Golden Sun Cinematic Playthrough Part Two
1The normally peaceful town of Vale is struck by tragedy and its newest Adepts, Isaac and Garet, are tasked with traveling the continent to restore order! Make new friends, gather powerful Djinn, and master your powers as an Adept to prove your strength and save the land!
00:00 - Part One Recap
4:55 - Kalay
22:47 - Kalay Docks
25:00 - Vault (2nd visit)
57:02 - Kalay Docks (for real this time)
1:27:21 - Tolbi Docks
1:35:25 - Tolbi
1:44:09 - Altmiller Cave
2:27:14 - Colosso
3:11:22 - Gondowan Cave
3:20:34 - Lunpa
3:52:39 - Kalay (2nd visit)
4:01:09 - Suhalla
4:01:58 - Suhalla Desert
4:21:33 - Suhalla Gate
4:24:34 - Venus Lighthouse
4:34:06 - Lalivero
4:37:28 - Babi Lighthouse
4:46:09 - Venus Lighthouse (2nd visit)
6:05:53 - Lalivero (2nd visit)
If there's a game that you want to see, feel free to leave a comment and I'll check it out!
Review: 4/5
Golden Sun is an incredible and creative JRPG that manages to pull off several unique feats that are impressive on their own; let alone in a GBA game. You take the role of Isaac, a boy who, traumatized by past events, is motivated to hone and strengthen his Psynergy so that he can prevent any future tragedy. You're immediately joined by Garet, childhood friend and fellow Adept, (Psynergy user), who is spurred on by his bond to Isaac, and it's off to the races!
The first thing that drew me into Golden Sun was the battle sequences. A lot of games in this era would use a simple sprite, possibly even the same as the overworld sprite, to represent your character in battle, and be introduced by a flashing white light or some other basic transition. Golden Sun blows those out of the water; each battle opens up with a quick camera-pan around the environment, including the enemies and party, and it creates a pseudo-3D feel for the fight. On top of that, the screen narrows a bit when each character is performing their action, and it makes for a very cinematic-feeling fight even for the mobbiest of mobs. You also see your character's actual equipped weapon for the fight, which was a nice detail to add.
Secondly, the class/Djinn system blew me away. I'm not gonna pretend I'm the most-versed in JRPGs, but I've never seen this done before, and it really impressed me. Throughout the game, you can gather these creatures called Djinn, which can be activated during battle to perform a specific action, and then be summoned afterwards for a damaging attack, where afterwards it will go on cooldown until it can be activated again. Pretty straightforward, but the twist on it is that, depending on which Djinn you have assigned to a character, and whether their ability has been activated or not, your character's classes can change entirely, giving them new stats and abilities you may have never seen before. This was incredible to me, as I was able to strategically activate abilities mid-fight that I knew would change my class and follow up with these new abilities. Changing classes isn't exactly a novel idea, but doing it mid-fight and having the basis be off of which abilities you have activated or set to be activated was done masterfully, in my opinion.
Golden Sun's story is... a story. It isn't bad, it isn't great; I can vividly remember key points but there are also some less impactful moments that just haven't stuck with me. This isn't the worst thing in the world; it's definitely serviceable and it provides enough set pieces and plot devices so that nothing you're doing feels without purpose, which I'd say marks it as a success. I was more drawn to the gameplay than the plot, but I'd say the plot does a more than okay job at providing a means to keep progressing.
--MILD SPOILER WARNING--
One major misfall the game suffers from is that it ends on a very abrupt cliffhanger, and the grand quest that you've been working towards this whole time is yanked from under you, only half-completed. There is a sequel, The Lost Age, which covers the remainder of your quest, but it did feel as if you were set up, with no indication that this game was NOT, in fact, going to see your quest come to fruition.
--SPOILER END--
The soundtrack was another amazing point for the game; there were plenty of tracks to where I didn't feel like I was being bombarded by the same repeated tunes, and actively found myself engrossed in some key moments in the story. I think the composers did an excellent job as far as creating a soundtrack that expertly accompanied the game's plots, fights, idyllic towns- all of it. As someone who loves finding new video game music to keep in a playlist, I'm definitely going to be saving a handful from Golden Sun.
In essence, I think Golden Sun is best described as a journey; there were moments where I was truly engrossed in what I was doing, fighting arduous battles and embarking on epic excursions, but they were perfectly offset by moments of calm, where I was able to take a breath and take in the view.
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