The GBA has been a goldmine for classic 16-bit RPG gaming. This
includes ports of old favorites like Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, and
Sword of Mana and new takes on classic RPGs like Mario & Luigi:
Superstar Saga and Riviera. Like the other new takes on old favorites,
Golden Sun borrows heavily from its ancestors and creates a great
original game that feels like an SNES classic.
Your story starts off in typical RPG form. You're a child in a small
village that protects the secret of Alchemy. Naturally some bad guys
show up and unlock Alchemy, causing chaos throughout the world. You
then set about on a quest to save the planet from those that would let
chaos reign throughout the world. Obviously this is a huge gloss over
what becomes a somewhat complicated plot, but you can see that no RPG
cliches have been left unturned by the story.
One of the great things about this story is how it's presented. As you
would expect, there's a lot of text to read, but it's supplemented with
very cute and expressive characters. When your characters are sad, a
speech bubble with a frowny face :( appears over their head. Surprised
characters display a "!", etc. It's cutsey, but it works well to give
the characters some emotion. Similarly to Final Fantasy VII, when you
enter a battle, your characters and enemies take on a more serious,
though still cartoony, appearance that fits the mood of combat very
well. Your special attacks and magic are exceptionally well animated,
especially for the GBA.
The battle system in this game also harkens back to the SNES days,
though it has its own nuances that keep combat fresh. In combat, you
assign all of your character's actions before any of them are carried
out. You can choose from a simple attack, using "Psyenergy" which is
just magic, using your djinn, summoning, using items, or defending. The
djinn and summoning systems are very interesting in execution. You join
djinn, which are little magical animals, to your characters. Each djinn
has a different action that you can use in battle. This ranges from
protecting your characters for a round, resurrecting KO'd characters,
or causing damage and status ailments to your enemies. Each time you
use a djinn, it goes into "standby" mode. After this, you can summon
powerful creatures that put a major hurting on your enemies. The more
djinn you have on standby, the more powerful the summon. Following a
summon, your djinn can be called back into action. It's a really
interesting system that offers a lot of strategy to your combat. About
the only complaint I have with combat is that your characters do not
attack intelligently. If you assign a character to attack an enemy
that's already been defeated, your character loses his turn rather than
attacking the next available enemy. This will cause you to miss a lot
of attacks, and can be quite a pain at times.
The puzzle-based dungeons are also a lot of fun to crawl through. You
may have flashbacks to The Legend of Zelda, though I kept thinking of
Wild Arms 3 when I was playing. You'll need to use your characters'
Psyenergy to freeze puddles, lift rocks, and knock over logs to get
from Point A to Point B. This keeps the dungeons interesting, and the
level design is top notch. There aren't any really difficult puzzles
until the end, but you'll find yourself scratching your head a few
times to figure out how to get across a room to the next door. Travel
between the dungeons is a bit more of a drag, unfortunately, since you
don't get an airship or anything like that. The map is fairly linear,
and there's not much more than trees and plains to walk through. Some
sort of vessel would've helped to speed along those sections.
My biggest complaint about the game is that it wraps up a bit quickly.
I pretty much got every major item and found every djinn, and it still
only took about 15 hours to beat. The story really just drops off of a
cliff at the end as well. This is mostly because it feeds directly into
Golden Sun: The Lost Age. Really, GS and GS:TLA are a single game
spread across two cartridges, in that you'll have to play both to get
the full story. Thank goodness the games are as good as they are, or
it'd just feel like a way to make me pay $60 to finish the story
instead of $30.
Golden Sun is a fantastic game, with a deep combat and magic system.
While the plot is of the obligatory "small kid sets out to save the
world" variety, the top notch production of the game keeps it from
getting dull. I highly recommend this game to anyone who likes RPGs,
and recommend that you pick up Golden Sun: The Lost Age as well.
