In the original Golden Sun, the evil duo Saturous and Menardi stole the elemental stars and used them to light two of the four lighthouses. When all four are lit, the power of alchemy will be unleashed and it is believed this will cause the destruction of the world. Isaac (the main protagonist) and his friends managed to defeat them at the end of the game, but a massive earthquake (which was caused by the lighthouse) resulted in a tsunami that ravaged the lands, causing the continents to drift. Felix (who had teamed up with Saturous and Menardi) had managed to flee and reunite with Sheba, Jenna and Kraden the scholar. So begins Golden Sun: The Lost Age. This time, Felix is the main character, with Sheba and Jenna forming the initial three members of the party, with Kraden as a non-playable character.
Instead of heading straight for the lighthouses, there's a lot of wandering about, pretty much aimlessly. The story definitely isn't a strong point of the game, and new players will be confused what the overall aim of the story is.
You'll be able to transfer party data from the original into Golden Sun: The Lost Age by either using a link cable, or typing in a massive password. The original party members join you towards the end of the game, so transferring data allows you to restore your equipment, stats, money and items.
The graphics are unchanged from the first game, which isn't a bad thing since developers Camelot really got the best out of the system. The main areas look great, but the battle system is where I was most impressed. Your characters are shown holding the weapon you have equipped, each attack is well animated, and the camera pans around the battle to emphasise the attacks.
In each battle, you can attack with your weapon, use Psynergy (magic attacks), use Djinn (little creatures) which provide different magic attacks or simply Defend. If a monster is defeated and you have issued an attack to that monster with another character, then they will automatically defend instead of choosing another target. I actually liked this aspect of the battles, since it makes you consider your attacks (strength and target), rather than mashing buttons to blindly attack.
Djinn are little creatures that are found as you play. Some are basically mandatory, others require solving a puzzle and others are found via exploration. There are four types representing the different elements; Mercury (Water), Mars (Fire), and Venus (Earth), Jupiter (Wind). Each of your characters has one of these alignments, but you can equip the Djinn to anyone you want, and switch them freely. When possessing a Djinn, this changes the characters base stats and can change the Psynergy available to them. In battle, you can basically use the Djinn to cause an effect (each Djinn is different, they may boost stats, heal, attack (possibly cause a status effect etc.). Once used, they go to their 'standby' state. These can then be summoned for a powerful attack (a Final Fantasy-style summon when using two or more). After a few turns, they return to their 'Set' state, ready to be used once more. It's an interesting feature because you have to remember that Djinn boost your stats when equipped, so using them causes them to temporarily be unequipped (making you weaker), but with the trade-off that they can be summoned for the powerful attack. A new addition in The Lost Age is the fact you can summon using different elemental combinations of Djinn. You learn these summons by finding ancient tablets, so this gives you an incentive to complete the optional areas of the game.
Outside of battle, you will be required to solve puzzles using your Psynergy. You will be using Move to push statues, Frost to freeze puddles into pillars you can use as platforms, Grow to increase the height of vines to use as ladders, Whirlwind to destroy bushes.There's plenty of new Psynergy introduced in this game such as Latch which moves ropes to form tightrope bridges, Pound to smash pillars into the ground, Tremor to shake objects loose and more. By the end of the game, it gets confusing. You want to destroy a large object - do you use Force, Pound, or Burst?
In the first game, the puzzles were mainly simplistic such as moving a crate to an obvious location. In this game, there's plenty of simplistic puzzles but there's plenty which are pretty vague or more difficult to solve, utilising a larger area of the dungeon. This just makes them awkward in a game with randomly encountered battles. The constant interruption makes it difficult to find your bearings and work out where to go next.
The world map design is pretty similar to the first game, so has lots of rivers to create a simple maze where some paths lead to dead ends. It tends to be a bit more open than the first game, but is still pretty linear. The map is huge, but there's not many cities, making travel very boring and tedious. You start off on foot, but then acquire a ship, later receiving the ability to fly. Flying is limited since you cannot fly over woodland areas; it's more of a hover to travel over certain areas.
Felix is a silent protagonist (which doesn't make sense since he spoke in the first game) who responds by nodding or shaking his head. It's more of an illusion of choice to the dialogue though, although can be humorous to try and lie or give the NPCs a disheartening response. There's plenty of instances where the dialogue goes for the cheap storytelling technique where characters will reel off a detailed monologue of the situation. Like a guard may say (I made up this example) “I can't believe the suspicious character sneaked past the mountain passage which the King ordered us to guard. We made sure to keep the hidden passage on the east side of the mountain a secret.”
The game is very vague throughout which is very frustrating. In the opening few hours of the game, I ended up wandering quite far before being stuck. After consulting a guide, I had to go all the way back to the start of the game to learn a Psynergy that was vital to progress. It seems strange game design not to block you as early as possible!
Even when you do find tasks to do, the reason why you are doing them is also vague. I begun climbing a cliff just because I discovered it. I had no idea what would be at the top or why I needed to be there. Later on, an important part of the game requires you to collect the three Trident pieces, but I had no idea why I was doing this either.
Some of the caves seemed a bit clunky so it was hard to see where the paths were. For example, there's a cavern with all kinds of pillars and rocks and you are expected to slip in behind them, yet – it looks impassable.
After playing the original Golden Sun recently, I found it wasn't quite as good as I remember. I do remember thinking the sequel wasn't as good and that it drags on, and that is definitely the case. The game is pretty long for a Game Boy Advance game, but the vague quests drag out the game even longer, taking around 27 hours to finish. The game definitely doesn't justify this length, and I mainly found the game to be a boring and tedious experience.