This one is an experience that reminds me of the Tales of saga thanks to its charm and colorful approach on the presentation side and of course with Motoi Sakuraba making the music here makes it even more familiar. Definitively this was Camelot Software Planning's golden era and I think Golden Sun is, as a whole, its masterpiece. There is... something unique with Camelot's GBA games and this is no different in that regard.

Story wise is on the classic side, almost like a fairy tale that progressively turns into its own thing, never losing the lightweight dialogue. Quite warm even in their darkest moments, tho a little bit rough at the last second of the game. Clearly they already had the idea of two games separated to tell the same story complete. There are a lot, and I mean, a whole lot... of puzzles during the adventure, some of them feel too "gamey" but when not, puzzle design shines, having to play with the environment using different magic spells, here called psynergy. Combat is probably my favourite thing of the pack. Golden Sun has a very dynamic class system when you have to be constantly using djinni and summon them all over again and viceversa while constantly changing classes during the same battle. This gives the four characters access to different psynergies depending of the class they're on. It's just great.

Overall a very good experience and probably the best GBA game I've ever played. I'll do the second one someday.

Haven't been playing games lately (reading books.. and to some extent still recovering from the sprint of IGF judging) but I didn't have anything written down for Golden Sun. I was looking over the guidebook to Golden Sun at my parents' place last year and I was reminded of what an approachable JRPG series this was for kids! But that aside, what I want to draw attention to is more how much I like (and still like) the field psynergy mechanics. The puzzles are only lightly challenging, but they lend a richness to the world: dungeons aren't just defined by treasure boxes and monsters, but they're physical places with rules and ways to manipulate the environment. Sure, the ways this is expressed is through simple puzzles, but it's still a neat idea that I thought was tied together really well and exciting to discover. The small plant? You can grow it! A secret passage might be there if you cast reveal! Move things around to hop over passages. I would love to see more of this kind of inventiveness on the field in narrative-focused RPGs.

Golden Sun fue mi primer juego de GBA junto a Yoshi's Island, y creo que es la mejor elección que he hecho nunca para estrenar una consola.
Mucha gente dice que es cosa de la nostalgia, que no es un juego tan brillante como decimos los fans, pero yo creo que se equivocan. He rejugado muchos juegos de mi infancia para ver si seguían siendo tan buenos como recordaba o estaba absolutamente cegado estos años. Algunos han aguantado el tipo, pero otros han sido una tremenda decepción... Golden Sun no es uno de ellos.
Para empezar, es probablemente el juego de GBA más bonito de todos los de su catálogo. Camelot exprimió como un limón todos los recursos que le permitía la consola para crear una verdadera obra de arte visual y sonora. El propio mundo, los fondos de cada zona en combate, los sprites animados de los enemigos y los protagonistas y, sobretodo, esas cinemáticas despampanantes de las invocaciones, son de las cosas más espectaculares que se han hecho para esta plataforma.
A pesar de ser un JRPG de corte clásico, de aventura medieval típica con magia y un grupo de personajes, ofrece una experiencia más cercana a los juegos de aventura por todas las mecánicas relacionadas con la psinergía que vamos encontrándonos a lo largo del mundo y de los diferentes escenarios y mazmorras del juego. Entre los puzzles, el plataformeo y los secretos ocultos, parece en algunos momentos estar más en un "Zelda" que en un "Final Fantasy". Además, la trama, aún siendo básica, consigue dar una serie de giros argumentales y de sorpresas que consiguen mantenernos en vilo hasta el final del juego.
Y, para mí, lo mejor del juego, los Djinns y las invocaciones. Nuestros protagonistas son adeptos de cada elemento y son capaces de canalizar la magia y absorber el poder de unos seres elementales llamados Djinn, quienes nos ayudarán a realizar invocaciones dependiendo de la cantidad que usemos para atacar. Al usarlos, accederemos a estas invocaciones, pero sufriremos un descenso en nuestras estadísticas de combate, por lo que requiere de estrategia y análisis elegir el momento correcto para atacar sin Djinns y con ellos.
El único punto negativo que puedo sacarle es que tiene una historia inconclusa, ¿por qué? Porque en un principio los dos juegos que salieron para esta plataforma iban a ser sólo 1, pero por problemas de espacio tuvieron que dividirlo en 2. Sí o sí necesitas jugar The Lost Age para entender y terminar la trama de Golden Sun.
Pero bueno, Golden Sun es una verdadera maravilla y podría tirarme horas escribiendo sobre él, pero creo que os arruinaría la experiencia, así que jugadlo y ya me lo agradeceréis después.

I'm a sucker for a classic turn-based RPG and Golden Sun certainly provided an experience which scratched that itch. It's got some neat twists to the formula with the Djinn system and Psynergy, but the combat overall isn't terribly engaging and is more just serviceable. The dungeon design is more notable with some genuinely awesome puzzles and generally well laid out maps. Story is, in classic RPG fashion, barely present, mostly serving to shuffle our heroes from location to location. I enjoyed Golden Sun for what it offers, but it's definitely not an all-time great, more of just a solid all-around game.

similarly to mario rpg's remake i went into this with rather low expectations, figured it was just another cool novelty that boomer-y games sorta fawn over. game is in fact great.

the class/djinn system is fantastic, extremely addictive and intuitive and fun, where so many games attempt this sort of system and stumble, if not fail outright, this game make looks effortless. where final fantasy has attempted and failed at plenty of times before, this game succeeds and sets a bar on its initial outing. the djinn/class sytem alone is worth playing this game for just to see an example of how to implement a job system in a deep and meaningful way while still being approachable and fun.

the story is cool but in my opinion far too reliant on context clues and random npc dialogue and hidden flavor text. could've done with a little bit more party member dialogue, half the time i honestly felt like i was playing a dark souls clone or some shit with how cryptically this game delivers information about what is going on. which is interesting given the good-vs-evil all ages presentation of things here. hoping that all picks up a bit for the sequel.

the combat is fantastic, but in my opinion often doesn't really require the player to make use of all the systems in place. for all the cool classes and spells and weapons, you can just as easily use mono-element jobs and spam your strongest spells for 20 hours and clear the superboss with little resistance. stuff is fun but i am hoping that stuff like buffs and debuffs become a little more important at some point in the next game. felt like there wasn't much room to spread the large wings the game gives you.

the puzzle system is fantastic, at its best this feels like a zelda game except with real rpg combat instead of the cinematic simulations of challenge that zelda often prefers (at least up until more recent zelda entries). the way the game delivers context clues about the story and constantly requires the player to interact with the world outside of battle makes weyard feel very involved and compelling to explore.

all in all, pleasantly surprised and had a great time, the game's original ideas are phenomenal and work fantastic, but i am hoping the core storytelling and boss fights get ramped up a little for the next go around.

For every cool aspect of this game, there's something that takes it away. The djinn and the combinations of spells can be cool in theory, but it seems it's optimal to just have one element tied to a corresponding character.

The set up for the narrative and the world is cool in theory, but then there's a lot of events that don't seem to tie in to the overall story and are just there to pad out the game.

Even with the virtual console rewind feature, random encounters are such a pain to work around. I hit walls multiple times and I was just losing my enjoyment of it as I tried to press on. I knew recently I wouldn't do the sequel because I feel that aside from the story, the gameplay experience seems to be relatively the same. I wanted to like this, and I think if I had played this when I was younger, I would have loved it and I totally get why this is a beloved and underrated game in the GBA's library for some, but ultimately it shows its age.

I get why people like this but I think nostalgia plays a big part most of the time. Sure, I've been playing every day this last week because I was enjoying the game so much that I just wanted to play it... but the story and characters weren't so interesting. There're a lot of games that have an interesting story but dull characters or vice versa so the game is balanced. However, this is not the case and maybe I feel a bit disappointed because I only heard people praising the game. The story is somewhat simple and it doesn't have much to it. I do like the main characters but I think they should have more development or a better story if they're going to be in the party.

I liked the combat system but (again) it's nothing spectacular. The class system seemed cool but in the long run it wasn't worth toying with it to see what could fit the characters better and I just used the basic build (matching each character with their element).

I don't like men wanting power or wanting to live more so f* Babi.

Also, this was a huge disappointment: the fight with Deadbeard. When I heard about him I was scared since he was the "most difficult boss of the game" but I had more problems with the fights that came before him? In comparison this fight was like taking a break.

Overall I really liked the game (and music!) so I'm looking forward to playing the second part and see if it improves this :)