So I've been playing through Golden Sun on the GBA for the first time. I'm having a great time! I can't believe I never played it before. I think it's one of the best I've played on the system.
Did/does anyone else share my opinion?
So I've been playing through Golden Sun on the GBA for the first time. I'm having a great time! I can't believe I never played it before. I think it's one of the best I've played on the system.
Did/does anyone else share my opinion?
I had the pleasure ofbplaying through probably 90% of the game before I got lost/got a new gba game and distracted. Very good old-schooly RPG. Never got around to playing the sequel though, unfortunately, but I heard it was still pretty great.
When Golden Sun originally came out I bought it, played it, and loved it!
After I beat GS, I couldn't wait for GS: The Lost Age to be released. While I was waiting for the sequel, I let one of my friends borrow the game and he saved over my game clear data.!!!
When I finally got The Lost Age, I didn't want to start it because I wanted to carry my game clear data over from the first. So I shelved both games for years, with the intention of beating the first one again so I could finally start the second one. Once the third Golden Sun game was announced for the DS I decided I would finally get back into the series and beat the first two games in preparation for the third.
How my tastes have changed. I think Golden Sun was a game of the times. It defined the early life of the GBA and had to be experienced upon first release to appreciate the impact it had. It has a mind blowing orchestral OST that really showcased what the GBA could do. Never had a handheld produced such beautiful music and its still an impressive piece of work and sounds great.
Then there were the graphics. They were jaw dropping and looked as good as any of the 2d RPGs on home consoles. Not to mention how the camera would rotate in battle to really give a sense of depth without polygons. Something I really hadn't seen done before. Combined with the epic Final Fantasy style summoning spells, the entire game seemed like a giant tech demo. It was a feast for the eyes and ears and really showed that the GBA was not just another Gameboy upgrade, but a whole new beast.
I had good times with Golden Sun upon release. I recently went back and tried to play it only to discover that underneath the amazing audio and graphical coding was everything that I hate about bad RPGs.
It has the tiresome "silent hero" that is a trademark of Camelot RPGs. I was never a fan of this approach but I never hated it as much as I did in GS. Then there are the ridiculous amount of "Yes and No" questions that assault the screen every 2 minutes and have absolutely no bearing on story or outcome. Why ask me countless and pointless "Yes and No" questions if there is only one correct answer and it just loops until you select the answer it wants? It's not good game design and is just annoying.
Then there is the story... which is pretty cool I thought, too bad they inflate the game with more side quests than actual core game. I always felt preoccupied with other peoples problems and rarely felt like I was making any progress on the main quest.
SPOILER ---> (Like when you are on the main quest and stop at Bilibin and they are building the mansion and are afraid of being cursed, so you go to Kolima and find all those people were cursed by Tret. You then proceed to Kolima Forest and make your way through that place and eventually reach Tret and there is an entire other level inside Tret. Finally you get past him and reach the town of Imil and press on past it and make your way to the Light House where you get some magic water. Then you make your way back to Tret and heal him.) <--- SPOILER END
I hate endless pointless side quests. I kept thinking "DEAR GOD make it stop"! When the game would finally let me back to the main quest I would have forgot what was going on because I had been doing irrelevant side quests for so long.
So yeah... That's my two cents... It's one of the only games that my tastes have changed on. Most games fall into the "If i liked them then I like them now" category. But for me, Golden Sun was helped by the initial WOW factor and once that wore off I found that game to be a horrible mess of archaic game design and horrible scripting.
If a god is willing to prevent evil, but not able, then he is not omnipotent. If he is able, but not willing, then he must be malevolent. If he is both willing and able, then why is there evil? If he is neither able or willing then why call him a god?
I loved the first Golden Sun back when it was first released, I only played part of the second one and just never got around to beating it. Don't think I could play it now tho, I've outgrown most turn based RPGs and the ones I do still enjoy I can only play for maybe an hour before I turn it off. Still a great game tho, it had the feeling that the RPGs on SNES had and at the time that was exactly what I needed.
I played the first one for a bit, but I ultimately gave up on it as I'm not a hug fan of turnbased RPGs. It did seem like a solid game and I know one of my friends was a big fan of it. He even made a Golden Sun Stage in Brawl that he loved because it was hard to play as Ike on it.
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Camelot have always been best at SRPGs. Structured, linear SRPGs at that. Shining Force II whist good, got extremely boring with the all of the pointless walking and repeating battles. I was relieved when Shining Force III returned to the linearity of the first game.
If only Golden Sun had being a SRPG, nearly every element of the SF SRPG titles are present apart from the battles.
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Loved the first, played throught twice--once when it came out, and once before Lost Age hit. Bought the sequel, and got about a quarter of the way through before getting bored. Never went back.
Does anybody know if the DS version will continue the same storyline, or is it a standalone adventure?
-Dobie
NES, SNES, & Gameboy Collector
I loved "Golden Sun" and "the Lost Age". Unlike a lot of rpgs the puzzles are actually fun, and the dungeons are not just big mazes. You have to play both games to get the whole story. The random battles can get on your nerves but there is no need for grinding, so just use magic feathers if you want a break from battles for a bit.
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