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I actually don't remember how I first came across these games.  I vaguely remember seeing something in the gaming magazines when the first Golden Sun came out, and I ended up getting my hands on the first game because it seemed interesting enough.

Boy, interesting is putting it lightly.  This game takes you for a bit of a ride through an intriguing RPG world, and then cuts off halfway into the quest.  And don't get me wrong: it's by no means a short game, and actually cutting the quest into two games was a fairly smart idea considering.  Basically, think Lord of the Rings where it took 3 movies/books for the main quest to be over because all of this stuff happened during, so it was basically split into 3 parts.  That sums up why Golden Sun was split into two main games: there's just so much that's happening in this world of Weyard and in the first story alone that, sure, a second game was nice.

And on top of that, unlike LOTR between the different parts, Golden Sun: The Lost Age completely flips the perspective on you.

Story
In the first game, you're playing the part of Isaac, who lives in a lovely little village at the bottom of the mountains named Vale.  In your childhood days, you lost your friend Felix during a storm when a boulder from Mountain Aleph crashed into the water where Felix was hanging on for dear life, pulling him as well as both your parents and your friend Jenna's parents away into the strong currents.

Years later and now teenagers, you and your friends Garet and Jenna are off to study Alchemy with an old Scholar named Kraden.  During an impromptu trip through Sol Sanctum within Mt. Aleph, you're ambushed by a dubious set of characters who kidnap Kraden and Jenna to force you to gather objects known as Elemental Stars.  You also learn that your friend Felix is alive and is teamed up with the bad guys despite seeing him swept away by the currents many years ago.  But by taking the Elemental Stars from their pedestals, you set forth a chain of events that threaten the very existence of all life in Weyard, and must race to stop the nefarious group from unleashing the power of Alchemy back onto the world.

It's actually a pretty intense type of story filled with little bits and bobbles on your travels that make it even more so.  There's no real monumental twists and turns to make it incredibly engaging in the area, but it's still a charming and interesting enough story to where it doesn't need all those little twists to keep you wanting more.

Lost Age, however, has a fair share of those twists.  First off, you're not playing as the same characters from the first game: You're playing as Felix, Jenna, and other characters you find throughout your adventures (in other words, you're playing the characters that you were originally fighting against in the previous game).  Isaac and the team from the first game don't even show up until halfway through.  So right off the bat, your objective is a complete reverse of the original game: rather than wanting to stop the elemental lighthouses from being lit, your objective is to make sure that they do get lit.

But what makes it so interesting is that the antagonists that the games throw at you aren't really antagonists except in the very basic sense.  Lost Age really goes deeper into why Felix and his group is doing what they do, and you actually really start to understand and even feel a little bad at parts when they're met with resistance.  It's actually a really nice instance of both sides truly believing that they're doing good, but which side is in the right?  Felix's company did deplorable things such as kidnapping, but they believed that they were doing something that would save the world.  Likewise, Isaac believed he was on a righteous quest by the Wise One, but keeping Alchemy sealed may have eventually destroyed Weyward over time.  There's no specific bad guy persay, just ones that have what may be considered more dubious methods to make sure the deed is done.  Even Alex, the character built up as the mastermind and definite antagonist was actually not a true antagonist.  There were many instances where he'd either helped the characters or made sure they stayed on their quest.  Did he have his own selfish intentions for everything? Absolutely, but he was never a character that really stood in your way (but in fact pushed to you remember your mission) or that you had to fight.

So really, character wise I was actually pretty impressed.  This was a duo of games that had no clear enemy, but in fact just had two sides at odds with each other despite having good intentions, mainly because they were told two different things: Isaac was told that Alchemy was evil and its resurrection would destroy Weyard, and Felix and company were told that Alchemy was necessary and its dormancy would destroy Weyard.


Gameplay
Gameplay is another area where the games both shine.  Par for the course, Golden Sun in some respects is a typical RPG: You run on the map or on the field, you encounter a monster randomly.  Battles are turn-based and you're allowed 4 total characters.  In these games you have the usual options of Attack, Psynergy (basically magic), Item, and Defend.  Psynergy for the most part depends on the type of Adept your character is: Mercury/Water, Mars/Fire, Venus/Ground, and Jupiter/Wind.  There are items that allow you to use different psynergy, and Lost Age also introduces cards that both change your class and alter your psynergy.

Djinn, however, are what make this game's battles unique.  Djinn are little creatures found all over Weyard.  They can be "randomly" encountered on the overworld map in certain spots, or you'll see them in various areas hanging out, and have to usually creatively find a way to find them.  Field Djinn vary on how they respond to when you approach them: some will join right away, others will fight you.

Djinn in battles are where some good strategies come in.  Each Djinn you find has a different ability that it can do when used in battle: some will heal, some will attack the enemy, some will inflict a status effect, and some will even resurrect an ally.  Much like the Adepts themselves, Djinn have 4 types (Fire, Water, Earth, Wind) which you'll know what Djinn you get because each type has a distinct look.

Any Adept character can equip any type of Djinn.  Naturally, one would expect an Earth Adept would do best with Earth Djinn and so on, but that's not always the ideal option.  Using Djinn will increase both damage and resistance to the corresponding element, for example.  So having an Earth Adept use Wind Djinn is a great idea if you're wanting to boost their wind resistance.

On top of that, using or setting a Djinn of a differing element for a character in will alter that character's psynergy for as long as that Djinn is "set."  So if you're wanting access to more unique psynergy such as Growth (plant psynergy, aka psynergy which you can only get this way), you'll be mixing and matching quite a bit.

On top of that, multiple Djinn in set mode offer another option: Summons.  Want to do a bit more massive damage? Summons are the way to go. All it will do is cost a turn of having unusable Djinn (since the ones used for summons need a turn to rest), and if multiple Djinn were used that were equipped to the same character, multiple turns will be needed before all of them will be usable (as only 1 per turn for each character will come out of rest mode).

All of this for battle mode is kept with Golden Sun: The Lost Age, with one addition: Inter-elemental summons.  In the first game, summons only happen when you use a set number of Djinn of the same type.  In Lost Age, this is extended to mixes and matches of various elements, such as 1 Venus Djinn and 1 Jupiter Djinn.  These summons are found via tablets scattered all over the world that you explore in Lost Age.

Out of battle, the game introduces a lot of different puzzles and situations where you'll use your non-battle psynergy such as Move (push and pull certain objects), Mind Read, Ply, Catch, and so on.  Some of the field psynergy you'll have at the start, some you'll only have when you have a certain item equipped (and there's a lot of this type), and as mentioned before some you'll only get when you mix and match and have certain Djinn types set for a character.  But the great thing about Golden Sun and Lost Age's exploration is that you'll rarely ever be just walking around for long...you'll actually be interacting with the field outside of battles, and you'll be just overall interacting with the world.

Golden Sun is another one of those games where fast travel isn't really a big thing.  You'll be hoofing pretty much all of it on foot, but thankfully the characters aren't super slow.  There's also shortcuts via fixed bridges that may be broken in the beginning and fixed later in the game to make returning to certain areas (which you'll actually do at one point for a later quest) much easier.

Lost Age actually introduced faster methods of getting around.  The first is ship travel, which much like any RPG out there, will come with random battles as well.  Much later in the game, there's also an item called the Teleport Lapis, which will teleport you to any of the previous towns you've been to.

Overall though, this game shines in gameplay, and I really only explained the basic aspects of it.

Graphics
Is it a Gameboy advance game? Absolutely.  Does it look like a Gameboy Advance game? Absolutely.  But despite that, it's still a gorgeous game to look at.  For a GBA title, the amount of effort they made into having the game look good actually shows pretty well.  The fields/dungeons are lovely, the towns are charming, the overworld map is pleasant enough to look at, character portraits aren't bad, battles look nice, battle animations and summons are pretty...overall, yes it's a GBA game and looks like one, but it's a damn good looking one.  Are there cutscenes like some GBA games at the time (like Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories)? No, but that's okay.  This is a game that really focused on engrossing you in what was going on currently, and knew that flashy cutscenes that looked completely different might take you out of that.  Let's be honest here after all: An anime cutscene in something such as, say Ni No Kuni makes sense.  The game is already going for an anime look, so it's not as shocking when you see that switch.  Games like Final Fantasy 9, it was because that was how games could show off, and also because the main gameplay was limited on what it could look like because of how the hardware and software both were.

Golden Sun, however, you could tell that they knew what they were working with and wanted to go for being unapologetic about it by making it a by-the-book type of older style RPG in the sense that what you see graphically is what you'll see from beginning to end (with the only anime-style bit being a picture at the end of 2, as well as the normal character renditions of what they'd look like normally).  But again, that's not a bad thing in the slightest since Golden Sun and Golden Sun Lost Age aren't ugly games in the slightest.  They're bright and colorful in the right moments, more muted in the right moments, and are much more about adapting the current experience by just making the world and its inhabitants as nice to look at as possible.








Would I love to see a remake in the style of something like Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening for the Switch? Absolutely.  Despite how "Meh" I was about Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, I thought it looked damn gorgeous with the style update on the DS.  I'd love to see a remake of the original 2 games in an even more upped style than that, but I'll also always have a fondness for the original style as well.

Music/Sounds
Music wise, Golden Sun and Lost Age both had lovely soundtracks.  The village of Vale is still a favorite small-town song of mine, and I also really love the Elemental Stars song.  Both are just such wonderfully done softer pieces of music that I greatly enjoyed, and my enjoyment of the latter was heightened even more when someone from Overclocked Remix did a nice guitar rendition of it (and I just learned of another really nice rendition today!).  Likewise, the Venus and Mars Lighthouse songs are such fun to listen to (especially the latter) when making way through those levels.  They just have a nice intensity and feel to them that makes it feel like an adventure (and again, someone from Overclocked Remix did phenomenal renditions of them that made them even better).  Overall, I was greatly impressed with the soundtrack for both games.

Golden Sun: Vale

Golden Sun: Elemental Stars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7pBcKlONnA

Overclocked Remix: Sol Sanctum Guitar (Elemental Stars Remix #1)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFKPL1nq2QQ

Overclocked Remix: Essence of the Four Elements (Elemental Stars Remix #2)

Golden Sun: Venus Lighthouse

Overclocked Remix: Rebirth of Venus (Venus Lighthouse Remix)

Golden Sun: Mars Lighthouse

Overclocked Remix: Rebirth of Mars (Mars Lighthouse Remix)

I mean, gaaaahh, talk about taking some good songs and making them sound awesome in a different way.

Sound wise, it was mostly fine.  There's only one thing that normally bugs me with some games, and that's the "voice" sounds that some games do when their text only.  With games like Banjo Kazooie and Yooka Laylee, they do weird character noises when someone speaks, which ranged from okay to grating.  Golden Sun...it's hard to explain properly.  They do character "noises" which has different "pitches" depending on the character speaking, but they're not voices persay.  I guess the best I can do is give an example from the opening scene:

Beginning scene of Golden Sun 1

Thankfully there's no narration, so you can hear it perfectly, but that's what I mean right at the beginning.  It's a "noise" to follow the dialogue, and it changes in pitch depending on the age and overall type of person speaking.  Sometimes it'll sound much higher, sometimes much lower.  It's a baffling choice to say the least...but at the same time, it's definitely not as grating and annoying as something like Banjo Kazooie can get on its character sounds.  And in all honesty, I get so lost in the game at a point that I sometimes forget that those character "noises" even exist.

Replayability
Does Golden Sun have replayability value? Absolutely.  On top of finding all the optional Psynergy items as well as the various Djinn scattered around Weyard, there's also 4 optional areas that give access to Djinn as well as an optional subplot-area (remember how I mentioned early about a bridge shortcut letting you go back to previous areas including one you'll return to for a quest?).  There's also an optional dungeon called Crossbones Isle where you can fight one of the game's tougher "Super bosses."

Likewise, Golden Sun Lost Age had a bunch of optional areas with puzzles that would grant you a new tablet to learn a summon.  There's also 4 optional dungeons with super-bosses that grant you powerful summons, including one that requires all 72 Djinn to be found to be able to access it, beat the strongest boss in the game, and grants you two of the best summons as a reward.

Likewise, there's coins that you can gather in both games for mini-games in one of the towns for each game, which can get you some better equipment if you're lucky.

So if you're one of those 100% players, there's definitely some optional stuff that you can do before you beat that final boss.

Overall
Overall, Golden Sun and Golden Sun the Lost Age are phenomenal games.  The story is great for both games and in fact is even better in Lost Age.  In fact, that's something that was progressed upon in Lost Age monumentally, making it a phenomenal sequel to an already great game.  Is it dated graphically? Sure, in the same way that Super Mario World or Final Fantasy VI are dated in the same area.  But like those games and others in that same category, Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age are still phenomenal games to play through from beginning to end, and I cannot recommend them enough.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn? I mean, it's okay, but you don't have to play through that one to get the full experience, as Lost Age wraps up everything really nicely.  Dark Dawn is sort of one of those "After Happily Ever After" types of things like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, where the main story is over and everything else is just a possible "Aftermath" of the ending of the main series.  It's not required to enjoy the series, but it's a neat little side bit to think about when you're wondering what happened to the characters after everything that happened in the main series.

But Dark Dawn is definitely a pretty game, just...odd.  It has a different tone and almost different structure entirely than its predecessors, though gameplay elements are mainly intact.  Is it bad? No, but I won't be reviewing it any time soon because compared to its predecessors, it was simply "mediocre."  Neither really awesome, nor really bad, just "Meh."

But definitely, definitely give Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age a shot.  Just don't play Lost Age first, as it takes place immediately at the same place that Golden Sun left off, so you'll miss quite a lot.

And as an aside, I also highly recommend checking out Overclocked Remix.  They have some really great renditions of VG songs, and also have downloadable soundtracks of their submitted remixes for free when they get together and do complete video game soundtrack remixes (and before you ask, no, 9.5/10 times the songs on the soundtracks are completely different and have only the basic connections to the original piece, and is usually in itself an original piece.  The judging panel for all submitted content is usually really stingy about making sure all submitted pieces are original renditions and not just "better/upped versions" of the existing song that they're remixing).