reporting's Full Review: Golden Sun: The Lost Age for Game Boy Advance (GBA...
If you are not familiar with the original Golden Sun, I suggest you turn around, and walk away, towards the first one before you start this one. Although this game has a lot of plot from the original story explained, it will not be nearly as fun if you jump into this one beforehand. The Golden Sun series were the first two GBA games I played, resulting in me, a huge fan.
Story
This is basically a continuation from the original Golden Sun; and the plot is very detailed, but easy to catch on. In the first game, you play Isaac, a young boy in Vale, when the sacred mountain, Mt. Aleph erupts, and psynergy jewels are scattered across the land. You were to race across the land, stopping your arch enemies from lighting the elemental lighthouses. Now, in this game, you play Felix, who is torn between his friends, his family, and his oath. He is also in the race for the lighthouses, but he's not sure whether to light them or stop lighting them. I find this plot quite weak, it's more of an extention from the original game. However, I find it better than the weakling plots of many "RPG" around.
Gameplay
This is a classic RPG, with turn-based monster fights, members of your party, puzzles, towns, dungeons, and learned powers. The controls are very simple: a to use an action and to open the menu, b to go back. Anyway, you go around solving lots of puzzles to gain psynergy powers, djinni (will explain later), key items, and members of your party. I find that the puzzles in this game are more than double the difficulty of the last. Seriously, there's a LOT of "flip this switch, run here, push the boulder, run back, cross the bridge, then smash this pillar so you can jump across" type of stuff. In a way, these puzzles are what makes it fun, but many of them are so tough that after turning off the game in frustration many times, you wouldn't be able to resist opening a walkthrough of some sort. Beware, the puzzles come in the most surprising of ways. There are even invisible keys to the puzzle that you can easily walk past. There will also be a lot of realizing that you can't finish the puzzle without a certain psynergy, and then having to go to a whole different continent and an entirely different puzzle.
This game does not spoon-feed you like many other games these days. You've got many continents to explore, and on each continent deserts, towns, caves, and more. It's up to your own judgement to decide where you need to go next to continue on with the plot. Do you need to go to the Apoji Islands for that new psynergy you need to complete the ruins, or would that be in Air's Rock? It's completely up to you, which makes the game even more difficult, and yet the freedom is great.
Along your journey, you will gain different powers, or psynergy. This variety makes the game interesting. There are powers such as REVEAL, INFERNO, EARTHQUAKE, PLY, and more. There's your typical "four elements" thing going on here, Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire. Often, you'll need psynergy to complete the puzzles and go on with the plot. With all the psynergy you've got to keep up with, add on top of all that the fact that for certain psynergies you can decide which party members get to use which powers. During battle and out of battle, members of your party can gain lots of cool powerful attacks, and there's no limit to how many attacks a certain member can have. (Golden Sun-1, Pokemon-0) Anyway, more about battling later.
One of the last, most unique parts of this game are the elemental creatures called the djinni. This makes the battle system so cool. In dungeons and towns, you can find these creatures anywhere, from basements to deserts, and even from random battle encounters. There are four types of djinni: Water, Earth, Wind, and Fire. Each of your characters can control djinni, which can give them powerful attacks and healing aides (etc) in battle. Not only do they unleash some major damage alone, but after a djinni is used, it can go into summoning mode. (You can also set the djinni into this mode from the menu screen when not in battle) You can earn special "group summons" in which summoning multiple djinni at a time can pack THOUSANDS of damage in hitpoints! Swapping around djinni from different element characters can change their attacks in odd ways. For example, a character with water psynergy given certain earth djinni could lose their healing abilities until the djinni is swapped away from them. What makes Djinni even greater is how they are linked to psynergy. Mixing and matching Djinni to different characters will affect the Psynergy available to them. You can turn this to your advantage by swapping the Djinni around until your characters have the best Psynergy combos possible.
Battle
Battling is by far the best part of the game. The battle style is so well planned, it can become an entire strategy game by itself. First off, this is turn-based. I repeat... turn based! If you are looking for an exciting hack-and-slash Zelda typed thing, you are looking in the wrong place. This battle is all strategy, and without a gameplan in the battlefield, you're toast.
So anyway, first off, you can do one thing per character, and characters can affect each other. You can use items on other characters, and even djinni on your own characters if it is not an attack. Then, after you have selected what you want each character to do, you see each attack happen, and depending on your opponent, they can attack after or in between your attacks. When a character loses all their HP, they are downed, and you need a village healer, a special djinni, or some very rare Water of Life to revive them. Capiche? How you battle is totally up to you, but I warn you that you cannot skip boss battles without losing out on an important item or power.
Again, back to Djinni. After using a Djinni in battle, they are in summon mode. You can unlock special summons in which combinations of Djinni in summon mode can pack some incredible damage. Not only can you summon these guys in groups, but each time you summon Djinni(s), you get to watch a neat clip of the attack.
The attacks in this game are awesome to watch, so much that you can't wait to use Ragnarok again so you can see that massive sword falling from the sky to smite all the enemy. There was a lot of detail put into this battling stuff, each monster with their own set of attacks. You'll find yourself memorizing which attacks work best against each opponent, what kind of damage they deal to you, and more.
Graphics and Sound
For a GBA game, the graphics are pretty average. There's a lot of pretty detail, but sometimes you have to squint to see exactly what something is. (Is that a rock, or a djinni?) Then again, I played this game often at night because I couldn't stay away. The sound, however, is a different story. While travelling in the World Map or sailing, the music gets super-irritating because the only way to escape the World Map music is to turn down the volume. Same goes for the regular monster-encounters. In the dungeons and towns however, the music is always different for each location, and always pleasant. It seems to set the mood for the place. Har-har. I would rate the graphics and sound 9 and 8, respectively.
Etc
This game has got a lot of mini side quests that you can do (if you can find them) and a LOT of time. It took me almost 50 hours to complete it, and I feel like it was a huge accomplishment. However, half the game is cut-scene, where the people talk for ages, and you pray that the battery doesn't run out, because you haven't saved the game recently.
No matter how difficult the puzzles are, I would do it all over again. A word of advice: Don't play after a long day, you may end up smashing the GBA. :)
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