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

At a glance, you can probably figure out what the Douse Stone there'll do. Now we just have to get to it. Looks like there's a path from another room, so we'll have to circle around. No one is surprised.

Other than that, it's basically just more of the outside. There was a pond that drained when we blocked off the tiki statue dripping water into it, which describes a few of the puzzles in this place. We managed to get around to the Douse Stone pretty quickly, and like you'd expect, watering it sent trails of magic along the path in the ground.


Clearly obvious, of course.

You can walk on them, so they're used as a bridge to the next section.



Here we see the natural extension of that. First we have to position the pillars into place, then fill the pond with the tiki statue, then activate the Douse Stone for magic water bridges. Pretty simple here, but the order is actually important, since the Douse Stone won't do anything with an empty pond.



If you remember Air's Rock, this room should be familiar to you. It had a room almost exactly like this. Likely, it's the "heart" of the rock, or whatever other cheesy thing you want to call it. I'll stick to "shiny crystal room", if it pleases you.

For mundane updates, treasure continues to be lackluster. I find myself casting Wish Well to top my HP off more often than I might like, but I think that's just because I'm pretty sure this isn't exactly supposed to be the first place you go to after getting a boat. Oh well, I'm still living fine.


Nothing suspicious to report.

Passing by the NOT SUSPICIOUS room, we find a Djinni in one of the rooms following!



We can't get to it yet, since the water's currents are strong. But before this update ends, we'll have it.

If you're playing, I advise you to start remembering landmarks, because you can go in circles here if you aren't keeping track. And indeed, I do get disoriented a bit before finding the right path. (Take a left from the NOT SUSPICIOUS room, not a right.)



So, a couple things to note here before you fill the water. One, the platform with the blue thing on it will not rise. Two, you'll have to freeze that puddle first if you want to use it. What this means is that you can't access both the treasure and the next room (directly above us). Luckily, the water will reset itself when we leave, so you do have multiple chances to get it right.


This lets you get the chest.

(If you're curious, it held a Water of Life. Nice, but obsoleted by Revive.)



Here's the advanced course for the puzzle we saw before. You'll be able to tell by the rocks on the ground, but some pillars can't be moved. Those will help you figure out how to arrange the path.


Not all of them will be used!

A bit later, there's a chest that's suspiciously easy to reach.



Yuuuuuup.

Fortunately, the very next room is the shiny crystal room again, and this time we can actually reach the shiny crystal to recharge our PP. The exit puts us right in front of a Douse Stone, so we take advantage of that.


Hmm. Probably nothing useful.

Inventory MacGuffins: 1.

There's no other path to take. So what do we do with this thing?


Oh, great, a nightstand.

Doing the obvious thing lets us channel Moses and part the sea in front of us.


Now where have I seen that obviously-unimportant door before...?

Entering it...well.



This scene: 6.

We are now surrounded by water, with no escape.

OH NO WHATEVER WILL WE DO. IT'S NOT LIKE WE JUST GOT A PSYNERGY THAT LETS US DRAIN WATER AWAY.

...oh wait.



We did.

What can we use this for? Well, first off, we could drain a certain tiki statue...


stupid djinni running twice, making me re-parch the statue each time...

There's also a shortcut to the outside we can open up with it, along with a chest that has a Rusty Sword. So Retreat doesn't even save that much time!

And that's all for Aqua Rock! Wasn't much plot-wise, which should tell you something about how you're supposed to know to come here. Anyway!

Oh boy sand land japan. You know what screams EARTH to me? A tiny island town and it's also tiny mountain.

Tundaria, Tundaria, how lovely is your tundra? Tundaria, Tundaria, it's time we went and plunged ya!

(to the tune of O Tannenbaum. Kind of fell apart a bit at the end)

As much as I want to hit Tundaria, I think we need to hit Izumo first to do the thing there.

Nah, the tropics gave us what we needed for the cold south, but not japan gives us what we need for the tower east of champa.

Then by all means explore the entirety of Tundaria!

Okay, stopping the vote here. Two votes for Tundaria mean I'm about to freeze my butt off! Update tomorrow!

Episode 14: Blowing Things Up

Hello again! It's been a while since we last checked in on RIOT and co., so let's get a summary of recent events going on.

Our goal is to light the Elemental Lighthouses of Weyard. Why? Hell if I know. Problem is, both lighthouses are on the other side of the world. There's a number of continents between this ocean and that one, and since this world's flat as a pancake, we can't just go the other way. However, we're putting that aside for a moment, because one of our party members is from a magical town and our resident living dictionary wants to go visit. Problem with that is that the magical town is surrounded by equally magical tides, currents, and fog, so we can't get in. Somehow, this has translated into us just dicking around the Eastern Sea until...whenever, I guess.

Last time, you guys voted to send me to the southernmost continent of Tundaria. Will there be penguins? Santa's evil twin brother Atnas? The Schwarzwelt? Only one way to find out!



This is where we disembark; the rest of the continent is either inaccessible or not a coastline. It's also pretty easy to see from this picture that Tundaria is basically a straight line across. The path couldn't be more obvious if it were glowing.



Our first destination lies on the opposite end of the continent. There's a Djinni hiding here.



Hooray!

Anyway, going back to that second picture, you can probably see how the north end of Tundaria is a point. Looks like there's probably something there, yeah?



And there is! That's the Tundaria Tower. What's in there? Well, let's find out!

First things first, we go straight past the first room and come to this thing.



As you might remember from the Alhafra Boat Reconstruction Project, we lack utility psynergy that blows stuff up, so this will have to remain in its icy coffin for the moment. Backtracking to that first room I skipped, there are two doors submerged in pools of water. We can't swim, but we can make all the water evaporate now that we have Parch! We'll start on the left side because I have a vague sense of it being the right way to go.

It leads to a fork. One of those has what's currently a dead-end room:



Well, if the ice coffin earlier wasn't enough of a tip-off, I'd say prospects are high for us to learn the art of explosions soon.

The other fork leads to an actual dead-end, which means that going to the left from the first room was the wrong way! Whoops. At least we found out now instead of fifty rooms later.

The other side also has a fork, and one of its branches also leads to an actual dead-end. Symmetrical! Now let's hope it's not completely symmetrical, at least.



Oh yay, ice puzzles. Just what I always wanted.

This one's pretty simple, at least, but I've no doubt we'll see more. (The chest has a Mint.)

Actually, I spoke too soon. If you're observant, you'll notice that I can't actually get to the ladder from here. So it's back out of this room and down more branching paths!

The other path is a one-way trip, but it circles back to the other side of the ice puzzle room. Coming in from the left side, we can maneuver our way to the ladder in the middle of the room, bringing us to the next floor. And pretty quickly, we find a new goal.



Unfortunately, it's out of our reach at the moment, but we'll soon fix that.

Another room, another puzzle:



The trick to this is knowing that when you Move a log, it'll keep sliding. So Pounding the center and right ice stakes, then Moving the log down, left, and up will position it in such a way that lets us use it.



With that other log out of the way, we can use this one to push the log right in front of the door out of the way, letting us enter.



Drat, another dead end. Wait...those blocks seem familiar.



Apparently even mirrored versions of the Reveal formation work...or at least, you might think that at first.



Huh.

Anyway, this leads to the top of the tower. We move a log out of our way and find something at the peak.



Inventory MacGuffins: 1.

With a name like "Burst Brooch", it sounds like it might be useful! There's an off-color cracked wall below us; let's see if that Burst psynergy does anything about that.



BOOM!

Now we're left to descend the tower. There's also that Mars Djinni we passed by earlier. ...which, as it turns out, we could have gotten when we first got there. Silly me.



Not the most...graceful victory, but it'll do.

A few quick Revives later, and everyone's back on their feet.

From there, it's a simple matter to get back to the entrance, but we're not done yet. First off, let's go blow up that dead end we found earlier.

It leads to four treasure chests, but only one of them is worth noting.



Yay, more weapons!

And with that done, now we can go see what that thing was we saw at the beginning.



That will never get old. Anyway. Thing inside.



Inventory MacGuffins: 2.

..."Center Prong"? Um...okay then. I'm sure that'll be useful or something, maybe. Who even knows.

Anyway, that just about wraps it up for Tundaria! (Funny, I could've sworn the Tremor psynergy was necessary here.)

Anyway, a story. Young Turtle, playing the game for the first time, made it to about this point. Except he never found Aqua Rock and the Parch psynergy. He got stuck here, in Tundaria Tower. Oh, sure, he might've eventually found Aqua Rock, if it hadn't been for one thing.

The cartridge's battery died.

Young Turtle lost his save and the ability to save. Every time he'd turn on the cartridge, it'd prompt a new game, as though it were being powered on for the first time. This was made even worse by the fact that the other two save files were being used by his sister and cousin.

(Yeah, they still haven't let me live that down.)

What does this mean, in other terms? All of those thousands of textboxes we've seen up to now, I've gone through multiple times. And of course, I was am was am ___ a stubborn person, so I didn't just let the game sit there after its battery died. I've practically memorized the first two hours of the game, because I've played through it so many times. So. Many. Times.

But enough about my volunteer work in Hell. It's time for you guys to pick our next adventure!

MORE EXPLOSIONS

I say we get DOWN AND DIRTY with dragons that want sacrifices.

Not done with voting quite yet, but I did want to mention something. Probably not worth an update in itself.

So, a while back, when Golden Sun: Dark Dawn was coming out, the Camelot CEOs did an interview about the game and series as a whole. What I want to point out is one particular question and response.

Read that again, if you must. Each of the first two games is a novel in its own right. And now, both of them together is supposed to be a prologue?

Camelot really needs better writers.

No. They need better editors.

The first two games as a prologue... that almost makes a twisted kind of sense. I mean, Dark Dawn completely dropped the original plot thread in favor of a sidequest because the heroes got so far off base they couldn't even reach where they started anymore.

i second this

Episode 15: What do you mean, this update isn't about explosions?

So, you guys wanted to go blow up the rock sitting on the mast of Alhafra's boat? Alrighty! But first, we should probably leave Tundaria, with our boat parked waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay on the other side of the continent.

...

*five minutes of fast-forwarding the game later*

Alright, let's go! Alhafra's coastline is guarded by tall shoals (how's that boat gonna get out of there, anyway?), so we have to park a short distance away.



Despite the large amount of people in town (and therefore, the high chances of being stopped by a cutscene at any given step), nothing stops us from going straight to the ship to blow up rocks.



Unfortunately, our handiwork does not go unnoticed.



This scene: 11. Total: 11.

And five steps later, another cutscene!



This scene: 63. Total: 74.

Boat is fixed; five seconds later, Briggs escapes. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

The placement of the villagers prevents you from leaving town at the moment (we're supposed to be looking for Briggs, anyway), so let's head to the ship. His family was hanging out there, anyway.

(If you can guess what's coming, congratulations, you rank in at least the first percentile of all humans for predictive skills!)

And yes, another cutscene is coming. But this one's pretty funny, so I'll be showing it off. I apologize in advance for the murder that the following 720x1600 image is going to be on some of you bandwidths.



This scene: 23. Total: 97.

As you might surmise, the Alhafran mayor's greedy little big butt is pretty ticked off right about now, but who cares about him. That last line from Chaucha, though, seems like a challenge. We should chase after them!

...but not yet. First, we're going to see how Briggs escaped. The tunnel in his cell links to a door off to the side of the mayor's house. Before now, there was a guard, but now he's too stunned to keep his post.

There's really not much to the tunnels, and there's no reason to be here. But...



This is as good a reason to me as any. Two of them are inconsequential, but the third one contains heavy armor that, while slightly weaker than store-bought armor directly, has extra wind and water resistance. I stick it on RIOT.

There's another triplet of chests in another part of the cave, but they contain useless consumable items and a pittance of coins.

That's all down here, so let's get to chasing after Briggs! You might remember Champa's location from when FOSIL was talking about it however many updates ago. But really, just sail straight north.



(Post-image correction: Champa's bank is actually directly to the left of where the arrow is pointing. Whoops!)

Immediately after entering Champa, we get our next dose of GS1-transfer content, here in the form of a cutscene.



This scene: 20. Total: 117.

This is referring to an event in the first Golden Sun where, when ANIME passes by Lama Temple. A guy gets trapped under a boulder. If you use the Lift psynergy to save him, you get told how to progress in the upcoming dungeon (though you don't need to save him if you already know how). If you do save him, you get a reward here if you transfer content. As for the Ring...I think it works as the Ward psynergy when used in-battle. Hell if I know, and hell if I'll ever need to find out. It confers no stats in itself.

Talking to the townsfolk have them praising Briggs for bringing back food and money (they, of course, don't know how he got said supplies). A ways into the town, we see the man himself.



This scene: 5. Total: 122.

Real smooth, Briggs.

Anyway, the cave system behind him is actually sort of labyrinthine, but there are Champa pirates blocking off all of the paths you don't want to take, anyway. So it's a straight shot to Briggs (there are no battles to waste your time, too).



Yes, that is Briggs' grandmother. A grown man is asking his grandma to defend him.

This scene: 15. Total: 137.



Oh by the way there's a boss battle here. To the game's credit, you are given a choice to back out and prepare if you'd like, but it's not really necessary.

Avimander's not too bad. He's got some fire attacks, and he can lower your defense, but that's about it. Fire attacks are obviously a bad idea, but water will put an end to him quickly. Oh, and he also gets two turns.

His most dangerous attack is Star Mine, since that's around 150 to 2 or 3 people. Best to keep yourself topped off on health throughout the fight.



Of course, this is Golden Sun.



This scene: 63. Total: 200.

Summary: All secrets are revealed, everyone makes up and lives happily forever after...more or less.

We're almost done here. Talking to Briggs' grandma (who I'm just gonna call Granny from here on, unless we find an appropriate BEATNAME) gives us an actual objective!...sort of. We show her that "Center Prong" we got in Tundaria Tower.



No idea what Ankohl is (I think it's some kind of ancient civilization), but if she wants to make us a free weapon, by all means, go ahead.

Now we just have to find the other prongs.

The granny's name is Obaba! I know this because [reason not found]

I'm pretty sure it was mentioned in one of the textboxes, but really, who has time to read through all that? I sure don't.

Sea God's Shrine!

Also, at this stage we've basically wrapped up Briggs' arc completely, but even so, we may as well do this thing.

Briggs

BEATNAME: YARR
Class: Pirate
Psynergy: None
Weapons: Long blades, probably some others
Advantages: Hero to his people, a true family man, comes with free crew!
Drawbacks: Cowardly as hell, robs cities on account of that whole "being a pirate" thing

Briggs YARR hails from the city of Champa, a small fishing town found in the cliffs of southeast Angara. Due to a chain of events that might be explained by the time you hit Lemuria, but probably won't be, so we'll just say "the lighthouses did it" and call it a day, the seas around Champa have warmed considerably, rendering them barren and depriving the people of Champa of their main form of sustenance.

YARR, lacking any better options, gathered up a crew and started sailing about, raiding from ruins and cities alike in order to gain supplies for his people. This works splendidly (although support for his piracy back home isn't total) until the tidal wave that moved the Idejima peninsula demolishes almost every single boat in existence. Thus stranded, YARR and his crew raid Madra, leading to Piers' NERD's arrest, and use the money to pay for the last ship standing in Alhafra. This works because the Alhafran mayor is corrupt as HELL.

Although YARR can potentially be the toughest fight in the main game when you first encounter him, Felix RIOT and co. take him down just in time for the Madrans to politics the ship under their control. Understandably, when YARR does recapture the ship, he's terrified of RIOT and co. following him, which they do because ?????????????? Oh well, at least it leads them to Obaba, who is coincidentally the only person with the skills necessary to forge the Trident of Ankohl. Unless you count that one guy down in Yallam, but nobody does, so.

Hey guys let's go to Yallam now.

Funfact: Granny calls the party out on this.



But really, how many things have we done since getting the boat were for a reason other than ??????????????

You might as well show off the crafting system this game has and go to Yallam.

And by crafting system I mean more ways to eat up you inventory, and crappy gear that is way worse than what you can straight up buy by the time you can craft it, and crafting being RNG based on a pool decided by what you give the dude. I'm saying it sucks.

You forgot the part that I always got concerned with as a kid: Not being told how much it costs until after you buy it (and then only by comparing before and after gold values).

Pfft, like money is worth anything in this game.

To be fair, I hadn't figured that part out yet.

on hiatus

Abandoned