u/Calfaer

What can I say, I absolutely loved the GBA titles. I was pretty high on Dark Dawn for the first half of my playthrough but by the time I finished, my thoughts settle on it being pretty mediocre sadly. I often found myself just wanting to go back and play the first two games but I begrudgingly finished Dark Dawn. I didn't hate it though, just felt frustrated by its wasted potential and the weird plot. The final third felt terrible and soured me on the good time I was having with the game beforehand. It felt like the game should have ended ten hours earlier than it did.

I'm astonished how well the GBA titles have aged though. They play so well and they are so charming. Practically everything about them resonates positively with me.

If anyone was curious to read my thoughts, I wrote lengthy reviews for the GBA titles here.

I just posted a review for Dark Dawn here.

I have joined you folks that must now wait for a new entry. I've already been waiting ages for Legend of Dragoon to get something/anything. Might as well add Golden Sun to that as well.

Coming off the heels of completing Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age, I was hesitant to try out Dark Dawn. It's a title many have noted frequently as disappointing, bland, or just flat out bad. I wasn't keen on souring my very high opinions on Golden Sun so I wasn't sure I was going to give Dark Dawn a go. That said, I'm glad that I did. While some fans may have you believe it's an absolute travesty, the honest but boring answer is that it's just an okay game. Therein lies the issue because it's not an excellent game like the previous two titles. On its own, it's a sort of forgettable DS JRPG that came and quickly went. It's not what one would hope for as a followup to the previous games. I'm going to try and allow Dark Dawn to be viewed in its own light, but I will have to draw frequent comparison to the original GBA games.

For the sake of brevity, I'll refer to Golden Sun 1 as GS1, Golden Sun The Lost Age as TLA, and Dark Dawn as DD.

If you were interested in reading my thoughts on the original two games, the link is here

General Plot Overview Thoughts - Major spoilers for the story

30 years have passed since the Golden Sun event at the end of the Lost Age. Alchemy has returned to the world saving the land from crumbling apart. Alchemy flows throughout the world now, with common folk now generally knowing what adepts are and how alchemy works. With this new power comes what was warned in the previous titles - a return of old powers, the rise of civilizations, and wars.

Similar to Golden Sun 1, and many other JRPGs, Dark Dawn starts off slow with lots of text and cutscenes. You take control of a new protagonist, Matthew, son of the renowned Isaac. Visually speaking, he looks practically identical to how Isaac looked in the first games. Similarly, you meet his friend Tyrell who looks pretty much exactly like how his father, Garett, looked in the originals. Isaac and Garett are living near Sol Sanctum, where their hometown village of Vale once stood. Nothing of it remains after the Golden Sun event, but they have been seemingly living in the area for quite a while looking to investigate these strange voids that have been opening up in the world that suck up alchemy.

If I understood correctly, their mission appears to be to re-enter Sol Sanctum, though with much of the geography in the area changed, it has become impassable. I'm not entirely sure what they were doing for the past 30 years, but at the start of the game, they get their hands on a soarwing, invented by Ivan (who doesn't appear at all in this game) to try and fly towards Mount Aleph and find their way back into Sol Sanctum.

When I first started, I was really intrigued by the general plot points that were being set up. It seemed like there was a lot of promise to the whole thing. Strangely enough, most of these plot points are abandoned after just a couple of hours. Instead, the game starts with Tyrell grabbing hold of the soarwing, taking it for a ride because of his ego, and ends up crashing it because he can't operate it properly. The entire game's plot and main quest focuses instead on having you trying to hunt down a rare bird to get a feather to fix the soarwing. The stakes feel very low.

For the first few hours after, you do appear to be following in the plotline by meeting up with Kraden, solving some puzzles with some voids, and meeting mysterious soldiers/henchmen using strange technology that appears to be linked to the voids. You also come across two new villains, Blados and Chalis, very much in the same vain as Saturos and Menardi from GS1, or Karst and Agatio from TLA. Alongside them is the ever mysterious Alex who now goes by Arcanus, who never had his plotline ever resolved in the original two games, and sadly will similarly not have anything resolved here either as he barely makes much of an appearance throughout.

This whole opening sequence feels so different in comparison to the first GS: a massive boulder during a heavy rainstorm comes crashing through your starting village, with some of the characters seemingly losing their lives while you come across the villainous duo of Saturos and Menardi who beat you to a pulp and leave you knocked out. You then head off on a quest 3 years later after uncovering more intrigue regarding the mysteries of alchemy to try and save the world. Though it's text heavy and a bit of a slog to get through, it's a very strong start and pulls you in to the world. Compare that to your dumb friend crashing and breaking a glider and having to go on a quest to fix it. It's like a world-spanning trip to a mythical hardware store.

In all honesty though, on its own, this intro really wouldn't really have been a bother as I felt the developer's intent must have been to use a fairly standard JRPG trope of using something on a small scale as an excuse for you to experience how the world has changed over the past 30 years and uncover new troubling plots as you progress. Throughout your journey, you'll travel through towns and cities and learn about the power of the ancient civilizations that once existed that is now returning to the world. You'll also see that rising powers are already waging war on each other and tensions between other neighbouring regions are growing. I'll be honest, I couldn't really tell you why some of the wars were occurring. Much of it felt quite forgettable. A lot of names I couldn't remember with the alluded backstories being equally forgettable; some leader doing something or another against another leader that I couldn't really care much about. I think the characters in each region were just fine but the subplots were forgettable.

I think this exploration of the new world and uncovering the mysteries and powers of the ancient civilizations was pretty cool but if I stop to think about it, I don't think it necessarily makes a whole lot of sense. From what I remember of the first two games, the knowledge of ancient civilizations had long passed. All the world tends to really know is that these civilizations were very powerful with amazing powers, wars were waged, great destruction occurred in the world, and then that power was then sealed away. These civilizations, all except Lemuria, faded away. Their power and knowledge was lost to the ages, with Lemuria entirely isolated from the rest of the world. In Dark Dawn, it was a bit surprising to find that many ancient ruins never really mentioned in the originals were mostly rebuilt for people to live in with much of the old technology still in tact and now powered up with the return of alchemy. In just 30 years, everyone seems to know the history of the ancient people who lived there while also having an understanding of their technology. Unless I'm missing something, that really doesn't align with the lore of the original titles.

I found Dark Dawn, at least for the first half, leans quite heavily on the Warriors of Vale and the events of the first two games. Lots of not-so-subtle nods to how great that journey was with those characters. An entire beginner area after your adventure starts summarizes many of the main plot points of the originals while teaching you basic puzzle solving and psynergy mechanics. They even have books you can find or buy that recap the story of the original titles with nice little picture book style animations. I wouldn't say it's in poor taste or anything, but it often gave me a strong feeling like Dark Dawn had a very "fan-made game" quality to it, which I wouldn't say is much of a compliment.

In the first half, I was pretty high on the game. I loved the puzzles and dungeons, and the exploration was not too bad (even considering the points of no return). The story was a bit boring but the gameplay was interesting enough to get me to keep picking it back up. The second half, or perhaps final third of the game, I really started to dislike my whole experience with the game. Things both seemingly started to feel rushed and also incredibly dragged out. Once you get to a castle town called Belinsk, an area where Beastmen live, the story ramps up very quickly in stakes. A catastrophic event referred to as the Grave Eclipse occurs that blocks most of the sun in a large part of the land, spreading aggressive monsters and gloom all over, killing loads of people. It is a pretty dark (unintended pun) progression considering all the events that came before it. You escape Belinsk and set off on a boat to copy a similar exploration format as TLA with Eoleo joining your party, the son of Briggs, who was just a toddler in TLA. The linear nature turns very open world, but in a much smaller area compared to TLA. You set off to find some map and some Umbra Gear and some other mcguffins and here's where I really lost interest as to what was happening. I didn't understand what was going on plotwise and I didn't really care. You quickly meet the final member of your party, Himi, who just has some magic power that tells you what to do next and then now she's with you on your quest. She has no real personality of her own and is more plot device than character. You were supposed to find a map that tells you where the Umbra Gear is, but I just ended up wandering all over the place and found it all myself and ended up finding the map at the very end.

Combat

The combat in DD is still the same system as before, no real changes, and that's perfectly fine with me. The combat difficulty, however, is a definite step down from the previous titles. I think there was a lot of throwaway random encounter combat in TLA and I found GS1 had better difficulty balance and combat pacing. Dark Dawn's general combat feels just as trivial as it did in TLA. You level up very easily and it's rare to have much difficulty with any of the combat. A huge criticism I have of this game is that there really aren't many boss battles at all and they barely push many of your abilities. One of the best parts of the originals were how you had to really balance your usage of djinn so as not to bring your stats down mid-battle too much, use powerful summons, stat buffs, heals, revives, shielding, and offensive skills to find sort of a rhythm to defeat lengthy and challenging bosses. In Dark Dawn, I felt really overpowered. Even if one of your party members happens to get KO'd, it's more of an inconvenience than anything to worry about. Regarding djinn and summons, there feels like there is little to consider in their usage as spamming them feels like a perfectly viable strategy now. This is all true right up until the final boss, who is incredibly challenging and a massive difficulty spike. Unlike the previous two titles, I really didn't enjoy this final fight. I found it to be pretty unfun and tedious. I think there is one main reason for this that will take a little more to explain why:

In GS1, you follow a party of 4 and get invested in all their skills, weapons, djinn, etc. Same thing with TLA except with a different party of 4. Each party member is introduced steadily and you understand all of their abilities essentially one by one and it's something I didn't really think about until playing Dark Dawn. For the final third of TLA, you get all 8 party members joined together with a new mechanic of being able to switch between them mid-battle. Since you are already invested in all these characters and know how to use them and their abilities, switching when necessary becomes pretty useful and fun, especially during the final battle. It felt incredibly satisfying to utilize all 8 characters based on the conditions of the battle and it was a perfect way of ending that series.

In DD, you are introduced to all 8 characters in one adventure with no real use for most of the them. The only switch I made was when Amiti, a Mercury adept, was introduced - I switched him in for Rief because Rief felt kind of useless in comparison. Once you get Sveta, a Jupiter adept, I felt no real need to switch her in for Karis as I felt Karis was strong enough. That means I never realized how different Sveta is. She has a full on beast transformation that gives her a secondary moveset along with some other unique skills. I used her only two, maybe three times, throughout the whole game and still felt no reason to switch her in over Karis or anyone else. Then you get Eoleo, a Mars adept, who feels like a worse Tyrell so same thing, I never really used him. Then finally, Himi who is the most forgettable of all of them and would be a potential sub in for Matthew as the other Venus adept. I never used her so I don't know what she's capable of. Because of the way these characters are introduced, I had little interest to do the mid-battle switch function like I did in TLA for the final battle. I was forced to a couple times but it felt like more of a necessity since I felt no attachment to the other characters.

Throughout the game, I also never once died or had my party wiped out. I remember this happening at least a few times in the original games. I also never really needed to rest at an inn - your passive HP and PP recovery was super high just walking around. If I had ever reached a somewhat low health state, I would just use a heal spell and my PP would be recovered in no time. By the time I ever reached the next destination, there would be no need to stop by an inn, I was already full health and psynergy. I remember having to go to those sanctuaries and pay good money to have my party members revived a few times. I never had to do that here in DD. That's really a shame too since I felt that the character abilities, djinn, and psynergy spells seemed pretty well thought out and unique, but there's never a challenge that actually lets you utilize them to their full extent except at the final boss.

A few bonus points I would give to DD are that I felt like the random encounter rate was lower overall (except in the Grave Eclipse areas which started to be really annoying) and the monsters at least more visually threatening in their design compared to the previous titles.

Switching to 3D graphics has slowed down the pace of combat a bit but I was pleased that it's still quite snappy and easy to navigate. The animations are quite nice and combat doesn't take long to get through. The summons are really nice to look at, spanning both screens for satisfyingly powerful attacks. I'll discuss the series' 2D to 3D transition a little more later.

While the challenge of combat isn't well balanced at all and despite my criticisms, it still mostly works. That classic JRPG style that this series nailed so well is still here so it still scratches that itch.

General Gameplay

In terms of pacing, dungeons, puzzles, and exploration, I think Dark Dawn does a mostly great job and is the strongest part of the game. Before I discuss the oft-reviled points of no return, I have to note that I had a lot of fun with traversing the world, finding djinn, solving puzzles, and completing dungeons. I felt it was much more in line with the first GS, where the pacing is quite linear, the dungeons are not particularly lengthy, and the puzzles are not that hard. Even though I found the challenge of puzzles quite straightforward, there's just something so satisfying about completing them and progressing that I think Golden Sun in general just nails, with DD being no exception. That said, there were still several instances where I found puzzles had me a bit stumped and were really well designed, with satisfying rewards at the end (usually another overpowered piece of equipment or a new djinn).

In terms of the points of return, in all honesty, they really didn't bother me at all and I don't really have a whole lot to say about them. Arguably, they are the least of my complaints about the game. There are I think 3 points in total where you are unable to turn back, blocking exploration of places you have already been to. So if you miss something, like any treasures or djinn or if you just wanted to talk to those NPCs and explore a bit of those areas again, well too bad. I can't say I really wanted to go back to any place though anyway but I feel I can understand the complaints that it turned some people off. Thankfully, I don't think it hampered or really even affected my experience at all. Maybe if I didn't know about them beforehand, I would been genuinely bothered by them, it's a bit hard to say. I'm not one to often backtrack to places in games unless I have to. I'll usually just move on, even if I missed something. Knowing beforehand that these points existed, I believe I had my expectations adjusted and I can't say they bothered me at all as a result.

I did end up missing one djinn at the first point of no return, but surprisingly managed to get the rest of the djinn without any really issue and I did so almots entirely without a guide. I did use one a couple of times after I had already found the location of the djinn myself if I couldn't figure out the puzzle to get them and was spending too much time on it. For example, there's one where you have to fish a djinn out a pond with a fishing rod. An NPC in the house next to the djinn tells you he wishes he had a sturdy stick to go fishing. I looked around for a stick in the nearby ruins with no luck. I was very much on the right track of looking to buy one in the store in the adjacent town but I couldn't find anything. I gave up and checked the guide - well I was almost there, I needed to check in the artifacts section of the general store, NOT the weapons/armour store. Little things like that I would look up if I felt really stumped an didn't want to waste too much time. I felt using the guide to get all the djinn affected my experience in TLA where I felt a little stronger than I should have been compared to the first title, where I thought the difficulty was really well balanced because I only had a small number of djinn. But here, even without a guide, I felt like I was drowning in djinn and was way overpowered. They were still fun to collect because of the puzzles you had to solve to get to them.

A little nitpick - with the transition to 3D and the design suited for a stylus on the bottom screen of a DS, I found I didn't like how you controlled Matthew. I played on a 3DS and I never used the stylus, just the 3DS thumbpad. Matthew's movements have a bit of momentum to them, meaning there's a bit of a build up between his stand still pose to his running animation. While I got used to it, I really disliked the feel of it throughout the whole game. It felt a bit slippery and less precise. I frequently found myself having to make slight adjustments to his position to get him to stand where I wanted to jump on certain platforms or use psynergy. Not too bad of a complaint, but still an annoyance that I felt merits mentioning.

Final Thoughts

I mentioned before that for the first half-two thirds of the game, I was pretty satisfied with it. The plot kind of sucked, but I think the main characters were actually more interesting (except Himi), but the gameplay was really fun. The puzzles were great and the use of psynergy/magic to interact with the world is something I don't think many JRPGs ever really do often. After the Grave Eclipse, I really started to sour on the whole thing. I couldn't tell you the details of the plot at this point, just that you have to stop this Grave Eclipse. I don't remember how it happened, why it happened, or what it was intended to do. I only know that you have to stop it. Arcanus/Alex is involved as usual manipulating the main characters into doing his bidding but his intentions are still completely unclear. The pacing also slows down a lot, where I just wanted the game to end after that. I kept coming back to it just to see it through. That's never a good sign.

After beating GS1 and TLA, I remember feeling really satisfied with the final battles and the overall experience. TLA's plot ending was pretty weak in that it felt like there was still a lot left unresolved, but gameplay wise I was happy. DD, the game ended after a difficult final boss that I didn't enjoy with lots of boring dialogue and some characters that I don't care about. Then the post credits scene where Matthew, Tyrell, and Karis return back to their home to meet up with Isaac and Garrett - but now there is a massive void opened nearby. And the game ends. I put the game down just feeling annoyed. I've written this review after a few weeks to let those negative feelings mellow but I think they haven't really subsided. I'm very tempted to say the game is bad simply because of how it had me feeling for the final third and how it ended, but it's really not bad at all. Even the final portion of the game has fun puzzles, cool secret areas, collectables, etc. I just think the plot felt like a generic Saturday morning cartoon with some generic villainous nonsense occurring that the good guys show up to stop.

I just finished both Golden Sun 1 and Lost Age and I am so impressed. I rented both of these games as a kid all the time but never got super far. I never understood the djinn system but I loved the graphics and combat animations. It was super impressive at the time on the GBA and I loved the art style.

To my great surprise, they both hold up incredibly well today on their own terms, with minimal nostalgia impacting that view. In terms of general playability, these games feel really ahead of their time. It feels like they master the basics of JRPGs gameplay and then do a great job of adding their own level of polish and systems. The art style really clicks with me and I find the graphics still look really good today, despite their low resolution. The soundtrack is similarly top notch, with these titles arguably being (in my view) the most technically impressive games on the GBA. These games are a clear example that a strong art direction can withstand the test of time.

I want to get my thoughts out while they are fresh and go into a bit of the story and systems a bit.

General Plot Overview Thoughts - Spoilers for the story

Golden Sun 1 starts off pretty slow, and there's a lot of repetitive text to slog through at the beginning. Character interactions and dialogue are arguably some of the weakest parts of this series. It feels pretty catered to a much younger audience, which isn't inherently a bad thing, but much if it feels tedious in it's execution. So many characters repeating what the other just said, elaborating on simple points for a little too long, and just blabbing for a long time with very little actually being said. However, the sprite work and emotion bubbles are a charming way of conveying character emotions and meaning.

Golden Sun 1 has you following a party of four consisting of Isaac, Garret, Ivan, and Mia. Their goal is to prevent the lighting of the 4 elemental lighthouses, which would unleash the power of alchemy on to the world and cause great destruction. The main villains for the first game are a duo named Saturos and Menardi. I actually found these two to be fairly compelling. They're portrayed as pretty generically evil but their motives are not made clear until the second game. A lot of vague and smug "you wouldn't understand" type of dialogue from them which, while quite repetitive, I did find to build a reasonable level of intrigue. Their cartoonish villainy is motivating enough to want to stop them. Looking back on it, I don't know why they never just straight up said that if the lighthouses aren't lit, the world will end. Might have saved a lot of trouble, but I suppose they didn't feel the need to explain themselves. A bit strange in retrospect, but it still worked for me.

On the surface, your quest appears to be a straightforward good vs evil, stop the villains from lighting the lighthouses, save the world from destruction sort of business. It starts to become a little muddier with the introduction of Felix, a childhood friend of Isaac and Garett, thought dead during the first sequence of the game. He appears to be working with the villains and seems to have the same goals as them, though there is not much comraderie between him and the other villians, as Saturos and Menardi are holding his sister Jenna and the old scholar, Kraden, hostage. Another mysterious villian, Alex, also appears to be working alongside the others but looks to have his own motives. It's an interesting set up with a strange payoff in the sequel.

With the goal of preventing the lighting of the lighthouses made clear, your adventure becomes somewhat standard fantasy fare - travel the world, visit towns, complete quests, meet party members, traverse dungeons, upgrade equipment and level up, fight bosses, and work towards your ulimate quest. Here's where I find Golden Sun absolutely masters this formula. While I wouldn't say much of anything is new if you've ever played any other JRPG, everything here just functions so smoothly. The systems, UI and menus, combat, and general pacing are so fluid. Load times are non-existent and I think an underrated aspect is the input delay is minimal, meaning text, menus, selections, interactions, etc. just feel so snappy.

The story moves along steadily having you connect and deal with problems in each locale, all of which conveniently happen to connect to your larger quest. You level up easily along the way leaving no need for grinding, which is really refreshing. The item and equipment progression is quite satisfying with the best equipment generally found as a reward for exploring extra parts of dungeons or defeating bosses in a certain way (which I didn't find out about until after beating both games). Your main power spikes, however, come from collecting Djinn, which I'll mention my thoughts on shortly.

As you get to the end of GS1, you have a dramatic final battle against Saturos and Menardi, spanning two phases. One is just your party vs the two of them. The second phase, they fuse together to somehow form a massive screen spanning dragon. The scale represented on the GBA is really cool, as the dragon doesn't even fit on the screen, and your party actually shrinks down in comparison giving it a really grand feel. This battle is a satisfying finale, testing your skills in djinn management, timely skill use, getting into a rhythm of mitigating the biggest hitting spells, and counterattacking with powerful moves and summons. It's a fun challenge without being too easy or too difficult. I loved it.

As you win the fight against these two, they dramatically light the lighthouse with their last breaths and throw themselves down into the ocean to their deaths. The lighthouse has massive geographical impacts, sending continents crashing into each other, and creating land bridges that didn't exist before. The game effectively wraps up here, with you heading out on a ship to explore the seas to track down Jenna and Kraden, and trying to catch up to Felix who is still bent on lighting the remaining 2 lighthouses.

It took me about 21 hours to beat GS1. I found it to be incredibly tightly paced that doesn't overstay its welcome and envelops you into a bright new fantasy world. I didn't do the extra hidden dungeon or its boss, Deadbeard, as I didn't realize there was a point of no return near the very end so I missed out on that. I also used a guide near the end to backtrack and collect all but one Djinn (located in the hidden dungeon). Some of those djinn, there's just no way you're going to find them without a guide on your first playthrough unless you happen to enjoy exploring random empty expanses of map. I played without a guide and thought I was doing quite well collecting them all up until one of the towns near the end, I decided to look it up and found I had missed most of them. The game may have been more of a challenge this way, but I found it really well balanced this way. For example, I just barely won the Colloso fight with only a few Djinn, making it really suspenseful as it boiled down to my final turn before I would have died in one more hit. If I had the other Djinn I missed, it might have been a breeze. Going forward, I decided to use a Djinn guide on my playthrough for the Lost Age. Here's where I may have trivialized the difficulty a bit however and maybe I would have avoided doing so just for a bit of extra challenge.

Golden Sun: The Lost Age is where things take a very jarring shift. You shift to playing as one of the first game's supposed villains, Felix. You follow him, his sister Jenna, a wind adept Sheba, and later on a water adept named Piers. The pacing is what immediately struck me. You're given very little to go off of on where you're supposed to go, very unlike the quite linear first entry. All you know is that you're supposed to go find the remaining lighthouses and light them. But things slow down a ton. The tight pacing of the first game is thrown out in favour of a vast open world type adventure. You're really having to take your time speaking to every NPC, reading their minds with psynergy to gather more info, and often times backtracking to progress in areas you couldn't reach as you didn't have the appropriate psynergy before. The dungeons are considerably longer and the puzzles are a lot more involved, with stacking psynergy mechanics used to make each dungeon more complex than the first game. I often times found myself stumped in certain areas. Most puzzles I felt were quite clever, while others came off tedious and felt like they were padding the game's length.

At first, I found this pacing shift really frustrating. It felt like The Lost Age was just becoming another bloated JRPG. As I continued to stick with it, the appeal of this design change really started clicking with me. I started to really appreciate how involved you got to each location in the world and how much more rewarding it was to figure out where to go. Reading an NPCs mind to glean some hints on something for the next dungeon became quite satisfying to figure out. There were a handful of times where I was completely lost and had to check a guide to find where to go next, primarily just to save the time of traversing the world back and forth figuring out what hint I might have missed. There was I think only once instance in the whole game where I felt I would never have figured it out without a guide. Narratively, I think this makes a lot of sense as, in the first game, you're following the tracks of Felix and the others and trying to prevent the lighting of the lighthouses and save Jenna and Kraden. In The Lost Age, playing as Felix's party, it really feels like you have to forge the path to the lighthouses and take your time to explore and figure things out.

One part of this exploration style gameplay that initially really annoyed me, though became less of an issue, was just how huge the world becomes. In GS1, you can travel between towns and dungeons pretty quickly in the overworld. Distances are not long between towns/dungeons. In The Lost Age, there is so much walking and walking and walking in vast empty expanses hitting random encounter after random encounter, with each battle serving absolutely no challenge. Locations felt super scattered with distances between locations very spaced out. Here's where I recommend an emulator with a fast forward function. I wouldn't have enjoyed this game as much without it. That said, as you adjust to the game's pace, you start to appreciate the other aspects of it. The level designs are a lot more involved. Dungeon puzzles really begin stacking mechanics and become much more complex.

The Lost Age starts to shine more in the story aspect, though not perfect. You quickly learn that the world is decaying, literally crumbling and falling apart at the edges as a result of the loss of alchemy from the world. It's mentioned that in the past, alchemy was abused for wars, control, and general destruction, leading to global havoc amongst great civilizations. Eventually, some ancients sealed the power of alchemy away into the elemental stars, removing them from their respective lighthouses and sealing them away in Sol Sanctum, in Mount Aleph (part of the starting location of the first game). It's a neat twist of turning the original hero cast from the first game turn out to accidentally be stopping the saving of the world, while the alleged villains are actually trying to save it. Like I mentioned, probably could have had that chat much earlier on between the two groups, but it's certainly more dramatic not to have.

I put a little over 35 hours into The Lost Age, primarily completing the main quest and collecting all the Djinn. While at times the pacing felt like a bit of a slog, the experience was unique and I'm glad the game doesn't hold your hand.

The Djinn system

Djinn, collected as these funny little creatures, come in 4 types associated with one of each type of element (fire, water, earth, air). As each party member is "adept" to a certain one of the 4 elements, assigning that element's djinn to that character upgrades their stats and class, giving them huge combat boosts and introducing new psynergy skills and summons. While you can swap different djinn types and mix and match elements between characters to create unique classes and different skills, I really didn't care much to do so. I stuck with mono-elements for each of my characters as I found it to be the simplest and most satisfying to use. Nothing quite hits like Isaac's/Felix's Ragnarok spell.

I did try out changing up the classes for each character and I really appreciate the freedom to do so anytime outside of battle, but I found I didn't enjoy the combat gameplay as much as it required more careful use of djinn, which has its own appeal for sure. Using djinn and/or summoning them in battle puts them on standby, which can change your characters class mid-battle. That can result in losing or changing skills and stats, and this hits much harder when you have different element djinns assigned to a character, making class and stat changes much more dramatic and finicky. I think there's definitely an appeal to this type of gameplay style, but it wasn't for me and I don't think the game was challenging enough that you ever really have to experiment much. At most, I would switch a djinn here and there between characters outside of battle to get a psynergy like "growth" to complete a puzzle like make a vine grow that you can climb up. Then I'd switch right back.

Psynergy and UI Design

Psynergy is a unique mechanic to the Golden Sun series. These aren't just spells used in combat, but functional skills you can use in the overworld to complete puzzles, read the minds of NPCs, reveal hidden secrets, and more. Assigning up to two skills at a time to the GBA shoulder buttons makes it quick and easy to use frequently used spells. Menus are so snappy and easy to navigate, I had no issue just activating psynergy's from the menus repeatedly either. That's one of Golden Sun's designs I love - everything is so fluid. Icons are usually large and incredibly simple to understand at a glance and there aren't huge blocks of texts like many RPG games to explain unnecessarily complex mechanics. Mind you, better explanation of the djinn system might have helped, but it functions just fine anyway, rewarding experimentation on your own. I can't think of a ton of other JRPGs that have this type of Zelda-style dungeon puzzle solving using special skills/abilities.

Battles are also just so seamless and quick. Random encounters did start to drive me a little crazy after a while though, especially when you're trying to figure out a dungeon's puzzle, but there's a couple ways I think Golden Sun handles this really well:

1. Battles are super quick. Once a random encounter hits, the screen flashes, pans in a pseudo-3D manner, and you're almost instantly in the battle. Once you know how combat works, you can usually mash through the combat very quickly - selecting your attacks, heals, spells, etc. and selecting your targets in seconds. I wouldn't say it's mindless, but it's simple enough and can be fairly easy to run through random fights. Encounters I found lasted maybe 10-15 seconds at a time at most.

2. Using the Avoid skill to avoid most encounters entirely. Here's where some djinn mixing between characters can help as you can get Avoid pretty quickly. It does run out somewhat quickly and the animation can be a bit dragged out a bit, but it's so handy when you're just looking to solve a puzzle without interruption or just get to your next destination.

Overall

I am just so impressed by these titles. These games feel like they have no right to be as good as they are. Packing such quality into a couple of tiny GBA cartridges is crazy. It's really a shame that this series has not seen any other entries. They scratch a certain itch that I don't think many other games/JRPGs have really matched.

One aspect I didn't even really mention but have to give a shout out too - the OST and general sound design is stellar. Every track, every spell cast, dialogue exchanges, menu interactions - exceptional.

I'm going to give Golden Sun: Dark Dawn a try next. I have heard some fairly negative things about it, and I hope it doesn't retroactively sour me on Golden Sun altogether, but it still seems intriguing enough to give it a go. I have my expectations lowered so hopefully it still ends up being an enjoyable experience.