In the end, Golden Sun: The Lost Age is a flawless RPG with a great continuation of the original cliffhanger.

User Rating: 9.8 | Ougon no Taiyou: Ushinawareshi Toki GBA
By D-MonDRV | Review Date:
The Game Boy Advance was released in June of 2001. When Nintendo announced that this handheld was more powerful than a Super Nintendo, fans rejoiced. This gave Nintendo the opportunity to re-release certain games and to have a lot more third party support. In November, a new RPG developed by Camelot reached the GBA. It featured some of the best visuals ever. It even matched a few PSOne Titles. The length of the first game was very short and it featured a cliffhanger ending. It all came into plan when Camelot decided to release each game as a new chapter. Almost 2 years after the release of Golden Sun, Golden Sun: Lost Age was released. Golden Sun: Lost Age is good for both newcomers and veterans of Golden Sun. It features a prologue that recaps the first game at the beginning. The 4 elements, called Alchemy, made up the entire world. Those were Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water. In the continent of Angara, there lays a sacred village called Vale. In the back of Vale stood Mt. Aleph, the source of all Alchemy. One night, boulders fell, killing Jenna’s family and Issac’s father. A few years later, Isaac learned how to Psynergy, an Alchemy power. Kraden, an Alchemy expert, told Isaac, Jenna, and Garet to go into Sol Sanctum and to check out Mt. Aleph. When reaching the summit, they caught glimpse of Saturos and Menardi. They were out to steal the Elemental Stars. Isaac and company got to them first, but Saturos and Menardi stole three of the four. And an ally of them, Alex, kidnapped Kraden and Jenna. They learned that their masked follower was Felix, Jenna’s brother. Whom everybody thought he died on impact when the boulder crushed him years ago. Isaac and Garet set out to the village of Vault, where they met a Jupiter Adept named Ivan. He joined their quest and went on to the mountain village of Imil where they met a Mercury Adept named Mia. The four traveled to the Mercury Lighthouse and fought Saturos but it was too late. As the 4 do more good deeds from one place to another, they end up in the Venus Lighthouse to stop Saturos and Menardi from lighting the beacon. Just when the group thought they had defeated the duo, Saturos threw the Venus Star into the beacon of Venus Lighthouse causing it to explode. Shortly after that had been done, Isaac killed Saturos and Menardi, and the lighthouse exploded once again causing Sheba, a Jupiter Adept, to fall off the lighthouse. Felix jumps in to save her, and Isaac’s group doesn’t know what to do. They look for the peninsula of Idejima, but it was gone. And so starts the 2nd chapter. Golden Sun: The Lost Age picks up one year after the original Golden Sun, and the story is continued. But there’s a twist. You’re in control of the characters that want to light all the beacons. Isaac, Garet, Ivan, and Mia are here to stop the lighthouses from being lit. Saturos and Menardi want all the lighthouses lit, and they told Kraden, Felix, Jenna, Sheba, and Alex why it would be a good thing. They’d be able to control Alchemy, and re-do things that weren’t supposed to happen in the past, but should it happen? Felix isn’t necessarily a bad guy. So anyway, you take control of Felix as you travel the world of Weyard after a massive tidal wave somehow squeezed every continent closer together. The game features the best graphics ever seen on a Game Boy. What you see in the game aren’t polygons. They are sprite animations continuously going over another to give it a rich detail. Lightning, Ice, and water effects have never been this good on a Game Boy. But Golden Sun isn’t just a visual masterpiece. It features very good audio as well. The soundtrack is one of the best and natural for each tone on the RPG. It gives the gamer a sense of danger, thrill, happiness, and so forth. The Sound Effects are also great as well. Lightning is realistic, and if you’re close enough you can hear the water gushing out of geysers. What sets Golden Sun aside from most RPGs is the complex puzzles and how you solve them. Psynergy isn’t just powerful attacks to launch at your foe; they are Psychic energy powers released from one’s mind on to a certain object. Original Psynergy like ‘Retreat’, ‘Frost’, and ‘Move’ are back along with some new Psynergy like ‘Lash’. All this makes the play control very simple and not hard to use. Press A, choose Psynergy, and choose which one to launch. You can walk or run with the D-Pad and you can save at any time. The Lost Age has the same great battle system used in the last game. Still, the characters aren’t that intelligent. Once you defeat a foe, and your character was still assigned to attack it, he or she will defend instead of attacking the next monster. You can choose to use an Item, Attack, or use Psynergy on each of your character’s battle phases. Also back from the original Golden Sun are the elemental creatures called Djinn. Djinn can be launched in battle as powerful attacks. And once some are set, you can Summon powerful Djinn gods to cause massive damage against your enemies. Hidden all over the world are Stone Tablets that tell a Djinni a secret. Once you have those Djinni Set, you can summon different new gods to unleash heavy damage at your opponent. Golden Sun: The Lost Age is one of the best, if not the best RPG available for the Game Boy Advance. It is a worthy sequel to the first game, and it picks up right where it left off. Also, at the beginning, the game asks if you’d like to Import your stats from the original Golden Sun via a Game Link Cable or a Universal Medal Code. The Medal Codes are for players without a Game Link Cable, but the Gold code is a shocking 6 pages. In the end, Golden Sun: The Lost Age is a flawless RPG with a great continuation of the original cliffhanger. It’ll boast about 30 hours to beat your first time through. And even after, Golden Sun: The Lost Age will prove to be a golden part in your Game Boy Advance Library.

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