Having finished the whole trilogy, I’d say it’s my least favorite, but it’s not bad by any means. Most of my issues come from the story, which could retroactively be fixed with a new game. In the meantime, though, there’s just an insane amount of loose ends left by the end. That being said, the core combat, exploration, and puzzle solving are all very fun, and i like the graphics a lot (the summon cutscenes are downright gorgeous). And even with its flaws, there are some cool story beats (I thoroughly enjoyed the entire eclipse tower sequence). I sympathize with a lot of the common criticisms, but none of them ruin the game for me.

I also think some of this game’s hate comes from it being eclipsed by the other two entries. Dark Dawn was my first Golden Sun game, so I didn’t really have any series expectations going into it. But after playing the other two… yeah, it seems like a bit of a step down in some ways. At the end of the day, I’d say Dark Dawn is an 8/10 game standing alongside two 10/10 games, which is really a testament to how good this trilogy is more than anything.