Golden Sun: Dark Dawn -- Initial Impression.

It's time for another one of those games. You know those games, don't you? The ones that speak to your gaming core directly. The ones you cherish. The ones that helped form your personal gold standard which you use to judge everything that comes after. There are a handful of series or teams that have had this impact on me. Phantasy Star, Ys, Shinobi, and the Shining series. It's strange, but I'm always a bit apprehensive going in to one of these games. They've never disappointed me. They've always delivered great gaming experiences. But as the years go by the fear that they will fail seems to grow a little more. Maybe because there are so few series left that remain untarnished in my eyes. Even the mighty Mario and Zelda have slipped over the years. I'm going to be playing Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. It's essentially a Shining game without the name. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn was developed by Camelot Software Planning and was published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS. Camelot Software Planning started out as an internal team at SEGA named Consumer Development Studio #4. They were created to work with Climax Entertainment in the development of RPGs for the SEGA Genesis. Their first release was 1991's Shining in the Darkness. They would go on to create Shining Force: The Legacy of Great Intention with Climax Entertainment. They would cease co-production of games with Climax Entertainment and would become Sonic Software Planning where they created Shining Force and Shining Force II: Sword of Hayja for the Game Gear as well as Shining Force II: Ancient Sealing for the Genesis. They change names once again as Camelot Software Planning and go on to make Shining Force CD for the SEGA CD and Shining Wisdom, Shining the Holy Ark, and Shining Force III for the SEGA Saturn. During this time they make Beyond the Beyond for the PlayStation and then jump ships again landing at Nintendo and the Mario Golf and Mario Tennis games. They make Golden Sun and Golden Sun II: The Lost Age for Nintendo's GameBoy Advance. Then it's back to Nintendo sports titles until November of 2010 when they release Golden Sun: Dark Dawn after seven long years of waiting. As I said earlier the Golden Sun series is pretty much the natural evolution of the Shining series in everything but the Shining name. It's what would have been anyway had they remained with SEGA all these years. I've put a few hours into Golden Sun: Dark Dawn and everything seems to be on track for a great gaming experience. The story and characters initially retain that most important Shining charm. The graphics work much better than I was expecting giving the meshing of the Shining style and Nintendo DS 3D capabilities. The controls work well. They went the whole way and have created two control styles that allow you to mix and match between the extremes of zero touch capabilities and full touch capabilities resulting in the best of both worlds. The game's puzzles have been great so far. There have been a lot of them and a few of them took some thought. The story is deeply rooted in the previous titles and the game does a really good job of bringing you up to speed with the events of the first two games. Everything seems to be going great. I just need to see how the story plays out. At this point I'm rather confident this one will end up meeting my expectations.