REPLAYING DARK DAWN: A JOURNAL

-opening text crawl spends about six screens letting you know how badly the ancients (y'know, in the space before both games you've already played) ruined everything and how the Golden Sun event saved everyone thank you brave heroes. I feel like a few important elements are missing here that those six screens could've conveyed
-cool airship in the intro right after that. i dont remember an airship from my first playthrough though
-oh wait, text crawl's not done yet
-Dark Dawn is set 30 years after the Golden Sun event, where the Warriors of Vale are remembered very well for what they did, and not always fondly. (we aren't sure if the Luna adepts are part of the Warriors of Vale, but nobody likes them anyway)
-the text crawl implies that the Warriors of Vale sought out to break the laws of Sol Sanctum and steal the stars from square one. REALLY THINK A FEW IMPORTANT ELEMENTS ARE MISSING HERE
-anyway, the awakening of Alchemy is actually a big deal, where even 30 years later the planet's in upheaval via natural disasters. okay, that's a fair reason to be upset
-Isaac and Garet are basically researching the calamity surrounding what's left of Mt. Aleph from the safety of the Goma Plateau (once it was a mountain range. now? not so much)

TEXT CRAWL OVER

-oh right, you can tap red text in dialogue boxes to get encyclopedia entries for different characters and the like. wonder if thats mandatory. anyway its a neat feature except that this is a Camelot game, so it is going to refresh text on things we already know, again, while answering zero questions brought up by this
-it characterizes Matthew as his father's son, "of few words but strong convictions". Which is to say he's the latest in a failed experimental line to produce silent protagonists
-oh wait: it actually does explain what the Wise One is! it's a "Philosopher's Stone", separate from the Stone of Sages and more like a golem than anything, created by the ancients that sealed Alchemy. Isaac still treats it like a god because apparently he's a pious dumbass
-Garet calls him out on this, as he should. Garet also has a cool mustache now
-first mention of Psynergy Vortexes: effective black holes that absorb Alchemy and can even drain elemental power from Adepts. this is, in theory, the main plot
-apparently the biggest of these is called the Mourning Moon, one big one that appeared over central Angara and wrecked a ton of things
-Ivan has an "indomitable spirit"? yeah okay sure
-anyway, starting party is Matthew, Tyrell, and Karis. they are meant to be the next generation of the classic Isaac/Garet/Ivan party except that Karis is a girl, and Tyrell ruins everything
-emotion menu! this is a neat concept, honestly, and the first instance of it popping up is when Garet complains that his fool son has taken the Soarwing they were gonna use to survey Psynergy Vortexes around Vale in safety. I will choose the angry face here because I know exactly whats gonna happen and FUCK THAT NOISE
-"Don't snap at me!" says Garet. well I wasn't intending to, originally. this is like mass effect but worse

ACTUALLY PLAYABLE NOW

-oh good, I can just look at encyclopedia entries outright even if I miss tapping them in a conversation. maybe. it also lists Psynergy and stuff
-it helpfully describes elemental power and resists but not what Luck does
-Matthew starts with access to Growth but not a sword. this is a fair trade honestly
-every time I try to leave I get interrupted by people yelling at Tyrell on the roof and forced to come back. screw you guys I wanna go bowling
-Karis helpfully shoves me over there and tells me to get that dumbass off the roof. this prompts an emotion menu, to which I respond with a nice neutrally-happy thing, getting Karis to yell at Matthew for being happy-go-lucky. real grade-A self-characterization engine, this
-anyway Tyrell jumps off the roof and glides over the canyon into the forest below
-oh man, what does Matthew think about this? let's go with that he's mad at Tyrell being a dumbass
-this time Isaac just responds with "easy now", which is much more reasonable. so that's 0.5/3 for letting me have emotions
-yet another emotion menu! they really throw these out like candy early on. I guess this is me talking to Tyrell? going angry again, and... "You don't need to get mad, Matthew! That's not helping!" FUCK YOU PAL
-anyway time to traipse off to the forest to rescue a dumbass who we're "proud to call our best friend".
-one last emotion menu: what does Matthew think about his odds of making it to safety on the other side of the forest? he is generally neutrally happy about it, I guess, because hanggliders are good at that
-"Hear that, Garet? Matthew believes in him, you should too." they actually legitimately interpreted one correctly. I mean I went with the most milquetoast option they could charitably interpret here, but it still counts. 1.5/5 success rate, good work
-anyway now we're arguing about whether Matthew and Karis can come with to find their dumbass pal. something something this is what we trained for. I'm a little doubtful that we trained for improvised paratrooper search and rescue operations but sure

GEAR UP AT HOME

-the hell you're making me watch a mandatory tutorial for equipping items. you didn't explain that shit the last two games and I'll be damned if anyone bought Dark Dawn without having at the bare minimum played a Dragon Quest
-and then following it up with a tutorial on saving. okay. at least they give a little synopsis of what you were last doing at the top!
-searching around at home, found Sun Saga 1, which is a book about the first game's intro. it has a little cutscene with paper cutout representations of the characters. it's kinda cute and completely optional. A+
-good things: the text parser for items and such is very good, keeping NetHack levels of grammatical case-checking in play
-weapons now have multiple unleashes, which can be unlocked by using the weapon more. increasing your skill level this way also improves unleash odds. so much for them making physical attacks in line with every Psynergy ever
-Isaac being a Venus Adept gives him tremorsense. or forest sense. or something. anyway he knows Tyrell is safe at the far end of the forest. WHERE WAS THIS POWER THE LAST TWO GAMES
-"Yes, we're eavesdropping. Don't look so shocked, that's the only way to find things out around here." Karis new favorite character
-new emotion menu, where Matthew is depressed that his father keeps secrets. never mind said secrets were things discussed in the opening text crawl
-"I suppose you want an explanation" this prompts an emotion menu because reasons. fuck it lets go hyped and see what happens
-this gets properly interpreted as enthusiasm for finding out whats happening! cool. maybe I'll stop noting every instance of the emotion menu. just the weirdly needless ones like this

OH SHIT A FIGHT

-the graphics are very pretty. Matthew and Karis have full body models now, with their weapon sprite fully matching the wielded weapon, and they legit run towards enemies and swing, and this is kind of amazing pre-3DS really
-"Karis' wooden stick unleashed its Critical Strike! Karis mastered the wooden stick."
-Garet gets surprised when I know how to use Move on pillars. I display my hype at him, and Isaac remarks that its like we've known how to do this forever. WELL AS IT HAPPENS
-aaaaaand they still give us a tutorial. why
-also this is part of a test Isaac and Garet designed for us. never mind that Garet wants to save Tyrell as fast as possible, he has to tell us we're doing his test wrong and tell us the answer. ?????????????????
-oh hey, Karis starts with Whirlwind but Matthew doesn't start with Quake
-"I thought we would reach the cave long before it got dark." WELL MAYBE IF YOU LET ME DO YOUR DAMN TEST RIGHT IN THE FIRST PLACE
-and now we're in the Tanglewood, which gets much meaner at night. Matthew is rightly mad about this, and Karis yells at him to not be angry, because we were just too slow. okay yeah I need a break, saving at first opportunity
-the monsters here would sense us as easy prey, but Matthew doesn't really care because surely such responsible adults as Isaac and Garet wouldn't let that happen! Garet confirms our suspicions by telling us that running now would be useless
-oh hey, they're gonna lend us some of their Djinn for this!

YOU ALL KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS

-Matthew knows about Djinn of course, because they're not hard to grasp. nevertheless, Isaac orders one of his to give us a tutorial, which he says will be "short and sweet". I distrust this
-at least its paper cutout style again
-until it transitions to battle, where the Djinn attack animations remind us that we are not playing right now, but watching a tutorial we declined
-like this doesn't personally bother me, but literally anybody who would actually be playing this game would want to skip this unless they hadn't played either of the prior games in decades or had never played a Golden Sun game at all
-JUST LET PEOPLE SKIP YOUR DAMN TUTORIALS
-at least they use Ramses in the summoning tutorial, reminding us that the summon animations got SO MUCH BETTER in Dark Dawn. gone are the days of wallscroll Nereids
-"Remember what Flint said about dividing them evenly?" I choose to be inconsolably depressed at this news because I don't know why an emotion menu is provided here. Isaac takes this reasonably by comforting us and saying it's not that hard to grasp
-anyway they give us six Djinn, three each of Mars and Venus
-Felix gets mentioned when discussing leaders of parties. don't get used to this, Felix basically doesn't exist in Dark Dawn
-Isaac says we should lead even if we're not used to commanding veterans like himself and Garet. Matthew thinks he'll do just fine, prompting a "why are you so happy" from Karis. YOU WERE DOING SO WELL ON THAT FRONT, TOO
-anyway they're on autopilot because we can't be trusted with full control of level 30+ dudes I guess but whatever I can save now BYE