This baby has polish; however, it's literary value leaves much to be desired.
Golden Sun begins with the character Isaac (in which case, you may have decided to change his name to something more vulgar like ‘my ass’ or something). He wakes up in the middle of a violent storm to find that the giant boulder that covers the volcano is inevitably going to fall upon his village. Events work their way to the point in which your friend, Felix, disappears into a river after being pushed underwater by a combination of the weight of the boulder and the current.
Shock pulses through the entire village like a lightning bolt. Everything suddenly becomes quiet as you come to grips with what had been a somewhat expected turn of events. Isaac (or ‘my ass’) never fully recovers--as evidenced by his persistence to become an Adept, or magic user.
This magic soon becomes the center-point of the gameplay. You have several magic attacks that can do everything from replenishing health points and status ailments to whacking your foe with a giant brand of earth and fire. What is even more ingenious about the magic system is the use of Djinn to change your character’s powers. Concentrating all Djinn of a certain type on one character is the easiest to manage, but mixing the Djinn will give you all sorts of useful powers. In one instance, if you mix an Earth Djinn and Fire Djinn, your character will be able to make small plants grow. This is often very useful as these plants (much like Nintendo’s ‘Minish Cap’) to climb cliffs.
The game is, for the most part, a strong collection of the best conventional ideas with a couple good original ones. The game shines with all the polish a Game Boy Advance can offer--and while many things about the game are unmemorable, even sometimes washed out; the entirety of the package comes together real nicely.
Alas! Fantasy Fiction is not an easy genre to shine your brilliance upon. The issue is that the genre relies very heavily on conventions (much like the Horror movie genre). Videogames are sometimes even worse than their contemporaries in literature as the focus is almost never as strong among the writing aspect of the game. That being said, Golden Sun is a comparatively decent plotline; however, those of us who wish to see a story of literary value will be left scratching the dark walls of a very shallow and empty well.
The problem I had with the story was that it left me saying, “okay...” Not in an, ‘okay this is weird,’ tone, but in an, ‘okay whatever’ tone. The characters were forgettable at best, and their emotions didn’t always match the scene they were in.
FOR EXAMPLE:
Venus Lighthouse is collapsing. Isaac and friends are on the top of the lighthouse. “So what do we do now?,” asks Garet.
AS OPPOSED TO:
Venus Lighthouse is collapsing. Isaac and friends are on the top of the lighthouse. “So what are we gonna do!?,” asks Garet.
The difference is only a couple words and en extra punctuation mark, and you can already imagine the anxiety in Garet’s voice. The original lacks the emotion and heart (and the correct active and passive verbs in the right situation) to be considered good.
(I'd even modify the entire scene to the characters latching for dear life on the nearest solid object they can find, ready to give up their lives after all the hard work they did... instead of having decent conversation with each other about how they are going to get down)
Put simply, even if it were the fault of mediocre localization, the English version of the game lacks in the story department (and yes, proper rhetoric and tone are some of the most important tools in storytelling). In the end, whatever happens to ‘my ass’ will not be the selling point of this game or the next, but that doesn’t mean the actual game won’t be. The promise of new weapons and Djinn are only too sweet to resist. Even someone as stiffnecked as me could not cave to the shear enjoyment of playing this game.