Do you love RPGs? Then you cannot miss out on this game.
You play Isaac, a young man in the small village of Vale on the planet of Weyard. Along with your friend Garret, you are practicing the technique of Psynergy, the mental techniques of influencing the world around you. When you journey with your friend Jenna and your teacher to the temple in the volcano that your town rests at the bottom of, you accidentaly release the ancient power of alchemy onto the world. The power was sealed away ages ago to stop the planet from being destroyed, and the two villans tried to unleash it 3 years before, but were unsuccessful. The resulting earthquake and flood killed your father and Jenna's parents and brother, Felix. However, you find Felix alive, accompanied by the two villans, when you enter the chamber in the volcano where you release the alchemy. They kidnap Jenna and your teacher, and this begins your journey, as you are sent to stop them from activating the 4 lighthouses on the planet that seal alchemy away. To actually activate the lighthouses, you must use that lighthouse's gem, at the start of the adventure, you will hold the Mars stone, which the villans are now also wanting to take from you so they can activate the Mars lighthouse later.
The game is a decent length with many twists and turns. There are many item combonations to use, a lot of monsters to fight and a ton of alchemy for each character to learn. Along your journey you will meet up with two more characters to add to your party, Ivan, a wind user psynergist, and Mia, a water user psynergist. Garret uses flame psynergy, and Issac uses earth psynergy. You gain Ivan to your party early on, and Mia comes a bit later. You travel between two continents, leveling and collecting new weapons and armor. You also have the option of finding and collecting Djinni, elementals that each have a different skill. Djinni affect what class you have at later levels, and can give you new psynergy if you give a character oriented with one element some djinni with another element. If you use them in battle, however, you loose whatever skills or stat points they had given you. Once you have enough in standby mode, you can summon god like creatures to attack your opponents in a massive assault, which can help a lot later in the game when facing off against boss monsters (using them once in battle puts them on standby and they cannot be used again unless taken off standby when outside of battle, or used in battle, which afterwards will leave them inactive for a few turns.
The storyline is deep and enriching. Each character has a well created personality that is stuck to perfectly throughout the game, and even supporting characters are well fleshed out. Battles are fun and if you like either strategizing or just running headlong into battle, you can still win fairly easily. The only problem is that sometimes there are too many battles.
The graphics are very good, especially for the GBA, the game is 3D looking. The only problem is that the world map is sort of bland, it would have been nice to have a little more flair with it.
The sound in the game is good enough, with enjoyable tracks. Unfortunately, with so many battles, it can get a little repetitive. However, there are a lot of tracks, so you're really only going to get annoyed if you're in one area for too long.
All in all, this game is definitely worth getting. If you plan on getting the sequel, you definitely need this one under your belt. Even if you aren't getting the sequel, Golden Sun is one of the best RPGs around, and should be missed by no RPG fan.