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

How to do Djinn without a guide: Give the brown ones to the guy with brown magic; the red ones to the one with red magic; the purple ones to the one with purple magic; the blue ones to the one with blue magic.

Swapping things around as Kalir does is never needed. It's the difference between, say, having area-appropriate gear and having the next area's gear in terms of a change in power level.

Gameplay is a lot like an older FF: You input everyone's actions, then allies and enemies attack according to their agility. If their action is invalid by the time their turn rolls around, they defend.

Pretty much. The basic gameplay and stat curve of Golden Sun simply isn't complex or challenging enough to support the Djinn system. As it was put in the Lost Age thread: "if the game's got no teeth anyway, why not see all the pretty animations?"

On reflection, I was maybe a little uncharitable towards the whole Xian segment. I stand by it being stupid and unnecessary and disconnected from everything. But I can kind of appreciate what the writers might've been trying to do, in fleshing out their world and adding more cultures. And again, they tried to basically make Weyard loosely correlate with real-world locations. (So what location does Altin match up to? Don't ask because I don't know.)



Anyway, Altin is flooded because of these statues.



This one immediately demonstrates that it possesses Psynergy, which drives home the point that hey, the eruption of Mt. Aleph is a pretty big deal and causing a lot of problems.



But I'm having a hard time caring about that given the abysmally slow pace of this statue's hopping. Why can't you be more like your cousin, Armos?



It flees into this small peninsula, where we can beat the hell out of it.



Spoilers: we're going to do this fight three times throughout this dungeon.



Garet is by far the best suited to messing them up.



Fearsome fighters they ain't.



That crit would be far more impressive if we couldn't almost heal two of them with a single Isaac turn.



The large thing dies and drops the Frost Jewel, which, like the Douse Drop, lets us use Psynergy Mia already had access to from square one.



Also this drains the water level since it's not constantly being refilled by a jumping gargoyle.



Despite all this harshing going on, Altin Peak is legitimately a pretty okay area. Still wish we had more of the Mercury Lighthouse jumping tiles though.



One neat element is that each statue you destroy lowers the water level, which in turn grants access to more shops. This first one gets the consumables shop opened. This is kind of clever and only slightly marred by the first statue not being a fountain for the 3+ minutes it took to taunt us.



I haven't bought an item from you or any of your Jennies yet and I'm not about to start now.



Next floor.



There's only two actual entrances into the mine from outside. This here is the passage leading to the final Living Statue, which means if you're not a coward, you can basically clear up the weapons and armor shops in one run.



This is around the point of the game where they actually start using poison attacks in full force, except when they don't trigger. And when they do, we still don't care and can cure them with a quick use of 2 PP from Isaac.



The encounter rate here is a skosh too high, so I'll be using Avoid pretty liberally. I'm not that worried about XP loss in the long run because this is Golden Sun.



One more statue. It's the second strongest out of the three statues here.



Altin Peak gets points for their minecart section being actually thematic, speedy, and not likely to ruin your day. It loses points for the track being horribly mangled in ways that mere flooding can't answer.



Only trick is that you need to find the switches to change up the track but this isn't really an obstacle.



What IS an obstacle: the fact that Isaac's pathfinding will force him to go around single-tile objects if he's so much as two pixels off-center from whatever he's running into, making facing these objects and activating them inordinately difficult.



Yeah explain to me how this could be caused by flooding.



Second statue bites it, and Isaac picks up the swanky new Briar Psynergy as an upgrade to Thorn.



As we were.

I never really got the design viewpoint that made mimics a good idea, honestly.



I don't mean in Golden Sun itself, they die like anything else in the game to a full-on beating. I mean as a rule. What is there to be gained from making a clear reward into a potentially lethal encounter that will almost always get the jump on you? Did it originate from D&D, or were mimics in other games before then? Are they just leftover cruft from GMs with a sense of opposition to the players and a need to treat player death as a punchline?

I mean, I usually run pencil/paper games the same way a mad scientist would run a chemistry experiment, but I'll try to be honest about a reward being a reward at the very least.



At this point, Isaac could use the Restore Psynergy to wake up Ivan or Mia. Not both, there's no good way to cure status ailments on multiple party members. This is, theoretically, a weakness the game could capitalize on, forcing me to make hard choices about whether I need Mia's buffing capabilities or Ivan's all-around decency more.



In practice, the mimic dies before Restore goes off.



Let me know if you can tell a difference between Briar and Thorn, graphics-wise.



In this area, we basically have to get the minecart over to where the statue is.



Half the problem is reaching this switch, which can be done by basically roving around aimlessly.



The other is actually reaching the minecart itself, requiring Frost.



Dragon Shield!



I give it to Isaac solely because Garet already has innate fire resistance.



Fun fact, I didn't actually take any screenshots of this fight.



I guess being second strongest isn't all it's cracked up to be.



This treasure we can get by backtracking into the mine once we've cleared it. I feel comfortable in not actually going to that trouble.



Once the weapons store is opened up, we're in the home stretch.



In order to clear out inventory space for the sake of making sales less clunky, I use my statboosters. Ivan gets the Hard Nut so I can pretend tanking existed this early in the RPG life cycle.



Mia gets an HP boost because she's the squishy wizard and everyone knows Toughness is a reasonable feat.



Garet gets the apple so Planet Diver can kill things even harder than usual.



The weapons being sold are all hella expensive, but since there's only one artifact weapon I don't even feel like buying Garet a new one (also he'll get an artifact weapon in the next area).



I initially was unwilling to buy it because it would've taken all my money, but then I figured hey, the game's easy anyway, why not see all the cool particle effects?



Silver lining! Your homes might've all been destroyed, but the revenue from selling off the fancy new ore might help with that!



We're right above the area boss, oddly.



To get it, we'll pass through this area, grabbing that Djinni because it's a Djinni and this is what you do.



Easy enough: flip this switch and then drive the minecart over.



These Frost pillars let us leave the area.



While this Frost-and-a-half pillar get to the minecart.

EXTREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEME



And there you go.



Drench is the upgraded form of Douse, and I don't think we're going to use it. I'm basically set with the classes we have.



This Djinni takes the opportunity to flee midfight, wasting my time and forcing me to redo the puzzle, or more sensibly, reload my save.



Doubly advantageous to do the second thing, since the first encounter in any load of Golden Sun results in your team attacking first.



Literally never gonna use this in normal fights and Ivan's bound to actually get Mars Psynergy soon, so hey, why not.



That's... not half bad actually!



Second time takes.



Spritz is an area heal effect, which is certainly nice since we don't have that ability...



Except now we do, because it promotes Isaac to Cavalier, granting the Wish Psynergy. Wish is an area heal and therefore lets us stop the only real barrier to our progress that we've had all game (powerful area Psynergy).



Ivan's Psynergy Rod that he's bought can leech PP from monsters, assuming they have it. Tarantulas do not.



Hey, we're up here!



What's down this dark twisty corridor?



Yes, causing a cave-in is meant to be the method of progression here.



Remember how I said Fuchin Temple was 100% optional? Still true here. If you don't have it, Garet gets frustrated at the dead end and accidentally starts the cave-in himself.



In a more darkly-written game, this would cause some kind of traumatic flashback that would result in one of your party members helping Isaac come to his senses, possibly dramatically sacrificing themselves, so the party can get out of harm's way. Presumably the cave-in would happen naturally rather than because the party is bored.



Instead, you sprint away from the boulder through the zig-zag path in a way that brings Yakety Sax to mind. I consider that an improvement even if it is dumb as hell.



The boulder crashes through the not-Isaac's-dad-shaped floor...



And a bestial bellowing can be heard deep within.



We climb down the wrecked tracks, ignoring for the moment that Altin is no longer flooded and we have no reason to risk our lives here save that Silk Road is still blocked and we have no better ideas for where to go.



This inexplicably leads to a buried ruin with architecture almost identical to Sol Sanctum.



A more accomplished researcher of game lore could probably identify what purpose, if any, these ancient ruins served (a random villager confirms the water-spitting statues used to be "guardian statues" which is incredibly vague). I'm not going to be too serious about this, but here's an idea.



Later in the series, you find an area that's effectively the equivalent of Atlantis. The king of this area, one King Hydros, is said to be several centuries old. Not-Atlantis, much like "real" Atlantis, is assumed to be completely mythical by the rest of the world. However, it used to interact with the rest of the world at large, back when the lighthouses were still going strong and Alchemy wasn't sealed away.



This is the Hydros Statue, and it probably goes without saying that it doesn't look a damn thing like King Hydros. But if the name is meant as reference to King Hydros, it probably implies that the distant ancestors of Altin REALLY didn't like this king, made effigies in mockery of him, and then fell into ruin and obscurity (with their progeny, the people of present-day Altin, mistakenly thinking of them as generic guardian statues).



There's not anything to actually write or edit this update, so I had to flex my creativity SOMEHOW. Anyway, Wish heals everyone at equal efficiency and it's great and we're going to use it almost constantly because area heals in JRPGs are basically mandatory.

Garet remains as good at tackling statues as ever.



I don't actually NEED this healing right now, but eh, why not.



The statue responds with Froth Sphere, a high-end Mercury version of Fireball.



If it wasn't for having just obtained Wish, its heavy reliance on Froth Sphere would make it actually dangerous.



But we have Wish, so whatever.



The physical attack it has is weak as hell even when it hits. This guy has basically no chops.



Okay bye.



I tried to come up with actual party banter here... but at the same time, I can't really think of what they'd actually talk about? This is one thing I can agree with the SA LPer I more or less stole this idea from: from Fuchin Temple to basically this point, there's really nothing going on. There's no reason to be doing anything here except that it is there, and your progression is incredibly arbitrary. The party discussion should be "we need to get to the next lighthouse and stop Saturos and Menardi!" instead of "gee isn't it weird that these statues came to life when we already have evidence that Psynergy Stones Make Weird Things Happen?".



The existence of ruins at the bottom of the mine? Also not explained. Here or ever. So that's cool.



If I wanted to be charitable, I'd say that my stuff above about tying it in to King Hydros is 100% canon, but even if I do, that doesn't mean anything.



So let's skip to getting the Hi-Jump Boots.



Nope.



Anyway, the Lifting Gem.



To maintain Garet's sick gains, he gets it.



This grants the Lift Psynergy, the latest in ghostly hand based Psynergy.



Using it, we can cause boulders to levitate indefinitely.



Just this one minor area here...



One last encounter with a unique effect...



And we're done! We're on the other side of Silk Road and can continue our quest.



Checking in on Silk Road confirms that Hsu is totally trapped there, Feizhi is right, yadda yadda whatever.



Lama Temple is at least a LITTLE more relevant than Fuchin Temple, since it has a connection to one of our party members, addresses Saturos and Menardi, and is actually required to progress in the game.



If we tried to clear Lamakan Desert without hitting this place up, we'd be walled just before the area boss, I think. Not interested.



It'll also have dialogue I can actually rewrite. Go me.



Good for her. I do not care.

Next Time: Harry Potter and the Merchant's Prophecy

So does the game really have no redeeming or distinctive characteristics?

It has more text than the Holy Bible?

He's not saying it's not fun. It is!

It's just not hard.

(also it's very pretty you really need to see this psynergy in motion)

It's very pretty for sure, and letting you use your combat magic for puzzle solving is a really neat idea (that is a little underexplored).

It's very much a bread-and-butter JRPG, and sometimes you just want that rather than trying to decode just what the hell a "Junction EX Combo Summon Deluxe No Tomatoes" is.

OK. I've just never felt that conveyed in this or any other LP about the series.

Consider that there are enough LPs that you have several from which to draw this conclusion.

Well by several I mean three (including this one).

Oh man, are you guys ready for backstory development for one of our characters?



Cuz that's happening. Today. This is Master Hama. Hi.





Wrong. Ivan is never once shown predicting future events throughout the entire series.













OH SNAP APPLE





Right, this scene isn't over yet, but I'm gonna talk it now.

Almost this entire event is... kind of pointless overall. Even the party brings up how it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for someone to wait around to hand out the Lens of Truth to the 1000th disciple. And the last-second "maybe I can't give you Reveal" thing doesn't work either because the established failure condition is "nothing happens". Feizhi's return helps link Xian to the outside world and confirm Psynergy as alien to the rest of civilization, which is good and fine, but again, it undercuts Hama's sudden indecisiveness.

Speaking of Hama, she doesn't really have a character either, did you notice? She's supposed to be this kind of detached-from-reality seer archetype, sort of, maybe, which helps tie her in even more to Ivan, but she waffles and wobbles in a frankly incredible amount for how little screentime she gets. It's not even the same as Mia where there's a few decent points of character to work off of. She's just kind of... there.



Case in point: she completely forgets about that thing she waited here for months to do the second someone runs in and warns her of calamity.



We were already going to be fine. Just get on with it.



Rest in peace, Prince.



Translated: Reveal has limited range but you have infinite PP and so can just cast it as a dowsing rod.



And she leaves with that line to go help Feizhi.





Hooray we have Reveal now.



It do this. The box here contains a Water of Life, for the record.

Unlike the Legend of Zelda, where the locations where the Lens of Truth are useful are mostly a crapshoot to find out, Reveal is usually hinted at by a formation of six rocks/bushes/etc in a hexagon around whatever might have a hidden thing.



Sometimes it's not really hinted at, but hey, you just got it, you're gonna try it out wherever.



This is Hsu. He could probably be one of the Beatles.



Garet uses Lift and we're basically done.



Yes. We use Lift once in the area and it sustains until we leave. We could walk around, recharge to full PP, heal the team, do it again, clear Silk Road, establish our own trading post, and provided we didn't actually leave Silk Road at any time during this, Hsu would be in no danger whatsoever.



Also, gloat. And probably have him clear Silk Road already.

This is a thing Golden Sun really likes to do, by the way.



Not have Garet be an idiot and ruin everything (he is, of course, interrupting Ivan here). I mean, he does that too.

I mean the part about calling you out for leaving your world-saving on hold while you go complete sidequests. In a way it's kind of refreshing compared to other JRPGs, where you don't go actually solve people's problems until the laser sky cathedral has turned the sun a lovely shade of lavender. It's still kind of aggravating to have people's thanks replaced with "WTF R U ODIN GO SAVE THE WORLD DUMBASS".



There's a reason I rewrote Garet to be slightly less stupid and abrasive.



Anyway, Hama leaves abruptly before Ivan say anything of use.



WELL HE WAS GOING TO.



Anyway yeah we've spent enough time on this already and Hama doesn't do anything else for the rest of the game. She'll show up in the Lost Age by the time you've forgotten she existed, and in the Lost Age you forget she exists the second the scene she's in ends. Probably faster.



No skin off my nose. Bye.



To Lamakan Desert! See the meter on the left?



It has three tiers, and at each one it pulls the drawstring on the back of one of your party members at random.



Your job is to find the oases here to keep the meter down.



Isaac takes a quick bath and the meter goes down, because this is definitely what you do in a desert oasis.



New dudes with new, weird moves.



Sometimes, the rock formations indicating oases hold antlions instead. That's cool.



Oh no, critically high heat!



Oh no, instead of an oasis it's useful treasure!



Oh no, Garet gets a weapon upgrade!



If the meter tops out, everyone takes pretty decent damage and the meter resets. I don't know if anyone can die from this, but we have Wish so we don't care.



One of the oasis spots has a Jupiter Djinni instead.



We beat the hell out of it, as usual. Smog is the same as Fever except Jupiter aligned.



It upgrades Mia's class to Scholar, letting her use Wish as well and basically ensuring we're never going to be at risk of dying ever.



Also found here: Lucky Pepper, which improves a stat I'm not going to tell you YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF IT WILL BE A COMPLETE MYSTERY FOREVER HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA



Sand falls exist here too. Oh, and just to clarify: only walking on the sand (falls included) raises the heat meter. The rocks are fine, they just keep it at the same level.



Dead end?



Nah.



There's no actual reason for us to head down there.

Well, except prizes. Mints give you an Agility boost, because who isn't going to rush to the store to get more Thin Mints?



Area boss!



The Manticore is where the game's bosses stop being weak and start being halfway decent as challenges, but even so, this guy's not very dangerous.



Fitting for the area, he's weakest to Mercury Psynergy.



Manticore wields mid-tier Mars Psynergy and some status effect spells. Garet's been tagged with a Curse, putting a turn limit on his life.



Or rather, a time limit until Isaac has to burn a turn casting Restore on him.



Manticore also uses a few other status moves, like Poison Tail. There's basically two types of Poison in Golden Sun: deadly poison like this, and poison that you can overcome by just self-healing on accident. I'm glad Etrian Odyssey figured out that making poison different intensities helps keep it competitive as a status ailment: 30 or so damage each turn doesn't mean much when your max HP can reach 1000 by endgame.



There's two kinds of Blast Psynergy in the game. There's the one Garet has that upgrades into Nova, and the one that he'd get if he had Mercury Djinn, which looks more like a kind of wildfire effect.



I eventually get the Vulcan Axe to land its Barrage unleash. It does extra Mars damage but failed to connect with the Stun effect it can do.



And it seems to me, that he lived his life, like a candle in the wind...



BYE.



Ply Well is the next level of Ply and sounds very silly to me.



Desert over.

At this point there's quite a few places we can wander to, but not many that actually hold anything of use. One place we want to go is this suspicious islet here.



Why no, this isn't going to get old at all.



SUCH A DEVASTATING ATTACK



Vine lowers the agility of the enemy for a while and that's all I have to say about that.



This upgrades Garet to his Savage class, granting him both the Spire Psynergy Isaac has in his base class and the Impair Psynergy, which would be far more helpful if enemies didn't use the same stat to check stat-lowering as they did to check defenses against things that instantly win the game against them, like Sleep, Seal, Curse, Stun, whatever.



Yay, now we have Nova!



Nothing over here. Just wanted to point out the game has no problems with letting us backtrack ALMOST all the way north of the Lamakan Desert.



New town! Guess what it is!



That's right, it's Ivan's hometown!



As the guards at the entrance indicate, Kalay is sort of meant to mimic the Arabian trader sort of civilization.



WE MUST STEAL THEIR GOODIES



Kalay Tunnel has always struck me as really... weird.



I mean, we can get this guy, that's not a problem.

Scorch does an effect of some kind.



It also upgrades Ivan to Ascetic, finally granting him actual Mars Psynergy in combat (and while it's currently a bit outdated, it'll get an upgrade very soon). He also gains Ward, which boosts Psynergy resistance for one target and is therefore great.



I get bored and give people stat boosts. Mia gets the Mint because her Agility is too close to Ivan's AND THAT VEXES ME.



Garet gets the Lucky Pepper because 2 Luck is criminally low.



Anyway, the reason Kalay Tunnel strikes me as weird is because of this room. I don't actually remember how to get the treasure in here. I know I've seen it every time, and I don't know how to get into the bottom area, which will let me access everything.



The only other route out of the tunnel leads into this prison-like area of Hammet Palace. It's just really bizarre.



Anyway, the palace is keeping quiet about Hammet's abduction, it seems.



LEMME IN NERDS I GOTTA GRAB MY SMOKES.



Ivan's got this, of course.



Okay, just pointing this out?

Kalay is basically supposed to be Turkey. Recent desert voyage notwithstanding, there is no way Ivan passes for "tan" in fantasy Turkey.



I'm not gonna be editing this intro bit because we'll be forced indoors very soon, where I'll have an actual conversation to edit.



Screw you, buddy.



Yeaaah back us up man.



Bored now, skipping ahead.



Let's pretend we're all caught up on the same page about Ivan and Hammet. Okay? Okay. Good.



First bit of this cutscene is just the latest news about Hammet. Nothing really fancy here.





Here, though, is where things get interesting.





For those of you keeping score at home, this is NOT the southwestern corner of the game map. That would put us roughly at Kibombo, in the heart of the continent of Gondowan (Africa). Layana's saying this went down at the southwestern corner of Atteka (South America).



Credit where it's due: this is legit backstory building for a character. It's a shame it shows up this late in the game, is centered around a very secondary character, and isn't even remotely accurate. In the normal text, it's a much more vague thing with the Shaman's Rod (use, instead of trade), and it's implied that Hammet is supposed to be the one to do it, which is blatantly wrong. Layana also says he managed to uncover a clue just in time, but never explains what that clue is (and I'm pretty sure the writers don't know either). It's also slightly spoilersome to say, but Ivan doesn't ever get the chance to actually use the rod proper. Calling it a trade (which was honestly more of an accident in my earlier description) makes it just flow better for basically any and all instances of its involvement than the far more bland "use it to get a thing" it has.

As for the Adept's oath, that's another element I can't really discuss without spoilers. However, I can say that the prediction centering around Ivan, and bequeathing Ivan to Hammet's care... is probably just honestly a bad idea. I mean, I don't really like prophecies as a storytelling element anyway, but this prophecy isn't even remotely correct in broad strokes. The Great Healer saying Felix must unlock the power? Yes, good, proper foresight nonsense. Everything going on with the oath is just incredibly roundabout and clunky and just not really well thought out at all.





We're not gonna backtrack now to save Hammet, we just don't have the tools for it yet. But we will be saving him, because there is a non-zero number of Djinn we can obtain by doing so.

But yeah, this is one of the few scenes in Golden Sun where actually relevant story to both the world setting and our individual character backstories happens. Hama tries but ends up being way too boneless for the connection they're trying to set up. And the next major city? That's gonna be REALLY fun to rewrite, although this one wasn't honestly half bad.



Anyway, back on track.

Next Time: Harry Potter and the Karagol Sea

It's probably too late for a change in plans, but you should totally pick the rowers so that you land on Crossbone Isle after Kraken.

Tried to. Screwed it up. Don't trust GameFAQs.

I'm guessing this is a typo. But I kinda like the way it turned out.

Hah.

I don't even remember how to do it myself.

I may have gone a LITTLE overboard on screenshots for this one. Oh well. Starting off by looting Hammet's palace: only thing of actual note is the Water Jacket which anyone can equip and which boosts Water and Fire resists. Everyone has at least one resistance to those elements so I'm not really worried about who gets it.



Occasionally, minor items can be hidden in barrels and crates around town. Actually looking for them is tedious, but Reveal can point out where they are. It is in no way worth your time to do this.



So this here. Tolbi's the next city, although we won't be reaching it this update. I just want you to bear in mind that this guy is afraid of Lord Babi. His citation for this is that he's lived over a century, which... I wouldn't find that kind of thing terrifying, but think about that.



If you stay at the inn before leaving, you get this cutscene (and why WOULDN'T you stay at the inn, full heals are starting to become actually useful).



Super minor thing in the grand scheme. This is a tour group heading to Tolbi for its Colosso festival.



Among their number are two warriors, this one being Sean and his red-haired pal being Ouranos.



Hooray, irrelevant!



Silk Road doesn't just link from Xian to Kalay, it goes all the way north of the Karagol (Mediterranean) to Tolbi.



The landslide isn't technically attributed to Saturos and Menardi, but lets pretend it was.



Anyway, the group leaves after this minor infodump, saying that hey, whoever's left behind knew the risks that they'd be late.



And here he is.



I'm not 100% sure about the map but I think if we head straight north we can return to Vault. We're not doing that until we check out Colosso, though.



This tunnel holds nothing of importance... although let me quickly check GameFAQs...

Yep, this is just for a sidequest, we don't actually use this area. Answered my questions about the chests in the Kalay Tunnel too (they're junk).



And here we are at the Karagol Sea.



NOBODY LIKES A PEDANT.



This is a minor and adorable scene, only slightly undercut by the fact that we totally could've seen the ocean by just walking to the coast around Imil. Was probably even visible from the top of Mercury Lighthouse, although Garet was obviously distracted there.



Can't get this guy because of the landslide, we have to sail across the sea and then walk along the entire northern coast of the Karagol.



Time for a boat mission. Hope you brought archers and pegasus knights.



Welcome to a really interesting segment of Golden Sun ruined by having too many words about pointless things and not enough about actually critical things.



Here, one of the crewmembers is arguing with the captain (unnamed) and his first mate Kaja.



There's concerns about setting off for a few reasons.



These problems are A: the disappearance of their replacement ship severely limiting their ability to ferry people, and B: an increase in monster attacks throughout the Karagol, with some even boarding and attacking the crew.

Oddly enough, these events aren't strictly linked.



Kaja's a solid enough fighter, but he's also the only one with his hands free enough to do so.



The captain thinks everything's going to be A-OK though.



I kind of like this little part, or really any instance of superstition, possibly baseless, in a high fantasy setting. This is a place where a handful of people are able to read minds, telekinetically move incredible loads, and direct the raw elements to destroy their foes.

In any event, the crewmember still thinks setting off is a bad idea, no matter how many trinkets the captain has.



Meanwhile, in the crew cabin, Ouranos and Sean are having words with a tour guide.





No lie, I barely edited that scene at all. It's really kind of refreshing, this writing here is honestly kind of... good. Shame it concerns characters who don't exist outside of this scene.



Anyway, I'm going to ruin one of the plot twists here to minimize backtracking.



Gee I wonder what the captain's lucky charm could be doing on the mast?



Let's go interrupt their meeting.



This gets disproven by Kaja's next textbox in the original. Let's see if we can fix that.





Zounds, gadzooks, etc.





Let's just chalk this up to warrior's insight because nobody else questions it or wonders how Sean knows it.



And the stage is now set for the Karagol Sea mini-thing! Oh, and you don't have to tell the captain your name: if you say no, he just goes "oh, well, you look like a Isaac #DORPO to me".



As mentioned, Kaja, Sean, and Ouranos will be topside, fighting off boarders. If someone comes belowdecks, we're to protect the crew and the oarsmen.

The funny thing is... down that staircase is where the oarsmen are. To get here, they have to enter the door that leads here, to the passenger's hold. You'd think we could easily defend both just by holding this point, but haha funny story.



Belowdecks, Kaja is briefing the oarsmen.



This is probably honestly true. Kaja looks tough, but he's likely only fought things in the Karagol, and even then only recently, since Mt. Aleph erupted.



Anyway this area is sort of a minigame, but spoilers: I relied on GameFAQs for it too and ruined it completely, because GameFAQS is great at locating obscure items, but absolutely terrible at boss strategies and puzzle solutions in many an instance.



But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, we need to 100% protect the crew and oarsmen absolutely no fooling.



This is what Camelot considers a "hint" for doing this area properly, which will be blatantly unhelpful in the best ways.



Anyway, as we set off, it does a mini-montage.



Panning over each of the locations...



Captain sets his lucky anchor in place...



To sea!



PUT YOUR BACK INTO IT!



And people rowing away down here!

I dunno, I just like this part!



Shortly after setting off, though...



Oh no, combat jellyfish!



Get ready for fun!



Despite a harsh starboard turn, the creatures make it on deck, and slip past Ouranos...



And get into the holds.



So yeah, here's how this entire scenario goes.



You get a monster attack, then you fight them off, then you select a replacement from the passengers.



Unlike every other fight in the game, it's NOT actually the best idea to just go nova for every fight, and I'll explain why later.



Needless to say, I do it anyway.



Once the smoke clears, Kaja checks in...



Notices we're down a crewmember...



And sends us up to get a new rower from the passengers.



This is the stupid part, and the part GameFAQs lied to me about.

See, you'll get through at the exact same speed no matter who you choose to row. Even if you manage to know everyone's exact rowing speeds and sync them up flawlessly, you'll still fight exactly 4 battles.

If you want to get to a SECRET ZONE... slightly earlier... and not be able to fully complete it... BUT IT'S THERE? You have to purposefully ruin the ship's angle, and ruin it hard, by throwing in really weak rowers on the starboard side and strong rowers on port.



It is, of course, basically impossible to find who qualifies for what for each side. Hence GameFAQs. The FAQ for reaching the area I mentioned suggested two orders, one of which was extremely vague and one of which was not. I am going with the less-vague but also wrong option here.



I wouldn't have chosen you if GameFAQs hadn't lied. Who's the real monster? I was just following orders.



So we got this 96 pound weakling in among the rowers here, what could go wrong?



Haha good friggin' luck.



The young lady is having severe trouble keeping pace with everyone else.



Moving right along...



Seagulls aren't monsters, but they are annoying.



Annoying enough that the lookout fails to do his job.



Sean and Ouranos are fighting as hard as ever...



But there's only so much they can do.



I JUST WANTED TO SAY YOU'RE BEING A REAL TROOPER ABOUT ALL OF THIS

Still not a boss fight. They're tougher than random encounters around Kalay but not by much.



One of the bats lands a Vampiric Fang, which does exactly what you think it does.



So here's where the thing lied to us.



This young lady is exactly as unsuited to rowing as the first. We'd want someone stronger here, like the chef or the bald guy.



Sorry.



At least they're matching! THATS WHAT THE ROWERS TOLD US TO DO RIGHT



Next round. The seagulls scatter without warning, confusing this guy.



Hey, he'll notice the monster this time.



Once again, Sean and Ouranos are outnumbered. Where the hell is Kaja though?



Continued adventures of slightly stronger than earlier random encounters!



I'd probably use you in either solution. I have nothing to say in my defense.



Probably.



The old man fares no better than the two young ladies.



Time for the area boss.



Kaja comes down asking for reinforcements because this thing is WAY huge and WAY angry.



Smash 'em, crash 'em, make 'em write bad checks!



No sooner do we get on deck than do we see Ouranos KO'd.



Sean gets launched to the deck before us shortly after.



YOUR RELEASE IS CANCELED, BUDDY



Here's why you don't want to go overboard with Psynergy use before this fight. Garet's literally half-empty now, and there's precious little opportunity for you to refill your PP between encounters unless you spend yonks walking in place. I am not this stupid, but I am stupid enough to overextend a bit, so we're going into the fight at a disadvantage, and the Kraken is honestly the first legitimately difficult encounter.



Unsurprisingly, and in accordance with about half the game's bosses so far, the Kraken is vulnerable to Mars and resistant to Mercury. Now that Ivan has Volcano, he has a decent non-physical attack to use (but will still use the physical attack if he gets an Impact buff from Mia).



Garet packs as much of a kick as ever, but he's got limited fuel this time around.



In addition to a healthy helping of Mercury Psynergy (Water Blessing and Froth Sphere, mostly), the Kraken has two physical attacks that are dangerous.



Spinning Beat does plenty of damage, and going by the weakness here, it's either Mercury or Venus typed. We'll have to see how Mia or Garet responds to one.



One nice thing about arranging the party in Agility order is that it means your fastest character will default to getting all the consumable items. Mia can sling around single-target heals almost as efficiently as Isaac can.

Poison Beat is the other physical attack. Guess what it can do.



Ivan still has the Healing Ring, which while it's possible to break, it's still a fast heal, and the Kraken can occasionally outspeed Isaac.



The Kraken can also use Ply, so it's not possible to simply win through attrition. Your PP reserves will run out first.



The good news is that this means Ivan can get PP using his Psynergy Rod, but he... doesn't have much to spend it on? Like, he can Ward Mia to lessen the need to keep her healed, but it's not even that critical.



Drench is the upgraded form of Douse, and it honestly packs a pretty heavy kick.



Screw it, have a Ward.



Garet does eventually run out of Psynergy, forcing him to rely on his physical attack.



This isn't that bad, honestly.



Neither is this. This is, for the record, the first time we've been normal poisoned all game.



28 damage is a drop in the bucket. Still, it's another tool the Kraken can use to ensure the fight lasts longer.



The Kraken is where I got walled my first time playing Golden Sun because it is straight up no-foolin' an actually hard fight.



One last tool it has is Dark Blessing, which has a chance of inflicting delusion. If you still have PP on your physical attackers its fine, but Garet's empty. He can't afford this.



I ACTUALLY USED AN ELIXIR WHAT.



And then we won. Good fight, good fight.



Damn right I did.



Wh-- IT NEVER WENT BELOWDECKS AND THERE WERE NO OTHER MONSTERS OTHERWISE THEY WOULDN'T HAVE STOPPED WITH JUST ONE CREWMEMBER.



This guy hauls around heavy backpacks for a living, he's used to this kind of work.



A lying liar who lies.



OH NO I'VE DESYNCHED THE TEAMS SEVERELY WE'LL NEVER MAKE IT



Or not.



And thats it. That's the Karagol Sea sequence.

Assuming GameFAQs didn't lie, we'd find land, but only after we went off-course from ruining our sailing severely. We'd do it right after choosing our fourth rower and we'd encounter no difficulties between that and landing.



Each of the rowers you choose has a comment after landing.



See? She's a trooper.



Her, not so much.



Hey, you're gonna be late for Colosso if you don't hurry.

Next Time: Harry Potter and the Invisible Tyrant

This doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I mean, unless you're gonna assume Saturos and Menardi were thoughtless enough to destroy Silk Road ahead of them as well as behind. Either that, or the landslide is unrelated.



Whatever. There's Tolbi, the next city.



Tolbi is the homeland of Kraden, and it's also the place we can cash in our several Lucky Medals and Game Tickets.



We'll start with the Lucky Medals because why not.



The thing you want to do here is pretty obvious.



Don't even bother throwing coins. You only get more coins as a prize and the gain rate is abysmal. Lucky Medals give actual prizes.



Only problem is you throw them over your shoulder and they spin around the center of the pool for about 15 seconds, giving them ample time to pinball off of turtles.



So that one was wasted.



Better. There's a few different possible rewards, and we want the artifact weapons because of course we do.



Nope. Spirit Armor improves all elemental resistances when equipped though, so that's nice.



Yep. The Assassin's Blade is a light blade so anyone can equip it, but its unleash is Venus based so Isaac and Garet want it.



Garet wants this Burning Axe more, though.



We'll check the weapon shop for a cool thing for Ivan, too. Mia apparently picked up a Frost Wand recently and I haven't used it that much? Okay.



The inn's completely booked for Colosso. Which... is kind of really good design, but carried out in a really infuriating way.



I'll explain in a bit, but right now, that Djinni is annoying to reach without shuffling our classes around, since Garet lacks the PP to even cast Growth. Screw that.



Lucky Wheels is a slot machine. It uses Game Tickets. It gives boots, rings and shirts, all equipment classes using slots we've not had access to. I'll probably do that later but not right now.



Anyway, the preliminaries and qualifying rounds for Colosso, which is a big-ass gladiator tournament everyone wanted to enter but couldn't because krakens, are already over. The town's kind of a complete mess honestly, festivals notwithstanding.



The reason is that the ruler's gone completely missing.



Just as a reminder, Babi is apparently a really intimidating, really old dude, who's lived far longer than any person should be able to.



Right, the Angelic Ankh. It's Mercury-based I think, but beggars can't be choosers. Take it, Ivan.



Tolbi's right on the edge of Angara, so Gondowan as a continent isn't that far off, but the actual location of Babi Lighthouse is really inconvenient to reach from Tolbi. This says a lot about Babi's influence and reach, as well as his priorities. (It's important to note that it's basically right next to Venus Lighthouse, which he can't use on account of not being a Venus Adept.)



Going back to my point about the inn: you are GOING to be weak as hell after the Kraken fight, and your first stops are the inn and the sanctum respectively. But when you get to the inn, you're told people are camping out basically wherever they can, forcing you to explore Tolbi and find somewhere that CAN get you some rest (unless you're walking in place for five years but again, screw that). And in the process, unless you're among the most bull-headed of players who refuses to read textboxes (in which case why are you playing Golden Sun) you're intended to learn a lot about what's coming up, since it's basically central to the endgame here.



You're going to encounter this scene unless you go right from the Kraken fight to the next dungeon area (DO NOT DO THIS).



Babi's Palace is where the actual inn is available, as well as one cutscene telling you where to go next and one very important, but very easily missed, and ACTUALLY MAIN PLOT RELEVANT character.



You can, of course, find the inn first and then completely miss both of those things.

This inn does the classic FF1 thing of every party member going to their own bed and resting. Because this is Golden Sun, they also all have unique but equally meaningless textboxes.



Continuing further in, we encounter this guy, Iodem. Spoilers: he's the Smithers to Babi's Mr. Burns.



This is kind of a long scene but also not really that worth concatenating. Let's get the main points. First, Iodem suspects Babi went to Altmiller Cave.



Altmiller Cave is established as incredibly dangerous. Whether that's before or after the increase in monsters following Mt. Aleph is never explained, but it doesn't matter.



This much is not news to Iodem, who has even followed Babi to Altmiller Cave a couple of times.



However, he couldn't follow him very far, since Babi literally went invisible almost instantly upon entering. The cave's fairly dark, but even so, there's a difference between being hard to see and straight up vanishing.



Since this is a thing that has happened a few times while Iodem has served Babi, it's not normally a big problem, but he's never left during Colosso, and never failed to show up again within the same day.

That about sums it up. Iodem's trying like crazy to search for Babi, and while it's never explained why, I'd imagine losing such a permanent fixture of the city, one with a... let's say tenuous relationship with neighboring cities, would probably be a big deal.



Oh, another area. Down here is where it's confirmed that Kraden is studying Alchemy at Babi's orders. Since they've had no reports from him for a while, they're concerned, but missing Babi trumps missing Kraden.



Moving on, here's the important part. Over on the left is Sheba.

Since the game tells you so damn little about her and she is only actually talked to here, I'm going to spoil a bit. Sheba comes from Lalivero, where Babi is building Babi Lighthouse over the ruins there.



Sheba literally fell from the sky into Lalivero, explaining her "child of the gods" state, but that does not matter to Babi one whit: all he cares about is that she's important, and she can be used as leverage.

Quovak, who ran the SA LP of these games, claims that despite all the atrocities and misuses of power he's done, Golden Sun presents Babi as one of the most sympathetic characters in the game. I don't really think that's true, so much as that all the information to point to Babi as the tyrant he is is kind of off the beaten path. Certainly in your party's interactions with him, neither his connection to Kraden nor his kidnapping of Sheba really comes up, missed opportunities both. I'm more going to chalk that up to a failure of the writers or localizers to properly impact upon the player that hey, Babi isn't really on the up-and-up and you should be asking some questions about him.



Getting back to Sheba, to literally nobody's surprise, she's an Adept. Jupiter, to be precise.



This would be an EXCELLENT place for her to talk to the party, define her character more, and basically get all the character building in that happened the first time we encounter Ivan in about the same circumstances. But because she's not your obligatory Jupiter Adept or token girl, that doesn't happen. All the text here I've invented 100%. And if you don't visit her literally right now, she'll basically vanish up until the endgame where you're expected to know who she is and why you should care about her. This is just lazy and inexcusable.



Also, the roadblock of the week is the checkpoint at the Suhalla Range. They'll forbid entry to us until we're good and done with the Tolbi end of things.



Anyway, by walking around the exterior of the town gate, we can get over here and create a path to reach the Mars Djinni.



Ember is one of the few methods of restoring PP midfight, so that's nice. Just don't expect a windfall out of it.



Outside of town, there's two Djinn to get, one of which is a random encounter on the western side of the map.



Ivan's Angelic Ankh does something very angelic in trying to steal the Djinni's life.



Anyway, Hail joins and does a thing whatever.



Altmiller Cave is just up here. We'll head there soon, just gotta backtrack along the northern coast of the Karagol.



YOU ARE A WASTE OF EVERYONE'S TIME.



Personally, the waist-high fence style obstacle never really bothered me, but eh.



Ground paralyzes a target, stealing its next turn. This is not a status effect and appears to work on anything, so against single bosses it's even better than Granite for the usual garbage (although if the boss gets multiple turns, as is rapidly becoming the norm, it's less useful).

Also Garet gets an upgrade to Barbarian, because at this point, our characters' Djinn grant them levels equal to their basic levels in their innate element. I feel like this is what causes physical attacks to excel so far ahead of Psynergy, since the base stat for Attack keeps increasing, but you can go the whole game without once improving your innate element's strength. Isaac's Thorn Psynergy is as strong now as it was back when we first got it. Mia's role as offensive caster with Prism and Plasma has basically been thrown out the window in favor of being full-time support with Impact and Wish.



Not that her Frost Wand can't back a kick (and stun), but she just doesn't hold a candle to Planet Diver or Cutting Edge.

That's another problem: since area spells never increase in stats, and neither Mia nor Ivan gets access to physical Psynergy like Garet or Isaac does, they're at a perpetual disadvantage that not even class stat modifiers can overcome. And you can't even make the argument of them getting more support or utility Psynergy to even it out, because Isaac and Garet get those too. Hell, Isaac's class is literally the best healer in the game, with access to Ply, Wish, both status healers, and any day now a Revive Psynergy. Meanwhile, Garet's class is one of only two that don't provide some way for him to either heal or increase party defenses.



And again: Garet and Isaac have the exact same Psynergy progression for offense as Mia and Ivan do. In fact, since they're both on relatively-decent middle-tier Psynergy attacks (Nova and Briar) while Mia is still stuck on first-tier stuff and Ivan's been using a garbage second-tier the whole time he's been in this class, they're better at casting, too. Not that they need it, because their basic physical attacks are far and away better than Ivan or Mia.



This isn't even "linear wizards, quadratic fighters" because that implies Mia and Ivan have gotten anywhere near the same level of progression, or any progression at all.

Mechanics rant over, let's do this.



Altmiller Cave is a dark place, but that bothers us less when we have access to Reveal.



There's torches here and there that provide visibility, but nothing too crazy.



Reveal still only works in the immediate area, but it's a good way to dodge the dead ends that you'd get by just following the easiest path in the light.



Obligatory early-dungeon easy Mimic.



In his continued quest to obsolete the casters, Garet gets our first actual status spell, Haunt. Unfortunately, Golden Sun is one of those games where status effects aren't worth using. Haunt deals damage at the end of the victim's turn except when it does for reasons. Even the GameFAQs thing with a star that was literally updated three days ago (with locations of Sleep Bombs, EXTREMELY RIVETING STUFF) doesn't explain where Haunt works exactly.



Garet will get more death-based Psynergy later on, including a Psynergy version of the Mortal Danger unleash, very few of which are worth actually using.



Hey, it's a guy.









This is a really weird sequence of events that is also completely unnecessary since Ivan's Reveal can show us what rocks have what colors. But I digress. Let's go grab us a draught.



GHOST MAGIC



SCARY SPOOKY etc.



Haunt has decent odds of landing on most enemies, but it doesn't really... do enough for it to matter in the long run.



That's never stopped me in Brogue and you aren't nearly as nauseating.



Ha haaaa! Screw you.



There's a few treasures in Altmiller Cave, but nothing truly notable.



In a vain attempt to keep up, Mia picks up the Bind Psynergy, which can seal a target's Psynergy. This is, again, not likely to work in boss encounters...



And not worth the trouble in random encounters.



ESPECIALLY WHEN IT DOESN'T EVEN WORK THERE



And yeah, just to drive it home. This is how much a Prism Psynergy deals...



This is from Garet's Nova.



At least the Golems have incredibly skrong haymakers.



There are pillar-rolling puzzles here but you only have to do this one. And even then, only if you want the Djinni (you do).

Set up everything like this, then freeze the water here.



This lets you push everything you need out of the way enough that you can reach it.



For the record, Djinn only attack if they're in an area that already has random encounters.



This guy can't even contend.



For a fun time, scroll up and compare Garet's stats to Mia's here. Note that Mia has positive modifiers to all of her stats, while Garet has neutral modifiers for his PP and a penalty to his Luck.



I wonder who it was that designed this map. I wonder if they're okay with being a monster.



Mmmm... nope. Not bothering.



So here's the next pipe puzzle. And here is the solution:



Just walk around it. Don't actually push things, zero need for that.



Anyway, time for the ridiculous security system of the ancient Tolbish!



First, these two.



Whaaaaaat how will we ever remember such a devious color whatever thingy



Hey look Reveal solves all problems.



Oh also this has the same sequence of white (middle rock) and blue (left rock) each time.



And that's about it.



The fastest way to get back is to just Retreat and then head back in to meet Babi. AND BY BABI I MEAN THIS MYSTERIOUS UNKNOWN INDIVIDUAL WE CAN'T POSSIBLY GUESS AT THE IDENTITY OF



Took you guys long enough to include a fire-blessing monster. I'd almost started thinking this wasn't a JRPG.



When Mortal Danger isn't doing mondo levels of Venus damage, it's instakilling people.



Drink up, pal.









Hey look, the brigade's here. And they brought torches.



Babi acts very evasive when the soldiers ask why he was here, but they don't question him on it.



Babi's disappointed that the prelims for Colosso have ended, but is dying to talk to us some more.