Golden Sun

Summary

Genre: Role-Playing Game
Number of players: 1-2

Review

I haven't had all that much experience with RPG's, so sitting down with Golden Sun was something of a novel experience for me. In this game, you play as a hero charged with defending the world from the forces of evil by travelling across the land battling monsters, solving problems and amassing items and equipment. This doesn't exactly sound too original, but does Golden Sun just boil down to a generic and bland offering, or there more to it than that?


Gameplay: As mentioned, you take on the role of a heroic youth, named Isaac, though you can rename him should you so wish. Your quest starts in your local village in the middle of a catastrophic storm, and from there the plot moves along with increasing speed until the quest proper begins and you set out upon the standard save-the-world epic. However, the storytelling aspect of the game is well done, and as many puzzles about the story are raised as you continue as are answered, leaving you hungry to play on just to find out what will happen next.

Again as usual, as you travel throughout the plains, caves and dungeons of the gameworld, you'll encounter a great number of monsters appearing and attacking wherever you go. Defeating these monsters gives your party money, items and experience, all of which are of use as you continue on the quest. The battles are turn-based, and consist of each of your party choosing to perform one action each round. You have many options: you can either attack a single enemy with your standard weapon; use a healing or attacking item; use one of many magical spells (known as 'psynergy'); or use an ally known as a Djinni. These Djinn are little creatures that you come across over the course of your travels, and who will join you if you defeat them in battle. The Djinn come in four different types based on the four elemental powers, and depending which party member you set them to can have varying effects on the type of magic you can use. In battles, each Djinni has a unique power when you use it, and once enough have been used you can summon powerful spirits to do some serious damage to the enemy. All up, battle is a well thought out system, and enjoyable to partake in. This is just as well, since the frequency of random battles is quite high, and you usually can't walk that far before another group of monsters attacks.

Other than the battles, there are several other challenges that you'll need to overcome. Many of these require careful use of a number of magic spells that can be used outside of battle, and there are a number of other taxing challenges involving moving blocks or rolling logs, many of which are quite tricky to work out. In addition, you'll often have to collect an item from a distant location before you can progress further, and sometimes you'll have to make quite a detour before you can get to your next main goal; suffice to say that there's a lot of variety in the game.

There are only one or two minor annoyances in an otherwise excellent gameplay system, the biggest one being the overuse of 'yes-no' questions in the game, where you're asked rather pointless questions about the situation in hand and whatever you answer makes no difference to the events in any case. Other than this mildly-annoying problem, there really isn't much wrong with Golden Sun's gameplay, which really is excellent and which sucks you into the world completely. Great stuff.


Challenge: The quest you must undertake is indeed a long one; there are many areas you'll have to explore and complete, and a large number of towns and cities to visit. It will certainly keep you going for at least 20 hours on your first playthrough, while even a subsequent playing, when you know exactly what you're doing, will take many hours due to the length of the game. As for game difficulty, there are a great many challenging puzzles to solve which can often be quite taxing to complete, while some battles with boss-type foes can be very hard indeed, requiring a great deal of strategy in selection of attacks: given the vast number of battle options, this can be very deep, yet never overwhelming. Overall, a game with a lot of challenge, and one which will last a very long time.


Graphics: Golden Sun's graphics deserve special mention, since they are without a doubt the finest yet seen on the GBA. The standard world map and townscapes look very impressive, with detailed and varied scenery, buildings and characters, but it's the battle scenes that really stand out as terrific. Well-drawn and clear backdrops rotate around your party and the enemies flawlessly, while character detail is very high. The graphical effects of the magic and Djinn attacks are stunning, however, and look better than I would ever have expected to see on a handheld. Suffice to say that Golden Sun really excels in the graphics category, and really shows what the GBA can do in this area.


Sounds: The game's sounds are also a solid addition to the package, with a wide variety of musical accompaniments to the action featuring. The music ranges from light and free melodies for when you explore a town, to more stirring music as you travel around the world map, and then to some eerie and dark dungeon-exploring music, and finally to rousing and atmospheric battle music, which gets suitably more sinister when you're up against boss characters. All of the game's music is done well, with the only small niggle being that there is quite a bit of repitition of the various tunes, particularly from town to town - it would have been nice to have different music for each village rather than one or two "town tunes", but given the limitations of the GBA cartridge, this is at least wholly forgivable. Character "voices", if you can call them that, make up a good part of the game's sound effects, though they consist mainly of little 'wibbles' as the characters are speaking, a la Banjo-Kazooie, which is at least better than silence and does convey a little about the speaking character. The various other sound effects are all very good, from water dripping in caves to logs being rolled around in the woods, and the battle sound effects are excellent too. Overall, definitely an aurally-satisfying game.


Multiplayer: Golden Sun also features a two-player mode, albeit a slightly-limited one. Two players can go head-to-head against each other, each pitting three of their party members against the other player, and being allowed to use the full complement of spells, weapons and items that they have available. This mode is certainly an enjoyable one, although it can be a bit one-sided if one player has higher-level characters than the other, and also you require two copies of Golden Sun to play the mode. While it would have been nice to have had a single-cartridge mode where two files from the same game pak could battle each other, this would, realistically, have been unfeasible given the restraints on memory size of the non-cartidge-holding GBA, although given the turn-based nature of the game, perhaps a pass-the-GBA system could have been used as in Advance Wars. Nonetheless, it's nice to have the multiplayer mode regardless of any small limitations, so we can't complain overmuch.


Summing up: Golden Sun really is an excellent handheld RPG, and one that can be recommended to devoted RPG fans and newcomers to the genre alike. With brilliant graphics, deep and satisfying gameplay and a lengthy quest, the game is an excellent title to own, and you won't go wrong in getting it.


Gamesmark: 96%


Reviewer: Maverik



Tangycheese's opinion: The Gameboy Advance really needed a quality game to kick-start its existence. Golden Sun quite possibly is that game. Superb graphics, and unbelievably-good gameplay make this a must-have game for the GBA. For once, Mav hasn't been overly-generous with the score - it really is that good.