In a dark time, an epic adventure begins as evil slowly envelops the world! The forces of darkness seek the lost art of alchemy, and as they move closer to their evil goal, the future of mankind hangs in the balance. Armed with noble weapons, mysterious psynergies, and a host of elemental creatures, you and your companions must find a way to stem the tide of evil. Your ordinary life is over as a golden sun rises above you, expanding your horizons forever!
Shining's co-developer Camelot Software Planning launched a new project of their own (and their first RPG in 4 years) with Golden Sun, one half of an ambitious story that indirectly felt like a tribute to the 16-bit era. Its colorful, lively sprites and animations update the classics for the 00s, while its characters & storytelling cover the genre's usual repertory (elements, town substories, meaningless choices, etc.). That being said, its real value lies elsewhere. First and foremost in the Psynergy mechanic, which falls halfway between Zelda tools and field skills: A handful of non-battle abilities that run the gamut from pushing objects around to raising platforms, from reading the minds of NPCs to clearing blockades, perhaps one of the best examples of puzzle-solving and secret hunting in JRPGs. They also deliver what is basically FF's Espers on steroids with the Djinn system, that spices up their basic but snappy combat with all sorts of possible options and combos.
Camelot tends to indulge in lengthy, wordy filler scenes at times, but their flair for creative scenarios peak when they graft it to Psynergy-led puzzle sections, leading to fun, brainy and inventive moments that add variety between the typical litany of travels and battling (including an especially innovative take on tournament arcs). Ultimately, it's the subtly complex gameplay that towers over everything else, a powerful blend of Breath of Fire, Lufia II and Final Fantasy VI.
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Golden Sun is a game that is beloved to me because it provided some light in my life during my childhood. There were several RPGs that I am no longer particularly interested in that I played when I was younger and enjoyed immensely then. My memories of playing Golden Sun are precious, but JRPGs is just one of those kinds of games that is a tough sell for me these days. I tend to find the gameplay exceptionally tedious, and the storytelling to be trite and really childish. When I think of the Mother games or the myformerselves games (well, those aren't Japanese, but Gingiva at least is partly following that JRPG format) I find myself a lot more intrigued, but let's just say that that's in spite of the limitations of engagement in the gameplay formula. I am not currently a fan of JRPG content, and Golden Sun is unquestionably a fairly "typical" game. Obviously there is going to be some bias involved when I evaluate a game that was so beloved to me, but I really do think that it's actually a pretty decent game despite being a JRPG.
Golden Sun has a compact world so you don't spend all your time wandering around, It's easy to stay focused on the objective. There's always a simple sense of direction of where to go, and the drastic changes in locations is ok. Good for youngsters. It has fast paced combat with easily spammable and cool looking abilities. It's very easy and simple, so it doesn't take much thought or skill to play the game. Again, good for youngsters. You quickly get to four characters and I guess you can try to build them differently by utilizing the Djinns, but really, there's not a whole lot here. You're probably going to play it straight forward, and the game isn't very replayable. The soundtrack is fantastic. The visuals... this is GameBoy Advance which has notoriously ugly games for the time period, but I'll give the art direction a pass, nice colors. All in all, I think Golden Sun is a pretty ok game even for me. Yet, it also has a ton of tedious dialogue, emote time wasters, and stock characters and story. It is, after all, sadly a JRPG, so of course the characters just had to be incredibly talky yet incredible forgettable. The writing is absolutely at its worst during story-driven conversations. The story is your typical meaningless JRPG bullshit. Very little entertainment or artistic value or any insights into relatable characters or worldviews or anything, really. Just by-the-numbers fantasy fluff with simple cardboard cutout characters. On a more positive note, this is also fine for youngsters, since they won't really notice that it's a bad story with bad characters. Things are much simpler when you're younger... And a simple game can be a great sell then. However, if you want something more, then this is going to be boring for you.
My verdict is that I'm confused because I have so many fond memories but I dunno if the game's really that great...? Should I rate it from adult-standpoint or kid-standpoint? I dunno, I'm putting my rating somewhere in between. Golden Sun has some good qualities, and some good moments. I guess I... like it!? A little? The sequel is more involving, bigger, harder and takes more thought, so I guess I like the sequel better for that. I've actually been meaning to replay the sequel for a long time but it just never really happened. I got stuck all the time as a kid so it took me a few years to actually finish it... but GS1 is really easy. If you like JRPGs you'll probably like Golden Sun (and the sequel). Otherwise I dunno.
PS: Correct me if it was only in the sequel, but that was the most ridiculous fucking password I've EVER used, it is INSANE.
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Golden Sun, in its own special way, reflects the ending of an era. It’s a console-style RPG that on the surface tributes games from the Super Nintendo era, but truthfully has more in common with its contemporaries: Japanese RPGs of the late 90s and early 2000s. It also does an excellent job showing why the two eras are distinct and why concepts from one don’t work so well in the context of the other.
When I think about Golden Sun today, I immediately think of its biggest flaw: there’s too much dialogue, and over half of it is pointless filler. This was common in RPGs of the era, and at the time nobody complained. We were used to info dumps akin to those seen in Chrono Cross, long introduction sequences like Wind Waker’s, and unskippable cutscenes. Some of these genre mainstays have unfortunately stuck around, and it’s a wonder when a game gets around them. I don’t mean to demonize the genre for this, as it was a necessary growing pain for RPGs to experience. We’d never have seen a great plot twist like Nier’s or the deeper character interaction seen in games like Xenoblade without game developers consciously trying to make their work imitate literature. It’s sad, then, that RPGs with a lot of potential such as Xenogears and Golden Sun simply don’t hold up that great today.
Chrono Trigger is often considered one of the gold standards a 2D RPG should aspire to imitate, and I personally agree. From the angle of story presentation alone, it outdoes Golden Sun by leaps and bounds. Dialogue is short, carefully worded, and sufficient to get the player invested in the characters. Remember how quick Lucca’s explanation of why Marle ceased to exist was? It even had a cutscene, and it was shorter than any dialogue sequence in Golden Sun. More importantly, it explained everything the player needed to know about the situation, delved a bit in to temporal theory, and introduced Lucca to the party, all in one scene.
By contrast, one of the earliest significant scenes in Golden Sun concerns Isaac and Garet escaping from the Sol Sanctum to pursue Jenna and Kraden. This scene gets dragged out by Saturos and Menardi taunting Isaac and forcing him to deliver the stars to them, the place starting to cave in, the Wise One explaining the circumstance, and finally the boys getting out. Another long scene follows this. However, very little happens here. It’s all essentially an action sequence setting the plot in to motion. There’s nothing important to think about, no characters are developed beyond what was presented initially, and we learn nothing about the Wise One that will reflect its nature at the end of Golden Sun 2. This is only a micro example of the issues I have with the game's story, but things don't improve from there. I can't even describe most of the characters' personalities, and I've played through this game multiple times.
Golden Sun suffers from other transitional blemishes. The pseudo-3D graphics have aged horribly over the past ten years, whereas Chrono Trigger still looks vibrant and well-tuned. Its soundtrack, while not incompetent by any means, sounds like it’s trying to force a bombastic orchestra on to the GBA sound chip. Gameplay even suffers. The battles are old-school to a fault, not even allowing attack redirection, and yet they provide little challenge to the player. The Djinn system contributes to the imbalance, as it sounds great on paper but in practice only serves as guide bait and accomplishes little since spells are so useless in comparison to summons. This is a problem seen in, yet again, other games of the era, Final Fantasy VIII in particular. Junctioning is great in theory, but doesn’t mesh with the battles the game throws at the player.
What am I trying to get at here? Well, it’s something we continue to see happen over and over again. Golden Sun claims to have an old-school aesthetic, but it doesn’t commit all the way because it can’t. Gamers of the time expected a certain amount of volume to the story and such, so making a simple, elegant game like Chrono Trigger was out of the question. Developers today don’t want to be stuck in the past either, but the difference is that they’re better at modernizing old styles of combat. Persona 4 feels like a retro RPG with new-age style. Golden Sun is just a mess, and it sadly illustrates something like a swan song for the games I personally loved growing up. RPG developers were no longer allowed to keep it simple, as stuff like the Final Fantasy games had made us see the genre as one full of new ideas and progress, often failing to realize how to implement new ideas successfully while still maintaining the heart that made these games fun to begin with.
Golden Sun now serves as something of a history lesson. It’s proof that everything can look like it’s hitting the right marks, but the sum of the parts isn’t adding up due to one big flaw; a huge one in this case. As stories became richer and more important to games than ever before, so too did editing. Slowly but surely, games have gotten better about it.
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I will say that I only thought this was good because I was a child and there were barely any new RPGs on the GBA at the time
this is better than the sequel (if only because, unlike TLA, the dungeons aren't absolutely atrocious) but as with TLA, this is horribly written, the battle system is incredibly boring in hindsight, and it is so bloody slow, especially compared to better RPGs like Chrono Trigger
As a kid, I remember getting lost in Air’s Rock and quit playing. I just assumed I sucked, which might still be true, but this video is somewhat reassuring in retrospect.
should be the case for all camelot games tbh
this is better than the sequel (if only because, unlike TLA, the dungeons aren't absolutely atrocious) but as with TLA, this is horribly written, the battle system is incredibly boring in hindsight, and it is so bloody slow, especially compared to better RPGs like Chrono Trigger
also, the graphics aged like milk.