I came back to golden sun a decade or so after release and realised that it actually kind of sucks. It captured the feeling of bigger jrpgs on a handheld, which is why I poured so much time into it as a 12 year old, but it’s riddled with potholes, cliches, and ellipses, and the battle system is nowhere near as deep as it thinks it is. If it had been released for full consoles it would have been considered unremarkable.
And then I bought and played Dark Dawn and enjoyed it anyway, because it does the feeling really well. Fucking dumb and largely incoherent plot that mostly consists of “…”, but so inexplicably fun.
I think there are a lot games that we glorify when we played them as a child and later we think they probably not that good. I want to replay golden sun, but i can’t tell you anything about the story, i played the game in english and can’t really speak english back then. So i’m interrested to see the story the first time to be honest. I think what i have best in mind, that i like the dungeon design with it’s riddles and you interact with magic to your soroundings. But even so, it could be not as fun as i expect it to be, well i will see.
The lighthouses in particular are really enjoyable dungeons, but some of the puzzles are just terrible when you take a step back and look at them critically - either obvious from the slightest glance and just busywork, or annoyingly obfuscated in a way that leaves you resorting to trial and error.
Similarly, the way the map is huge and apparently open makes exploring it exciting, but it’s actually very segmented and linear - even with a boat on the open sea there are all sorts of blockades to progress that require you visit locations in a specific order.
And yet it’s fun. I can’t explain it as just nostalgia, as I have just as much fun seeing it torn to shreds (LPArchive has an incredibly critical let’s play of the first 2 games) - I think it’s something about the creativeness of the ideas that went into the game. Like you said, it put a lot of detail into how you could use magic to affect people and the environment, and it adopts an interesting perspective, first as heroes, then as their villains, who have their own heroic motivation. The story explores interesting ideas, even with all its plotholes and “…”'s. Even the class system is interesting in how you can change your abilities and power up or power down by using Djinni. It’s like it throws so many good ideas at the wall that you don’t mind that none of them are actually done well.
I asked this in nintendo community, but since there might be different set of people here, let me ask here again.
So, everyone has been asking for Golden Sun for ages. For someone who knows nothing about them (other than watching the trailer above), anything I should know about them before starting them?
First the obvious, play them in order. Other than that, it’s fine to go blind into the games. And because i played the games so long ago, i don’t remember thing really good. But at lesst i remember a bit.
There are a lot hidden things in these games, so it can benefit you to explore a lot, even in the overworld. The game system seems to be easy and is probably easy to play, but has a lot to find out as well. Get different skill depending on the equiped djinn oder depending on activated or not activated djinn you have different stats as well. Earth Djinn doesn’t have to go to a earth char. play a bit with them and find out interresting combinations.
Both games are conntected and you need to play both for the whole story. Iirc they were planned as one game and later split up.
There are so-called Djinns, little creatures you collect and equip to change both skills and attributes of your party. Some are missable (Edit: Only in the third game, you can’t miss Djinns in the GBA titles, misremembered that). If you care for completion, you should look up their locations - or at least the missable ones. If you don’t, searching can be fun and the games are beatable with a fraction of them.
Instead of grinding, try experimenting with Djinn setups. Some are great for overworld puzzles, of which there are a lot, others are better for certain fights.
Speaking of puzzles, they are some of the best RPGs in that department with many overworld abilities to use. If you don’t like them, there are probably too many.
There is a third game on the DS, but as far as I’m concerned you can ignore it. It’s basically a long introduction for a new series that never happened. Only go for it if you need more after finishing both games.
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