Golden Sun is probably the best game for the GBA!!!! WHERES GOLDEN SUN 3!! IM WAITING
The Bad: The game's way too short; the cliffhanger ending will doubtlessly bother many people; there aren't any summons that combine two elements (earth, fire, wind, water); there's only one sequel.
It was 2001. The GBA was released at last, after much anticipation, but as with every system, there weren't a lot of stellar games right off the bat. Mario's first outing wasn't appreciated much, and many of the other releases were just licensed titles with a bad GBA port. And if Nintendo didn't provide a Mario, a Zelda, a Metroid, or something else that was halfway decent, who would?
Camelot to the rescue! The guys who usually make golf games (save for those Shining Force titles for SNES) explored RPGs again for one of the best in a long, long time on a Nintendo system.
The tale of Isaac, Garet, Ivan and Mia is deep, immersive and powerful. You get the characters to join your party early on, but not so early that you get their names mixed up. Yet this gives you a chance to level them all up and really get to know them by game's end, despite that that comes far too soon.
The use of the elemental towers in the game and the lighting of the beacons is brilliant- it combines a classic idea (the elements themselves) with magic, a stellar cast, and those oh-so-cute djinn.
The djinn really pack a punch though, and the game length is improved a fair amount if you track down every one of them, which will certainly be a worthy investment of your time. Not only do they have powerful summons at their disposal, but you get brand new classes only with their help.
It's a shame there are only four summons per element, but their are plenty of classes to go around, if you choose to experiment. The magic, too, is many and varied. Each character, with all their classes available, literally would have hundreds of attacks if you mix and match djinn.
So there's a great story, and equally great gameplay. Battle's plenty of fun, despite being turn-based. You keep expecting it to get repetitive, but it never does. It just makes it that much more fun to explore- you don't get sick of the random monster encounters.
Graphics are really a showcase for the GBA in this game. They're beautiful, even today, if you don't mind the 2.5-dimensional characters. The music is just as memorable as a Mario, a Zelda, or a Final Fantasy titles, too. It just goes to show that MIDI can be really, really good, especially nowadays.
It's a shame the game is somewhere between just ten and twenty hours, which is incredibly short for an RPG. Again, collecting all the djinn (quite a feat, admittedly), adds to the length of the game, and it will level up your characters more so they can face the truly powerful major enemies, Saturos and Menardi, but it still just makes you want a sequel more.
So it gives you a taste of the goods to come, just as the GBA itself is giving you a taste of what's in store. It's one of Nintendo's mega hit systems, and will go down in history for it- because of games like this. Anyone who picks this one up at a used store will adore it, and it's still one of my personal favorite GBA titles. You'll just have to have the cash to get the sequel too, and get ready to riot for a third title on DS.