By sgathaich0

Copyright theorkneynews

I decided to get the expansion pass to the Nintendo Switch online. That’s given me access to N64, Sega Dreamcast, GameCube and for this review GBA games. I like the classic turn based Final Fantasy games. While playing some of the modern content in FF14 with classic music I wanted to play those games. But with the expansion pass, I have another game I can play, something I enjoyed before and happy after all these years to come back to.

Golden Sun was released on the GBA in 2002 over here (yeah once again needing to remind people, usually Americans just how bad we in Europe had it for waiting extra for game releases). The game is a turn-based RPG very much what we call a JRPG these days. You play as the Adept Isaac who is a Venus Adept. Adepts are people who can use Psyenergy to harness the elements. Earth-Venus Mars-Fire, Jupiter-air/lightning and Mercury-water. after the opening story he and his friend Garet set out from their home town through the world of Weyard to prevent the activation of the 4 elemental lighthouses that once done will unleash a power that was sealed away. As you journey you quickly meet Ivan the Jupiter Adept and Mai the Mercury Adept.The game follows your standard classic JRPG style of walking around in the Overworld looking from above while battles then take place in their own different screens, those who have placed FF1 to 10 will know this style and be very familiar with it. Where the game would differ with that is in its use of Psyenergy. You see it doesn’t just get used in battle but in the Overworld too. Very early on you learn to use your abilities to move objects without having your characters physically move them and other abilities like reading minds, revealing hidden secrets and many more that are needed to explore.The other feature that affects the game is the elemental Djinns. Right after you leave Vale you encounter your first one and upon equipping it to a character it increases their stats or changes their class, and depending on which Djinn, which character and which combination of Djinn you can get a very different set of abilities in battle. While you can just put the Djinn of the corresponding element on that Adept and work perfectly fine to the point it’s what I recommend on a first play through. Shifting those up can make interesting new playthroughs as you try out different ways of battle. Djinns also can be used in battle each having a special ability when used such as raising the whole parties stats, doing so puts the Djinn to the set statues and while that will lower the characters stats when set, you now gain access to big summon attacks depending on how many of the same type of Djinn are set all the way up to 4 for big damage and elemental buff, this does then also cause the Djinn to need to recover at a rate of one a turn. But those big attacks are often worth it, some bosses I found the easiest way to win was just go in all Djinn set and summon everything. Hey if it works it works.One negative for the game is the limited inventory space, each character having a set amount of items they can hold. Making this worse, that includes equipped items and items that when equipped unlock different Psyenergy powers. This can get rather annoying late in the game but I suppose by then you can probably remove a lot of the healing items you carry about as your characters can heal better than them with healing abilities and Djinn.There are a fair amount of things you can miss in this game, while nothing too vital… At least not for this game, not interacting with certain things at a point or not going back to do a side quest can result in objects not being obtained. There are at least 2 Djinn that require a decent amount of backtracking late on to areas at the start of the game one of which resolving a side quest that you would be surprised to find isn’t resolved just going through the story as normal.But why do all this? Well after you beat the final boss the game continues through an epilogue and after the credits have rolled you can save the game. But this does not start a new game plus. You can access an area for a sort of endless battle mode but it’s just a score and nothing objected, but that too isn’t why you saved. For this is game one in a set of two and everything you did here after saving you can link up to the next game for additional rewards… and an uber boss if you manage to get every Djinn in both games. This does explain why you seemed low level by the time the game ended, but pays off for all those additional seemingly unimportant things you did earlier.That’s not to say this game comes off as short. While this is a game for a handheld from the turn of the millennium it will still take you a good amount of time and even more if you set out to get all those bonus bits done and get all the Djinn. This game even has its own secret uber boss too with a little extra in the next game for beating it. Still if you are going to play this game you should play that one too, though if you don’t have 7 Djinn on each character by the end, you can have another play through and see if you missed anything. Do that before starting the sequel. Fortunately both are on the GBA player… Now I need to find out if I can only share info from the big huge passwords or if they included a way to just transfer like the old one did through a link cable.Rating: 🎮🎮🎮🎮