Golden Sun
Golden Sun is a 2D fantasy RPG for the portable gameboy advance handheld. Unlock the power of Djinns in this turn-based roleplaying game. Golden Sun has an interesting story, steady pacing, and original puzzles to solve. RPG fans and novices alike will find Golden Sun to be a satisfying game that’s hard to put down.
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Developer: Camelot Software Planning Publisher: Nintendo Release Date: November 11, 2001 Platform: Game Boy Advance JustRPG Score: 85% Pros: +Innovative puzzles to solve. +Has the look and feel of a classic console RPG. +Lengthy story and gameplay length for a portable RPG. Cons: -Random battles are too frequent. -Interface and Combat involves a bit too much button mashing. |
Golden Sun Overview
Golden Sun may be a portable RPG, but it has all the ingredients of a classic console RPG. While the fantasy themed world may be unoriginal, Golden Sun spices things up with puzzles, and adding an element of timing to the turn-based battles. The main story involves finding powerful Djinn which tweak your characters stats and allow for powerful summons. The 2D visuals are bright and look great on the GBA, but they also harken back to the days of Super Nintendo RPGs. Young and old RPG fans alike should enjoy Golden Sun, and its sequels which build on the solid foundation of the original.
Golden Sun Screenshots
Golden Sun Featured Video
Golden Sun Review
By, Ronald Wartow
Synopsis
If you can cope with strenuous, constant controller button-mashing, Golden Sun provides a long, engaging quest, impressive 2D graphics, and true turn-based combat featuring the summoning of mystical and mythical creatures. All this imparts a fulfilling experience all around. Depending on how you tackle the game, expect completion time to be between 20 and 30 hours. The look and feel of the game is truly reminiscent of the good, old RPG’s on earlier game consoles, like the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The game was so popular a sequel, Golden Sun: The Lost Age, highly rated by Just RPG, has enthralled many RPG’ers since released not too long ago. (See the Reviews Section of the site.)
Puzzle-Filled Story and Frequent Object Manipulation
The fairly typical save-the-world-from-devastation-and-ruin-by-a-really-bad-villain-and-save-someone scenario, while fairly typical of RPG’s, provides enough curiosity to make the player wish to find out what’s around the next corner. If the player wishes, there are ample side quests to stretch playing time.
The beginning is particularly dramatic where the hero’s sylvan home village is threatened by a gigantic earthquake causing, not surprisingly, gigantic boulders to wreak havoc. (For those supervising younger games, be warned that the consequences of this destruction cause the demise of someone.) Just getting to the first goal, the town square, with boulders continually blocking seemingly-clear paths is just a sample what’s in store. The player will find that, along with plot, a penchant for object manipulation is absolutely required to progress. These object manipulation puzzles crop up frequently, and present, at times, annoying choke points in game progress. You might find yourself shaking your head at the convoluted solutions to some of the puzzles. Many of the solutions are in unique magic skills of the characters. Players can mind read or even move or capture out-of-reach objects.
Gameplay
Depending on what’s happening in the story, the hero usually travels with two companions. Every character develops normally for an RPG. Experience gained from winning combats causes leveling up. Each character has a class to begin the game.
The player periodically finds powerful Djinn, magical genies that become powerful allies in combat and class development. The more you use the Djinn, either as direct attackers, or, as summoners, the more powerful you become. Setting Djinn to a particular character can cause that character to change class, and become more powerful. Even the character’s magic called psynergy changes when this happens. Speaking of magic, the normal spell types are here, and are the product of leveling, when spells increase in grade and clout.
Combat involves the normal, sporadic difficult boss battles, and a huge volume of random encounters. Because of the Djinn and magic, most adversaries are pushovers, and fall like wheat under a scythe. Unfortunately, the game carries forward one of the worst traits of early Final Fantasy’s, the inability of a party member targeting another monster when the original target had been killed.
Button-Mashing Mania
As mentioned at the top, Golden Sun requires strenuous, constant controller button-mashing, with no end ever in sight. Every sentence of all conversation balloons requires a confirming button-press. What’s worse is that each and every combat hit or miss also requires a confirming button-press. After awhile, my arms became very sore and achy. Here’s a simple example. Let’s say one of my party of 3 casts a spell against 4 monsters. The revelation of what damage was done required a button-press. That’s 4 button-presses for just one turn. During some combats, by actual count, I had to button-press 64 times. Given the fact that there are hundreds of combats in the game, to say nothing of numerous dialogue exchanges, it can easily be seen what a toll this annoying “feature” would take.
The result of all this was to assure that I would never, ever, no way, replay this game. This is too bad, since nearly all the gameplay is quite worthwhile, as the rest of this review corroborates.
Bottom Line
Ultimately, Golden Sun provides a medium-length, interesting RPG adventure. Golden Sun would have earned an A, but was downgraded because of the compulsory button-mashing, frequent choke points, and excessiveness of random battles.
Final Grade: 85%
Golden Sun Screenshots
Golden Sun Videos
Gothic 2 Gameplay Footage