- Pronouns
- He/Him
I’m waiting for that to hit 50% off minimum. I might jump into this this weekend tho
-
Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.
-
Do you have audio editing experience and want to help out with the Famiboards Discussion Club Podcast? If so, we're looking for help and would love to have you on the team! Just let us know in the Podcast Thread if you are interested!
News Golden Sun GBA duology out on NSO on January 16th
- Thread starter Semi Lazy Gamer
- Start date
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Playing this for the first time, I cannot believe how much dialogue there is. I feel like I'm playing a Persona game.
Dark Cloud
Warpstar Knight
That’s the biggest problem for the series and the DS game is worse. Wayyy too much dialogue.
Linkstrikesback
Starman
- Pronouns
- He
It's going to get a lot worse. Especially if you play the DS game which ahd an 8 person party and EVERYBODY had to comment something vapid on everything.
LuigiBlood
Mage Robot
I can't wait for Mario Tennis Power Tour and Mario Golf Advance Tour to get the superior Golden Sun games. /s
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That's part of the charm, lol (except for the DS game, where it was way worse). But for real, it winds down after the initial area (but it will return later)
Aether
Tingle
It comes in waves. It's fine, the problem is less the amount (unlike some 16 bit games it keeps full sentences and doesn't use broken English to reduce storage usage), but that so much of it is... Fluff. Charming, written fine for the time, but more concerned with emotions of not that deep characters.
Still, golden sun is best sun. ( I replayed it 2 years ago, during the pandemic on a DS , so won't join.
But I hope that it won't take to long for DS emulation with dark dawn to come to switch(2)... Probably just another 2-3 years
Still, golden sun is best sun. ( I replayed it 2 years ago, during the pandemic on a DS , so won't join.
But I hope that it won't take to long for DS emulation with dark dawn to come to switch(2)... Probably just another 2-3 years
SeafoamGaming
Moblin
yeah i can confirm this: I also don't think you can use the local wireless/wifi to link GS1/GS2 in any way, either. On the bright side, I did manage to bring over my Wii U VC clear data to remake a proper TLA save via the password feature lol, even though I wanna replay GS1 proper before trying 2 to finally beat it (since that was the one I got stuck on back in the day)
Christo750
Source of the Right Arm
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
only about 5 hours in but what a neat game! i can imagine being into JRPGs like this in 2002 and being obsessed with this game. and i can see why people want another one so bad. i'm sure the overload of text keeps up, i'm sure the "cutscenes" that go on entirely too long keep up, but i'm excited to keep going with it. the Djinn system is cool.
MrGab
Boo
Played about 5 hours, I'm just passed by Goma Cave. I'm liking so far, but it's a game I could like much more if I played this back in mid 2000s. Random battles, party member defending instead of attack when a foe is already defeated, dificulty to revive a fallen party member are some of things I don't like so far. On the good side, I liked PP restoring when you walk, puzzles Zelda-like, story seems good and visuals are good for GBA.
UncleAlbert
Cappy
Played them when they released, then 10 years later and another 10 years later here we are! It's like coming home.
Yesterday I got to the first lighthouse, and so far I noticed that the games are faster than I thought and also a bit easier, but maybe that's because now I'm an experienced player. About the long dialogues: I love them! I'm not a fan of visual novels mind you, but in a 16-bit console graphics will only get you so far, you also need dialogue to flesh out the world and the characters. I agree with someone above, that you should approach this like a "Saturday morning cartoon"; it's just a fun adventure for 10 year olds. But we adults can enjoy it too!
Yesterday I got to the first lighthouse, and so far I noticed that the games are faster than I thought and also a bit easier, but maybe that's because now I'm an experienced player. About the long dialogues: I love them! I'm not a fan of visual novels mind you, but in a 16-bit console graphics will only get you so far, you also need dialogue to flesh out the world and the characters. I agree with someone above, that you should approach this like a "Saturday morning cartoon"; it's just a fun adventure for 10 year olds. But we adults can enjoy it too!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Learn to embrace casting aoe spells in most battles. The spell still goes off as long as any of the targets are alive, even if the main target dies.
Aether
Tingle
The reviving aspect gets way easier (but never is on the FF spam phoenix downs level).
In the beginning it's annoying, but later I liked it as a strategic aspect with djins and classes.
The defending instead of attacking is something I'm mixed. I get why it's annoying if you miss a turn in a boss battle because of that, but I also like it because I had to mentally keep track of what damage I do, what the normal enemy can take, and how to set up my attacks (including multi attack) to optimize the damage dealt.
I never got the problem with random battles personally.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Made it to the first lighthouse and finally got the full party. I still find very good how quick combat is, and back in the day I missed some summones (partly because I didn't understood very well the djinn system) and even the basic ones are really cool.
I am trying a more varied class party now since I originally thought that each member having their own djinn class was like best set uo, but looking at some faqs, some of the advanced class have really nice stats upgrades
I am trying a more varied class party now since I originally thought that each member having their own djinn class was like best set uo, but looking at some faqs, some of the advanced class have really nice stats upgrades
For encouraging piracy you have been banned for five days. -xghost777, meatbag, VolcanicDynamo
lmao imagine paying double the price for online just to rent a bunch of roms that a 10 year old smartphone can emulate.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Lmao imagine having an income that people can spend money on whatever they want to without people judging. Especially when they want the convenience of playing on their preferred console.
(also by the way, most of us are on a family plan, and only pay around $10 for the entire year, and get additional DLC and online on the cheap)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Spent more time than expected in Tolbi since you can use the rewind feature to get most of the prizes in the minigames very easily. There were items I never knew they existed in my first gameplay
Also the 4 djinn summons are really cool, the scale of judgment in particular always get me
Also the 4 djinn summons are really cool, the scale of judgment in particular always get me
- Pronouns
- Him
As a Nintendo fanatic since day 1 i never played this game. I was always obsessed with Shining Force 2 HOWEVER, this weekend, Omg. I have no words, the story line is beautiful and i am currently ready to go through the desert! WHAT A GAME!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I also like each dungeon has it's own thing, so it's never just going through corridors. Exploring the dessert while having to search for oasis to cool down could have been something of a chore, but it's really quick
- Pronouns
- Him
I cant believe there is shining force fans! haha
kvetcha
hoopy frood
- Pronouns
- he/him
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Funny thing I've only played Shining in the Darkness, never played any of the other shining games
Yeah, having multipe element classes gives you more variety in attacks and magic and better stats, The thing is the way you are obtaining the djinns is usually balanced until the second part, so it kinda is natural for giving each one their corresponding element djinn
Sunshinemario
Moblin
- Pronouns
- He him
So i’d like to make a small rant post about this game
Just a disclaimer: I owned it as a young kid and was never able to get past the lighthouse, I sadly lost my cart a long time ago so wasn’t ever able to continue, so a lot of the content past that is new to me
Playing the game again, it’s really fun, I like the world building, the exceptional spritework, the combat (mostly), and the OST (bless Motoi Sakuraba, god damn)
Also love the characters. It reminds me of the Mario Golf game on GBA which I also owned and played obsessively as a kid.
But…
Recently, got to this one fight on the Tolbi ship called “Kraken” and suddenly this thing becomes the hardest fight in the game. I only had one water of life and for some reason Quartz does not work on reviving characters for this fight (who knows why).
So basically, this thing has extremely high agility that will practically guarentee it gets two hits before all four of your party gets to attack, and worst of all many of it’s attacks are multi-hit with almost none of them being Psynergy based (meaning blocking the Psynergy does almost nothing)
If one character is down and you have no W.O.L, you’re basically screwed, you arent winning.
So after getting frustrated by like 5 attempts to fight this thing (even after going back and lvling up my party to 20), I had to look up how to beat it (something I really dont like to do) I saw many people saying to use lvl 4 Djinni summons (which is insane because my highest is only lvl3 and I have only one of them)
But then; someone recommends to use Ivan’s sleep special, I was a little confused as I had tried this on previous bosses to no avail, so I assume it only worked on regular enemies…
And just like that, the hardest fight in the game becomes the easiest fight in the game. I remember getting to Tolbi and wanting to use the inn only to realize I had full HP on all of my characters. The thing can’t even attack you once because by the time it wakes up you’re already back to Ivan with enough PP to knock it back into sleep.
This is some pretty bad difficulty balancing. Unless there’s some sort of thing I missed it would’ve been really nice to know that this thing had a weakness to sleep. I think a remake could’ve fixed that (and other small issues with the game)
I really was having a lot of fun with this game , but this has essentially put off my motivation for playing it for now. A real shame. Hopefully I get back into it, when it’s good it’s really good.
Just a disclaimer: I owned it as a young kid and was never able to get past the lighthouse, I sadly lost my cart a long time ago so wasn’t ever able to continue, so a lot of the content past that is new to me
Playing the game again, it’s really fun, I like the world building, the exceptional spritework, the combat (mostly), and the OST (bless Motoi Sakuraba, god damn)
Also love the characters. It reminds me of the Mario Golf game on GBA which I also owned and played obsessively as a kid.
But…
Recently, got to this one fight on the Tolbi ship called “Kraken” and suddenly this thing becomes the hardest fight in the game. I only had one water of life and for some reason Quartz does not work on reviving characters for this fight (who knows why).
So basically, this thing has extremely high agility that will practically guarentee it gets two hits before all four of your party gets to attack, and worst of all many of it’s attacks are multi-hit with almost none of them being Psynergy based (meaning blocking the Psynergy does almost nothing)
If one character is down and you have no W.O.L, you’re basically screwed, you arent winning.
So after getting frustrated by like 5 attempts to fight this thing (even after going back and lvling up my party to 20), I had to look up how to beat it (something I really dont like to do) I saw many people saying to use lvl 4 Djinni summons (which is insane because my highest is only lvl3 and I have only one of them)
But then; someone recommends to use Ivan’s sleep special, I was a little confused as I had tried this on previous bosses to no avail, so I assume it only worked on regular enemies…
And just like that, the hardest fight in the game becomes the easiest fight in the game. I remember getting to Tolbi and wanting to use the inn only to realize I had full HP on all of my characters. The thing can’t even attack you once because by the time it wakes up you’re already back to Ivan with enough PP to knock it back into sleep.
This is some pretty bad difficulty balancing. Unless there’s some sort of thing I missed it would’ve been really nice to know that this thing had a weakness to sleep. I think a remake could’ve fixed that (and other small issues with the game)
I really was having a lot of fun with this game , but this has essentially put off my motivation for playing it for now. A real shame. Hopefully I get back into it, when it’s good it’s really good.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah the Kraken fight is a difficult one even with all the djinns you can have at that time (since even if you set them before, kraken 2 turns can kill anyone). With that said most of the status effects works with most bosses and a lot of the difficult fights became a walk if you seal their magic, put them to sleep or use haze to lower their accuracy and later on poison becomes the best way to kill enemies. IIRC in GS1 there is no really immunity to status effects besides the final boss, it's just a check against luck
I'm having the opposite effect where they are not as good as I remember. The endless poorly written dialogue, random battle after random battle while you're trying to figure out puzzle solutions, no real direction on where you should be going, characters autoing to 'defending' if they were queued to attack an enemy that gets defeated first... I played about 3 hours or so and I think I'm done, the rest can stay as a game I enjoyed in my memory.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Finally finished the firts one at 20 hours. It still holds very well, with the battle system being the star here. Once you have a decent amount of djins you can play more into classes and you have more options. It's also very quick combat wise, which makes sense considering at the time they knew they had to consider the battery life. I know people says it's chatty but honestly no converstion last more than 5 minutes (which is a breeze considering actual rpgs) and even if its a saturdau morning cartoon plot, the last fight stills pump me up (plus the magic attacks of the final boss are crazy lol). It also surprised me because the first time I didn't even knew there was a secret dungeon/boss and found new weapons and armors.
Gonna start the second one once I finish Prince of Persia, but overall I'm really glad they bring it to NSO and that more people has the chance to experience it
Also me writing the password because I forgot you could take screenshots:
Gonna start the second one once I finish Prince of Persia, but overall I'm really glad they bring it to NSO and that more people has the chance to experience it
Also me writing the password because I forgot you could take screenshots:
Aether
Tingle
Yeah that was a hard one, but no, status spells work on bosses, and quartz had always a chance to not work, maybe you had bad luck. By that time I hab enough skins for lvl4 summons, but kept then more aktive for the status boot and skills. That's probably the outlier in regards to difficulty.
The game in my opinion the game holds up well. Feels like it's easier to mash through the dialogue then with some modern RPGs.
Battles are super fast.
The no direction to me feels like with old Zelda titles: talking to NPC's and looking where you still haven't been is 98% of the time the solution.
tlA has some moment where the options get overwhelming and keeping track what's still open is hard, but that's the teritory with an open world.
Linkstrikesback
Starman
- Pronouns
- He
Spent more time than expected in Tolbi since you can use the rewind feature to get most of the prizes in the minigames very easily. There were items I never knew they existed in my first gameplay
Also the 4 djinn summons are really cool, the scale of judgment in particular always get me
Judgement is particularly hilarious when you take the first game in to context where a handful of boulders falling from a mountain is treated as a unequivocal disaster the likes of which Vale took years to recover from.
Aether
Tingle
Yeah, the summons make 0 in game sense, they are just fancy because FF summons existed. Heck, this is nothing to some end boss attacks and summons in the second one...
MrGab
Boo
I'm in Venus Lighthouse, and I don't know if make a mistake or something, but my party is constantly wiped in battles, especially when there are 4 or more monsters, Djinin of Issac not always revive a fallen member, then you have to summon, wait to recover and use again...to not revive again, by this time my party is already wiped. Then, I walk back in lighthouse, and have to redo all puzzles again...this is not fun. Game started great, but things went downhill in this lighthouse. Also, I somehow missed a psynergy to use in plants.
Aether
Tingle
By that point you should have revive magic that always works.
It is learned at 2 levels (depending on class):
Revive
Revive is a Venus-based Support Psynergy that is used to "Revive a downed ally" to full health. Revive is a Venus-based single-target support Psynergy. Visually, revive displays several golden feathers falling from the sky onto the target. In Golden Sun and The Lost Age, a beam of light comes up...
Oh, and the small green plants: it's called growth, if Isaac has fire skins or garnet has Venus skins you get that (since the beginning effektively)
Last edited:
Linkstrikesback
Starman
- Pronouns
- He
"Growth" the psyenergy for plants isn't missable, but it's not intuitive. You have to, iirc equip a fire djinn on a earth adept or vice versa.
If you're at the Venus lighthouse, you probably don't want to be using quartz to attempt revives at all- if Isaac has 4 or more earth djinn then he should outright have a psyenergy just called "revive" that works 100% of the time.
Aether
Tingle
Others can have it to with the right djinns.
Linkstrikesback
Starman
- Pronouns
- He
You shouldn't have needed to grind at all to get revive. You literally get it at level 17 on Isaac when most will finish the game without level grinding from 25-30. Are you sure you have been using the djinn system properly? It affects the spells you have access to.
MrGab
Boo
I went back, got some djinns, and changed djinns between party members.
Sirhc
Heir to the Poyo
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Just defeated Deadbeard after finishing the game (used save state before the point of no return). I'll probably redo the final boss and ending with this save state, I heard there's some new dialogue in Lost Age if you defeated Deadbeard.
Such a great game, hopefully Nintendo will return to this franchise.
Such a great game, hopefully Nintendo will return to this franchise.
ziggyrivers
thunder
- Pronouns
- He/him/his
Oh! That's the optional boss from Crossbones island! I just had a flashback xD
Aether
Tingle
Sounds like you didn't explore much.
I ran from a third of my encounters and reached level 17/19 right before the second desert.
To be fair, it is possible to get far with low level and good strategy.
The second one has imo the better dungeons. Some are a little to long, but some really great.
The second game is way more open compared to the first one, especially later it's almost like lttps second half in that there are many options where to go.
If you're lost, no shame to look up a walkthrough for a hint. (but it's not as obtuse as to not find a way).
MrGab
Boo
Where is located this optional boss? Also, in first game you can not return in earliest places after land in Gondowan?
UnassumingLocalGuy
Tektite
You get to Crossbone Isle and the bonus boss through a unique-looking tornado near the end of Suhalla Desert (although there is a neat little easter egg where you can get there early by picking a certain set of passengers to row during the ship crossing).
You actually can get back to the earlier areas after going to Gondowan too, through Gondowan Cave between Tolbi and Suhalla. There’s even a substantial side quest in Lunpa that you can only do after getting the Cloak Ball in Tolbi.
MrGab
Boo
Oh, I think saw this tornado!
Finally got a ship, and now there are many places to go, I just don't know where to go, guess I will take time to explore now. This game is better than first game, I don't know if fans think of this too. Curious about Dark Dawn now. To GS fans: what went wrong with DD? Just a case of a good game, but more the same? Or the game is really not that good?
UnassumingLocalGuy
Tektite
Yeah, while I don’t know for sure what the general consensus is, at least personally I think Lost Age is a major step up from the first game, with its more complex dungeons, more open-ended exploration, and larger world with more Djinn and summons to find and experiment with. It helps that it wraps up the story rather than ending on a cliffhanger too.
You are at the most open-ended part of the game, so don’t be shy about looking things up if at any point you feel totally lost about what to do next. There’s enough clues there to figure out what to do as long as you make sure to explore every new area available to you, but it’s easy to get a little overwhelmed during this section.
As for Dark Dawn, I don’t consider it a bad game so much as a very disappointingly unremarkable one. If you enjoy the gameplay in the first two games, you’ll most likely still have some fun with Dark Dawn, and I think it picks up and gets more interesting as the game goes on. My main issues with it are:
*Gameplay-wise, it feels like a step backward. The same elements are all still there, but the difficulty is completely trivial, it’s a more linear experience than either of the previous games with multiple points of no return, and it’s significantly smaller in scope than The Lost Age.
*While this didn’t bother me too much, I think it’s fair to say that the simplistic 3D graphics on the DS aren’t quite as charming or timeless as the original’s visuals.
*That said, I think the story is the biggest sticking point for fans. While it may not be the strongest aspect of the originals, I think they manage to tell a solid, effective little story with some pretty good world-building, and they also leave a few threads open by the end that would have been ripe storytelling opportunities for a continuation. Dark Dawn doesn’t deliver on any of that, spending half the game on a completely inconsequential fetch quest with minimal stakes, while making conversations even more pointlessly long-winded, and then ending with another cliffhanger. There are a handful of neat connections to the previous games, but overall instead of paying off fans’ expectations for a follow-up, it ends up feeling like one big setup for yet another sequel that will never happen.
MrGab
Boo
So, finished Jupiter lighthouse, and now starting magma rock. This game is definitely better than first, easily my favorite from series so far, now I understand GS fans wishing a new game. There are some issues, like the game not tell clearly where to go after you got the ship, so I just explored almost every corner of map. Other thing annoying is to open menu to set or unset djinns to activate certain psynergy needed for puzzles and obstacles, a QOL change on this could be so good. But in general it's a great game, hope Camelot make a new one for Switch 2, although I'm not sure if actual Camelot could make a quality RPG with a size and scope of a Xenoblade or Dragon Quest.
