Entering my thirties has made me feel onstalgic about the most important games of my childhood and I am compelled to write my thoughts about them. I'm not a writer but it feels good to talk to you about them.
The first two Golden Sun games are two of my favourite RPG's. They would feel traditional to a new player today but the unique way they glue together gameplay elements and story are feel unique.
I can't disassociate my perception of the quality of the games from me being eleven when I first played them. These games are the reason I got a Gameboy Advance. I remember wanting a Gameboy Advance to play Golden Sun so badly after trying it once at a friends house that I would hold my Gameboy Colour sideways to pretend. I wanted to play Golden Sun so badly my dad took me to Electronics Boutique so that I could pick out an RPG to tide me over and I randomly picked off the shelf Dragon Warrior 3 because the box art reminded me of Dragon Ball Z (yes, I know).
Here's the premise of Golden Sun: Fantasy world with magic, called "psynergy" divided familiarly into the "elements" Fire, Wind, Water, Earth. The majority of the worlds characters cannot use psynergy, but the few characters that can (including the protagonists) are aligned with a specific element. In this world psynergy is part of it's forgotten history and much of the world doesn't realize it exists at all. This general ignorance factors into how the characters solve people's problems secretly throughout many of the game's subplots. It's modern societies live around or near the ruins of ancient, clearly more advanced extinct cultures.
Classic RPG gameplay: Overworld with towns, and dungeons where random battles occur. Dialogue is text based with rudimentary sqeaks and squaks chirping as the text goes across the screen. Lengthy exposition would probably feel tedious to many but I loved it as a kid and luckily the game allows you to set the speed at which text scrolls if you're a quick reader.
The dungeons are a mix of fighting and traversal puzzles that are managed by using the character's psynergy powers. The puzzles aren't often complicated but make every dungeon feel like more than identical rooms to move through with different window dressing. Many of the same psynergy powers you use in combat are also used to navigate puzzle solving which makes different parts of the game feel cohesive and realistic. How many times in a game have you seen an obstacle that you think you should be able to jump over, or cut through based on your abilities in other parts of the game? In Golden Sun using Fire in battle and also to solve a puzzle in the same dungeon enhanced my suspension of disbelief as a kid. It also makes sense in the context of the story. The journey your characters take as unique, specific elementally aligned psynergy users require them to access and make their way through the worlds ancient ruins that conveniently also align with a specific element, although the story premise justifies this formula well.
This game involves collecting magical creatures that power up your characters, work as "attacks" in and of themselves, and unlock powerful summons that are a copy/paste of the PS1 era Final Fantasy's grand videos of calamitous nuclear level events. These creatures, called Djinn, are often found in dungeons but can even be found in the overworld. For a lot of players like myself it meant going to GameFaqs to look at guides to get every single one but the majority of them could be found by solving traversal puzzles and scouring the corners of the game world. In battle is where Djinn unlock another layer of strategy: When you collect Djinn and attach them to your characters (like equipping weapons) your characters stats are amplified. When you use one of them as an attack or defensive boost in battle that stat boost is removed until the Djinn "refresh". Your characters become weaker as more Djinn are used, putting them in "standby" which sets you up to use your spectaculer summons. This risk/reward creates an interesting rhythm in boss battles that is unique from other RPG's.
Your characters begin their journey believing in a certain worldview, and through plot twists and revelations learn about the true state of the world and what it means to save it. This is cleverly handled by giving you control of a different group of characters in the second game before everything combines near the end. The story elements here aren't unique but the pay-off over two games is satisfying. The theme of learning more about the nature of the world makes exploring, especially in the second game where the entire map including land and sea are open to you, very satisfying.
The graphics are a GameBoy Advance mix of 2D & 3D that have a tight hold on my nostalgic heart because my youngest years growing up were with my Gameboy Pocket & Colour and seeing that leap was mind blowing. I think they still look nice today! I'm sure professional reviews at the time found issues with the visuals but they remain a personal high watermark for me.
The limitations of the GameBoy Advance are apparent in one glaring way that sticks out in my memory: To connect the story of both games you can bring over your progress from the first. Did you have a second Gameboy Advance and a link cable? Neither did I! The way for us to bring our characters progress over was to record i n c r e d i b l y long, 260 character passwords in the first game on a piece of paper, hope you didn't mess up, and then record that same 260 character password into the second game. I have played through these games well over a dozen times. It always sucks!
These games, as a two-piece, combine their gameplay and story elements in a way that I haven't seen in other RPG's I've played. I've played a lot! This made exploring the world as it got bigger increasingly rewarding. To me, it's flaws are minor and it's strengths are memorable. The initial two Golden Sun games are in my forever top ten and if my dusty old GameBy Advance doesn't die I will play them again.
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