Each playable character had a certain affinity to an element: Venus(Earth), Mercury(Water), Jupiter(Wind) and Mars(Fire). Spread throughout the land were many Djinns, some where easy to spot, some had you dealing with puzzles and some were simply random encounters. Each Djinn had his own unique use in battle, from defensive boosts, to special attacks, plus, they passively raised your character stats. Djinns had to be equipped to your characters. Naturally, equipping a Venus adept with Venus Djinn made him stronger... however, depending on which Djinn you gave your characters, you would end up with different classes that affected both spells and stats. The best classes had your characters with Djinns from different elements than their innate, and it meant that another character wouldn't get to use his better classes, so you had to consider if having a powerful character made up for at least one of the others getting the short end of the stick.
The game also had lots of enviroment puzzles that had to be solved using Psynergy. Psynergy were basically the name that spells went by, and which Psynergy your character could use depended on which Djinn he had, and a few equippable Psynergies were also avaiable. There were loads of Puzzles in the games, and surprisingly, never got boring, even after pushing your 400th pillar.
Then there is combat. The game used a turn-based system, and as explained before, stats and Psynergies depended on your classes and equipped Djinn. It doesn't end there though, some weapons had "Unleashes". Unleashes were powerful special attacks that would almost-randomly be released. Consider them powerful crititcal attacks. Certain equipment items could better the odds of the Unleash going off. Besides being very powerful, they also looked really cool. Then there were the Summons. By using Djinns, characters lost the stat bonuses the Djinn was giving him(and would change to a lower tier class), and that Djinn would go to a "pool". Djinn in this pool could be then used to cast Summons, which also looked great(Judgement was epic) and dealt loads of damage.
The games were also very oldschool. Isaac was a mute hero, in the first game, but talked in the second one... However, while Alex spoke a few lines in the first game, he became the main character from the second one and thus lost the ability to speak. Oh! And Speaking could be done through menus, oldschool-style! And combat? Have your characters target only one enemy, and if he dies before everyone had their turns, they would waste it since "there's no target". Despite that, the games were very easy, perhaps the only real challenge was the optional boss Dullahan at the end of the second game.
Character design was fantastic, every character looked very different and unique, but all of them felt like they belonged in the same world. Graphically, both games used the same engine, and they still looked great. Summons looked as powerful as they were, and every Unleash was so cool that it felt rewarding. The world in which the game took place was a very cool place. There were lots of locations and races, and the setting itself, the adepts, djinns and lighthouses were very original.
Still, they had their flaws, and for RPGS, I felt they held them back greatly. Characters were very underdeveloped. Sure, they had their motivations, backgrounds and relationships, but they were pretty barebones. And each character, personality-wise, felt very samey. You could probably switch every dialogue speech around and it wouldn't change a thing. And while the story was very original, I felt it wasn't so strong and a bit... Disney. So while they were great games, they were not perfect....
And my issues with the past games? Now characters actually feel different. The latter 2 do feel a bit ignored, and don't get much time to shine, but the other 6 get plenty of personality. Most Summons from previous games return, and they look even better than before. Graphically, this game was a treat for the eyes. The gameplay itself is every bit as good as the other games were, both exploration/puzzles and the fights themselves.
I'm done.
Seriously.
I'm done.
Honestly, I agree with everything you said except for the part when you mentioned the previous games being "very easy". They might have been to some, but compared to Dark Dawn, they were difficult. I breezed through Dark Dawn's bosses, and the final boss wasn't an exception. I felt as if the puzzles were a lot easier in Dark Dawn. The ONLY challenges I received while playing Dark Dawn was finding the secret boss (y'know, the little one with the book that primarily used magic), and Dullahan. All in all, great review.
ReplyDeleteI know this blog post was from years and years ago. But I've recently gotten back into the series and was trawling the internet to see how the series had aged in the fanbase.
ReplyDeleteNow I should make a couple of caveats, first that I didn't play DD until 2014, and even then I didn't finish it. And that I first played the games as a young teenager. (For those of you curious I'm now 21.)
That out of the way I'm going to start with the obvious, the first game was massively obtuse. There were puzzles in that game that couldn't be completed until after you'd finished the story, puzzles that saw you going (spoilers) right back to the start of the game and completing areas that you had written off as dead ends. The end of game side dungeon was massively obtuse to get to. Requiring you to use some pretty out of the box thinking to even arrive at. And if you went early, you'd have to make several reattempts of because the dungeon had (metroidvania style) puzzles that couldn't be completed until you had X ability.
Futhermore, not only were the puzzles in the first game obtuse and out of the way, truly rewarding some dedication to exploration, even after the 'end' of the game. They were essential, for getting 100% in TLA for reasons I won't spoil here. The games were intertwined to such an incredible degree that story, puzzles, secrets and even combat were enriched in the second by playing the first, truly rewarding the player for dedication to the series. TLA was a massive world, filled with tiny secrets and even now (not having the time I did in my youth to explore) I often have to rely on guides to find all the Djinn, because there are so many that I couldn't possibly remember the locations of all of them.
I didn't much care for the story, still don't tbh, I'm not a huge follower of story in rpgs (well except for dark souls but that's another matter entirely) I'm far more interested in developing the stats of characters and overcoming puzzles and combat challenges.
The first two games fulfilled this craving to such a degree that when I started to play the final fantasy games (1-6) I was disappointed by their lack of depth. FFVIII filled this craving somewhat with a rather satisfying conjunction mechanic but I digress.
It can be understood then that when I started to play DD that I was massively let down. The combat had, if anything, gone backwards in both difficulty and depth. The puzzles were lack-luster and straight forwards (compare them to the fiendishly difficult to master puzzles of the first Golden Sun game and you'll understand my consternation) the world was condensed, tiny and filled with points of no return that crushed my instinct to explore. And the game didn't reward the player at all for paying attention in the previous two games. The lore was spoon fed to the player, the tutorials were in depth and handholdy to the extreme, and the finely tuned combat skills that had been honed over hundreds of hours trying to beat dulluhan were completely wasted on bosses that all fell with a single attempt.
It was a waste of money and time, both for the developer and the player. I'd have almost preferred that there wasn't a sequel, if it meant that DD never existed.
LGreymark
It was a let down, a huge one. From such a talented studio to