One of the best RPGs for the Gameboy Advance.
The storyline is an immersive tale of a group of youngsters who go through several events of childhood trauma. Proceeding on from these events, they become entangled in a sinister plot to destroy Weyard, the continent upon which the game is set, or so is originally thought. With distraught far and wide as cataclysmic events from the continent’s ancient history come to pass once more, Isaac and his friends have to battle through the game’s storyline to try and save their world.
Needless to say, the storyline is very involving, and the plot advances well, without going too quickly or bogging down. The boss fights, as one would expect from an RPG can become very challenging and will require a lot of level grinding at certain stages. Moving around on the map itself, you are represented by a relatively unimpressive version of Isaac. You can interact with other characters and move between locations on the continent of Weyard. The world is massive, and contains varying enemies with different play styles and elemental advantages and disadvantages.
The types of attacks are varied, and there are multitudes of them. The different attacks, most of which revolve around the four elements which govern the world of Golden Sun, have both more powerful versions of themselves, which resemble each other in appearance, along with completely unique attacks that make the playing experience seem all the more real.
The added dynamic of the “Djinns” during battles makes for a greater level of strategic depth. Djinns allow your characters to use special attacks or boosts on your party, and raise their stats while in “Set” mode. When a Djinn is used for an attack, it goes to “Standby” mode. From standby mode, the player can use the Djinn to summon a powerful elemental spirit upon enemies. Using more than one Djinn will result in a more powerful spirit. After being used in a summon, Djinns go into “Recovery” mode. They are essentially useless at this time, and will return to “Set” mode after a predefined number of turns. However, when in either “Standby” or “Recovery” modes, the Djinns do not grant your characters the stat boosts that they did in “Set” mode. This forces the player to trade-off between their best stats (and often some of their best attacks) to use their summons, which are the strongest method of attacking in the game. The difference is negligible near the beginning of the game, but later on your characters can lose hundreds, and sometimes more than a thousand, of hitpoints by using all of their Djinns.
When you enter battle, the unimpressive display graphics of the game’s overworld is replaced by a much more detailed sprite system. The character sprites are stunning for a Gameboy Advance game of its time, and make the battles all the more realistic. Subtle additions, such as a character’s hair and clothing fluttering in the wind make the battles much more real, and are a graphic that had rarely been employed in hand-held games before. The attacks, even those you will use often, look amazing, and the finishing summons are out of this world.
The soundtrack is simply a masterpiece. Though it is synthesized, the theme songs are amazing. The combination of many different instrument types and a very catchy tune create a great theme song for the game. All of the other music, such as battle music and cinematic music match their position in the game perfectly and create a brilliant atmosphere.
Golden Sun is a game that any RPG fan could enjoy, but as with most games, people who are not accustomed or do not enjoy this type of game aren’t the right audience. If you like RPGs, Golden Sun, and its sequel, are a must have. If you don’t like RPGs in general, it most likely isn’t the game for you.