when I was a kid I would travel to Egypt on family trips and get bored to tears at times. I remember this game saved me on one of those! I remember playing it in the dark at my grandparents' place. Such a gem.
Haha when this game came out I had a job at a health food store that got 1 customer a day. I’d play this game literally all day until the place went out of business. Sometimes I was so absorbed in the game while on the clock, I’d forget that I was supposed to be working.
When I bought golden sun, I thought it was that game that you had to play under the sun. On the manual it didn't have anything talking about that tho. So I asked my friends and they also thought it was that game. So we would sometimes play on the sun to try to get more power on combat. This one friend of mine was so sure that it helped to get better results on fights. 😂 We still laugh about that until today
Your enthusiasm & passion for the game had me at the edge of my seat for the whole video!😂 I know my brother loved the Golden Sun games, and now I understand why! I hope they'll both come to Nintendo Switch Online, so I can give them a try myself 😌
Great memories of this game. I still replay through it every few years or so. Camelot is one of my favorite game developers they've made some of my favorite games like Shining Force, Golden Sun etc.
The Golden Sun games have been in my backlog for an embarrassing amount of time, but I still look forward to finally playing them. Also, they're confirmed to be coming to the Switch's GBA Online app in the future, so hopefully the series can garner some new fans to keep it alive and kicking
The variety of the combat, the plethora of interesting puzzles, the excellent writing, the sheer size of the map, wonderful level of customization, the stunnibg art direction and memorable soundtrack. This game always had a wonderful surprise up its sleeve, it pushed the quality of a GBA title to the upmost limit. Its a gem of a game that I remember clearly to this day.
Derek, you are a talented and hardworking reviewer. Its always refreshing to watch your reviews, especially retro reviews. I also look forward to Hit Point podcast every week. Keep it up man! You’ve earned your success
I can't convey how nostalgic I am from this odyssey packed in such a tiny cartridge. I'm considering modding my old GBA to give it a new life and dust off these cartridges and give them a new life, playing them in a hardware that I remember so fondly.
Oh man, on the N64? If I had to guess... It'd probably have looked worse. The sprite-based graphics have really stood the test of time better than most early polygonal games, I think. :)
@@SuperDerek The fact that they were kinda forced to release it on the GBA because it was too late for the N64 era is both a curse and a blessing. You could call it destiny!
@@dreamor6303 I don't think it was a curse because if it would have been on N64 it wouldn't have touched so many like they have. I don't think it would have had the same impact. It was a blessing not a curse, because those sprite based graphics and the colors popping have stood the test over a lot of games. Shining Force 2 for example as old as that is it looks incredible. Golden Sun was very detailed it's actually surprising what they were able to do so early on without actually knowing the hardware well.
Hi!! Glad to see you my man! Maybe this thought isnt popular, but I feel this review was to "speedy". I miss your old, more thoughful, inmersive videos.
Haven't watched your videos since the holidays, but you are looking Super Fit, Super Derek. Way to go! Inspiration for me to maybe slim down a bit too. Oh and thanks for the GS nostalgia. 🙂
One of the series that I don’t understand why it was never re-released on the modern systems.. playing Zelda now the puzzle solving and variety reminds me of this game …
I absolutely adored this game when I played it when it came out. Loved seeing it from the opposite perspective. The other games that did this at the time were fire emblem path of radiance and radiant dawn. And I loved it there too.
Great review. I hope this gets added to NSO after part 1. If you like this and want more Golden Sunnish gameplay, check out Shining The Holy Ark on Sega Saturn if you can. Very much the forerunner to Golden Sun but as a first person dungeon crawler with a much simpler pre-djinn system
Nice to finally see this finished lol. I had a lot of fun helping out with the streams. Golden Sun: The Lost Age is my personal favorite RPG. A lot of that is nostalgia, but there really isn't another RPG like it for me. The way it marries exploration, the Zelda-esque dungeons, and the incredibly flashy turn-based battles is something I wish there was more of. As for Dark Dawn, to give my own small opinion. I think it is a good game that got too much hate, with a few singular issues bringing it down for many. It is my least favorite of the series, but I have played many significantly worse RPG's. Either way, loved the video Derek and hope you're enjoying the Trails of Cold Steel games so far :)
You said something Derrick that I think about with games these days. As much as I love a great story and an awesome narrative of character's one issue remains with games like this. And that's time.... As and adult being married working all the time. I want my attention to be on this story, and I don't want distractions. How do you do this my good man? It's impossible now..
As a younger player back in the day when it came out, I got completely lost on this one, I loved the first so much, but this being so open just left me confused and frustrated
Yeah, my use of "Duology" was really meant to emphasize that these are pretty much two halves of the same game. These were even just going to be a single game but apparently had to be split into two because of size constraints. The third entry in the series is definitely on my radar. Hope I can take a look soon! :)
@@SuperDerek can’t wait to see what you think of Dark Dawn. I don’t know if my nostalgia made it hard for Dark Dawn to live up to my expectations, but it left me wanting more out of it, like it didn’t reach that height that it should have. So I’d like to hear your thoughts in the future. To it’s credit, it attempted to push the bill in many areas, which is why I’m worried that my nostalgia-blinders may have caused me to see it less than what it is.
So basically Golden Sun and Golden Sun The Lost Age could be considered 2 halves of 1 game? Perhaps it's time for these games to get a Switch remake and combined into 1 game and then followed by a remake of the third game (Golden Sun Dark Dawn).
Golden Sun "The Broken Seal" and "The Lost Age" are my 2 favourite RPG games since early 2000! But take it with a grain of salt. I'm a huge GS fanboy and 100% biased 😄 Also try out Golden Sun Reloaded in case you have finished both games and are seeking the extra challenge! 😉
Man, I don't even remember the play as the villain gimmick. I must have been so annoyed by all the puzzles that I paid zero attention to the plot. Maybe I'll check out some gameplay videos as a refresher, cuz I definitely don't want to actually play it again. Glad you had fun with the games at least.
I couldn’t finish the second game. I was too attached to the cast from the first game and switching them was just too much for me. I think the furthest I got was the Poseidon battle
Damn man, I think you missed the best part then. If you had your password from GS1, eventually the team from GS2 meets up with the GS1 crew and you can bring everything, gear and all from the first game. Then your team gets bonkers, you can swap out and have a backup squad. That was a really hype moment.
I never got into the golden sun games. I had a GBA but didn’t game much on it due to preferring console gaming. Plus although I liked JRPGs at the time, I wasn’t that big into them yet instead playing Castlevania Circle of the Moon, and Banjo Kazooie Grunty’s Revenge on the system instead. It was also the start of my life moving forward and getting more interested in going out with friends and working to support myself so handheld gaming in general started to go downhill for me and by the DS era handheld gaming went away completely.
I live-streamed the process. Apparently because I picked "gold" instead of just like, "bronze" or "silver" the code entry was apparently an order of magnitude worse than it needed to be, and all it did was bring over some extra items and such. It took like an hour, simultaneously the best and worst live-stream on Twitch ever! xD
Actually the tidal wave was caused due to the (imbalanced) awakening of the lighthouses, because of something that has not been explained yet in the GS games that is most likely tied to GS4. 5:20 actually the game said that this world was way bigger in the past but due to.. natural events it started to "fall apart" which is why the GS2 map is as big as it is. And when you play GS3 you can understand that there is more to this theme then one thinks so far! So.. when do you intend to play GS3? I really wanna see your take on this "so bad it killed the franchise" game which imo it didn't, it had some problematic development also thanks to Nintendo and because GS3 is the GS1 to GS2, thus a narrative that isn't complete complete in that sense.
Oh boy. Can’t wait for your next GS review. Especially with the stuff I’ve heard about that one. I’ve heard that the 3rd game was so bad it killed the series.
![Golden Sun The Lost Age [GBA] The Game Collection!](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
