Heading into Golden Sun I was hoping for a solid RPG and while I did get just that, I'm still left a little underwhelmed.
A part of the reason why is due to the story. Overall, it's just Bad. None of the characters develop aside from maybe Ivan in the beginning, the ending is extremely anticlimactic with how many loose threads there are and the main characters do nothing in the story other than react to the villains' actions and try to stop them. The reason why I find it so underwhelming though, is because the prologue is so fantastic. The stakes in it are high, it establishes the villains as a huge threat and is surprisingly tragic and it just set my expectations for the story so high but everything that came after the first 2 hours was so forgettable and generic. I wish the game explored Felix's relationship with Saturos and Menardi, or spend more time exploring Garet and Isaac's guilt over feeling like they're responsible for what happened in the prologue but that sadly doesn't happen. Also, I really dislike the fact that you get dialogue options. It's a minor thing but they don't affect the events of the story in any way so it just feels like a cheap way of trying to make the player feel like they're involved in the plot.
Where the game fares much better is in the gameplay. Golden Sun uses the Djinn system, they're these creatures you can collect and equip them to your party members to boost their stats and give your characters different abilities. You can also cast Djinns and use them as spells, and if you use enough of them you can use a summon for massive damage. Using Djinns as spells does decrease your stats so it adds a layer of decision-making by having the player decide whether you want to cast a spell at the cost of temporarily lowering your stats. I really like this system and trying out different Djinn combinations to see what kind of spells I'd get was very fun. I really like the game's difficulty too. Golden Sun has party members recover mana simply by walking and to circumvent this making the game too easy, the random encounters in this game are decently challenging and you can very easily have a party member die if you're careless. This may not sound like much, however it is very punishing as reviving items are extremely scarce, it takes a long time to acquire a reviving spell and the only reliable method of reviving party members is to go to a town and pay a ton of money for it. This means you always have to be on your toes which makes random encounters very engaging. It's also helped by the encounter rate being very fair in this game, you can often go entire rooms without running into a single enemy so I never felt frustrated when trying to progress. The game also has really great dungeons thanks to Psynergy. Psynergy acts as spells that you get throughout the game that help with puzzles. They range from being able to move blocks, to turning invisible, to freezing puddles of water into a platform. The puzzles this creates are really fun and it makes for some of the best dungeons I've played in any RPG. The only blemish on the gameplay is the inventory system. Characters can only hold 15 items at most. There also isn't any storage mechanic and if an item is necessary for plot progression, it's taking up a slot in your inventory for the rest of the game. Therefore, the farther you go into the game, the more clogged your inventory becomes and it leads to a lot of tedious and completely unnecessary inventory management. I just don't understand why they put a limit on how many items you can have.
The music is decent, but is very held back by being on the GBA and it results in none of the tunes sticking in my head aside from a few great town themes and Saturos' boss theme.
Despite my issues with the story, I wouldn't say the game does anything offensively poorly to the point where I was disappointed but it also doesn't do anything exceptionally well. I like the Djinn system, the puzzles, the dungeons, how it looks (especially in battle) but nothing really resonated with me to the point where I was desperate to keep playing. The game is certainly a step above being a jack of all trades, but it's still a master of none.
A part of the reason why is due to the story. Overall, it's just Bad. None of the characters develop aside from maybe Ivan in the beginning, the ending is extremely anticlimactic with how many loose threads there are and the main characters do nothing in the story other than react to the villains' actions and try to stop them. The reason why I find it so underwhelming though, is because the prologue is so fantastic. The stakes in it are high, it establishes the villains as a huge threat and is surprisingly tragic and it just set my expectations for the story so high but everything that came after the first 2 hours was so forgettable and generic. I wish the game explored Felix's relationship with Saturos and Menardi, or spend more time exploring Garet and Isaac's guilt over feeling like they're responsible for what happened in the prologue but that sadly doesn't happen. Also, I really dislike the fact that you get dialogue options. It's a minor thing but they don't affect the events of the story in any way so it just feels like a cheap way of trying to make the player feel like they're involved in the plot.
Where the game fares much better is in the gameplay. Golden Sun uses the Djinn system, they're these creatures you can collect and equip them to your party members to boost their stats and give your characters different abilities. You can also cast Djinns and use them as spells, and if you use enough of them you can use a summon for massive damage. Using Djinns as spells does decrease your stats so it adds a layer of decision-making by having the player decide whether you want to cast a spell at the cost of temporarily lowering your stats. I really like this system and trying out different Djinn combinations to see what kind of spells I'd get was very fun. I really like the game's difficulty too. Golden Sun has party members recover mana simply by walking and to circumvent this making the game too easy, the random encounters in this game are decently challenging and you can very easily have a party member die if you're careless. This may not sound like much, however it is very punishing as reviving items are extremely scarce, it takes a long time to acquire a reviving spell and the only reliable method of reviving party members is to go to a town and pay a ton of money for it. This means you always have to be on your toes which makes random encounters very engaging. It's also helped by the encounter rate being very fair in this game, you can often go entire rooms without running into a single enemy so I never felt frustrated when trying to progress. The game also has really great dungeons thanks to Psynergy. Psynergy acts as spells that you get throughout the game that help with puzzles. They range from being able to move blocks, to turning invisible, to freezing puddles of water into a platform. The puzzles this creates are really fun and it makes for some of the best dungeons I've played in any RPG. The only blemish on the gameplay is the inventory system. Characters can only hold 15 items at most. There also isn't any storage mechanic and if an item is necessary for plot progression, it's taking up a slot in your inventory for the rest of the game. Therefore, the farther you go into the game, the more clogged your inventory becomes and it leads to a lot of tedious and completely unnecessary inventory management. I just don't understand why they put a limit on how many items you can have.
The music is decent, but is very held back by being on the GBA and it results in none of the tunes sticking in my head aside from a few great town themes and Saturos' boss theme.
Despite my issues with the story, I wouldn't say the game does anything offensively poorly to the point where I was disappointed but it also doesn't do anything exceptionally well. I like the Djinn system, the puzzles, the dungeons, how it looks (especially in battle) but nothing really resonated with me to the point where I was desperate to keep playing. The game is certainly a step above being a jack of all trades, but it's still a master of none.
4 Comments
The fact Lost Age exists and it was planned to follow up on the original right from the start doesn't really make this games ending any better though. Especially when you get more questions in the last 10 mins of the game like "What happened to Felix and Sheba?".
If you ever do find it in your heart to give TLA a shot, I would certainly recommend it. The previous poster is wrong, the game wasn't planned as a single story from the start, it was planned as a single game that had to be split into two because it wouldn't fit into a single GBA cartridge (I heard it was originally going to be an N64 game, but I can't find a source on that right now). This is why the end of the first game is so abrupt.
I pretty much agree with your sentiment, the first GS is a solid RPG, but alone, it's not the unforgettable game people say. It's the two games played with the password system that make it so beloved.
I pretty much agree with your sentiment, the first GS is a solid RPG, but alone, it's not the unforgettable game people say. It's the two games played with the password system that make it so beloved.
Rensie
1 year ago