golden sun

With the original Golden Sun ending on a cliff-hanger, and The Lost Age carrying on directly from it (or rather, from slightly before the end of the first game), I didn’t really have a choice but to start it immediately afterwards. Well, not quite immediately, as you can transfer your saved game from the first game to the follow-up but this required half an hour of password input and correction.

Not that you see the benefit of the password for some 30+ hours of gameplay, because you don’t start as the same characters. Instead, you take on the role of one of the antagonists of the first game, Felix. He’s not really bad, and was assisting the real bad guys under extreme duress, but his goal is still the same if for a different reason: to light the lighthouses. Of which there are two remaining after the original title, if you recall.

The basic gameplay remains the same as the original, and in terms of art, music, and even most of the baddies encountered, there’s not much different here. It’s very clear that both games were planned to be a single game but then for Reasons (cartridge size, development deadlines, MONEY, whatever) it was split in two, Sonic 3 & Knuckles style. What is new includes a couple of new characters for your party, some additional “magic” moves (like being able to make ropes span gaps), and – much later in the game – boating.

Yes, at some point in the story you gain access to a ship, which lets you travel most of the world by sea, docking at beaches and (I didn’t realise for a long time until I did it by accident) sailing up rivers. Later still, your ship gets the ability to fly allowing access to even more areas although you can’t fly over cliffs, trees or mountains so you still have to initiate “flying over land” from a river or beach.

Dungeons and towers are similar to the first game, although I found them generally more puzzle-focussed than before. I also found it less obvious where, on the overworld, I was supposed to go next. It is, especially once the boat gets involved, a less linear game, but it’s harder to discern exactly where the next sensible location to visit would be. That is part of the reason why I took about 40 hours to complete The Lost Age, compared to about 20 for the original, but the game is obviously far bigger anyway. The map is larger, there’s more to do, and you seem to spend much more time back-tracking and revisiting towns than you did before.

The final boss was an imposing three headed dragon, who could attach sometimes four times in one round. That sounds tricky, but actually, a combination of “heal everyone” Alchemy and the odd djinn heal/buff/defend every turn and actually, it was easy. I made much more use of djinn this time around (spoiler: the saved game transfer pulls in those you found previously once your party is bolstered somewhat in the later part of the game, so you end up with loads), mainly in the form of Massive Summons for bosses.

With the full game, as both parts are, complete, I can say it is still fantastic. I don’t think I ever got round to The Lost Age when it first came out (I bought it, but Other Things were played), so I’ve come to this after playing more modern JRPGs and can say it still holds up well. There’s no point playing The Lost Age without the first game though, so you really need to treat it as a single massive adventure.

Many years ago, so long ago that my Gaming Diary didn’t even exist, I played Golden Sun on my Game Boy Advance. It was great. At least, I remember it being great, but I remember very little about the actual events in the game. I recall the catastrophe at the start, and the village you’re in, and that your friend goes missing and it turns out later on he’s working with (under duress) the bad guys. I remember there was a lighthouse. And I remember the djinn – sort of like little dragons – you can find and add to your character to buff your stats, give you new moves, and unleash on baddies. Mainly I remember them because they were in Shining The Holy Ark on the Sega Saturn though, not that they were in Golden Sun.

With very little remembered of the game, it was almost like playing an entirely new Camelot RPG just with the odd sensation that it was all a bit familiar. But being able to replay a great RPG, especially one from the likes of Camelot (who were the late 90s/early 2000s kings of the genre) without knowing everything is a Fine Thing Indeed.

Off I went then, with my guy Isaac and his chums, through the usual overworlds and dungeons and towns and, yes, lighthouses (there are two, or three, sort of) fighting random battles and watching the numbers go up as a charming story unfolds.

Being a GBA game with really detailed 32 bit sprite graphics (with loads of Mode-7 type backgrounds and maps), it looks amazing on a tiny handheld screen but blown up to fifty imperial inches it feels really messy. Older games, like those on the SNES and earlier, seem to come out OK at that size, probably due to less cluttered backgrounds and more obvious sprite edge definition, but here there are too many colours and too few pixels and it becomes hard to see what things are. Until, for some reason, it doesn’t. I struggled for a while, trying the (limited) screen rendering options, but got used to it and actually, it’s fine.

I don’t remember how hard the game was when I played it before, but I found it very easy this time through. Well, in terms of the actual fights and so on, anyway. Perhaps it’s because I did plenty of levelling up, or maybe I was just cautious, or I completed most of the side quests or something. The final boss battle was a walkover. What was difficult, however, was knowing what to do next. Even chatting to everyone in the towns (as is de rigour for JRPGs) didn’t always make it clear where I was supposed to go next, at least in terms of direction. I was nudged towards a new town or dungeon via the dialogue, but very rarely was it made clear where I might find such a place, so much wandering ensued. Perhaps another reason why I levelled up a lot, I suppose.

What I’d also forgotten about the game is how it ends. Because, well, it sort of doesn’t. You beat the boss, there’s an event, and then it’s straight into the sequel to actually finish off the story. Only two of the four lighthouses the game tells you need to be (or shouldn’t be, depending who you ask) lighting are in Golden Sun. A bit of an anti-climax and seemingly hurried end, if you were not aware of the follow-up title, Golden Sun: The Lost Age. Which, luckily, appeared on the Switch Game Boy Advance service at the same time as Golden Sun. Phew, eh?

Golden Sun: The Lost Age (Switch): COMPLETED!

Golden Sun (Switch): COMPLETED!