Ogon no Taiyo
That's Golden Sun, to you non-Japanese folk out there.I think this was one of the very first Big RPG's to hit the GBA, and it's also immediately one of the best. Sadly, this is mostly because the GBA hasn't seen a lot of very good RPG's so it's not saying that much, but in all honesty, this is a very decent game.
You play as Robin (or Isaac in the Western version. What the hell is wrong with the name Robin!? Is it not as COOL as Isaac!? Christ...) and you are an Energyst, meaning you possess Special POWAAHS like magic, and...uh....well, magic basically.
But what separates this game from most RPG's is that these special Magic powers are not confined to use in battles only, but also in normal field and town scenes.
There is a number of spells that can be put to use outside of battles, and mainly serve to move or grab objects that are out of reach, reveal hidden items, freeze water, extinguish fire, etc.
As you may guess, these abilities feature heavily in puzzle solving, and puzzle solving itself features heavily in this game. Aside from the standard RPG fair with the random battles and the experience gathering and the learning new skills, most dungeons and fields are filled with puzzles and they can be pretty challenging. They never became annoying though, at least not to me, but I love puzzles in my RPG's. All puzzles are built up very logically and it's always clear what you should do, just figuring out how to do it is the problem.
Which brings me to a recently raised topic: being stuck in games.
Let's face it, being stuck in a game SUCKS. Some gamers may think that we have become spoiled what with the gamefaqs of this world, and that too many people have almost become incapable of independent thought. Well, SOD that, I for one am glad that I can easily find the answer to almost every question I can think of, cos I simply do not have the patience anymore to spend hours and hours to advance.
There are of course several reasons why one might get stuck in a game, but it usually boils down to either of these three: A Difficult Boss, Not knowing what to do next or Not being able to solve a puzzle.
Bosses are usually a matter of levelling up, but even that has become a task I'm not really up for anymore, I hate it when games require too much uplevelling, and I generally prefer games to be playable at a leasurely level. Fortunately most of them are nowadays.
But what I want to focus on are the latter two problems. Being stuck not knowing what to do next may very well be THE most annoying experience in gaming. Wandering around aimlessly not having a clue as to where to go is simply not my idea of fun, thank you very much, and this is the absolute number 1 reason I use gamefaqs when I do. I rarely use it for Boss strategies or puzzle answers, cos I can figure that out myself usually, but not knowing what to do SUCKS.
Now, you might say that in a sense, not knowing the solution to a puzzle is also a kind of not knowing what to do next, but I'm talking about having no clue what you are supposed to do. At least with a puzzle, you know what you have to do, you might just not know HOW to do it. With puzzles I have a lot of patience, and generally I consider them as real challenges, and I'll try to solve them myself, because it actually makes me feel good to solve a particularly nasty one. I really enjoy hard puzzles, but I hate not knowing what I'm supposed to do.
So is any of this going anywhere? Does it usually? Then stop that stupid line of questioning, ya ginger bastard! (Did I mention how much I love Conker yet?)
Thing is, Golden Sun has a couple of those "What the Hell am I supposed to do next?" moments. It also has a SHITLOAD of puzzles, but those always have a clear target, and it's not likely that you'll be stuck there for long.
But there are just a couple too many moments where it's not clear what to do next, and in most cases, you just have to move on to the next area, even though it feels like there's something you still haven't finished in the area you're in at the moment. Sometimes you have to move on, despite loose ends, which can be confusing and annoying. A quick gander a gamefaqs will solve anything, but that's not how it should go is it?
IN FACT, the entire ENDING is exactly that, a bunch of loose ends that stay untied, despite the fact that you just killed some big ass dragon type thingy. WITH TWO HEADS!
It's not until you actually get to play the sequel that you find out that this game was more or less meant to be a sort of prelude. A 17 hour prelude, yes, but still a prelude. This game can be very unsatisfying in that respect, since it seems unfinished at some points and it ends too abruptly. It lacks a decent build-up or climax and you're only left wondering why the hell you didn't just buy the sequel in the first place.
But admittedly, what IS there, and what is NOT painfully ommitted is a lot of fun.
The battle system is very speedy, and it even gets away with text-based combat, like "Robin does 64 points of damage to the Muslim Fundamentalist" which I normally hate (Dragon Quest anyone? ANYONE?). But Golden Sun mostly gets away with it because: A) Combat is VERY speedy, B) The Graphics are GORGEOUS. I mean, WOW, GO GBA! Great special effects for magic and summons, beautiful environments and backgrounds, good animation, the WORKS!
Combine that with a very high quality synth and a very enjoyable score by Motoi "Valkyrie Profile, Star Ocean, Baten Kaitos (whoot!)" Sakuraba and you know that the presentation leaves extremely little to be desired.
Add to that some nice subquests, rewarding exploration and solid, if limited, item management system, and it should be clear that this is, after all, a rather high quality title. It's just that because they chose to let all the real happenings take place in the sequel, that this game just lingers a bit and doesn't have too much to offer yet.
If you plan to get both games (which I would recommend for RPG fans) this is highly enjoyable, as a stand-alone game, it just doesn't feel complete. Still, what's there is good solid fun, so I'll give this an 8.9
posted by Ingen! @ 7:32 PM
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