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My first, BEST! Game Boy Advance Game!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: November 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I played Golden Sun from one of my friends and I'm quite impressed with the game and its graphics. After getting a Game Boy Advance, I bought the game two weeks later. I loved the story, music, magic system, and of course, the impressive graphics. The story is about a kid named Issac who is trying to rescue his friends from the evil villians who kidnapped them and stole the elemental stones they discoverd. The music is the best I've heard from a portable game system. The magic system is fantastic. You can use psynergy(magic), Djinn(Elemental magic, Summon(Djinn elemental Summons), and other commands for battle. The battles are pretty short so it the game won't get so annoying that it wll make you quit playing it after the first hour. The graphics is the best thing about this game. The pictures are colorful, smooth, somewhat 3D ish, and the weather effects are amazing. You'll actually feel as if the pictures were real! It comes with a world map that tells you the location of towns if you don't know where they are. Buy or rent? Buy 2 for the Arena mode.

Best GBA Game Ever!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: April 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

If you have a GBA and want a great RPG then you should totally buy this game. However, if you hate games that have a ton of dialogue, then you might get pretty annoyed by this game. I happen to like games with a lot of dialogue. Overall, this was a fun, challenging game with a great story.

A masterpeice in Production

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: September 27, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Golden Sun is a classic stly, turn-based RPG. It include magic abilities, summons, and magical weopons to inflict damage or have stratigic effects on enemies or teammates. It is the same stlye as games like the earlier Final Fantasy games, and should be equally entertaining. The game features outstanding visuals on battle, and the summons and spells have nice animation, the best on the sytem so far. The Game Boy Advance is lacking in RPG games, until now.

Consider THIS

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: November 27, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game is incredible concerning the graphics and gameplay.
Unlike an earlier review that said it has "Dark" parts,
This game is clean and I believe has an "E" rating.
I am currently at the "final" battle, which really makes no sense as to the storyline. If in fact this is the final battle, the game is too short and you should think twice before buying.
And to someone else's "Ragnarok", that word is used in hundreds of games, so don't let that ruin the experience ;)

Now that I've said that, I must say that the Djinn system is quite good, and there is 7 Djinn's of each type. The "secret" classes, such as NINJA are pretty hard to find without a lot of wasted time searching for them.
The last bosses are extremely hard, unfortunately. And the fact that you cannot learn many "permanent spells" you may be stuck with some new, strange powers that may or may not work well.
There is a GIANT selection of weapons and armor which become stronger as you travel deeper into the game.

All in all, I give this game a 4.5, except there is no 4.5.
I suggest you buy it, and hope the sequel is much longer.

Golden Sun best RPG

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: September 25, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This is a great game. It kinda reminds me of some final fantasy games and chrono trigger. You can play as 4 characters that each have a differnt element earth, fire, water, wind. the menu function is quite complex. But the graphics are incredible. You should defently get this game if you like the final fantasy series.

It couldn't have come at a better time.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: October 26, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Yes! Finally, a portable RPG worth buying! Right now, I'm a high-school student and I have been wating for a more grown-up approach to portable, RPG gaming. And then here comes Golden Sun. Reminiscient of the good ol' Final Fantasy games of yore, Golden Sun captures the heart of both the adventures and battles of all previous FF games. Alas, it's not made by SquareSoft, but that will just give Nintendo and Camelot the extra 'punch' needed to help make this game that much better than all previous RPGs. I bought a GBA the first day it came to my local store, and this is exactly what makes me proud to be a gamer...

Excellent

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: January 10, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The outstanding simplicity of Golden Sun is perhaps what it benefits the most from. Engaging, engrossing and tonnes of fun right from the onset this title delivers an RPG experience that only stumbles on a few steps but never loses its footing. It features the best examples (and story elements) of RPG games from the last 20 years and largely manages to avoids their downfalls.

The story as mentioned is cloned from just about every RPG ever made is postively huge. Its Non Linear story telling and hundreds of individuals for you to interact with make this a lasting and hugely replayable title. In this though lies the rub and the games one fault: The story's dense structure makes it easy to get lost in the plot if you weren't paying attention during one of its lengthy text expositions.

Great graphics, clever use of mode7 effects and excellent sound round out a very solid package. Golden Sun may not appeal to all, adamant opposer's of the RPG genre, need not apply. However those of you who have been looking for an RPG fix or just a good game on the GBA, need look no further.

Everything about this game is awesome!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: March 31, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I got this game because everyone said it was so cool. I wasn't an rpg fan when i bought this but this game is incredible. The graphics are so much better than pokemon, link's awakening, or other gbc games i cn't believe how improved the gameboy is now. The sound is great, with a cool soundtrack to boot. when it comes to that sort of thing, golden sun is perfect.
as for the game, the story is okay, but a bit hard to follow. The controls are solid, and easy to remember. The battles are fun, and different enemies and moves ad to the game's replay alot. the cutscenes are really fun to watch, but be warned, they can be very long sometimes. the levels are well planned out with lots of puzzles to solve. However, you should get a strategy guide because some of them are h a r d.
Well, that's all i can think of to say, so now, to sum up,.....
T H I S G A M E K I C K S [behind] ! ! B U Y I T ! !

Golden Sun fun or fluke?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: July 12, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I will start right off and say a great and will be classic game for GBA. Its deffinatly not what it could have been, and though i havent played the jap version there is no heavy and dark conversations or exchanges, and it sounds like he hasnt played the american version. Anyways golden sun is very good for the money, but the story is right out of rpg class 101, in other words very basic, very stay inside the lines. Can be confusing at times, puzzle wise. PRos - Good old fashiond RPG. Visually awesome, the graphics kick tail. Very final fantasy sevenish, combat wise. Save anywhere. Strategiclly awesome. good magic game. Cons - very basic and at times boring rpg. You Do Get Stuck. very hard to find the four wild djinn ( the last for Djinn you find in the wild) Once you go forward its hard to go back and do things. Very run of the mill dont stray off the beaten path, keep right on going with one quest at a time game.
All in all fun and exilerating!!

THE GREATEST RPG OF ALL TIME?? No. Not by a long-shot.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 11 / 24
Date: March 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Maybe if you've never played any other RPG in your life you'd consider this the best there is, but c'mon, it's nothing new at all. And for once, I agree with Amazon's editorial review in that the story is incredibly basic and cliche. I've played quite a few RPG type games in my day (since 1994), and this one definately doesn't stand out one bit. While it has good visuals and some good music, it's missing the things that matter in this genre- good characters and a compelling plot.

It's up to a group of 4 kids to save the world from evil. Yeah, 'cause that hasn't been overdone. Not at all. And what's worse, they actually take a step down, and throw in the elements as a "major" part of the plot (well, what plot there is). What's funny is the first 20 minutes or so: the villagers in the town seem to forget that 2 of the main characters actually brought upon the potential destruction of the world.

The characters are all just incredibly stupid. I haven't seen such boring, linear characters like this since Final Fantasy 7 (read my review of that for the whole story). You have the main hero, who doesn't talk...which I don't have any problem with, but others here seem to. Garet, who never has anything smart to say, and the suggestions he brings up would bring death to the party immediately. And then there are the other two members of the party: Ivan and Mia, who aren't as dumb, but they don't have much to say after you first get them. All the additional characters never seem to do anything useful. Most of the time, you know where to go next without having to ask anyone...even if you're required to ask someone in a town in order to move on in the game. Reviewers that praise Golden Sun for "great character development" must've been playing some other game, or been on medication, because there's none of that here.

But there were two things that really irked me. One of them being the dialogue. Don't get me wrong, I always take my time and pay attention to the dialogue in other games, but here, it's damn-near useless. For every 30 minutes of dialogue, you only need to pay attention to maybe 2 lines. Everything else is just filler. And it doesn't help that there aren't any plot twists or double-crossings that you should be on the look out for. The other thing that bugged me big time was that the characters were all 'bouncy'. Whenever one would say something, the other characters sort of bounce up and down a few times while standing still and act excited. That got old fast. If it weren't so comical, I probably wouldn't have been bored so fast.

Golden Sun tries to be innovative with the use of Pokémon...I mean Djinn. They're creatures that represent each of the 4 elements, and you equip them to boost your stats, change job class, and unleash great summons. You can go into a fight with your Djinn set to 'standby' and unleash summons right at the start of combat, and take out most enemies in one turn.

As I said, the visuals are [even still in this year] impressive. It looks like a late-generation PSone game during the fights. I was amazed that the GBA could handle some of the summons here. The music is 50/50. Some tracks are good (especially in caves) while you'll forget others after you leave the area it plays in.

Ignore everyone that goes "OMFH THIS IZ TEH BEST GAME EVAR!!11oneshiftone1!!1" and don't expect it to blow you away, and maybe you'll get into it. I hope the other games in the series aren't as linear as this one. Maybe I expect too much from games these days, but look to one of the many other SNES ports for the GBA to fulfill your RPG needs. Heck, import Mother 1+2 (EarthBound) while you're at it. Golden Sun developers could learn a thing or two about a good game from that.

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