When Shining Force studio Camelot announced RPG Golden Sun on GBA it has been hard to wait! Get ready for the adventure!
User Rating: 9.2 | Golden Sun GBA
Shining Force studio Camelot hit GBA with highly anticipated RPG Golden Sun. So apart from its good looking graphics what makes Golden Sun a must have RPG? First of all, you play one of the gifted children, Isaac, three years after the tragedy that cost the life of his beloved father. His gift: the “psyenergy”, “source of all energy. This energy you the ability to move objects like a Jedi or read into people’s mind for instance, many powers are added as the game goes on. Your quest is to chase the four element stones’ stealers (wind, water, fire, and earth) and in the same time save a young friend and an old fella that managed to get captured by the same group that stole the stones. Coincidently it turns out that this same group caused Isaac’s father death three years ago. Three people will fulfill your force to form a four characters style group. As a classic RPG each character wins experience points during the game, but you won’t be able to choose where to put those points as they are automatic. Secondly, you’ll notice the introduction of pokemon-like Djinns. Those little element creatures what turn out to be essential to succeed in your quest especially when you reach over-powered bosses. They dramatically increase your competences, give your strong spells, and in addition to that can be combine to perform breath-taking attacks. Those creatures hide themselves in random places in the map, villages, or donjons. Whereas some are obviously easy to find, some will give you a hard time. But don’t worry you can afford to miss a few of them without affecting your progression. If the gameplay isn’t innovative for a RPG, the show provided with each fight is revolutionary for the GBA. RPG involves huge amount of fights throughout the game and might get repetitive and uninteresting, in worse case boring and annoying. Camelot got the point and added a new dimension to the fights. With Golden Sun 3D effects and rotating camera is now a reality in 8-bits games. High range of spells and attacks use effect never seen before that will keep your month wide open. It is not to mention that Djinn’s attacks are the real plus from the developers so awesome they are. Golden Sun could without a doubt be classified in the top 3 best looking GBA titles. Rain drops impact on the ground, trees and water move as the wind blows, or characters blinking from time to time just show the tight care brought by the developers. The game is colorful and each city as a theme (mountain, sahara, asia, and so on) which gives a thankful contrast all along the game and really feels that you are traveling around the world. But where Golden Sun really shows off it’s once again during those battles, just highly enjoyable! Nonetheless Golden Sun is a classic RPG. You go from village to village and gain experience after “hard” fights. It happens that you have to complete a sub-quest but they are usually in relation with your adventure and tend not to give you much choice whether to complete them or not. Although you can buy equipments to increase your characters attack and defense, you capacity are set up automatically after leveling up. Note that in this way Camelot encouraged the player to concentrate more on Djinns combinations which are pretty extended. Finally Golden Sun provides long hours of enjoyment. Estimate 25 hours to reach the final boss and have the sufficient level to kick its ass. Hardcore gamers may add a few hours in order to find the 28 Djinns hidden in the game. In addition to that the game includes a battle mode via link cable, and an arena to fights monsters encountered in the quest, enough contents to convince any player still hesitating in purchasing this great RPG. 
