Japanese.
        • Which is the whole point behind a woosleyism.
    • Wording is important here. Kraden doesn't say that "Arcanus" sonds like the most important card in the deck, he says it sounds like the most important cards. Multiple. Specifically, he means that "Arcanus" sounds like "Arcana". Tarot has two sets of cards. The Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana. The Major Arcana are the strongest cards in the deck, but even the Minor Arcana would be egotistical, since it implies control over Swords and Cups (Blados and Chalis), as well as Wands and Pentacles.
    • The player character Crown was probably renamed Rief in English-language versions to avoid confusion with the change of the villains' Theme Naming from playing cards to the Tarot (the suit of Pentacles is sometimes called Crowns). His sister Noble was probably changed to Nowell for the sake of consistency (and possibly Foreshadowing for her specialties; her name refers to a winter holiday, and Kraden indicates in a cutscene that she can use Frost/Cold Snap/equivalent).
  1. ↑ Imprisons Hou Ju and then continues to hold her after repulsing Sana from Morgal. He also imprisons Eoleo for piracy, but you can't begrudge the latter. Then sets both up to boil alive ala cruel and unusualy punishment on the full moon festival (which ran the risk of souring any potential future peace with Sana and Champa) until Eclipse Tower rises from beneath. Understands that he knows jack shit about why it was offline or what its true purpose even is in the first place. Goes along with the Tuaparang's plans to recommission without even so much as evacuating his people just in case it anyway. It is also never implied that he feels even remotely bad for what he put Hou Ju through despite her having never done anything to him or his people.
    His reason for wanting to activate Luna Tower was because he thought it was a weapon that he could use on Sana and Bilibin. He does genuinely regret all of the death and destruction that he caused in his own country, but he doesn't back down on the fact that he wanted to use the tower against other countries. As for the executions, conversations with NPCs in Belinsk indicate that he wasn't just threatening Hou Ju and Eoleo's execution as an ultimatum for Luna Tower's activation. He supposedly has public executions at every full moon festival.]]
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