When Golden Sun reached Britain in March 2002, Edge reviewed it as “an RPG so old school you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a Super Famicom conversion”. That was meant kindly: the game, Edge went on, “provides exactly what 16bit fetishists hoped the GBA would provide”, a long, turn-based role-playing game with towns, dungeons, random battles and a world map, in a handheld cartridge. Its own ideas were in the details. The heroes’ magic, Psynergy, works outside battle as well as inside it, so the dungeons are full of puzzles that need a spell to solve. And the party collects 28 small elemental creatures called Djinn, whose placement decides what each character can do.
Fast facts
- Developer: Camelot Software Planning, the studio of the brothers Hiroyuki and Shugo Takahashi, which had made Sega’s Shining Force games.
- Publisher: Nintendo.
- Platform: Game Boy Advance.
- Released: Japan, 1 August 2001, as Ōgon no Taiyō: Hirakareshi Fūin (Golden Sun: The Broken Seal), at ¥4,800; America, November 2001; Europe, March 2002, at £30.
- Players: one, with a two-player battle mode over a link cable.
- Sequel: Golden Sun: The Lost Age, which continues the same story; it reached America and Europe in 2003.
First shown
Nintendo showed Golden Sun at Spaceworld 2000, its own trade show, among the first games for the Game Boy Advance. Edge found “Ougon No Taiyo, a 30 per cent complete RPG game from Camelot”, which “looks the part”, and captioned its picture “technically impressive”. With five minutes to play a Japanese demonstration, “language difficulties” cut the experience short. In 2001 Nintendo of America’s own magazine used Golden Sun to show what the new handheld could do: it “demonstrates amazing visual effects that are made possible by the GBA’s processing power”.
Adepts and Psynergy
The story begins in the village of Vale, below a temple on Mount Aleph, on a night when thieves try to break in and a storm and rock slide wreck the village. Three years later the thieves, Saturos and Menardi, return and carry off three of the four Elemental Stars, taking the hero’s friend Jenna and the scholar Kraden with them. The hero, Isaac (Robin in Japan), and his friend Garet set out to stop them, and along the way the party gains Ivan and Mia.
All four are Adepts, people who can use Psynergy, a magic that, in Nintendo Power Advance’s words, “uses the power of the mind”. Each Adept belongs to one of four elements, and each element has a planet’s name:
| Element | Name | Adept in the first party |
|---|---|---|
| Earth | Venus | Isaac |
| Fire | Mars | Garet |
| Wind | Jupiter | Ivan |
| Water | Mercury | Mia |
In battle, Psynergy is attack and healing magic. On the map and in dungeons, the same powers become tools. Move pushes and pulls objects such as statues and tree stumps, Frost turns a puddle into a pillar of ice to climb on, Growth turns a sprout into a climbing vine, Whirlwind blows away leaves that hide cave entrances, and Reveal shows hidden doors and paths. Ivan’s Mind Read uncovers what people are hiding: the first use of it traps a thief into giving away his secrets. A typical room in Nintendo Power Advance’s guide asks the player to push two columns, freeze a puddle, push the columns again and walk round to the prize. Edge, reviewing the third game in 2011, described the series as borrowing “liberally from the Zelda design manual”, with dungeons that are “obstacle courses to be bested with ‘psynergy’”.
The Djinn
The Djinn are the game’s collecting hook. There are seven of each element, 28 in all, hidden around the world, and each one joins the party when found. A Djinni can be given to any character.
Set on a character, a Djinni raises their statistics and changes their class, and with it the list of Psynergy they can use. Nintendo’s Japanese site showed how this works on the hero: giving him more earth Djinn deepens his own class without changing his spells, while a fire Djinni makes him a more aggressive class with fewer spells, and a water Djinni gives him strong healing. Mixing elements produces stranger classes, and the number of possible combinations grows with every Djinni found.
In battle a Djinni can be unleashed for a one-off effect, such as an attack or a heal. That moves it from “Set” to “Standby”, and the character loses its bonus, so their class may drop. Djinn on Standby are not wasted. They are the fuel for summons: one Venus Djinni summons Venus, two summon Ramses, three summon Cybele and four summon Judgment, and the other elements have their own four. Edge summed up the trade-off when it previewed the third game: the first state gives “stat boosts and certain Djinn-enabled attacks, while the second sacrifices the overall package in favour of a whacking great summon attack”. After a summon the Djinn need time to recover before they return to their characters. In the Game Boy Advance games, Edge wrote, it was “a system of considerable flexibility”.
Reception
In America, IGN Unplugged listed Golden Sun for release in November 2001, and by February 2002 its readers were quoting IGN’s score of 9.7 in letters arguing about the site’s awards. In Australia, Hyper gave it 93% and a full page, and it was in the country’s top ten Game Boy Advance games in February 2002.
Edge’s review in March 2002 called the turn-based combat “handled elegantly and, aside from a few frustratingly difficult battles, … delicately well-balanced”, and the random encounters “irritating”. Its verdict was that Golden Sun “is a good game which offers nothing new, but offers what it has with exuberance and depth”. Retro Gamer, recommending Game Boy Advance role-playing games in 2005, called both Golden Sun games “a great introduction to the RPG market” thanks to “their relatively straightforward combat systems, enjoyable storylines and the many elemental familiars you’re able to collect”.
The Lost Age and after
Golden Sun ends with the quest unfinished: at its climax, as Edge put it, “our heroes were cast adrift on a floating island”, and The Lost Age plunges the player “straight into the thick of the plot, where the last game left off”. Retro Gamer treated the two as “really just one big adventure that’s been spliced across two cartridges”, and players could carry their party over from the first game by link cable or by a long password. Edge found The Lost Age “slick, practised and enjoyable” in 2003 but noted that “the only element that really stands out is the collection and utilisation of magical Djinns”.
A third game, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, came to the Nintendo DS in 2010, set 30 years later with the children of the first heroes. Edge gave it eight out of ten and called its in-game tutorial, which has the new heroes run an obstacle course modelled on their parents’ adventures, a “masterstroke”.
Sources
- Nintendo, Golden Sun: The Broken Seal product page (Japanese, web): release date of 1 August 2001 and price of ¥4,800; one or two players; the Djinn pages on class changes, unleashing Djinn, the “Set” and “Standby” states and summoning; the hero’s Japanese name, Robin. https://www.nintendo.co.jp/n08/agsj/index.html
- Edge issue 89, October 2000, p. 9: “Ougon No Taiyo (Golden Sun)” among forthcoming Game Boy Advance games at Spaceworld 2000.
- Edge issue 90, November 2000, pp. 70 and 73: Spaceworld report (“a 30 per cent complete RPG game from Camelot”, “looks the part”, “technically impressive”).
- Nintendo Power Advance volume 1 (2001), p. 8: Golden Sun “demonstrates amazing visual effects”.
- Nintendo Power Advance volume 3 (2001), pp. 4–15 and 39: Golden Sun guide (release November 2001; two-player link mode; Adepts and Psynergy; the four elements and the party; 28 Djinn, seven of each type; summons for one to four Djinn; Vale, Mount Aleph and the opening; Move, Frost, Growth, Whirlwind, Reveal and Mind Read in dungeon puzzles; Standby).
- IGN Unplugged issue 8, November 2001, p. 9: Golden Sun in the American release list for November 2001.
- IGN Unplugged issue 10, February 2002, p. 7: readers’ letters quoting IGN’s score of 9.7.
- Hyper issue 102, February 2002, p. 97: Australian Game Boy Advance chart for the week ending 3 February 2002.
- Hyper issue 108, October 2002, p. 96: letters page, recalling Hyper’s full-page review in issue 100 and its score of 93%.
- Edge issue 108, March 2002, p. 79: Golden Sun review (Nintendo, developer Camelot, £30, European release in March).
- Edge issue 124, June 2003, p. 86: Golden Sun: The Lost Age review (out in the US; the cliffhanger; the Djinn).
- Edge issue 120, February 2003, p. 13: Golden Sun 2 due in translated form later in 2003.
- Supergamepower (Brazil) issue 101, 2003, p. 29: The Lost Age, transferring a save from the first game by link cable or password.
- Retro Gamer issue 22, 2005, p. 82: Golden Sun and Golden Sun II as one adventure across two cartridges.
- Edge issue 217, August 2010, p. 28: Golden Sun: Dark Dawn preview (the Djinn, active and standby states, the Game Boy Advance games).
- Edge issue 223, January 2011, p. 101: Golden Sun: Dark Dawn review (the Zelda comparison; 30 years after the Game Boy Advance games; the tutorial; eight out of ten).