Are you INSANE!? Or maybe you think you're funny? Let's Play Golden Sun 2!

Episode 2: Meditation Gives You Wings

Welcome back! Last time, we left off with a tidal wave crashing over the floating peninsula of Idejima.



Everyone's in one piece, at least. RIOT wakes up first.



I've already skipped a few, but here, you can see another "feature" of the Golden Sun series: inconsequential Yes/No prompts. Except for one scene later in the game, they have absolutely no bearing on anything. Though I always pick Yes here, because what follows is probably my favorite scene

Doing so, RIOT waves his right arm, then his left arm.



Afterward, he shakes his legs.



Remember, kids: If you ever get washed away by a tidal wave, self-diagnosis consists of making sure all of your limbs are still attached to your body.

In any case, now we have to examine everyone to wake them up. Of course, this involves textboxes. First BOSS (7), then FOSIL (14), and then WUSS (23).



Of course, not content with just that, there's another cutscene as you try to leave!



This scene: 43. Total: 66.

So, I realize I should probably at least give actual summaries for those of you who don't know the plot. In short: Alex disappeared, the other two lighthouses that need to be lit are in the Western Sea, and WUSS is coming with us because we'd be screwed seven ways from Wednesday without her.

With that finally over, we now reach the World Map. Pressing R lets us see where we are in relation to everywhere else. We can move the cursor around as we wish, and points of interest will pop up as we find them.


For the curious, the Venus Lighthouse is almost directly north of us.

A short trip south and we find our first town, Daila!



I'm not going to be including NPC dialogue in the textbox count, so remember that if you play along, expect more textboxes than what I've counted.

And of course, it wouldn't be a Golden Sun game without extra textboxes. As was hinted at in the last cutscene, WUSS can read minds, using the Mind Read psynergy. With this, Camelot was able to squeeze even more textboxes into every single NPC in the game!


And you thought reading minds was a useful power.

This town also introduces you to one of Camelot's absolute favorite things: hidden items in towns. Sure, most RPGs will hide items in various pots and crates and whatnot in their towns, but never to the extent that you see in Golden Sun. In Daila alone, there are five hidden things you can find. This is probably on the lower end of the average. The other question you may have is if it's worth finding everything. Well...


There's penny-pinchers, and then there's these guys.

This reminds me to check my starting inventories. You see, in the Golden Sun games, each character in your party (sans FOSIL) can carry up to 15 different items. Consumables can be stacked up to 30 in one slot, though. Right now, since we have three characters, our inventory size is 45 44.



See this thing? This is a plot MacGuffin. Golden Sun does not have a "Key Items" inventory, so everything gets stuffed in your limited inventory space. And you can never remove them until the MacGuffin in question gets used.

Inventory MacGuffins: 1.

After equipping the party as well as I can at the pathetic equipment store in town, it's off southward again! Hopefully we can get somewhere without a cutsc--



Crud.

What you see there is a Djinni. A Venus Djinni, to be exact. This is also the wordiest Djinni in the game (82). Thankfully, you can skip the Djinn tutorial in this game. If you were playing Golden Sun, you can't skip it.



After the Djinni finishes talking, it joins us. Each element has its own "joined the party" animation. Venus Djinn boast the loudest. (I'm serious. If you're playing this on a Game Boy Player and your TV isn't muted, then congratulations, you just woke up every single living thing in the building.)

With a Djinni, we can now start fiddling with classes. I'll get more into classes later, but the simplest explanation is that they affect your stats and what psynergy you can use.

Most people, at this point, will give the Venus Djinni to the Venus Adept, RIOT. However, there is a better option.



Giving WUSS a Venus Djinni changes her class from Wind Seer to Seer, which has the imporant effect of giving her the Cure psynergy. This lets RIOT focus on bashing things with his sword. Also, even with that Agility penalty, she's still faster than RIOT, which is always a good thing for a healbot.

Getting the Venus Djinni also opens up random encounters on the world map. These are as easy as you'd expect and this is probably the last time I'll ever mention them. The most important thing to note is that, now that RIOT is in the party, the battle music changes to the Golden Sun Book Two battle theme. Get used to hearing it, because until the last 20% of the game, we're stuck with it.

A little map exploration and we stumble upon Kandorean Temple, the first actual dungeon in the game.



The front door is locked because apparently they're currently in a "period of meditation" and can't be disturbed. But come on, we're Adepts! Masters of Alchemy! We don't need doors.



And sure enough, going around the left side reveals a cave covered by leaves. FOSIL takes this moment to introduce interactable scenery, somehow managing to use only one textbox! (83)

The answer here is to use WUSS's Whirlwind psynergy to blow away the leaves, but we lost that psynergy when we changed her class. What do we do?

If you answered "remove the Djinni", then congratulations, you've solved - by yourself - a problem that has apparently resulted in three questions on the GameFAQs answer board! In other words, 'y cant shiva whirl wind'.

A quick casting (and resulting FOSIL textbox (84)) and we're free to enter. A mostly-featureless cave leads to the well inside the temple, which conveniently has a rope for us to climb to get out.

As we enter the temple, a cutscene.



This scene: 14. Total: 98.

The three monks on ground level take turns meditating and levitating. The one in the middle is borderline good enough to attempt some sort of trial, which is dangerous.

Of course, we scoff at danger, so in we go behind him!

Walking forward, we immediately find a chest.



Of course. In Golden Sun, Mimics are mini-bosses in their own right. Not that that actually means anything, as this one dies in two turns without doing anything. It drops a Game Ticket, which we won't be able to use for another ten thousand textboxes or so. Until then, it eats up another inventory slot! Though we can sell this, at least.

SHIT WON'T STAND.

In the next room, there are some pillars we can hop on. Going to the right, we see a Mercury Djinni!



Unfortunately, it's blocked off and we can't reach it. We'll come back later. For now, we head back the other way.



That monk we followed inside got wrecked by the random encounters. Seriously, did he think he could just fly through the place or something? Anyway, we navigate the pillars here twice, first weaving through on the ground, then hopping across the tops of them to reach the next room.



Here, the rushing water will push us downward if we stand in it. Walking will allow you to just barely make headway, while running is a good bit faster. Y'know, if you weren't holding B down all the time for some reason.



In the next room, there are two platforms being raised by the rushing water. They aren't always rushing, so sometimes the platforms will fall. If you place a log on one platform, the other will be pushed higher, to the room above.



Riding the lower one up this way brings us to a Mysterious Card, which I'll talk more about later. The other platform lets us progress onward.



In this room, we have tightropes, which do nothing except slow down your movement speed. There is no reason why this couldn't be solid ground. Meanwhile, BOSS levels up and learns the Flare Wall psynergy, which is a stronger version of the Flare psynergy she already knew.



We find ourselves back in the room with the Mercury Djinni, yet there's still nothing we can do to get up there. If we could tie the rope here to that stake or whatever it is, maybe, but that would require us to already be at the stake.



In this final room, there's a boiling pot here that we can't move with our hands because it's too hot. Fortunately, the magic hand of RIOT's Move psynergy doesn't feel heat, and can push it aside just fine. You should heal up before going too much farther, because we're about to fight our first boss!



These Chestbeaters here are weak to Fire, but strong against Wind. Yet another reason why WUSS is better served as a healer.

They aren't particularly strong, but they can heal each other with Herbs if any of them has low health, so it's best to focus on one at a time. They only have 150 HP each or so, so it's not long before they dissolve.


Just like that.

RIOT and WUSS level up, learning Spire and Flash Bolt, respectively. Stairs appear behind the boss leading out of the dungeon, and if you have any kind of RPG senses at all, you know that a cutscene's coming up.



It's also so pointless, it can be summed up in one picture. This scene: 38. Total: 136.

And the dirty secret is that picture isn't even part of the cutscene. There's a small gap in two parts of the cutscene where you can talk to Master Poi like an NPC. That's what he tells you.

Anyway, since we passed the trials of the cave, we have the right to learn the secret power of Kandorean Temple, Lash. It lets you tie ropes at a distance.

This cutscene also has one more thing of note. Outside of RIOT's, BOSS's, and FOSIL's hometown of Vale, no one knows what the heck Psynergy is. The monks here believe Lash is a sort of "spiritual power". This is a running theme with people who have psynergy and call it something else.

Not-Psynergy Psynergy: 1.

Anyway, the jewel on that stand, the Lash Pebble, is what actually teaches Lash. As long as it's equipped, the person with it can use Lash. It can never be removed from your inventory at all.

Inventory MacGuffins: 2.

I give it to WUSS since she has the most PP. And now that we have Lash, there's one more thing we can do here.


The first screenshot of the Psynergy Hand in action!

We can get this Mercury Djinni that's been taunting us all dungeon. It doesn't exactly like us, though...



...and it tries to fight us! Some Djinn will battle you before they join you. They have a high tendency to flee, which requires you to leave the room and come back for them to respawn.

Anyway, this one, being Mercury, is weak to fire, so a couple of casts of Fume (plus whatever the hell RIOT and WUSS think they're doing) makes this one ours.



None of our characters are Mercury Adepts, though, so there's no easy choice on who to give him to. RIOT and BOSS can use him to get Cure Poison, in the off chance that we run out of the fifty trillion Antidotes the game will dump on us. BOSS can also get Guard, which boosts someone's defense. However, both of them lose whatever other psynergy they have, so they end up with net negatives. WUSS is probably the best choice again, since she gets Impact, but there's a problem with that. Thanks to the way Djinn are arranged, you're not allowed to "unbalance" them. I can't stick both the Venus and Mercury Djinn on the same person right now, because then they'd have 2 while the other characters have 0.

For now, I'm going to leave the Mercury Djinni on "standby" with RIOT, which means it's not contributing to the equipped character's stats and class in exchange for being able to summon with it, which I'll explain later.

There's nothing left to do here, so we can leave the temple now. Since the period of meditation is over, the front door is open, so we don't have to escape through the well.

And with that, this update draws to a close. Next time, we'll...actually, we won't do anything of note. Welcome to Golden Sun!

Noted and amended.

Jenna


BEATNAME: BOSS
Class: Flame User
Psynergy: Mars (fire)
Weapons: Staffs, ankhs, and light blades
Advantages: Playable early on in both games, takes no guff, has her own theme
Drawbacks: Has terrible taste in men, gets kicked out of leading roles easily

Jenna BOSS is one of the four characters native to Vale, mentioned in Kraden FOSIL's post. During her youth, Saturos and Menardi attempted to break into Sol Sanctum to claim the Elemental Stars within it. This not only failed to work as intended, but triggered a storm and landslide that caused the death of her entire family, as well as Isaac ANIME's dad.

Three years later, she fails to learn a damn thing when Saturos and Menardi show up again to raid the Sanctum, and follows FOSIL into Sol Sanctum again to try to stop them. While they do discover the Elemental Stars, BOSS and FOSIL both manage to get captured by Saturos and Menardi, but on the upside, she discovers her brother Felix RIOT didn't get killed by the boulder at all, even though it was the size of his HOUSE and landed RIGHT ON TOP OF HIM.

In Lost Age, BOSS accompanies RIOT on his quest to continue lighting the lighthouses as their captors did. Since this is in direct conflict with ANIME and co. trying to prevent that from happening, and she kind of Likes ANIME maybe I dunno? she isn't too keen on fighting with them. This doesn't get conveyed really anywhere in the mountains of text the game offers.

If nothing else, she's a pretty badass fighter. Her default Flame User class handles like a Red Mage, combining powerful offensive and healing Psynergy with decent physical stats, but being a Mars Adept, she has access to many of the same classes as Garet WEABU, who is as Stupid Facesmash Meatshield as you can get. BOSS has zero compunctions about Planet Diving some sucker clean off of a cliff.

Look, I know this is official art because I've seen it in the game's strategy guide, but really, this is worse than Amano art.



This is BOSS. That is not BOSS.

Now seems to be a good time to talk about how battles play out.

Supplementary Update #1: Battles

When a battle begins, you've got the whole screen-flash thing like you're used to in RPGs.



The enemies are introduced one-by-one, and first strikes/ambushes are announced at this time.

When a new turn rolls up, you're in the Turn Menu.



To the left, the Fight option brings up the Character Command menus. We'll get to those later.
In the center is the Flee option. Selecting this lets you try to escape the battle. You know how this works. Succeed, battle's over. Fail, eat a fistful of enemy actions.
And to the right, you've got Status. If you have to know your character's stats in the middle of a battle, this is where you go.


This is what the status screens look like.

Now, you can play the whole game ignoring the Flee and Status options. Fight is where most of your battling will happen. Let's look at the menu that pops up here.




Attack lets you attack an enemy. Duh.
Psynergy lets you select a psynergy to cast. Duh.
Djinn lets you select a Djinni to use/set and the stat/class changes that will occur if you do so. More on this in a bit.
Summon lets you use standby Djinn to summon elementals. More on this in a bit.
Item lets you use one of that character's (and only that character's) items. Unusable items will be in yellow.
And Defend reduces damage you take. Duh.

Anyway, on to the first somewhat-unique option, Djinn.



Since RIOT only has Fog, that's the only Djinni that pops up. It's currently in standby, as you can see because the name's in red. Using Fog right now would set it, applying its stat changes to RIOT and possibly changing his class (it would, as we see here). Fog's "description" is useless since all it says is that it's ready to summon.



Over here, WUSS has a set Djinni, as you can see because its name is white. Using Echo here would function as a special attack and would put the Djinni on standby, removing its stat changes and also possibly changing class.

(For what it's worth, BOSS's Djinn menu is a blank box.)



Here in the Summon menu, we have a list of all available summons, as well as their Djinn costs. Since we have one Mercury Djinni on standby, we are able to summon Mercury, which would inflict a small bit of water damage on all foes. If we had that Venus Djinni on standby, we could summon Venus that does the same thing, except earth damage. Summoning an elemental will raise your Elemental Power for that element, which affects the strength of Psynergy of that element, for the remainder of battle. Any character can summon, even if they don't have Djinn on standby.

Then, after all commands are said and done, the turn plays out. Characters with the highest Agility go first, ties being resolved randomly. If you choose to attack an enemy and that enemy dies before the character's turn comes up, they will switch to defending instead of targeting a different enemy.

One more thing. You can see that you've got all these elements to use, but how do you know which you should use? Enemies don't just straight-up tell you what they're weak to...except they do. Pay attention to the battle messages in these screenshots.



Note how each of the damage numbers has different punctuation. When the damage ends with !!!, that element hit a weak point. When it ends with !, that was neutrally effective (either by an element the enemy doesn't react to, or by non-elemental attacks). And when it ends in ., that's your sign that you should switch to something else.

I'll be getting into the technicalities of all the numbers in a later supplementary update, but for now, this is the end of the battle tutorial. Would you like to hear it again?

>
>

Alright then! See you next time!

(For the record, if the games had battle tutorials, they'd have twice as many words while saying half as much.)

PREVIEW OF NEXT UPDATE:

Episode 3: RIOT SMASH!!!

Last time, we were just leaving Kandorean Temple, having obtained the secret of Lash. We're kind of banged up at this point, and our next stop has us pass by Daila anyway, so we rest at the inn there. Inns in Golden Sun will charge per-living-head, so if you have someone dead, you save money by resting at the inn first, then going to a sanctuary to revive someone. Here, things are cheap at 2 coins a person, though, so it really doesn't matter.

Our actual destination is east of Daila: the Shrine of the Sea God. Here, we find two kids.



This scene: 7.

Kid on left got carried to the far side by the wave and can't get back (except he totally can). One quick Lashing later...



This scene: 26. Total: 33.

Critter, you say? Why don't we go take a look?



Yup, as expected, it's a Djinni! Jupiter this time. That walkway looks a bit unstable, though...



And it falls under our feet. dang it RIOT why are you fat

Of course, we can just climb the ladder there. But the Djinni notices us and flies off. We end up having to chase it through several rooms, though we can see footsteps at some points to see which way it went. I'd show pictures, but there's literally nothing interesting in this cave.



Here, though, we've basically got it caught. Push the torch thing up so it blocks the path, and the Djinni can't run anywhere. Of course, it still doesn't like us.



As a Jupiter elemental, it's pretty weak to RIOT's Spire psynergy. Though BOSS's Fume psynergy is also strong on its own merits, so it gets some use here, too. And fortunately for us, WUSS's Venus Djinni gives her the earth element Growth psynergy, so she can actually do something in this battle. ...Not much, but something.

The Djinni's pretty strong, but it only gets one attack off.



Like Fog, Breath here isn't very useful for either RIOT or BOSS. Both get the Delude psynergy (read: Blind), while RIOT gets Gaia, which is a knock-off of psynergy he already has, and BOSS gets Ward, which buffs defense. None of these are worth giving up the psynergy they have already, so I keep it on standby.

Of course, with one Jupiter Djinni, we also get the Jupiter summon, if summoning was ever a good idea (it isn't).



Over on the other side of the room, we can see the cave going further inward, but there's no way to get over there. With nothing left to do, we leave the shrine and go back to Daila.

Now that the kids are back, Daila looks a bit less waterlogged. We also find an old friend (and a cutscene).



This scene: 18. Total: 51.

Alex hates everyone so he runs off. Fine with me, the less people that yammer on, the better.

For what it's worth, if you already know where to go, this scene is optional, but I wouldn't dream of depriving you lovely readers of this insightful dialogue. Anyway, to Madra it is!

The other east path from Daila leads to the Dehkan Plateau. For those interested in geography:



We're standing at the plateau, the yellow dot north of us is the Temple, north of that is Daila, the blue dot east of Daila is the Shrine, and that red X at the base of the cursor is approximately where Madra is (not that you should know that yet).

Anyway, Dehkan Plateau. This is where Golden Sun 2 takes off the kid gloves. Not for battles, no (those never come off), but for puzzles. To start off:



The slightly-cracked panels you see will turn into heavily-cracked panels if you step on them. And if you step on one of those, you'll fall through the ground. Of course, a quick look at this tells you you can't actually make it across without falling, so down we go! You can come out through that cave opening you see (aside: BOSS learns the Beam psynergy from a level up), which leads to a Full Metal Vest, which gives a poopload of defense and everyone in the party can equip it.

Back in the cave, there's another exit that comes out on the other side of the cracked panels. From there, we go to the next screen.



These pillars work just like the slightly-cracked panels from before. One hop damages them, a second hop breaks them. Then we have another cracked panel setup that's impossible to get through normally.



However, falling on this last panel here drops you down near a chest with a Mint, so it's worth it to get to the far side. Going through the cave leads...back to the same place?

Indeed, because there actually is a way past the cracked panels without falling!



This hole is already completely broken, which means that you can jump over it. I hope you didn't forget you could do that!

On the next screen, there are more crackable pillars.



Notably, that chest can't be reached without destroying the pillar in front of RIOT here, but doing so makes you unable to actually proceed unless you leave the screen and come back to reset the pillars. Is it worth it?



Hell yes.

Themis' Axe here is the first Psynergy Weapon you can find. What's a Psynergy Weapon? Well, for the most part, it's like a normal weapon, except...


Cue episode title.

...they can "Unleash" special effects. Think of them like a kind of critical hit, except with a base 35% activation rate. Stone Justice here adds 11 base attack and has a chance of halving the target's Agility. Quite useful. It's also, as you might guess, earth elemental, which means it's best in RIOT's hands (not that the girls can equip axes anyway).

(Note: Even without unleashes, any weapon can get a critical hit. It only multiplies damage by 1.25, though, so don't expect big numbers.)

Anyway, a screen refresh and some pillar hopping later, we reach a new screen. And over to the left, we see a Mars Djinni!



However, the path dead-ends here, so where do you go? Well, I passed some slightly-cracked panels on the way here, so the only way forward is down!



And it leads straight to the Mars Djinni! Of course, since nothing can be easy, it runs and falls down a cracked panel when it sees us. We take another and follow it to a new screen.

Following it across a rickety bridge, it uses a new psynergy to Pound down a pillar and pass by, leaving nothing but heavily-cracked panels behind it. We can't follow this way, so we go back across the bridge to find another route, finding a Nut along the way.

On the next screen, the Djinni exploits cracked pillars to prevent us from following it normally. Fortunately, after a puzzle, there's another way around to the underground caves where the Djinni went.



There's a clear path to the Djinni, or so it looks. Stepping on the square in front of it will cause it to Pound us down below. We'll have to get around it. Fortunately, that's not too hard to do. Back on the surface, we fall down a cracked panel and land directly on the Djinni, knocking some sort of block out of it? It runs off, but we get the block, which is actually the Pound Cube!



Plot MacGuffins: 1.

In the next room, we've caught the Djinni.



If we went straight for the Djinni, it'd hop over to the right and we couldn't follow because the second pillar would break. However, if we Pound the first pillar down before moving toward the Djinni, it can't escape, leaving us to subdue the Djinni.



Water psynergy would be the best against it, but we don't have any of that, so we just have to stick with our strongest attacks, which means RIOT swings his axe like always, BOSS uses Fume (even though it's resistant, it's still better than all of BOSS's other options), and WUSS uses Flash Bolt or heals.



The important thing here is that this is our fourth Djinn, meaning someone can hold two! Giving Cannon to WUSS would get rid of basically all of her battle psynergy and replace it with Slash, a pretty weak wind psynergy, so that's out. The other two, however, won't change her class, so she can get a straight boost out of those. RIOT would lose all of his earth psynergy by setting Cannon, and since he's the only source of that right now, that's off the table. BOSS, being a Fire Adept, only gets a stat boost from Cannon, but that's better than nothing.

Also, I go look up psynergy base powers, and it turns out that the Gaia psynergy I dismissed earlier is actually stronger than anything RIOT's got right now, so I give him Breath and set it.

Right now, our loadout looks like this:



This also has the effect of making RIOT go first, though I can't combine this speed with the Cure psynergy he knows from his base class, so WUSS is still our healer.

Anyway, after that, it's just a quick mostly-linear trek to the end of Dehkan Plateau. And right as we leave, we see a familiar boat! Hah, bet you thought we'd get through this without any cutscenes, did you? This, my friends, is Golden Sun. The cutscenes are always watching.



This scene: 6. Total: 57.

It was mentioned before that Saturos and Menardi used an orb of some sort to sail their ship. Without said orb, this might as well be a junkyard.

Almost done for today, guys. Still got two things to show off. No cutscenes though, so that's good.

Anyway, west from the boat, you'll pass right by a cave. Impossible to miss.



A really simple puzzle and we can examine that tablet thing.



The glyphs are shimmering in the first image, which is why they look funny.

Anyway, what's this about? We have just learned the first of the glyph summons, Zagan. Unlike the elemental summons, these do not automatically get unlocked as we meet the summon requirements. We have to find glyphs scattered around the world. They also differ from elemental summons in that they require standby Djinn of multiple elements. Zagan here requires a Venus Djinni and a Mars Djinni on standby to be summoned. He's earth elemental and will reduce the defense of his targets.

Our other point of interest is this unremarkable forest right next to Madra, our destination.



What's so special about this forest? Well...



It's hiding a Venus Djinni! There are six Djinn that are hiding on the world map like this, where you have to be in the right place and just start running around for random encounters. Luckily, they're pretty common, like "90+% encounter rate" common. Like other Djinn, they will sometimes flee, but you don't even have to leave the world map to re-encounter it.



Anyway, this guy gets wrecked, as expected. By far, the best choice to take Iron here is WUSS, who upgrades from a Seer to a Diviner with a second Earth Djinni. She gets no new psynergy, but all of her stats get a sizable boost, worth at least two levels. Fog screws up everyone else's psynergy, so he gets put on standby.

Anyway, next time, we find some lame nerd and explore dank, dark catacombs!

I'm sorry my image wasn't up to par. Hopefully the image from this character post will be more fitting. For real though if you want me to use official artwork I can do that.

Felix


BEATNAME: RIOT
Class: Squire
Psynergy: Venus (earth)
Weapons: Heavy blades, axes, light blades, maces
Advantages: Can perform the Chaos Dunk, strong but silent type
Drawbacks: Suffers from Stockholm Syndrome, Raiden Syndrome, and Crono Syndrome

Felix RIOT, as you may recall from the post on Jenna BOSS, was almost killed by the boulder falling from Mt. Aleph during the raid by Saturos and Menardi. However, he was merely left inches from death, and the pair saved him and brought him with them to their homeland of Prox, far to the north. There, he was nursed back to health and given rudimentary training in combat, on one condition that won't be revealed here because spoilers of some kind. Three years later, he returns to Vale in disguise. He joins Saturos and Menardi as they confront Isaac ANIME's group in the heart of Sol Sanctum. Only there does he shed his disguise, revealing his identity to prove to ANIME and co. that even though they're totally gonna capture BOSS and Kraden FOSIL and screw you, no harm will actually come to them.

Fast forward to the end of the first game. Not content with two and a half hostages, Saturos and Menardi go for a third, holding Sheba WUSS of Lalivero hostage in exchange for the Shaman's Rod, a plot thing that you will totally forget to use by the time it's actually remotely relevant. I think it's even in WUSS' inventory now. RIOT objects to using WUSS as a bargaining chip and nearly mutinies against Saturos and Menardi, but ANIME and co. pick this time to try to stop the lighting of the Venus Lighthouse. Long story short, they fail, RIOT vows to keep lighting the lighthouses even with Saturos and Menardi dead, and the lighthouse triggers an earthquake that sends WUSS into the ocean and RIOT diving right in after her because he DOES NOT FEAR DEATH.

After a thorough medical self-examination following this nosedive and also a tidal wave, RIOT, joined by WUSS, BOSS, and FOSIL, begins the second leg of the adventure without overpowered final bosses lording over him. As a Squire, he boasts impressive physical power and nearly-as-good defense, but he's on the slow side. His default Psynergy, with one very notable exception, is generally better used for healing than offense, as his default class is the easiest way to access the Revive Psynergy.

It started in RIOT's, but I gave it to WUSS immediately because it's the strongest weapon she has at the moment. As soon as she upgrades, it's going in the MacGuffin pile.

I've never played it but this game sounds truly outrageous.

Is there much to the spell or summon graphics? I'm interested in seeing them, assuming they're more than just colored flashes.

Oh, yes, I'd bet five bucks that a majority of the game's budget went toward the psynergy and summon animations.

I don't have a way to record them (or upload the resulting video), so I personally can't show them, but if someone can find a Youtube video, they're more than welcome to post it.

For what it's worth, there's nothing particularly spectacular at the moment due to low levels, except maybe Fume, which is a stream of fire shaped like a serpent dragon arcing from the caster to the target.

EDIT: You can also see a bit of the Themis' Axe's unleash animation up above. The attacker raises the axe, which causes bunches of rocks to start levitating, then he swings it, which sends the rocks flying. Basically, Toph from Last Airbender.

Sorry for the delay! Fourth of July screwed with my schedule a little.

---

Episode 4: I should have saved the Dryguy preview for this update.

Hello again! As we left off last time, we had just stumbled across Madra. Lightning-quick recap: We're looking for a ship to get to the Western Sea to get to the Jupiter and Mars Lighthouses so we can light them for ambiguous reasons.


Um, shouldn't there be a port...?

As we enter, we get stopped by two guards.



This scene: 9.

They thought we were some pirates called "Champa". My question is what would they have done if we were?

There are some guys with gladiator armor you can talk to. They're NPCs, but they're the first mention of ANIME since we began.


But didn't Colosso just end, like, a month ago?

Treasures in town include the Nurse's Cap, which is half-decent armor for the girls and can be used in-battle to heal someone.


I must say, this is a well-made stand!

Next, those guards had mentioned an underground passageway which the pirates used to get in. Let's check it out!


At least they had the courtesy to leave the graveyard untouched.

There are some random encounters down here, but nothing particularly bad. A bit of exploration leads to what looks like a ruined city. Looks like the pirates didn't have to dig as much of a tunnel as they planned. Inside one of the buildings down here, we find the Tremor Bit!



Inventory MacGuffins: 1.

In my professional opinion, screw the Tremor Bit. There are no clues that this item exists and that it's down here. It can be skipped for quite a while, only to become mandatory about six dungeons from now. And by that time, the passageway we took to get here has been blocked, meaning that you have to take the other, more complicated trail. Even then, there's basically no reason why the Quake psynergy that RIOT already knows can't do exactly what this does!

Why yes, I did miss this item the first time I played this game, why do you ask?

Anyway, there's nothing else down here (for now), so we go back up to the town proper. The Weapon shop doesn't have anything in its normal stock, but in the Artifacts section (read: Psynergy weapons), there's a Magic Rod which BOSS and WUSS can equip. I give it to WUSS, since I happen to know that BOSS is going to get another upgrade before the end of the update. As of now, that Shaman's Rod I just mentioned up above is now obsolete.

Inventory MacGuffins: 2.

The armor shop doesn't have any artifacts, but then, the normal armor is an upgrade for some of my characters anyway, since I didn't have the money to upgrade in Daila. Lemme take a bit to explain about equipment. A character can only equip one of a given equipment type (weapon, hands, head, body,...) at any given time, but there are like fifty Djinn-tillion equipment types. Okay there are actually seven, but still. Weapons, Body Armor, Arm Protection, Helmets, Rings, Undershirts, and Boots. Generally speaking, Rings and Undershirts are incredibly rare, and you'll never find an armor shop selling "standard" versions of them. There are, in fact, only four kinds of undershirts, and one can only be gotten through transfer data (I'll show that one off when we get there).

Anyway, I suppose I've wasted enough time. Basically the rest of this update is cutscenes, so grab some popcorn.

First off, to the prison! It seems they've got a guy they think is Champa scum, but he says he's not.



This scene: 23. Total: 32.

Looks like the prisoner is some blue-haired nerd. One of the guards' girlfriends got hurt during the Champa raid, so he's kind of angry and is trying to get NERD mad. When NERD freezes the puddle under his feet using psynergy, the guards freak out and run away. FOSIL wants to go talk to him.

He says nothing that's all that important, but of course, that's only one set of textboxes. One Mind Reading later...we still don't really learn anything except that he knows what Psynergy is and, as a fellow Adept, can feel us poking at his head.

Outside is another cutscene!



This scene: 17. Total: 49.

Here, we learn that the elder of the town is on NERD's side, that NERD has a weird boat, and that we're apparently going to Osenia now? This is the first I've heard of this. (For the geographically-inclined, Osenia is the next continent over.)

Anyway, there's nothing left here in Madra (most definitely not a boat, or even a port), so we might as well head on over to Osenia to see what kind of places there are.

Three textboxes as we cross the drawbridge to let us know we're OK'd to go. (52) At Osenia Cliffs, the joint between Indra and Osenia, we find the wreckage of a Champa ship. Our rope-tying and plank-hopping skills get us to a chest with a Pirate's Sword. This Psynergy weapon is that upgrade for BOSS that I mentioned earlier. Actually, it would even be an upgrade for RIOT, but then that would leave no one able to equip the Themis' Axe, and BOSS would be stuck with a mundane weapon.

Anyway, that's the end of this update! It's been kind of short, but the next areas we can get to are full updates in themselves, so I'll save them for another time!

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Viewer Participation Time!

In Madra, the NPCs there mentioned two places of note in Osenia, and we can go to both of them! However, which shall we go to first? Will it be...

...Alhafra, beyond the Yampi Desert, which is a port town that Briggs, the captain of the Champa, was supposedly taking refuge in? Or will it be...

...Air's Rock, near the mysterious town of Garoh? Supposedly, the winds from Air's Rock can be felt from many miles away.

Voting ends in 24 hours!

Alhafra sounds distinctly plottish. Go to Air's Rock.

They both sound pretty plottish to me, but at least the mountain will feel like we're breaking sequence a little bit.

Air's Rock, because it sounds like a place for RIOT to learn AIR'S SHRED, and kick off the AIR'S SICK GUITAR SOLO skill tree.

I feel like the devs of the game wanted a slight branching path here, but I think going to Alhafra first makes slightly more sense flavor-wise, as you can talk to the people there about Air's Rock (absolutely related to Ayers Rock in Australia, Golden Sun loosely correlates its own map to the real world one). It's also built with higher-level encounters than the Air's Rock path, so the challenge should make things fun. To say nothing of the fact that Air's Rock is painful as hell regardless of level.

But enough about that, let's learn about...

Sheba


BEATNAME: WUSS
Class: Wind Seer
Psynergy: Jupiter (Wind)
Weapons: Staffs, ankhs, maces
Advantages: Has a sense of humor, impervious to falling damage, can read minds
Drawbacks: Holds the ingame record for Most Times Used As Human Plot Device

Sheba WUSS' childhood was something of a mystery, in that she doesn't recall being born or having parents, but instead fell from the sky into Lalivero as an infant. She was taken in by Faran, the mayor of Lalivero, and treated as his own daughter, which worked wonderfully until Lord Babi (you may recall this name from Kraden FOSIL's bio) wished to extend his influence to the small desert town. Taking WUSS as a political prisoner, he had the citizens build a massive lighthouse that overlooked the ocean, something of a silly idea given that Venus Lighthouse was not much more than a stone's throw away. In a half-assed defense of this, the lighthouses can't be scaled without a corresponding Adept.

WUSS' poor luck only got worse when, while being escorted by Babi's soldiers back to Lalivero, she was abducted by Saturos and Menardi. After all, they had Felix RIOT as a Venus Adept, Alex as a Mercury Adept (not that it mattered at this stage, as the Mercury Lighthouse was the first one lit), and were both Mars Adepts themselves, so they needed a Jupiter Adept eventually. I already discussed what all happened once they got to the top of the Venus Lighthouse in RIOT's bio, but to recap: WUSS got held hostage, RIOT got pissed off, Saturos and Menardi lit the lighthouse, then WUSS got tossed in the ocean with RIOT diving after her.

Her current motivation is a bit of a mystery, but the two clear elements are that she wants to learn more about her mysterious past, and she wants to help out RIOT because hey, RIOT is a kickass dude who apparently has her best interests at heart, so why not? Her default Wind Seer class is pretty much the opposite of RIOT's Squire class, making her the typical Bl.MAGE of the group with an array of offensive, debilitating, and defensive Psynergy. Of course, she suffers statwise for this, as her Agility is her only really useful stat. Also uh... there's no Intelligence score or anything, the effectiveness of your Psynergy offensive is determined by innate element, equipped Djinn, and how much PP you have to sling lightning everywhere (which she does have a lot of). But that's a gab for another day.

I'm Loving Kalir's Character Breakdowns. Keep it up man!

I have only one nitpick; You forgot to mention that Riot forgot how to talk between the two games.

He can totally talk! In the first update, I didn't show it, but he quite plainly said "???"

Alhafra because Kalir said so, I guess.

Actually, how about we make that gab today?

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Supplemental Update #2: The Damage Formula

As with all RPGs, Golden Sun has complex calculations involved in figuring out those little numbers that pop up at the bottom of the screen and dictate everything. Fortunately, this one is simple enough to break down. First off, the formula for physical attacks:

Damage = Base * Mult. Mod + Add Mod

Simple enough, right? Now to break down each of those variables. Base is simply the base damage. Physical attacks use the following formula:

Base = (User Attack - Target Defense) / 2

Now, for the Mult. Mod, most of the time, is going to be 1. Critical hits make it 1.25, and certain psynergy and unleashes (which are basically types of psynergy) will change this as well.

The Add Mod is similar. Normally 0, (Level / 5) + 6 if you crit, can be changed by psynergy and unleashes.

Then, at the end, you add a random number from 0 to 3 to the result.

Psynergy uses a different formula though, since it doesn't care about attack or defense. It involves a variable called Relative Power. The Psynergy Base is determined by the psynergy you're using.

Relative Power = User Power - Target Resist
Damage = Psynergy Base * (1 + Relative Power / 200)

Let's run through a couple of examples. Say RIOT makes a physical attack. He's got 84 Attack, and we'll arbitrarily say the enemy has 20 Defense. Following the formula for base damage, we have (84 - 20) / 2 = 32. Mult. Mod and Add Mod are both negligible here, so we take that 32, add the random factor, and that's how much damage is dealt. Easy.

Next example, BOSS uses the Fume psynergy. First off, the psynergy has a base power of 50. BOSS's Fire Power is 109, and our arbitrary enemy has 48 Fire Resist, so first, our Relative Power is 61. Then our base damage is 50 + (1 + 61 / 200) = 65.25, truncated to 65. No Mult. Mod or Add Mod, so that, plus random factor, is our damage.

Elemental Physical Attacks, such as most unleashes, offensive Djinn, and some psynergy, are a combination of both. They use the physical attack formula, with one extra multiplier at the end, called the Power Multiplier:

Power Multiplier = 1 + Relative Power / 400

For an example of this, let's go back to RIOT. His Themis' Axe uses its unleash, Stone Justice. Base damage is 32 like before. There is an Add Mod of 11, so that becomes 43. Then, we calculate the Power Multiplier. RIOT's Earth Power is 104, and we'll use an Earth Resist of 72, giving a Relative Power of 32, a Power Multiplier of 1.08, and a final damage of 46.44, truncated to 46. And after that, you add the random factor.

As a final note, summons work like psynergy, with one small difference I'll note when I bother talking about them.

oh god, the game's changed you; you've become like them!

Okay! At 3 votes to 2, our next destination is Air's Rock!

Before I begin, lemme make a small comment to set the mood. Air's Rock is the only dungeon in the game, aside from possibly the final dungeon, to warrant two updates.

Without any doubt, Air's Rock is the longest dungeon in the game. It is not hard; there isn't even a boss. It is, however, incredibly tedious, with half of the dungeon spent at the incredibly slow climbing speed, and the other half casting Whirlwind on everything that exists.

Sorry for the delay! I have no excuse this time. Anyway, PREVIEW OF NEXT UPDATE:

I love the systems this game has, but the dungeon design is bad and while the story has a few things that could be cool, it was done really poorly.

I just really wish The game was a little more balanced, and much harder. If I had EO levels of challenge with this games djinn/class setup, I would be a happy person.

Episode 5: Are We There Yet?

Hello! Last time, we left off right in front of Yampi Desert! We won't be going there, though, since you guys wanted to send me to Air's Rock! So instead, we take a turn south. On the way, RIOT learns the Weaken psynergy, which reduces elemental resist.

It should be noted that random battles here are simply button mashing.



On the way, we come across the town of Mikasalla, also known as "The Town that Camelot Forgot". Aside from a Mars Djinni which we can't get yet, there is absolutely nothing of note in this town. It is, in fact, small enough that the weapon, armor, and item shops are all condensed into a single vendor. Speaking of, it does have some good equipment upgrades, but they're kind of pricey, so I can't really buy anything.

North of Mikasalla is a cave, which we can't do anything with at the moment. But that's not the only reason to come up here.



These plains here are special (to note, the aforementioned cave is right off the top of the screen). Why?



They hold a Djinni! Meet the second World Map Djinni, Sour. A few turns and it's ours. For those keeping track at home, we now have two Earth Djinn, two Mercury Djinn, one Jupiter Djinni, and one Mars Djinni.

I rearrange my Djinn and come up with this setup.



WUSS is going to have to set her Djinn on standby soon, so she won't be able to be my healer. However, RIOT's two Mercury Djinn give him the Ply psynergy, which is essentially an upgraded Cure. He doesn't really have any offensive psynergy, but he doesn't need it. Unfortunately, he's still the slowest party member.

On our way to Air's Rock, we pass by the mysterious town of Garoh. There's nothing much to do there yet (I think even the inn's closed), though, so I skip it for now.



Here we are. Air's Rock. Five seconds in and we're already introduced to its main gimmick.



See that rather conspicuous rock to the right? That's what the sign calls a "Wind Stone". If you cast Whirlwind on it...



...it blows away the sand in front of you. This is why WUSS can't have any non-Jupiter Djinn here. She must be in her base class to use Whirlwind. The DS game, Dark Dawn, fixes this by making puzzle-centric psynergy like this character-intrinsic.

You may notice from the screenshots above that there's a sandwall to the left. To blow that away, we have to get to the right side of the Wind Stone. Thanks to the three-inch purple rocks, though, that means we have to go the long way around.

Welcome to Air's Rock.


I hope you didn't forget about these.

This particular sucker is a pain in the butt. Honestly, had I remembered it was here, I would have waited until after another chest in the area to fight this. But anyway.

Also in that screenshot is a really big rock. It seems pretty safe to say that whatever our purpose here is, activating that massive Wind Stone is going to play a part.

We go around, taking several long routes to blow away sandwalls, so we can go all the way back around, through the path where the sandwall blocked, so we can get to another Wind Stone to blow away another sandwall that blocked us before.

Keep in mind that psynergy used on the field still consumes PP. In fact, if you didn't have slow PP regeneration while you were walking, this dungeon would require several visits, because there's no way WUSS has enough to complete the dungeon in one go.

We finally get around to blowing away that sandwall we saw at the beginning of the dungeon, and what's behind it? Another Wind Stone, to open up another path.

Screw Air's Rock.

I'm not taking many pictures, and that's because what you see above is generally everything there is to see right now. Walk around, find a Wind Stone, hit it with Whirlwind. Walk around, find a Wind Stone, hit it with Whirlwind. This is the dungeon that never ends. It goes on and on, my friends.

Finally, we make it to the large Wind Stone.



haha did you think we were done

It should be noted that as of now, we've spent 45 PP on field Whirlwinds.

Anyway, now it's time for that preview picture to mean something. We've got to reach the summit of this mountain. Which invovles a lot of slow-climbing, and...



...a lot of these suckers. They spit out whirlwinds at a regular rate. What do you do with them?



Why, let them cart you halfway across the map, of course? This is the second gimmick of Air's Rock: Being carried away by whirlwinds.

It is every bit as annoying as you imagine.

We open up a shortcut back to ground level, and another path (that we previously cleared via Wind Stone) to a chest.



Probably the most useful thing in this entire dungeon. (This is what I was referencing up with the Mimic.) It's a Long Sword, which means only RIOT can equip it. It easily obsoletes the Themis' Axe. Its unleash, Hurricane, has a chance of weakening the target's Attack, too, which is a nice touch.



At this stage of the game, doing this much damage is absurd. At least, for 0 PP. Fume and a few other psynergies we know could potentially get this high if they target a weakness.

Anyway, we go back up to scale the mountain. Here, we start finding out why slow climbing is a bad thing.



If those whirlwinds hit me, I'm going to be sent straight back to the start of this particular cliff. So I've got to climb up while dodging them.

The next screen is the worst, since you've got to traverse it multiple times if you want a good piece of treasure. First stop is here.



We'll call this Outcropping 3, since it's the third one up. You want to Move this log on the left further leftward. Afterward, you go to Outcropping 2 below, fall down a slide to Outcropping 1, then ride the whirlwind on the right upward. That brings you to the other half of Outcropping 3, where you can Move the other log to where the first log was, jump over, and slide down toward Outcropping 1, where you'll likely be caught by a whirlwind and brought upward to Outcropping 4.



All that is done to get here, where we move the log into the gap. To actually get over there and up to the Wind Stone, we've got to go back to the Outcropping screen and climb up the other way.

Going around brings us to the Wind Stone. Activating it gets rid of this fog. If the fog wasn't removed, attempting to go upward would have looped us around to the bottom of this screen, instead of going to the next screen (AKA just like the preview picture).

Now, after activating the Wind Stone, you could take the climb on the left and progress in the dungeon. But take one guess where the good treasure is. That's right, we have to go all the way around again. The logs are still where we left them, so I don't have to Move them again. Of course, we still have to take the sliding whirlwind trail from Outcropping 2 to 1 to 3 to 1 to 4. What's our reward for tedium?



Absolutely worth it. 50 Wind Resist is no joke.

...Of course, now we have to go all the way back around again. It's a good thing VBA has a fast-forward button!


Photographing a lightning bolt is pretty hard, even when they sit on the screen for a second to fade out.

What's that? You thought we were done? Oh no. All we've done is gotten inside. There's still a full dungeon left.

This is where my update ends today, though. Next time, we'll explore the inside of Air's Rock and discover the secret of an empty town!

I can't help but wonder if the "right" way to do Air's Rock is to just ignore all the optional treasures. You're never gonna summon Flora, don't kid yourself, and as cool as the Fujin Shield and Storm Brand are, they aren't THAT much better than what's in the store. Still snag the Djinn of course (how many are there in here? I forget) but that isn't a huge detour.

Anyway, character profiles. Part of the problem with this area of Golden Sun is how little the characters you meet matter. The mayor and son from Alhafra? They don't even get names. Riki and Tavi? You never have to meet them at all, and even if you do they leave after like five seconds of cutscene. And unfortunately, NERD is still a continent and a half of gameplay away. SO.

Alex


BEATNAME: TOOL
Class: Paragon
Psynergy: Mercury (water)
Weapons: None
Advantages: Healing skill is second to none, ridiculously good at avoiding confrontation
Drawbacks: Makes the Slugs of FTL look trustworthy and altruistic

Alex TOOL was once the caretaker of the Mercury Lighthouse, found in Imil. However, once approached by Saturos and Menardi about the possibility of lighting the lighthouses, rather than leaving them dark to keep Alchemy sealed, he left his responsibilities to Mia NOONE and helped them to raid Sol Sanctum the second time around, albeit in the laziest manner possible. Due to his aid, Mercury Lighthouse was also the first one lit.

His laidback approach to destroying the world (?) doesn't stop there, though. While Saturos and Menardi seem driven to light each lighthouse and face off with Isaac ANIME & co. each time they meet, TOOL instead prefers to show his face only after combat, usually to heal up the people he's working with. Despite this, he's no less eager to see the lighthouses lit, which makes his flakiness regarding Felix RIOT & co. even more suspicious.

As a Mercury Adept, and one of the best, TOOL has some of the strongest healing in the game, able to fully restore a party's HP and PP, but he isn't much for fighting. Then again, that doesn't mean he can't. When Jenna and Kraden BOSS and FOSIL head for Idejima and take out some Laliveran workers, TOOL keeps the entire army of Tolbi, whose soldiers are picked from the winners of Colosso, occupied with weaponized geysers, launching soldiers into the distance with ease.