![]() That was an important step for me to take. Also, I still have nothing positive to say about Marta outside of completely superficial statements like “She’s got a kinda cool fighting style.” But Emil sewed the seeds that would eventually allow me to grow up a bit. He interested me because he was the kind of character I needed to see at the time.įrankly, he’s not how I matured as much as I have today, and this doesn’t excuse him from poor writing. Seeing him constantly stumble to muster his courage never frustrated me because it constantly challenged me to reflect upon myself. I had no experience with heroes supposedly massacring my hometown, but I shared his generally timid nature and hesitance to shake up his status quo. Dawn’s monster system is still flawed, and it seems to exist for no reason other than to enable a plot that constantly splits Emil from other party members, but it appealed to many of my sweet spots in gaming before I even understood them myself. It still fascinates me in many better RPGs like Dragon Quest V and the Shin Megami Tensei series because I find it a thrilling thematic prospect to join the front line instead of making your collectible critters do all the work themselves. This enables a weird, asymmetrical dynamic between the main human cast and monster companions, and that asymmetry between my own party members fascinated me. While Dawn’s monsters only fight as AI party members, you can support their growth in various ways you can’t with humans such as feeding them, teaching them new spells and evolving them. It’s a combination of the underdog and heel-face-turn tropes that gets me excited, and it helps that I always fantasize about playing with exotic, cute, and/or ferocious critters in games. I’m a big fan of supposedly weak and generic monsters turning a new leaf and growing in strength alongside the main cast members. But Dawn blended together these subgenres together in a way I never expected, and it taught me to recognize some of my favorite RPG tropes. I already loved catching Pokémon, and Kingdom Hearts enamored me with action RPGs. That’s why I was excited to get this game. Yet after getting that process over with, I was excited to fight alongside my new monsters. Even in my early teens, I knew this process was more annoying than it ever should have been. ![]() Oh, and you still have only a random chance of getting the monster you want after this. Your AI allies and enemies can disrupt this by casting their own abilities, making this already tedious process much less reliable. This requires spamming spells and attacks of that element while avoiding any other ones. To simplify it as much as possible, you can only recruit a monster after defeating it if the battlefield is “attuned” to any single element strongly enough. I would say this is better for monster collecting enthusiasts, but actually catching monsters here is a mess. But this trait never stuck out to me or else I wouldn’t have had to Google her wiki entry. A quick Google search reminds me that she’s a stubborn tomboy, and I now remember how that personality would make her a catalyst to Emil’s gradual manning-up. That…that’s a pretty bad sign for the character with second billing. I only recall that she falls for Emil before he earns the right to have a love interest. I… don’t remember any of Marta’s actual personality traits. He’s accompanied by female lead Marta, who develops a crush on him right away and… huh. But this plot thread is more interesting in its concept than its execution, as it doesn’t develop into anything as intriguing than it sounds like. Emil’s motivation to defy his cowardice is a more unique twist as he seeks to confront Symphonia’s previous protagonist, Lloyd Irving, for supposedly decimating the town of Palmacosta. This is rarely an enticing trait for a protagonist, and for the most part, it also leaves a bad first impression.
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