This game and its sequel are the best GBA rpgs. Anyone who likes rpgs will enjoy playing Golden Sun for sure.
Gameplay 9.0
Story 8.4
Music 9.3
Graphics 8.8
Fun Factor 8.4
How memorable? 8.2
My Overall Score: 9.1
The Review:
Golden Sun was one of the early Game Boy Advance rpgs, but it proved to be one of its best. For me, this game and its sequel were the best GBA games I played.
The game had a long and interesting introduction that got me very interested in playing it. The music was very well done and fitting for the settings in the game. I would say Golden Sun has one of the best OSTs I have heard in a handheld game. Since the beginning, it was clear that the original and immersive music style of this game was one of its positives. It also kept a mysterious vibe at the beginning, which made it more appealing.
The battle system seemed fairly standard turn-based rpg stuff at first, but new elements such as the Djinns and their abilities made it more interesting. Once again, the music also helped to keep it fresh.
The gameplay was mostly battles, exploration, and solving psynergy puzzles. The battles and the exploration were good, as in most good rpgs. The psynergy-based puzzles, however, were a very good touch to this game. The puzzles required the clever use of your psynergy abilities to complete them. I remember them being engaging and satisfying to complete, without being too hard either.
The story was pretty good and its world with psynergy and adepts was original. It isn't the best story I have seen in rpgs, but it was definitely good all the way. My only complaints would be that it was slow sometimes and that in order to see the true ending you need to play its sequel, but there wasn't anything bad about it.
The game itself was very well balanced. It wasn't hard, but some bosses would give you a good challenge (specially if you were not collecting Djinns for power-ups and new abilities). Overall, it took me 30 hours to finish without any need to grind levels. Also, some of its parts, such as Kolima Forest were remarkable for me. The Kolima Forest from Golden Sun is one of my most memorable rpg quests from handheld games.
Basically, if you want to play a GBA game, this is the first game I would recommend and if you are looking for great rpgs, this is also one of my suggestions. Golden Sun is for the GBA what FFX was for the ps2, and I could argue this could have matched FFX if it had been done as a ps2 game back then. It's highly recommended for all rpg lovers.