A well structured game that will not disappoint those familiar with traditional RPG elements, reminiscent of SNES days.
User Rating: 9.2 | Golden Sun GBA
It wouldn't be hard to believe that our lead character begins his quest in bed (those familiar to the genre will know what I mean). The town of Vale is at the base of a mountain which houses an ancient temple holding the power of Alchemy. Several powerful intruders disrupt the village and make off with a couple of its occupants and the temples secrets. Our hero, Isaac takes it upon himself with the help of a friend to pursue the evil and get back their friends whilst preventing the evil doers from using the stolen powers in a negative way. This is a very brief overview, however as you can understand the plot of RPG's are revealed in lengthy introductions involving the rapid pressing of scroll buttons once text has been read, this is no exception. In traditional RPG style, gameplay revolves around several key modes. The first being the village encounters. The party spend time in towns, villages or ports talking to locals and powering up on items and weapons. Towns are unique and look wonderful. Talking to locals will pave the way for the next leg of your journey. The second phase of gameplay occurs when the party leaves a village to make their way across a range of different terrains, eventually arriving at the new destination. In Golden Sun the journey is varied and involves traversing through caves, mountains, swamplands and green plains. During the above mentioned aspects of your quest you will be able to find and collect a range of powerful elemental creatures called Djinn who will join your party (yes it sounds horribly like Pokemon but innovation has thankfully saved the concept). There are 4 types of creature to represent each elemental power; earth, water, fire & wind. Assigning a Djinn to characters help build experience using a specific type of elemental power which greatly improve the powers to be used later in the game. In total there are 28 Djinn to find throughout the game, most are easy to find whilst others may be hidden forever. The way you assign the Djinn to your party greatly affects the end result, therefore the management of your parties elemental creatures is one of the games main tactical areas which you should work on to perfect. Djinn provide powers to your party members in battles, but also provide some invaluable powers in villages and temples. You are able to read peoples minds, move obstructing boulders or even make vines grow to reach new areas. The Djinn must be toggled between characters to give your party the desired result when moving around certain locations, it's actually lots of fun working on new strategies with your party and their massive array of bizarre looking "pets". The Djinn are the core driver for the strategies in Golden Sun's battles and I absolutely love the concept, I just thought it wasn't completely original but Camelot have done a brilliant job to make the Djinn work in an innovative way. Once you play through the game you will discover that Djinn are a very strong ally and you will be compelled to go out and "catch em all". Whilst making your way across vast landscapes the party will encounter enemies who will move the game into battle mode, this is where things get really interesting. Golden Sun features a brilliant turn based fighting system with icon driven choices to determine how you approach the enemies before you. There is the ability to simply fight which will strike a blow with your chosen weapon, there is Psyenergy which is similar to traditional Magic or you can use your creepy little friends to attack. The Djinn build up some heavy duty powers and they become an invaluable addition to your party (later in the game you will actually back track to find some you may have been unable to locate in earlier scenes) they are just amazing. The journey has it's ups and downs like any good story, a massive amount of dialogue is present and at ever so seldom times your mind may start to wander, however once the action returns you will be edging to get to the next chapter of the adventure. Movement between locations is at times broken up by an array of puzzle solving which has been thrown in to keep things fresh. Sometimes a puzzle may lead to hidden treasure chests containing special items or in some cases a puzzle must be solved to progress through the game. The way you become totally enthralled with the game is enough to warrant a positive response. The majority of the game follows a structured path, and those familiar with RPG's will predict the next movement or plot twist. Even so, the game has been polished so well that it's hard to put the machine down (even to let the batteries charge), because you will become immersed in the quest. Your party of 4 remains constant throughout most of the journey, once you uncover the various townships the world map doesn't seem incredibly large (in fact its rather small). The variety of gameplay and action combined with a story which draws you in is enough to get you moving forward in a consistent manner. Apart from a giant Octopus Boss encountered on a ship, the enemies were relatively straight forward. I have a habit of never skipping battles when playing RPG's because I like to build my character up in preparation for later aspects of gameplay, perhaps this is why I didn't have much trouble? This game will appeal to those who have never touched an RPG and those who are veterans, simply because it offers gamers enough training to ease into the game without boring people to death entirely. I bought this when the GBA launched but was having too much fun with Circle of the Moon and an array of other titles (hence the late review), however as soon as I put this cartridge in the machine, it was not removed until 20 odd hours later when the game was completed, and I guess that's just the point. The game may be considered too short. The entire experience just flows so nicely you will be compelled to keep playing, and then it's over. Other than the final area the entire journey moves along a train track (in one direction). This is a well structured game that will not disappoint those familiar with traditional RPG elements, reminiscent of the Super Nintendo days. Short may not be a negative to take too harshly because overall the game is fantastic.
