Golden Sun is a game that just instantly captivates you when it boots with its extravagant music. If that isn’t enough, you start the game during a horrible disaster, that just makes you want to learn more about it. I’m not sure about you, but that just piques my interest.
You start off in the village of Vale, the magical hometown of our mute protagonist, Isaac, along with his childhood friends, Garet and Jenna. Vale is engulfed in a storm; tossing boulders everywhere and destroying things left and right. Isaac and Garet must get to safety. After a lot of walking, you find a boy who is about to drown, so you must find help for him. You fail, the boy dies, you randomly find the main antagonists, they beat you up– Cue intro!! Usually I try to avoid major spoilers, but all of that is in the first few minutes of the game.
After that comes Golden Sun’s biggest flaw: no one shuts up… Usually that doesn’t bother me as long as it adds to the plot. Which in the beginning it does, but there’s just so much text that pads out the game. For example: after the accident, there’s a scene full of exposition, which is good for the beginning of the game, but it’s during a scene where you’re fixing the roof, that just drags on. There’s lots of choice prompts that don’t really matter. In the beginning I chose no to most of the prompts, before I started to realize that it didn’t really matter. There’s also a lot of oddly worded text, that doesn’t bother me much since it gave me a lot to laugh at.
One of my favorite things about Golden Sun is how it’s kind of in an episodic format. Plot points and info dumps remind me of something like Avatar: The Last Airbender. Speaking of that show, each town has a lot of diversity. From how buildings are made, to how towns in different regions have different words for things like psynergy. I do wish that there was a form of fast travel. Shin Megami Tensei has elevators and terminals, Final Fantasy has the airship, while in Golden Sun you have no form of teleportation.
Pros:
+ Great story+ Amazing soundtrack
+ Fun combat
+ Semi-3D sprites
Cons:
- Constant info dumping
- No fast travel
- Low enemy encounter rate in the beginning
- Choices don’t matter
Final Thoughts:
Golden Sun has a simple save the world plot, but has a lot of characters and side plots along the way. Even though there are those problems, I didn’t really get angry at any point. Close to the end, I kind of stopped paying a lot of attention to what people said… I’m not really sure if I want to recommend this game. I liked it, but I also tolerated the problems. Then there’s also the fact that this is the first part of a duology, with the second game being The Lost Age. This kind of made the ending feel awkward for me since you didn’t really save the day. Until I play the second half/game, my recommendation is a “maybe”. If you want a fun RPG for the Game Boy Advance, this will suit your fancy, as long as the cons don’t scare you. Hopefully after playing The Lost Age, I can give a real recommendation for Golden Sun.
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