In late 2010, Camelot Software Planning traded in their golf clubs for broadswords as they made a return to the RPG genre after seven years of sports game development. But before we get to the latest game in the Golden Sun series, allow me to set the scene.

Shining the Golden Golf club

Let’s assume you know of Camelot’s heritage as the creators of Shining Force, one of the most beloved strategy RPG franchises in the history of electronic entertainment. Or at least of the 90s. Let us also assume that roughly a decade ago, you and a group of friends sat down to play either Mario Golf and/or Tennis on a Nintendo 64 and had more fun than you were initially expecting.

This is the power of Camelot and their sweet Arthurian name.

In 2001, the first Golden Sun emerged from the darkness, a traditional JRPG with a twist. The twist being that it was for the Game Boy Advance (GBA) and it had awesome graphics.

But there was more. You could catch cute creatures called Djinn which could be used to power up your party or summon enormous gods to aid you in battle. Returning to early areas of the game and unleashing Thor’s mighty hammer upon unassuming moles and rats was only half the fun.

The most distinct element of Golden Sun was “psynergy” -- magic that could be used outside of battle in order to solve environmental puzzles. That’s what really separated it from the 16-bit Final Fantasys and Dragon Quests of the world -- you could actually do something when roaming the land beyond talking and trading. Cool stuff like reading people’s minds and freezing puddles.

Golden Sun released for the GBA to critical acclaim, though some noted its lack of difficulty, plodding pace and overly talkative characters as reasons to stick to manlier RPGs that require graph paper and preferably a beard to play. Regardless, it was a success and so a sequel was released in 2003, subtitled The Lost Age.

The Lost Age was very much a continuation of the first game, which meant little had changed. In an unthinkable switcharoo, you now played as the bad guys and fought towards the goal you attempted so valiantly to prevent in the original, namely restoring alchemy to the world. You started to realise that…maybe…maybe good and evil ain’t so black and white after all!

The loyal Golden Sun fan base grew stronger but the second game did little to quell the haters. Now here we are, seven years later and finally a new Golden Sun has risen, ominously titled…

Dark Dawn

…and it’s pretty much the same, again. Characters talk too much, the narrative provides little urgency and the combat is the RPG equivalent of Kirby’s Epic Yarn. But it’s not all bad. In fact, it’s mostly good, with certain facets of the game edging towards greatness.

First off, the story is a light-hearted romp that begins with you searching for a mystical feather needed to repair a flying machine. However, you don’t actually acquire the feather for a good twenty hours or so and once you do, you never actually use it, nor do you get to fly the flying machine. Disappointment. Anyway, by this time you have more important things to do, like stopping three dastardly villains from bathing the world in darkness.

It’s a simple tale that is bogged down by excessive dialogue. Your party members will continue to chat amongst themselves long after you’ve discovered what to do next, constantly reiterating the task at hand just in case you’re a ninety year-old Alzheimer’s patient, or an idiot.

The main purpose of the narrative? To funnel you into as many ancient ruins as possible. Dark Dawn is the definitive ancient-ruin-puzzle game. Every town has an ancient ruin filled with ancient puzzles just waiting (for thousands of years) to be solved. These puzzles involve using your psynergy (magic) to manipulate the environment. You can unleash a whirlwind to levitate platforms, shoot fireballs to ignite lanterns, grow vines to climb, grip spires to swing from, arrange heavy pillars, crush boulders…you can even slap things with a giant mystical hand. Wonderful.

These puzzles represent the best part of Dark Dawn. They are exquisitely designed throughout and really encourage exploration. You never know when you might find a new summon ability or a powerful new weapon. The collectible Djinn creatures are often placed in plain sight - in towns and in dungeons - and you must forge a path to them. It’s a really neat way to power up your squad.

This brings me to the battles, which are certainly fun, most definitely fast and unquestionably pretty, but lack any sort of challenge. After thirty-four hours of playtime, I only had one character die in battle. Only once, then the final boss kicked my ass and slaughtered my entire eight-man party several times over before I eventually beat the game.

In theory, the battle system provides a slew of tactical decisions for the player. For example, if I wanted to summon Daedalus -- master craftsman of ancient times -- to perform a devastating attack, I would have to leave three Venus Djinn and four Mars Djinn on ‘standby’, which would mean temporarily weakening Matthew and Tyrell, the main ass-kickers of my party. (There are four different elemental Djinn - Venus, Mercury, Mars and Jupiter. Same as Earth, Water, Fire and Wind, obviously.)

See, your characters are only as strong as their class and their class is dependent on the amount (and type) of Djinn set to your character. So you can either play it safe by equipping all of your Djinn to their respective characters, or weaken your party by putting them on standby in order to unleash epic power attacks. You can do this manually before battle or use a Djinn’s special ability during battle which then sets it to standby, allowing you to “build up” to a summon attack.

In reality however, the battles are so easy that the vast majority of them can be won without bothering with this stuff. Standard melee attacks and magic are more than adequate for the majority of the game. Using the Djinn and Summon commands becomes more of a novelty to break up the formula of combat.

There is a post-game tussle with a crew of giant ogres that requires some thoughtful strategy, but by then it’s too little too late.

When Satoru Iwata is Exec Producer of your game, you kind of know you’re going to get the resources and time needed to make a polished product. Dark Dawn is a 3D showcase for Nintendo’s aging system and polished to a shine. It’s gorgeous from start to finish, with more visual variety than we’re accustomed to in handheld RPGs. The traditional Asian architecture scattered throughout the world is particularly outstanding.

The in-game encyclopaedia is immense and the menus are beautifully slick, with the most intuitive trading interface I’ve used in an RPG.

The classic Golden Sun theme song is back, so too the comedic BOING! whenever you jump. Overall, the music - from pumping battle themes to the delicate menu melody - is elegantly composed and serves the light fantasy setting perfectly.

Dark Dawn may not stray far from its chatty, plodding GBA roots, but smart environmental puzzles instil a connection to the stunning 3D world of Weyard that you don’t often come across in JRPGs.

 While the combat is a far cry from Camelot’s Shining Force days, it’s still fun to crack the heads of humanoid lizards wearing body armour.

I hope the dedicated group at Camelot get another go at the Golden Sun franchise on 3DS. If they only added some extra spice to the combat, cut the dialogue by 50% and fashioned a more open, non-linear start to the game, they’d have a portable classic on their hands.