Golden Sun
Year: 2001
Rating: E
Time Played: ~22 hours
After the initial rise in popularity of Role-Playing Games (RPGs) in the 1990s, there was a bit of a lull in the genre. Square had established itself with hits like the Final Fantasy series and Chrono Trigger, and Game Freak had slightly reinvented the genre with Pokémon. With some of the “golden era” games from this genre coming from the Super Nintendo, it made sense to see the next notable RPG come in the form of Golden Sun on the similarly powerful Game Boy Advance. Using some tropes of the genre, Golden Sun felt original in its combat and class structure.
The introduction of the Djinn mechanic made Golden Sun a blast to play. As pseudo-onetime spells, the Djinn were fun to find in the Overworld and powerful to use in battle. I wasn’t necessarily a fan of how they’d randomly seem to change the class of the characters. The elemental mixtures sometimes made it so I couldn’t use a Djinn (or their summons) because I’d lose an ability I needed to solve Overworld puzzles. I would have appreciated an in-game guide that detailed all the classes I’d unlocked so I’d know which abilities they had and could plan accordingly.
The plot of Golden Sun was pretty standard for RPGs. However, the dungeons were visually well-developed and had interesting puzzle gimmicks. While random encounters are usually annoying in most RPGs, the battle animations in Golden Sun were dynamic and flashy, thus making these fights fun when they happened. Similarly, the boss battles were epic, and felt satisfying when I defeated them. All of this was also accentuated by the game’s music, which is excellent for its time. Overall, anyone who enjoys RPGs (or maybe wants to get into them) would not go wrong with Golden Sun.
The best RPG the Game Boy Advance has to offer, I give Golden Sun 4.5 stars out of 5.
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