There have been a handful of great RPGs on the DS this year, both first and third party. So many that some gamers probably don't have time to play them all this year. Winter's big RPG release comes in the form of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. It's a sequel to the Game Boy Advance series, and continues the story. It's a solid, fun RPG, though not as robust as some of the other games this year.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn is a very story driven game. I don't want to spoil any of it because this is a game worth checking out, but here are the basics. The game takes place 30 years after the GBA games. Players start as the son of Issac, the main protagonist from the previous series. Turns out that the same crap that threatened to destroy the world back in the day is happening again, and its up to the kids to stop it before the world is literally torn apart. So on top of having to save the entire planet, the characters are trying to live up to their parent's legacy.

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The story is pretty interesting, if a little derivative. Unfortunately the characters don't seem to know when to shut up. The dialogue sections of the game go on forever. The characters will talk way more than they need to for the story to progress. The cutscenes are so long that I was spending most of my train rides reading dialogue, which makes the game hard to play as a handheld game.

The battle system for Dark Dawn is pretty similar to the previous Golden Sun games. It's the classic, turn based battle system that serves as the backbone for nearly every handheld JRPG. Each turn players can select to attack or defend. Attacks are broken up into a physical weapon based attack, or a magic spell, called Psynergy.

Throughout the game, players find and collect these little creatures, called Djinn (which will be familiar to Golden Sun fans). The Djinn each have an ability that players can use like a spell in battles. But they also serve as the building blocks to the class system. Depending on which types of Djinn are attached to character, their class and spells will change. By mixing and matching the Djinn, players can customize the strengths of their party.

The Djinn are also used for summons, which is the best looking part of the game. Players can call up huge giants or monsters to help out with the battle, and each one gets a big flourishing cutscene. They're all very cool.

The Djinn system works pretty well, and it makes the game feel more original. It takes a while before players earn enough of them to really customize their party. So for a major part of the game the parties stay pretty similar, and the game feels very standard and unoriginal. Not bad, but just not very noteworthy, compared to the other big RPGs that have come out this year. The other big problem is that for a long time, there's just no reason to use Djinn. The normal party spells work just fine. It takes effort to use this extra game mechanic and do the Summons and I found myself not bothering because it was faster and more efficient to battle enemies normally.

There are a lot of puzzles in Dark Dawn, which is great. Much more of the game is devoted to figuring out how to get through tricky temples and caves than it is about leveling up to fight a boss. Most of the puzzles are pretty basic though, making the game feel more like its geared towards a younger audience. Nearly every puzzle simply requires using the magic spell you most recently acquired.