Golden Sun

The Good
For starters, great...everything about this game.

The storyline is pretty original, and really is easy to get into. Everything works out like it should, and you'll meet tons of unique characters which really help define the world itself.

The main quest is easy to follow, but there's some sides you can do as well. For instance, there's a roadblock you get through, and see that there's a bunch of stupid and basically just out-of-place trees. You use Ivan's special ability to mind read, and find out that they're people!!! One of the girls is about to fall in the water, and you need to use an aquired ability to rescue her from certain doom. Come back once everyone is a human again, and they recognize you and give a nice reward! Simple things like that really, really do make games more fun and involving.

The RPG rules and standards hold well in the game, giving you adequate time to beef up characters and buy better equipment. I especially liked the original idea of weapons having unique abilities that come out every so-often. Say if I used a Bandit Sword, on occasion i'd do a move called Rapid Smash which does a ton of more damage.

Another cool thing is the Djinni! There's 6 of each type of Djinni, which are Fire, Water, Earth, and Wind. Using them in battle can either boost your stats, lower your enemies stats, damage the enemy, or remove/alter your status. The coolest part is when you use more than one of the same type, which unleashes a fury of that specific element! On a side note, you can also mix-match the different used Djinni powers to create fusions, which ultimately is a trial-and-error process of finding the right one. And the visuals while doing any of these, or using "psynergy" which is a form of magic, are absolutely splendid to behold. Tons of them to discover by altering your equipment and Djinni placement. Try it out! Music and sound effects are ear-pleasing, and you'll never feel anything repeat. Just overall a great experience.

The Bad
This part will be pretty small, because there's not much to complain about. Well, like some RPG's, the main character NEVER talks, not a word. Sometimes he'll shake his head or jump or emote in some fashion, but all you can really do is make decisions.

Another small, yet large in my eyes negative is that the game is WAY too short. This game seems to be over before you actually are able to fully get into it.

The Bottom Line
An awesome RPG for the Gameboy Advance which you will spend hours playing, and then playing some more after you beat it because the replay value is extremely high. Definite Buy.

The Good
The tunes are really exciting, the graphics are nice, colored and detailed (especially in the battles), the controls works perfectly in the games, well, all the "I/O" part of the game is really great. Before seeing this, I was thinking that many "new generation" RPG that have a release date of 1998 or +, would never be as great as some SNES RPGs about this, but this game proves that this is false. The story is somewhat great. I can't really explain why, but even if the usual "go on a journey and save the world" thing repeats itself for many RPGs, the story is really exciting. A thing I liked about the gameplay is that you spend more time in the game to fight monsters than to watch stupid scenes without doing anything, like many "new generation" RPGs. For example in Final Fantasy X, you're always walking, speaking with people, or seeing scenes like in a film, and you're in average not often doing battle. In the other side, in very old RPGs like Dragon Warrior or the first Final Fantasy, you were always in battle and you hardly ever spoke to people. In Golden Sun, the balance is just right, you never spend a big amount of time without speaking to anyone or without advancing in the story, but you also never spend a big amount of time without fighting. The battle system looks plain at the beginning of the game, but it becomes interesting after a while, and actually there is a lot of strategy in it, unlike Final Fantasy games for example. It's also pretty hard to collect all Djins. But, once you got the strategy to defeat very-strong monsters, the game will become pretty easy.

Finally, the great thing in Golden Sun is that there is very challenging enigmas everywhere. One half of the enigmas are optional (to get items, weapons, etc...), and some of them are so hard that you'll give up (this happened to me a couple of times, but I tried them at least one hour !).

The Bad
The thing that disappoint me in the game is the item-quantity limitation. Here you can only carry 15 items per character, and this is pretty frustrating to be unable to collect all the weapons of the game, etc...

Also, there shall be ~10 sound effects in the whole game, and all magics and attacks does just a combination of them. They could input more different sounds effects. However I really like the noise that make someone who is speaking. It's really fun ;-)

Well, I found that the last boss was a bit easy, and the ending shucks. I mean that the game finish just where is should not be finished. I just completed the game several hours ago and I was disappointed by the ending. They just want you to buy Golden Sun 2, just to make themselves twice money, just like Pokemon ruby & sapphire and so on... What a shame. By the way, I'll surely buy Golden Sun 2 someday, but... well this is frustrating to buy a game in those conditions, just to know the sequel of the story. Usually, when I buy a game, its for discovering a new world, a new story, not to know the sequel of another one.

The Bottom Line
Golden Sun is a very great RPG that shows the full-potential of the Game Boy Advance. I would recommend it to anyone who like RPGs. I think it has the good side of old RPGs, and the good side of news ones, and just this stuff make it really great.

The Good
I have very fond memories of playing Final Fantasy Legends I-III on family road trips years and years back. FFL III in particular gave you great flexibility in developing your characters how you wanted. Playing Golden Sun, I had pleasant flashbacks to the FFLs of yore. Golden Sun is every bit as much fun as those older games, and a whole lot prettier to boot. You're placed in the cliched RPG plot in the shoes of a young man (default Isaac, but you can change it to Assmaster or some such if you wish) with extraordinary powers. And those powers are what makes Golden Sun stand above the rest. You must use them not only to do battle with the thousands and thousands of monsters roaming the land, but also to interact with the game world in a variety of ways. See that little sprout by the ledge? If you have the growth power, you can make it spring up into a vine, thus creating a very efficient little rope ladder, opening up new areas in the game world to explore. In order to achieve these powers, you must amass a collection of Djinni (think Pokemon with less personality). Each one confers one of four elemental powers (earth, water, fire and wind), augmenting your characters and giving them new Psynergy (magic). By combining different Djinni on a character, you change the types of spells and powers he or she can wield. This is a nice touch to the typical magic system, which is usually the weakest part of electronic RPGs. You are forced to make tough decisions when determining which powers your characters will wield.
The graphics are Super Nintendo-quality, with nice spell effects and impressive character animation. Your little guys (and gals) emote in ways that previous GB RPGs couldn't manage. Finally, the challenge level begins to ramp up quite nicely later on in the game. You are actually forced to use strategic thinking in some of the later boss battles, which is a good thing - most RPGs seem to be designed to please the least common denominator.

The Bad
Unfortunately, the package is not completely free of flaws. Worst of them is the insane amount of low-level monsters you have to hack through to navigate even the smallest of mazes. I would rather see slightly less combat with higher experience point awards. Be prepared to spend a lot of time ridding the land of moronic entry-level baddies. Combat graphics, strangely enough, are not nearly on par with those of the isometric view. Some monsters, especially the big ones, are chunky and ugly.
Dialog is excruciating, as you would expect. I found myself rapidly pushing buttons to wade through several inane NPC conversations that I was forced to overhear, despite their apparent complete lack of relevance to my quest. This smacks of self-indulgent programming, and does not make for enjoyable gaming.

The Bottom Line
It's a Game Boy RPG done right. Think Final Fantasy Legend plus a lot more environmental interaction.