My writing can beat up Camelot's writing. Let's Play Golden Sun

Hey kids!



Let's play Golden Sun!

Golden Sun is a GBA RPG designed by Camelot, a company that apparently made a bunch of other RPGs before this one or something? Okay. It was very popular in its heyday when it came out, but as time went on, people realized that despite the really clever puzzle system involved, it was honestly a pretty bland, by-the-numbers RPG. Like, Dragon Quest levels of bland. That said, because I played this instead of FF7 or what have you in my dumb high school kid days, this is the RPG series I remember.

I have a few different goals with LPing this game. First off: there are abandoned LPs of each of the three entries in the Golden Sun series on this site already. With each of them, I note that a common trend is that the person doing the LP... doesn't actually like the game that much? Which can work for some games, but I don't think Golden Sun is one of them, unless you're that one SA bloke. Maybe this is just my personal belief, but I feel like if you're gonna go into a game to LP it, you should at the very least enjoy some of it.

That said, I'm not an idiot. The series has its detractors for good reason, chiefly the dialogue. It's not that it's needlessly long-winded alone (although it is), it's that in addition, the characters so rarely say anything of actual use or interest. If you're not interested in the dialogue, it goes on too long, and if you are, it's unrewarding. So with this LP, I'm not going to be posting the literal dialogue of the game. Instead, I'm going to be basically making up the cutscenes as I go. I'm not gonna go full fanfic mode here, but I'm going to try to summarize the scenes a bit more efficiently while also characterizing everyone a bit more effectively. I'll be taking a few ideas from the linked SA LP. I'll let you know if anything I do is drastically different from the game's results, except for if I forget to and don't.



Anyway, we start off the same way any RPG does.



Waking up the protagonist just in time for the demise of their hometown.



Isaac hops out of bed, and his mom Dora glows with a mysterious power...



To grab his cloak off the wall. This is Psynergy, the game's version of magic. It can be used both in and out of combat and we'll discuss it later.



Normally, Isaac (who you can rename) is a silent protagonist, only given voice with these Yes/No prompts. These rarely actually change how the game goes, and is just meant to let the player characterize Isaac (or ANIME or whatever). Nuts to that, says I. Silent protagonists work best when you can put yourself in their shoes, and even then I prefer non-silent protagonists whose actions in scenes you can guide, Mass Effect style.

Speaking of that style, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn added a thing where you can react to dialogue with one of four emotes: happy, pumped, sad, or angry. It's honestly kind of a cute way to handle it, which the writers were in no way prepared to do, and usually just went "Why are you acting so [emotion you picked], #DORPO?"

Do not name your character #DORPO.



Anyway, outside we meet up with Kyle, Isaac's dad.



It is totally raining and storming, by the way.



Right, enough amateur hour for now. Let's go down these stairs except not because as soon as we try a boulder happens.



What I attempted to do: change the message speed to fast and give the menu color a pleasing (to me) crimson tint.

What actually happened: I pressed B instead of A, undoing all the changes. Oh well.



Anyway, this area is basically prologue city. We're meant to hurry down south, but literally every time we try, a boulder rolls into our path, forcing us north instead.



This leads us to this clown over here.





Hey guys guess who your second party member is.



One complaint Quovak's LP has about the characters is that they barely have any personality definition, which... I don't quite think is true for Garet, at least. Right out of the gate, Isaac is told by his parents that he can't take everything he wants, and not two steps later we see Garet literally stuck in the dirt trying to drag a heavy chest of his stuff. This kind of paints him as the Goofus to Isaac's Gallant, which again would work better if it was Goofus and Gallant instead of Goofus and #DORPO.



Hands up, everyone who is surprised.



A number of priests and villagers, using Psynergy, slow the Boulder's descent, but there's not much that can be done against something that massive, apparently.



Considering Isaac and Garet are within spitting distance, yeah, GTFO time.



Another miniboulder falls and cuts us off from the straight path, which Garet takes the time to remark on. Not remotely necessary given we have already seen this happen at least twice.



These boulders have the common courtesy to have landed before we got here, though. Finally, some respect.



We also run into this nerd here talking about monsters everywhere and the landslide wrecking property.



If you say he's going to die, I forget what happens. Probably he insults you for your negativity.



Anyway, combat. We run into a Marill with a spork in short order.



Golden Sun's base combat is as straightforward as it gets. Each character can either swing their weapon, use Psynergy if they have it, use an item, or waste a turn.



Isaac and Garet are both just kids though, so they don't have enough Psynergy to do more than annoy bugs.

You get an instant ambush against the Vermin here and a sole Vermin poses precisely 0 threat.



A later fight sees Isaac critting a Bat out of existence. Critical hits are pretty key in Golden Sun, since the best weapons in the game have special critical effects with Psynergy and such. The best strats usually involve just stacking as much crit chance as you can on a character and letting them go to town.



One thing that the game does is if your attack would target something that has since died, you instead default to defending. This is, understandably, annoying, since there's nothing here that punishes you for attacking it, but I can deal with it.



Back to plot.



Isaac's parents are there, helping out another family whose names I'm pretty sure we never get outside of Felix and the girl with the portrait earlier (spoilers: her name is Jenna).



Well that was quick.



Or not.



Again, Felix and Jenna's parents don't have names I'm aware of. Let's call them... oh I dunno. Greg and Holly.



Fun fact: Felix doesn't actually talk at all during this scene normally. I at first assumed that was because he was like super baby-level young, but no, he's older than Isaac or Garet.





Still a few monster fights on the way. Still not remotely approaching a challenge or being interesting. Garet can't kill a thing that's already dead so he goes defense.



Plaza! First thing we see here are children and seniors, neither of which is likely to field Psynergy in any useful amount.



I mean, they CAN use Psynergy.



Just not at all effectively.



Over here, though, we have a few possibilities.







We fight no monsters along the way and make it back in short order. Vale is not a really big place.



Right, let's pick up the pace.



As the group descends towards Jenna's house, they hear a thunderous crashing noise.



Time's up, the Boulder is falling.



Dora and the kids run for cover.



Jenna's family, and Kyle, do not get this luxury.



When the spray of water subsides, there's nothing there. The pier, and half of Jenna's home, is destroyed. Everyone has vanished into the river. The villager we brought took a critical wound and can't stand.



Honestly, truly speaking? This is a pretty effective scene here in and of itself. In the grand scheme of things, it's a bit diluted, but hey, for here and now, this is a good way to establish things, isn't it? Better here than some flashback.

Like everyone's basically completely floored by this turn of events.



Here, though, is where having a silent protagonist hurts. Isaac should be just as completely stunned as the rest, literally seeing his dad get slammed through a pier by a boulder. But instead, #DORPO (you pronounce the hashtag each time, of course) would be like "can I get into the house and steal their stuff? Oooh, maybe I can check out the area where the Boulder used to be for prizes!"



But I'm pretty sure you can't go north anyway, so.



Garet elects to catch up with us through his own weird reasoning.



On the way back to the plaza, though...



Mystery people! Whose names I intend to spoil right now because honestly they mean nothing in a vacuum. Blue hair is Saturos, blonde is Menardi.



I won't really say much about who they are or what they're doing, but for now, guess what, they're our villains.



Excellent timing, Garet.





With that, the two leap down and attack!



Guess how this turns out.



Yeah, something like that.



They flatten Isaac and Garet in seconds.



And with us out of the way, they waste no time in making their escape.



Title screen flashes once again at this point. The backstory is now set, so let's skip ahead three more years, why don't we.



We get a slow pan of a slightly older Jenna going about the now peaceful Vale.



Isaac's working hard on roof repairs...



And Garet's about to hit the next level of Super Saiyan.



Since the Boulder, he's been hard at work with his Psynergy training...



And he's made solid progress, too.



That's the Move Psynergy, and one of the staples of the puzzle solving that I SWEAR WE'LL EVENTUALLY GET TO DO.





This scene is mostly just Jenna explaining how she feels about the tragedy from before, which, okay, fair enough. But the crux here is...



Garet and Isaac never told anyone what happened.

Garet literally says nothing at all after this, and it's just the two sprites trying to emote and basically express an awkward silence. Which, in some games, sprite emoting is amazingly well done. Super Mario RPG could afford Mario as a silent protagonist for how expressive his character and sprite were. These characters have eight directional facings, speech bubbles, and barely anything else, so it's much harder to convey.



The two head back south to Isaac's house, being patched up with Psynergy.

Yeah this is kind of dragging on a bit. Again, the Goofus/Gallant thing kind of falls flat when your character is a silent protagonist. And it's not even for a good reason, either: Isaac can speak just fine in the later entries in the series. And he's a jackass, too. But I'm getting ahead of myself.



Let's skip past all the stuff we've heard. We're going to meet Kraden the scholar.



Dora is still going to be a bit upset about our Psynergy obsession.



During the conversation, she trips and nearly falls off the house...



And Garet undoes most of our hard work.



Then it happens again, at which point Dora makes us leave. I didn't have a way to condense this or make it better with text, so instead, screencaps. Let's move on and get to the ACTUAL GAME



Yay team.



So, one quirk about Golden Sun is its Psynergy. The only stat each character has that actually determines whether they are a better wizard than their allies or not is their total Psynergy Points. Past that, each character has Elemental levels for each of the four Aristotelian elements. Everyone starts with 5 levels in their signature elements (Venus/Earth for Isaac, Mars/Fire for Garet and Jenna). There are minor numerical variations that don't mean a damn thing in the other areas: suffice it to say that elemental levels determine offense and defense for that element.



Beyond that, everything else is self explanatory. Attack is how hard you hit, Defense is how hard you not-hit, Agility is who goes first, and Luck is something obscure. Probably status ailment resistance or crit chance, those are popular.



I like to arrange my team in order of Agility. Again, numerical variation means they might not all act in this order, but whatever, it's Golden Sun, I don't have to care.

Also, this is Jenna. Jenna... doesn't really have characterization in the first game. In the second game, she gets a bit more, most notably in her impatience. I'd say more, but that'd spoil something that will stop being spoilers as of like the next update.



Can't believe I didn't notice my settings weren't saved for this entire update. I'm pro.



Better.

Next Time: Harry Potter and the Sanctum of the Sun

Hey, I like Golden Sun!

I just had...a few sour experiences with Lost Age. (someone tell me why i tried to lp it, again?) I still like it though.

Maybe there should be a game where luck only affects how you do at the casino games.

...

Every JRPG has a casino, right?

So in other words, Suikoden?

Wait a second.

The dev team sat down and thought out "Okay, Mars is fire, obvs, it's red and everything. But what planet can we use for earth energy?"

"I've got it! Venus!"

I don't think they put that much work into it. They just used some old ideas and called it a day.

Jenna's parents don't get portraits, and Garet's father doesn't either, but his two sisters who matter basically not at all do. So that's neat.



So, today we're going to go meet Kraden, and the rest of the update will basically cover that and Sol Sanctum.



But first, Vale as she is experienced. You can come down here to the shops before leaving for Sol Sanctum, or even before meeting Kraden, but there's not really much reason to do so. In fact, Golden Sun as a rule doesn't really have sidequests. It's more or less a straight shot from the start of the game to the end. The Lost Age did a bit to try to make the midgame, at least, a little more non-linear, but that came at a cost of not having any kind of real goal for the team for the first half of the game. In the first entry, we will have a solid goal for much of the game.



An interesting thing is this dude here. You can't tell, but his Psynergy demonstration here is a new power he's learned, Quake. Isaac will be picking this one up in short order.



As the kid earlier mentioned, there's travelers in Vale, a rarity. We can find one of them up here.



That mask is pretty neat, but the dude will have no truck with us. Oh well.



Kraden's place is just over here, but you can't take the shortest route because you don't want to interrupt the playing puppies. I, for one, fully support this kind of stupid obvious roadblock, because puppies.



Oh hey, the other travelers.



Always... bribe him with snacks? Snacks are tasty.



Saturos motions for her to be quiet, as he's suddenly noticed us doing that eavesdropping thing we do so well.



Busted.





This scene is kind of awkward in the original. The tone is more or less as I've written it here, but Saturos and Menardi play it off far more aggressively, which doesn't fit in with their approach, at least not effectively. Their actual goal isn't really known quite yet, but it will be fairly soon, and suffice it to say that making enemies in the village would put a pretty big thorn in their sides. Either way, it still ends with them relenting and letting the crew past to visit Kraden.



Anyway, Kraden's cottage is here, by the dude who wasn't all that injured during the Boulder event.



He's basically ruminating about how much Saturos and Menardi seem to know, but he both undersells and oversells his own knowledge as a scholar here in the writing, which is frankly really stupid, and I'm not here to write soliloquies.



Here's the relevant bit: they plan to set the elements of Alchemy in motion. What, exactly, this means isn't yet known.



Anyway, class is here.



HOORAY ARREST THOSE TWO OFFICER LET'S GO INFORM THE MAYOR SO WE CAN GET A TROPHY



Or... not?





So, another thing. In the original, Sol Sanctum is forbidden to enter, period. Yet the townsfolk all comment about things like climbing and meditating on Mt. Aleph, which Sol Sanctum is basically connected to, and you even admit that your lesson for the day involves climbing Mt. Aleph. So my editing here is mostly just closing that minor plothole. That said, the conversation here hews closely to how it plays out normally.





Kraden ducks back into his cottage and grabs a few silvery-looking bags, and then we're off proper.



Here's the temple, but not Sol Sanctum itself. Inside are a few priests yammering about how Psynergy is a gift to the chosen people yadda yadda yadda boring garbage.



Since climbing Mt. Aleph is forbidden in the normal text, this guy is standing guard to stop you from patrolling it.

He's also really bad at his job, so let's just pretend he doesn't exist. Good.



Literally two steps away is the entrance to Sol Sanctum.



Complete with the symbol for Sol on the entrance.



Sol Sanctum serves as the intro dungeon, and a place to learn the basics of dungeon exploration for Golden Sun as a whole.



Literally the first room has you face to face with a lake full of tiles.



Isaac can jump from spot to spot with ease, clearing a tile-wide gap just by moving towards it. In an era where waist-height fences form unstoppable obstacles (and still do, in this game), this is nothing short of revolutionary.



Oh hey a fight!

And as mentioned earlier, now that everyone's been studying Psynergy, they all have access to the option in combat.



As a general rule, Psynergy progress through three tiers in game. So this Cure spell Isaac has will later be matched with Cure Well, and then later again with Potent Cure. There is no reason not to use the highest tier Psynergy in a group whenever possible. I mean, you COULD make a claim about consuming too much PP, but you would be lying.



Isaac has cure, while Garet and Jenna both have a basic Flare Psynergy available in combat.



Jenna and Garet both have the same number of Mars levels, so they both do equal levels of damage with the Flare Psynergy. I know, Jenna is wielding a staff, you'd think she'd be better than Garet at this sort of thing. Trust me, they're equals. Also a single Flare is enough to wipe out three of the four things we were facing here.



Tutorial puzzle item, go!



See? Same. I think the RNG throws in about a 3 point variation on basically any damage calculation that happens, so this is well within expectations.



Hey guys guess what we gotta do to do the thing.



This opens the way ahead.

Each character has 15 inventory slots, which work much like in DQ. Equipment and plot-relevant items also take up spaces here, but same-type items, like the Herbs everyone has, stack up to... I think 30? Not that you'll actually need them. And it's not like items are so critical that we'll be hard up on those 15 spaces until we get more characters.



New Psynergy! This gives us a Venus type attack to go with our Mars-typed Flare. Different enemies display different resistances, as is the case with any game, but they're not always the most intuitive, nor is it especially critical to figure it out.



And we're at the end... already? Huh.



And not so much as a single footprint.





This would make a lot more sense if we hadn't had to put a gem in a minotaur statue's eye socket before this. But hey!



Gaining access to the further depths of Sol Sanctum grants us access to new, more resilient enemy types.



They have Orb Spin attack.



Oh, right, something I should do is showcase a few of the game's Psynergy animations, as best I can with screenshots. One of Golden's Sun's strengths is its higher-than-average visuals given it was a GBA RPG. The devs really went all out with some of them. Quake... is not really one of these.



Also Slimes can run away, wasting their time and yours and awarding no XP or dosh.



The minotaur puzzle gets repeated a few times in slightly more mazelike conditions.



Anyway, here's Flare.

Psynergy targeting is kind of clever: there are few, if any, abilities that target enemies evenly: instead, you choose one to take the brunt of an area attack, and the effect scales down for anything nearby. While your attack gets replaced by Defend if the target is dead, any Psynergy you planned on casting still goes off, provided there is at least one legal target that could be hit by your original targeting.

I'm not going to regularly screencap levels unless they mean the character in question gets a cool new Psynergy out of the bag. Just letting you know it is still happening.



Another area. Those statues are all across the channel, so we can't jump over.



So instead, we use Move, the power Isaac and Garet developed with their training.



Move lets you basically push a thing in any direction from a distance. It costs PP like anything else, but not very much, but you recover PP just by walking around, and any room with an indepth puzzle usually foregoes encounters, or at the very least lowers the rate they appear at.



Anyway, the entrance upstairs is behind one of these, which we only discover after gemming the minotaur again.



It's not this door, though. Back here is just a featureless room where ghosts exists. We're tomb raiders now, guys! (Why is it called Amaze? I don't know.)



There's also dodge chances in this game. I have no idea what governs this, but some enemies are more likely to dodge than others.



Oooh, that looks promising. The tileset, not the Herb.



You can also run away from encounters, which is animated by your crew just nope-ing out of frame, stage left. Hence why Jenna is a good three feet in the air right here.



Anyway, we're here!







In the original text, Kraden doesn't even bring up the possibility of waiting for Saturos and Menardi. In fact, Kraden in general comes off halfway between a learned sage and a spoiled child: if you refuse to keep going, he insists on staying here, which means abandoning him here when there's monsters about. I mean, nothing actually dangerous, but Kraden can't fight and the three of you can. This isn't even the worst instance of Kraden acting like a child. In any event, we're continuing onward.



Just to the right of the Sol room is this Luna room.



Not even justifying this with a scene. Either way, he's going to stay behind and investigate the Luna room more carefully, while we press on into the passage south of it.



One of the rooms leads to this place, full of Psynergy Stones.

In the lore of the game, the Psynergy Stones are basically what grants Psynergy to people. It has nothing to do with being chosen people of the gods. Living near a large concentration of Psynergy Stones will grant Psynergy, although it can in rare cases arise in unrelated individuals. Different stones can also grant different elements: the people of Vale almost exclusively have Venus and Mars Psynergy, which are in-lore related as linked through Sol. (One could theorize that Mercury and Jupiter are similarly linked via Luna, but that's never outright confirmed.)



From a mechanical standpoint, Psynergy Stones restore all PP. Since you could always just spam your healing Psynergy before picking one up, I don't know why it doesn't just heal HP too. Oh well.



On the upper floor is this room.

This statue puzzle here is supposed to be the trap that Saturos and Menardi triggered on their first incursion, which in turn caused the storm and the Boulder event. I'm not going to bother with showing it off because the text as is implies that neither Saturos, Menardi, nor their entire team was smart enough to realize that not only did pushing one statue cause a cataclysmic event...



But that the method of disarming it was one room over.

I kid you not: Jenna's family, Isaac's father, and Saturos and Menardi's team all died because they weren't smart enough to push the statues in the room slightly to the left.



The actual puzzle isn't that hard, either: push both of these statues up to the slots, where they'll start shining light on the center.



This makes a floorhole, which you can then use Move on the central statue to drop it in.



I don't have a good in-character reason for dropping the statue in a hole either. Let's go with that instead the team had to decode mysterious texts or something, how about.



Once that's done there's no problem whatsoever with shoving these statues around.



The light from the statue above changes the section of the relief on the floor from Luna to Sol, which is mirrored in the room below. If we hadn't dropped the statue in the hole floor first, lightning would've started striking in this room.

Once we do this the first time, Kraden heads up and observes what we've done, making the remarks I've mentioned above as to the left room disabling the trap of the right room, but MYEH MYEH MYEH.



Let's cut ahead. This room changed to Sol...

And the central room to Luna.



As Kraden says, this changed something in here significantly.



A portal to a secret room????



Hey, why not?



Yes, the sprite stretching is normal here. I think they were trying to establish the scale of this area and didn't quite think it through.



















Now this... this was a fun scene to rewrite.

In the original, it's never brought up that grabbing the Elemental Stars is at all dangerous. I mean, they go over their raw power and the Stone of Sages and the need for the Mythril Bags, but not that taking them could be a bad idea. Hell, Jenna says "make the boys do it!" when Kraden tries to go for the Stars himself and nearly falls in the drink.

In fact, despite Isaac (and Garet, possibly) knowing that messing with Sol Sanctum was what caused a lot of people to die, they don't really once hesitate in going to get them. (I tried making Isaac say no to Jenna's request but she legit "but thou must"'d me. Rude.) You just hop in and grab them, heedless of peril. Then again, it's supposed to be "known" that the stupid statue puzzle was what caused the storm.

I'm not really sure I did a GREAT job of this dramatic reveal here, but it's a far cry better than the statue trap being Joe Chill.

Next Time: Harry Potter and the Elemental Djinn

Hah, I remember playing this many moons ago. Kraden's shaping up to be an excellent final boss (just guessin').

So, this would be the first LP I've really created a backlog for. Usually I just churn out an update, throw it out there, call it good. But for this one, I want to get at least five updates ahead, just to convince myself I'm REALLY up to this. I mean, I'm effectively rewriting Golden Sun. That's not nothing.



Anyway, the Elemental Stars room is basically just a final exam for making sure you understand how Isaac's jump works. It's orthogonal only, and the thing he's jumping to has to be the same altitude as his current position. Yeah, kind of obtuse rules, but I don't mind so much, because having that kind of established ruleset is kind of critical in a puzzle game (as is knowing exactly where those rules do and do not apply. See: Ittle Dew, the Talos Principle.)



In any event, it's not long before we reach the Venus Star first.



Taking it causes a few of the pillars to jut out of the water, creating new paths. Most of them are useless, but a few will unlock new paths.



The Star itself doesn't do anything else when we take it, thanks to the Mythril Bag.



One down, three to go.



It, um... It's really not hard at all.



Two down!



He really kind of is.



Anyway, Jupiter Star is next up. I'm not gonna bother showcasing the puzzle solutions, because basic navigation isn't a puzzle.



Kraden doesn't call out for us to keep going this time, though.



Turns out there's a good reason for that.





Hey, remember this dude?



He's back!











Suspense!

...Which I will ruin by talking about the editing I did.

The original scene plays out much as it did in my writing, with a few exceptions. First off, it's... really vague and hard to read that Kraden's refusal to cooperate is because they can't be trusted to keep their word and return them alive, rather than sheer bravado. Which makes the whole mask guarantee nonsense seem a bit weird and just kind of forcing a dramatic reveal. (Even with my rewriting, it feels kind of forced anyway, the mask lasts for all of like ten text boxes.)

The second is the fact that as things stand, Saturos and Menardi could totally just beat the hell out of us and take the Stars. They've done it once before, and we aren't that much stronger than we were three years ago. So I decided to make it so the villains HAVE to make this deal, with Isaac's ability to hold them off via terrain superiority.



Anyway, back to the drama. Is it true? Can it be?!



That's Felix, no question.







Honestly, I don't know why they just have Garet go give them the stars, when the route to the Mars Star is on the way. Eh.

Either way, a new dude warps in as Garet makes his way over.





So that's three of them.



Normally at this point, Garet tries to rules lawyer his way into saying "we got you the Stars, let our pals go", which goes over about as well as a lead balloon with severe depression. Since that's dumb and boring, I think we'll try to explain our villains a little bit better.



Anyway, that wraps up the negotiations.



Give them the Stars, everyone goes home, the villains get life unending but that's about it, right?



HAHA NOPE. THE FLOOR IS LAVA NOW.







This scene wasn't really changed that much, save for aiming Felix's ire at a more appropriate target. In the original, Menardi shoves Jenna towards the exit in impatience, which, okay, proper paints them as still villainous, or at the very least stressed out. But I feel like it kind of undercuts Felix's trust of the two if he's already yelling at them for clear mistreatment of his family in our first encounter with him.



Also they are placing a LOT of confidence on the survival odds of two people they're writing off for dead. Either that, or their ability to loot a ruined chamber buried under a volcanic eruption.



Anyway, back to these two.





Mechanically, this isn't strictly true, but not for the expected reason. I'll explain a bit more later, though.



Right now, we're not QUITE done with the rockeye.



It can speak! It tries to warn us away, claiming this place is dangerous.



In fairness, it hasn't actually... done. Anything. At all. All it's done is sit there and gather energy while everyone remarked about how powerful it is, but hey.



In any event, it heads over and uses Psynergy to keep a fissure from flaring up too much. That's a start.



Yeah being inside of a volcano erupting is usually pretty bad I hear.



But first.





Hey, bad news for us. Unfortunately, we really don't have the time to outrun a volcanic eruption.



Thankfully, a plan arises.



Narratively, we're backtracking here a bit. This happens as the Djinn leave the statue, ordinarily, which is basically a complete non-sequitur in the heat of the moment but is in reality one hell of a Chekhov's gun.

And then we did.



Hooray!



Anyway.

Isaac and Garet both begin play with the Move Psynergy for out of combat use, but Isaac can also use the Retreat Psynergy. This is never explained or hinted at normally, and in your incursion to the core of Sol Sanctum you have no reason to actually use it.

So instead of saying we had it from the word go, I'm just saying that Isaac gained it as part of whatever the Wise One did to the Mars Star, because that makes a lot more narrative sense to me.



Mechanically, it's an escape rope.



Our dramatic escape sequence takes all of two seconds.



The entire town's watching the mountain in fear.



No, we don't get in trouble for sneaking into Mt. Aleph or Sol Sanctum or anything. In case you're wondering.





So, we're going to recap everything for the people back home.



Nothing of actual note happens in this scene, so let's just speed it up.



The retelling is done in a sepia-toned pantomime, Super Mario RPG style, and that's honestly kind of adorable to me.



Again, the two are in basically zero trouble for sneaking past the priests and getting into Sol Sanctum despite it being nebulously forbidden.





Most people haven't said much in this scene, but hey.





It's hard to tell from here, but the healer is basically glowing red and sparkling here, as though getting further information from the Wise One.







So. In the original text, when presented with this choice, Garet instantly goes "I dunno, you decide for me, Isaac". And then he complains if you do choose yes, and his granddad admonishes him saying "hey, you said you'd let him choose." Decided to go with this after-the-fact siding with Isaac to make him a slightly less terrible and stupid person.

However, this is one of the rare few instances of NOT being a "but thou must" or false choice. You can totally decide not to save the world and just leave the Sanctum. Doing so gives a non-standard game over, implying that the world inevitably drifts towards its destruction. Which... I don't think is what would actually happen given what goes down later in the series, but okay, points for cleverness.



Anyway, the orb dude hovers in after we accept and gives the healer more glowy orders while personally addressing us.



Like the minor scene with the Mars Star earlier, this is here to be a giant Chekhov's gun for much, MUCH later, and to lay down the groundwork for Felix to effectively be the real protagonist of the series. But it's a minor, easily-forgettable line in a sea of equally forgettable lines, and it doesn't even have the animation of the Mars Star event to put it in the player's mind. In fact, I'd argue that even the writers forgot about it later down the road.



Point being, the healer here gives us basically nothing of use to actually go off of.



And once they leave saying one more "that is all", these useless jerks leave too. Not like they said anything in the cutscene anyway.





And then we did.

Ordinarily, the extent of your parting gifts is a single Herb (50 HP healing item) and an item from Dora we'll get at the farewell party. I figure it'd be a bit smarter to actually have the mayor put his money where his mouth is in calling out the priests.

Anyway, moving right along.



DOG!



These two are basically saying nothing of actual use except this.



DOG AND CAT!



I don't have a good way to rewrite the first half of this scene, in which literally everyone gets a few shots in at Garet. Way to make a guy feel loved at his farewell party. There's also the minor issue of me having completely forgotten if his family has names either. They all have portraits, mind you, just not, y'know. Names.



The little kid here (uh... let's say Tammy) gives us the Catch Beads, which were what Dora used to grab our cloak in the prologue. There are a few items that grant Psynergy like this in the game, but the Catch Beads aren't required for anything.



At this point they all bring up that Dora must be feeling completely heartbroken that her only son is leaving, especially with her husband dead and gone. But there's just so many plotholes with this (Jenna going without mention despite being in the care of her grandparents who are probably just as sad about literally everything that's happened, the fact that Isaac off-screen promised to not return until he finished his quest, which is only ever mentioned after the fact to guilt trip you if you return, the fact that she's the one saying you should leave tomorrow originally, Dora being the only one with an actual name or any connection to what you've been doing) that I'm honestly 100% in favor of axing this entire discussion. Hell, they only bring it up solely to tell Garet he's wrong again.



So yeah. I'm sorry, I know I went in trying to edit the writing in these scenes, but I just can't feasibly do it for this scene at all. If it was taking potshots at Garet at another time, like before you meet with Kraden (which they do if you talk to them because his training stone crushes the flowers his older sister... Heather, we'll say, planted), it'd be fine and building character (and they do try that with the roof scene, except it just involves more Dora instead of Garet's family). Here, though, it's just... Nah. Nothing worthwhile here at all.



The sooner we leave Vale and get into the real game, the better.



The entire town hops as they deliver this line. That's cute, at least.



And we're off.



The world map! And a hoppy!



I'm pretty sure you can skip the hoppy, but I don't see much of any reason to do so except a challenge run (and even then, why bother).



So, this is one of the game's Djinn.

Djinn are the main mechanic that differentiates Golden Sun's battle mechanics from other games. They were unsealed when Mt. Aleph erupted, and now they're all over the land. There's 7 of each of the four types, and they're your main method of customizing your characters.



Flint here is a Venus Djinni. Each Djinni you equip increases that character's elemental level for their element (as well as a few ancillary stats), which in turn might change their class. For Isaac, Flint is basically a straight upgrade to his Psynergy and stats, but for Garet, that extra Venus level changes his class from Guard to Brute, lowering his defenses but making him better at running at people and hitting them. It also changes up his Psynergy: as is, it's a straight downgrade, but once we get more Djinn and levels, he'll become competitive with Isaac.

As a general rule, there's three types of class: pure element classes (only give character Djinn of their type) pack the most kick but have vulnerabilities to almost all other Psynergy, dual element (only equip one other type) are a bit more versatile and still plenty strong, and tri-element classes are the hardest to get, being basically lategame exclusive for the first game but having lots of unique Psynergy and even more versatility.



They can also be used in-combat. Each Djinni has an Unleash effect...



Doing it undoes the class-bonus effects for setting it but usually has a strong immediate effect, akin to the crit abilities from some of the game's artifact weapons or some of the support Psynergy.



WHOMP.



Once used this way, the Djinni goes into standby and enters your pool of Djinn to be used for summoning.



Summons are strong, wide-scale area attacks that boost the summoner's Elemental strength corresponding to the summon. The more Djinn of an element you have on standby, the stronger potential summon you can field, up to a maximum of four Djinn.



Particle effects are involved.



Finally, after summoning, all Djinn used in the summon go into recovery, where they can't be used for anything for a short while (either in-fight turns or walking on the overworld), after which point they set again, changing class stats once more. You can also set Djinn that are on standby if you'd rather use their unleash effect again or maintain your class bonuses, but why would you waste a whole turn doing that?



Anyway, that's all for now. Let's start out adventure!

Next Time: Harry Potter and the Jupiter Adept

Because two people alternating between unleashing and setting the barrier Djinn makes you effectively invincible.

It's not like the game (or The Lost Age) is exactly hard outside using those either.

World map! Except... no, this is actually a continent-and-a-half map.

Camelot tends to write on the long side of games [citation needed]. So the first game in this series takes place almost solely on the continent of Angara, which... if you look at Weyard, the world of Golden Sun, from a birds-eye view, is effectively Europe and Asia. The locales of Golden Sun also loosely correspond to their real-world analogues, which doesn't mean much given we'll be in European areas for most of the game, but it'll get a bit more apparent as we head towards the northern bit of Gondowan (Africa), and REALLY obvious when we hit Xian (China). So look out for that. The sequel plays with basically every area except these.



Also, now that we're out of the tutorial for how to play the game, all the monsters have been replaced with statboosted versions of themselves with identical names and sprites (I dunno either). Wild Mushrooms now have an area heal move, as well.



And Bats can shoot sonic waves. I don't know if they can disrupt who they hit at all, but they didn't when I was playing. In either case, it's not THAT much harder than it was before.



Anyway, there's somewhere the plot really wants you to go first, but I'm not going there. First, north to Lunpa. We'll discuss the town in more detail soon, but for now it's locked off.



Only reason to actually come up here this late is to use Catch to grab a Nut, but if you really need a single consumable healing item badly enough to go off the beaten path, you may want to consider rethinking your strategy. I mostly ended up here by not having played for ages.



Here's where I wanted to go.



Goma Cave is our quickest route to the nearest lighthouse. There's only one on Angara, Mercury Lighthouse, further north. You could almost make a case for Venus Lighthouse, on the tip of Gondowan (roughly at Saudi Arabia's location), but eh.



Most of the entrance to Goma Cave is no trouble whatsoever.



But eventually, we get to this stump, which refuses to budge.



Ordinarily, there's no discussion here. It's just Garet's one line and then you're expected to come back later. Which... okay, if you DIDN'T at least swing into the town on the way here, you were probably just being obtuse.

Also, they DO add Fireball in Dark Dawn as a puzzle solver, and use it precisely to burn down plants and the like. That's not the solution here, for reasons.



For now, forget it. Back to the town of Vault.



But as we enter, SURPRISE OVERWORLD CUTSCENE



This is the merchant Hammet. He's part of a sidequest later on, the content of which will become very apparent shortly.



His caravan heads south, but a destroyed bridge there stops them.





As if to drive the point home...



A Psynergy Stone crashes to the ground very close to the caravan.





Lunpa is, and remains, locked off even though they're heading up there. So that's fun.



Anyway, Vault. Weird name for a town, especially right after we just left Vale.



Despite Hammet's caution in the field, Vault is completely harmless, and everyone treats the eruption as though it happened last week instead of "right now".



I like how they put the kids chasing each other in circles around wells and the like in most towns. It's kind of cute.



My aimless meandering was moderately taxing, but again, we recover PP just by walking. I'll probably stop at the inn anyway solely because I can make up for the price of a stay by stabbing a rat or two.



In any event, we're not far behind Saturos and Menardi's group, so they're likely headed to Mercury Lighthouse too. I don't know if they took the hiking route or not.



First, shopping.

We can buy and sell weapons and armor at these two dudes. The "Artifacts" option mostly leads to magic weapons that have unleash effects, while the Repair option is there to fix up items that have a chance of breaking with each use. We don't have any of either yet.



The only artifact being sold is something neither of our characters can equip.



The equipment there isn't BAD per se, but literally nobody ever will bother buying a Mace early on. You'll probably buy a Long Sword or Battle Axe if you want weapons, but they're expensive.



Instead, I'm just gonna buy up a full set of armor for both of our dudes. That means caps for their heads...



And shields for their arms.



To actually advance the plot, we have to track down the Shaman's Rod. It doesn't do anything in and of itself, but that's our goal. No points for guessing that this guy is involved.



THERE'S A DOG HERE



There's also a Djinni over here. Unfortunately, we can't get this one for a while.



Ringing the watchtower bell scares it from behind the tree onto a ledge, but we can't reach that ledge from where we are.



In our wild bumbling, we end up in the mayor's home.



We start a conversation with this kid and get rewarded with Psynergy aimed at us.



This is before any of us say anything at all, mind you. Say hello to Ivan!



You can decline here, in which case Ivan goes right back to his niche in the house. But we'll need his help eventually.





Ivan as a character is probably the second most developed in the first game, behind Garet. He's mostly defined by his social awkwardness, between his submissive attitude and his inability to determine that reading people's minds is inappropriate. Which... is fine, really. I'll probably try to do something to differentiate him from my writing of the ever-cautious Isaac here. Probably play up his being an apprentice or whatever to Master Hammet.



Anyway, Ivan's response to us claiming Mind Read is a creepy power...



Is to let us share that power ourselves.



Yay, we can think all the stupid things we want!



And now we have three party members instead of just two!

Ivan leaves your party if you leave Vault, however. Golden Sun is very good about restricting new party members to where you get them until you do whatever they need to do in that area. At least Ivan returns your Djinn to you if you give them to him (which isn't a bad idea right now honestly).



Anyway, Ivan is a Jupiter Adept, so his innate element is wind. But as stated, he's not that much of a fighter: he wields a different set of weapons than Isaac/Garet do, with only short swords being shared between them. His Agility and PP reserves are high, but his other stats less so.



If we give Ivan the Venus Djinni we have, his class changes from Wind Seer (the Mage line) to just plain Seer (the Shaman line). It's not a bad idea, it gives him Cure and bulks him up quite a bit, but I'm going to stick to pure element classes until we get at least two of each Djinni.



Anyway, Ivan starts off with his Mind Read power, which for ease of use should be set to a shoulder button, and Whirlwind for field use.



Almost every single NPC in the game has an alternate line of text for when you use Mind Read on them, which is occasionally clever, charming or helpful. In practice, you probably don't want to add even more text to your playthrough of the game.



Anyway, this loser is almost certainly in on it, but we don't get any information aside from them being from out of town, so we're not that much closer to the Shaman's Rod.



Not that hard to find them, though.

Thanks, innkeeper. You're super helpful.



We find them upstairs talking about CRIME.



Ivan's creepiness is tangible, even without Mind Read, and the thieves refuse to let him near them on principle.



And we can't Mind Read what we can't catch.



So it's time for a minigame!



HAHAHA YES THERE WILL BE NO ESCAPE



Garet parks himself in the room's exit, leaving Isaac and Ivan to corner one of the thieves.



The thieves will flee if either Isaac or Ivan gets close, and Ivan just walks in a direction. In theory, you're meant to corral one of them towards Ivan. In practice, apparently if you just walk left at the start like I did here on accident, you instantly corner one. So that's neat.



GIVE ME YOUR BRAIN WORDS





Hey guys can you guess where the stuff might be?



Also: how did the thieves get in here and seal it off? Or more relevantly, how were they planning to get the stuff back?



In any event, the dude doing repairs was captured here for seeing too much.



TELL US YOUR SECRETS





Of course it's not gonna be that easy.









This scene just got a few tweaks. First: giving some reason why Lunpa would be a "noble" thief, especially when he's initially referred to as such by someone who just got wronged by a group of thieves. Second: trying to make the bandit's bargain less stupid. In the original text, they just go "see, we're not as bad as Dodonpa, won't you let us go?" Which... doesn't really fly at all.



Which brings us to the first boss fight of the game, sort of. The music here isn't any different from the usual fight music though, and the challenge is similarly nonexistent.



Ivan's physical attack might not be good, but he can fall back on offensive Psynergy, and he starts out with Whirlwind and Ray, both solid contenders.



PSSHHZZZEWWWWW



You can determine enemy weaknesses to the different elements by the punctuation after the damage on an attack. These guys have equal levels of resistance to everything, so they get the weakness punctuation (!!!). If they resisted, it'd instead be a single period, and if neither applies, it's just a single exclamation point.



These guys use items in the fight, which are actively limited in usage, it seems. The Smoke Bomb, as you can see, inflicts blindness delusion.

Given that every character on our team can contribute via offense Psynergy, this proves about as effective as you'd expect.



The Thieves also sometimes waste their turns.



However, they do have healing items and know how to use them, so there is that to watch out for.



That more just prolongs the fight, rather than making it a challenge, though.



Me being a dumbass and using Ivan's physical attack certainly doesn't help in that vein.



Progress is being made, though.



The bandit leader also has Slice, a speedy attack that can inflict pretty high levels of damage, but even so, that's nothing to write home about.



Bye, nerds.



Earthquake! Guess what it's the upgraded version of Quake (which still remains usable). Costs more PP in exchange for dealing more damage and hitting a wider area.



Ivan also grabs their sword, out first artifact item, which I'll put to use in the next update.





So, in the normal game, Psynergy is completely imperceptible to non-Adepts. They can tell the aftereffects if they're perceptible, but not the actual forces involved. That's all well and good for justifying Mind Reading every single person in the game, but it kind of falls apart when using Psynergy like Earthquake in the face of non-Adepts. I'm still fine with non-Adepts not being able to detect things like Mind Read, but I'm going to just treat Psynergy as more or less obvious to anyone who's looking.





Rather than waiting for an answer, he just reflexively reads our mind again.



Mayor and a few villagers roll up.



The thieves don't really make a good argument for themselves here, either.





Anyway, the thieves are hauled off to jail...



And the villagers start searching through the crates.



First one is the mayor's urn, which, okay, that's fine.



Next up is... a gold statue thing?



Oh no how utterly villainous.



And the last one has the Shaman's Rod.

The mayor also thanks us for catching the thieves and promises a reward at his home. I forget to go get it this update. It's probably not important.



Oh whoops, I accidentally wrote this conversation a short ways up. Oh well, no need to repeat it.



To the point, then.



Ivan goes over and actually gets the Shaman's Rod from the crate...



And with that, he's gone.

He returns our Djinni to us if it's equipped to him. He does not do this for the Bandit's Sword if it dropped into his inventory. I'm not that broken up about it and you can probably guess why.



ARGH I WANT TO MIND READ YOUR GUILT IN BEING ALMOST COMPLICIT I AM HISTORY'S GREATEST MONSTER



Woo, sidequest stuff.



I got this way earlier than I really should have, though. I've no need for this until we hit... like, halfway through the game.



On our way back to Goma Cave, Garet picks up a new attack Psynergy of minor consequence.



We STILL can't get past this obstacle...



But who should show up but this clown. Hands up, everyone who is surprised.



So, while we can't burn the leaves...



Ivan's Whirlwind Psynergy is more than sufficient.



Cleans them out with efficiency.







So, okay, storywise this entire exchange makes a degree of sense. From a gameplay perspective, this is just stupid.

First off, why CAN'T Garet just burn away the leaves? Second, assume you did what I did because you had to reach the lighthouses. (This is already a shaky assumption because you have no idea where the lighthouses even are, but bear with me.) You come here, try to Move the stump, fail, and go "okay, we don't have that Psynergy yet, we'll come back." And then you go to Vault and do that entire sideline, but end up with nothing to show for it but the mayor's reward and (maybe) a Bandit's Sword. At this point, you STILL have no idea what could even get past the leaves: the only hint you can use Whirlwind is seeing it pop up in Ivan's Psynergy selection when choosing Mind Read. It doesn't even have use in Vault.

The end result is that the solution will evade players until they come back, frustrated they can't find or recruit Ivan at Lunpa, and then he magically joins the party anyway. The good news is that there's not many actual locations you can reach here: the bad is that it's still going to take a lot of backtracking over the world map.



Anyway, Whirlwind gets rid of leaf piles. This is okay.



And Ivan kept the Bandit's Sword, which we'll have him equip instead of the Shaman's Rod, solely because it's an artifact weapon and he kind of needs to be able to keep up with the other two in a fight.

Next Time: Harry Potter and the Man-Shaped Tree

Cool.

This section's kinda awkwardly worded. I think you could drop the "to boot" on Isaac or Garet's lines, or add one in the Bandit's to emphasize the humor in it, a la "<Bandit> Psh. Guess you guys are as ugly as Hammet and twice as stupid! ... To boot!".

Also this:

True. I admit to not running that post past a second party for editing, and I've no qualms about tuning those sections up.

Oh, I guess Amazes can cast Rumble. This is a monster-only ghosty Venus attack.



Anyway, the mayor's reward.



It's a revive item! If you're not worried about the state of the game as it currently stands, feel free to sell this for a boatload of dosh. (2250 coins to be precise, more than enough to keep an earlygame party happy for a while.)



Also, once you take care of the thieves, the townsfolk helpfully point you in the direction of Goma Cave, so I guess that's there too.



Anyway, here's Goma Cave proper.



The inside has a worked route towards Bilibin, but it's been blocked by a cave-in.



Once we get through, we'll push that stone down and effectively create a shortcut through the map if we want to head back through here again. Golden Sun is pretty good about things like that.



Anyway, the enemies in Goma Cave are about the same as on the overworld, just a bit more numerous.



Because I'm not going to use it in combat when I have access to Ray, here's Whirlwind to show it off.



Also, Isaac's Earthquake Psynergy is incredibly strong for how early we are. It's our go-to choice for killing large encounters quickly, but his PP reserves aren't quite as sturdy as Ivan's, and he's your only healer unless we swap around the Venus Djinni, which I'm not going to do this early. Having everyone with powerful blasty Psynergy is a better option for me, I think.



Garet's Fire Psynergy is a weaker version of the Psynergy Saturos used to finish us off earlier.



As for the Bandit's Sword we got...



Works just like the Bandit's Slice attack: speed forward, do lots of damage.



The most dangerous enemies in the cave are the Skeletons, seen here hatecritting Garet for a pretty solid amount of damage this early on. It'll take a few turns of regular attacks to take them down, but still, nothing here should pose a threat at all.



Exception noted for this guy here.

That's a Mars Djinni, therefore we want it. But as the explorer here indicates, it'll try fighting before just joining us.



Ghosts have Herbs? Okay. They can also cast Rumble for what that matters.



Anyway, the puzzle here is easy. Push the pillar into the divot in the ground, and it'll create a path to reach the Mars Djinni.



Goma Cave overall is mostly just about pushing things around. We don't have much Psynergy to us at the moment, so it's just a straightforward intermediary dungeon in every respect.



Lucky Medal! This is used as one of two currency types for the gambling minigames once we reach the city of Tolbi. For now, we're just gonna hoard them.



Shove this stump into the drink below...



And you create a path to move on.



Oh, I guess we CAN crit with artifact weapons, the unleash doesn't replace it. Okay! The two ARE mutually exclusive, though.



Let's wrassle.



TOP OF THE TURNBUCKLE



Djinni fights happen a few times in the game, and while they're usually pretty dangerous, they have some easily exploitable weaknesses by the fact that you know for sure what element they are.

They pack and wield Psynergy of their type with incredible efficiency, but that's not the big problem. The problem is that they can also flee in a fight. As the explorer notes, if they do this, you can re-enter the area to get the Djinni to fight you again. This is annoying for a few reasons, one of those being if you had to solve a puzzle to reach them in the first place, you get to do the puzzle again.



Anyway, we don't have that much single-target kick, so I'm gonna unleash Flint on him.



DJINNI FIGHT



Cost a bit more than I'd like, but nobody died, I call that a success.



And that's another Djinni added to the team!



Forge's unleash effect is a party-wide attack boost, which is pretty nice to have this early on.



This guy is perhaps knowing a bit more than an explorer like him should, but he's right. By far the most important things to find in Golden Sun are extra Djinn.



Anyway, Isaac can now go Brute himself, using Forge.



Ivan, on the other hand, can become a Pilgrim, which is honestly almost a complete upgrade statwise. His Psynergy, though, gets strictly worse, at least until he has several Djinn under his belt.



And we're done with Goma Cave. Nothing else of merit really happened in there.



Hey look, it's Bilibin!



That's a weird lookin' tree.



So, there's a very clear intention of the designers for you to do something here.



And that intention is this, right here.



Bilibin's basically trying to deal with a curse originating from Kolima.



Bilibin's lord, McCoy, requested Koliman lumberjacks to cut down the sacred tree within Kolima Forest to build a fancy new house for his wife. This went about as well as could be expected.



The hint is that it's less the fact that the tree is sacred and more the fact that Psynergy Stones from the eruption have basically jacked everything up. Formerly harmless creatures can now pose a severe threat to anything they want to pick a fight with. I mean, imagine YOU had to fight a rat that could call down thunderstorms whenever it wanted.



Honestly, what we're really here for...



Is a Djinni.



Like Vault, you do have to do this place's quest eventually, but are allowed to go in another direction if you so choose. Unlike Vault, you aren't really locked into doing it anyway (for now).



I'm stopping in here to fill you all in on the situation, and then to grab this Jupiter Djinni. I'm pretty sure I have to pull the statue down from this side, but not 100% sure. Either way, it tells you there's a Djinni here and where you can reach it from.



To actually get to it, we have to walk on top of the town wall.



Whirlwind open this side passage...



And there you have it.



WHOOOOOSH

Gust's effect is much like that of the Bandit's Sword. Which is to say, it hits a dude for damage.



The effect when giving it to Isaac or Garet is much the same, turning them from their useful base classes into the (at this point) completely garbage Apprentice/Page classes.



Okay, not COMPLETELY garbage. But having a higher PP pool isn't very helpful when all my attack Psynergy is replaced with a garbage status effect Psynergy.



Anyway, weapons. While we can't afford the Witch's Wand, we can now afford the Magic Rod, which is even better for Ivan than the Bandit's Sword.



But instead of selling it, we're giving it to one of our dudes. Let's say Isaac.



Oh, and we get a Game Ticket every few purchases. This is the other currency for gambling games.



The Bandit's Sword isn't incredibly powerful, but Isaac and Garet haven't got weapon upgrades yet.



In order to get Garet a cool weapon, I even sell our highly precious and valuable Nut.



This nets him a Heavy Mace, which isn't the best thing the store sells, but it's no slouch, and it's distinctive!



The problem with Bilibin is that they really, REALLY want you to try going in the wrong direction, being confused as to why you can't, and then solving this intermediary problem, when there's literally not a thing stopping you from just ignoring the entire thing and going in your ACTUAL direction of north (which NOTHING EVER TELLS YOU IS THE RIGHT WAY).



The actual thing meant to dissuade you is the fact that the encounters get tougher if you go north than if you go east. Nuts to that, says I. I'll fight whatever the game feels like throwing at me.



Should probably get an inn stay first.



Oh hey, Murk unleash. It doesn't do much more damage that I can tell...



But it can put targets to sleep, which works the same as it does in literally any other game.



Ghosts can cast Impair to weaken our defenses. I don't care.



SPOOKY CRIT



Oh cool, they dropped an Oil Drop. This will effectively duplicate the final Psynergy in Garet's Flare line, making it a solid emergency fire attack.



Far enough north, and we hit Bilibin Cave. Even outside of ignoring the pseudo-sidequest of Bilibin, this is a good idea to go first anyway, to limit backtracking for stupid reasons later.



Oh, hey. This plant here...



If we change Isaac or Garet to Brute, they get access to the Growth Psynergy.



Casting it on this plant...



Turns it into a vine ladder!

I didn't figure this one out for an embarassingly long time the first time I played this game, leading me to miss a lot of high-class goodies.



For example, slide down this slope here and go in the cave...



To get the Elven Rapier.



This sucker is far and away better than any of our other weapons. I'm giving it to Garet, whose barely-used Heavy Mace will replace the Bandit's Sword for Isaac.