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

Check out that lovely shade of peridot! This unleash only does normal poison, not the deadly variant the Wicked Mace would afford. You can make a very good case that Mia most deserves the Cleric's Ring and Wicked Mace, but the Crystal Rod is already really good for her and I just want Garet to wield axes all game.



Fast forwarding. These guys are probably fine, don't worry.



Back in Babi Lighthouse, where recolors of bosses and side area enemies just lounge around in spades.



Down we go.



Didn't need those ankles anyway.



This is Faran. I promise it's Faran and not the principal from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.



Faran's the leader of the Lalivero and Sheba's surrogate father, and he's taken a few villagers down to the ruins in pursuit of Saturos and Menardi. But rather than finding himself scorched at the conclusion of a wacky chase scene, his crew is just stuck at this door here.



Iodem and Faran apparently recognize one another, which makes sense. Iodem being the voice of Babi in foreign lands, he'd have to be responsible for taking Sheba hostage, which SHOULD mean Faran would be livid at seeing him. But instead the two appear to be on fairly good terms, as though they've been acquaintances who discuss trade through the mail. Since this is the first time we've ever seen Faran and might have no idea of his involvement in the entire Sheba incident, or even who Sheba IS in the first place, this would be a perfect time for him to lay down the law about how this is all Babi's fault, they should never have defiled the ruins with this grandiose tower, should never have captured Sheba to bully Lalivero into doing their bidding.





Anyway all this kerfuffle is just about that door up ahead.



Despite the ingame lore about Venus Lighthouse only being accessible by Venus Adepts, you need Reveal, a Jupiter Psynergy, to enter. Don't think too hard about that though, any of our Adepts can use any Psynergy type because Djinn.



Anyway we did it.



Yes we all have a lot of things to do, let's go hurry and save Sheba and stop them from lighting the lighthouse and all that.



Why is Iodem the first one to make a move for the door after this, instead of Faran? I dunno man I just work here.





And that's about it. Let's get through to Venus Lighthouse.



Depending on which route you selected back at the normal Venus Lighthouse entry, the path here splits. It's all very mysterious.



Such intense puzzles. It's a good thing we sharpened our wits at Crossbone Isle, or we might be stuck here for ages.



Oh right, we gotta mess with our Djinn to get to those. Which reminds me, I haven't shown off the tri-element classes yet.



Each of the Luna and Sol class sets has three to choose from. Mia and Ivan have access to Ranger (Mercury/Jupiter/Mars, it's basically Ascetic with a bit more variation)...



White Mage (Mercury/Jupiter/Venus, home to Wish, Revive, and the unique Dull debuff line for lowering enemy Attack)...



And Medium (slightly-different Mercury/Jupiter/Venus). Medium is just as terrible as Shaman.



In their continued quest to prove themselves better than the Luna adepts, the Sol adpets get Ninja (Mars/Venus/Jupiter, with its attacks all mostly being reflavors of existing things but bringing the uniquely strong Death Plunge and Shuriken physical Psynergies)...



Samurai (Mars/Venus/Jupiter again, same story as above but with more tankiness and buffing Psynergy)...



And Dragoon (Mars/Venus/Mercury, tri-element Guardian with less healing and buffing capability. So it's junk.)

Of those classes, Samurai, Ninja, and White Mage are actually considerable outside of normal dual or single-element classes, but again, you're dividing your elemental levels even more harshly and have nothing improved over your starting levels. The resists are nice, true, but each individual resist doesn't get THAT much for it. I'm perfectly happy with my current setup, thank you very much.



Hard difficult puzzle challenge I guess.



At the very end, if you go left instead of right, you reach this room.



Using Reveal grants you a Mia-only robe. I won't be equipping it, but it's nice to have.



Okay let's move on. Don't feel like resetting the route to do the other half.



If I did, we'd come through from there.



Oh snap, an actual puzzle!

These statues need to fit onto the X grid in the center in the right configuration.



Each of them clarifies the position of one other statue relative to itself, so you can use Mind Read to suss out where each one goes by taking their statements all together.



It's not a super hard puzzle, but it is kind of nice. I'd like to see more in this vein too, but we're at the end of the game.



The earlier entry into Venus Lighthouse recycled the same music as Mercury Lighthouse. Once we enter through this point, it takes on its own unique theme.



We can go through this way to reach the earlier segment of the lighthouse. Do note that this statue likes to just leave its post, so the electrical barrier will return should you push it on and then leave.



Instead of water, the falls here are made of sand.



Unfortunately, Carry as a Psynergy is very under-utilized. Most of the places where it sees use are places where normal pillars could exist with Move as the key Psynergy for them.



As in the Lamakan Desert, the sandfalls force you down as they move.



If you wanted to run cursed Mia, this Thunder Crown is the chief reason to do so. The Wicked Mace is nice, sure, but the crown ties it all together with its innate PP regen.



Instead of water-walking and pipe-rolling, Venus Lighthouse's puzzle is this thing. You already know exactly how it works just looking at the image.



Since we can actually walk on the sand falls, changing where they are or opening up more of them is our method of progression here.



This is the only one we actually shut off, though.



Mia upgrades her Plasma Psynergy to go with her new Prism one.



The main way they try to make these things difficult is by providing you very few blocks and a lot of places to put them. Which is good, resource starvation is a key thing to making puzzle games harder, but again, Golden Sun isn't a very hard puzzle game, and the only real creative or difficult puzzles show up way later in the game.



Our goal for this room is to enable the two sand falls so we can get to the upper right, which leads to the Lighthouse Aerie as before.



This is Fenrir. Fenrir is a cautionary tale against random item drops in games.

Golden Sun calculates random item drops on a per enemy basis. Each enemy that has an item assigned to it gives that item an ICC, or Item Chance Class. This number goes from 1 to 9: bosses like Deadbeard and the Killer Ape have their item at ICC 1, which gives it a 100% drop chance. Each increment in ICC halves the item drop chance, all the way down to about a 0.4% chance for an item drop at ICC 9.

Just about every enemy within Venus Lighthouse has an item drop they can potentially field at ICC 8, ranging from things like the Zodiac Wand, an artifact staff, to a Lucky Medal (if you get one of these you are literally the least lucky person on the planet). A handful of them have ICC 7 instead. Fenrir is the only enemy in the game with ICC 9, dropping the strongest light blade in the game, Kikuichimonji. Due to its high stats and its relatively neat Jupiter unleash, Asura, it's a popular choice for an endgame weapon for Ivan, despite the fact that you basically need to do RNG seed nonsense to guarantee it.

Among these is a mechanic which is in no way hinted at in the game, which relies on knowing what each enemy is elementally weak to (already a bit of a stretch since the punctuation is your only guideline). If you finish off an enemy with a Djinni unleash of the element it's weak to, it'll change colors and growl a second time when dying, and the ICC for any item it might drop will decrement by 2, giving that item a x4 multiplier for dropping.

Now, the only case where this literally guarantees an item drop is against Apes, which are the only enemy in the game with an ICC of 3 (and even then they only drop Vials). Most enemies hover comfortably at around ICC 5 or 6, where they jealously hoard items such as Elixirs and Smoke Bombs. If you want the good stuff, better to just use RNG seeding through hard resets and referencing GameFAQs for exactly what actions to take in a fight.

How much of an advantage does this eke out in the end? About as much as clearing out Crossbone Isle in its entirety for the Demon Mail. Remember, Ivan and Mia already have top-end weapons that they just straight up bought from the store. The Giant Axe is another potential drop, but it's outclassed by a thing you just find here by opening a chest, or by the Demon Axe Garet's safely using right now. At the end of the day, you're wasting several hours, at the very end of the game, likely gaining more levels than you did actually completing this or the two dungeons beforehand, for a maybe 10 point attack boost.



Anyway here's some high end armor or something.



I'm not the kind of idiot who will grind enemies endlessly looking for random item drops these days. No, my idiocy is a unique brand.



This is kind of amazing for exactly how pointless of a shortcut it is, once you stop and look at the layers upon layers of other shortcut options you have or are creating in this area.

One sandfall opened up, one to go.



Here's the best weapon in the game. It's guarded by this conveyor sand maze thing.



Not very hard at all.



This is almost always going to end up equipped to Isaac given his main protagonist status and the Venus element it so clearly has, but Berserker Garet can make it work.



Oh man guys how are we gonna solve this puzzle? Really try to think this one through, looking at the puzzle.



I did it. There's probably multiple solutions. I like this one.



And last sandfall.



Our goal is to land on this MYSTICAL ELEVATOR



But first, here's Titan Blade. Flashy.



Oh yeah Thunder Lizards are enemies here.



Now Ivan has Shine Plasma too! Good for you, Ivan.



This sends us out through the sandfall to here, where we can head up that upper right path...



To here. This is the end of the line: once we go down that chute, we're locked into the final boss fight.



Can you believe this ride is almost over? I know I can't, since this is the second of the four lighthouses. You won't catch me saying that Camelot rushes their games.

Next Time: Harry Potter and the Venus Lighthouse

Right, let's get this over with. On the platform...



And up to the top.



Just for the record.

Town count from Vale and the setting establishment of the game to first lighthouse: 1.5 (it could be as low as 1 if we literally never entered Bilibin, and as high as 3 if we went to Kolima like they wanted us to. I'm ignoring Imil since it's basically an extension of Mercury Lighthouse, similarly, I'll ignore Lalivero for the next number.)

Town count from Mercury Lighthouse to Venus Lighthouse, not including Lunpa: 8 (counting Hama and Fuchin Temples, as well as the Karagol sailing sequence, as half a town each. Also counts Bilibin and Kolima.)

During all of those towns, we have not heard of our game's primary villains except in the broad strokes of "they did some stuff that inconvenienced some people", only becoming actual villains in eyeshot once they realized that Lord Babi, the guy we're currently helping reclaim immortality, was beginning to overtake them in antagonist status.





In the original, they say that lighting Jupiter is basically the same as lighting Mars. That's really not a clear way to say what they mean here, and it's intentionally vague for the sake of a plot twist that doesn't actually mean that much if, say, you get the actual locations of the lighthouses on a real map.









In the original, this encounter basically plays out the same way, save for one minor thing in that Felix isn't going to return Sheba to her home... but instead just to the boat with Jenna and the others (which Saturos and Menardi have no problems with, even when Felix doesn't mention Alex at all). The response from Saturos and Menardi is just as strong to this extremely innocuous request as it is here to his more open defiance that I've written. They also don't bring up why he feels this strongly about Sheba (because again, the first time where Sheba is mentioned in a mandatory textbox is, if I don't miss my guess, at Suhalla Gate), especially in comparison to the capture of his own sister, or leaving his childhood friends to die in a volcano.





Our team, being heroic as HELL, is listening in on all of this.





I talked a bit about some of the more contradictory points of this game with a few people, and one thing brought up is Felix's hostility in these scenes towards your party despite the more openly antagonistic elements of Saturos and Menardi. By all rights, Felix should be happy to have the aid of Isaac's group here at this point: even if he does agree with Saturos and Menardi's plans broadly, he's clearly taken some issue with their recent(ish) moral failings. I guess you could write it off as Stockholm Syndrome, but while I'm no expert on the psychology behind that, I think that would lend him to not question their capture of Sheba at all, rendering this entire rebellion scene a bit moot.



This is doubly weird because, again, Felix's goals are the exact same as those of Saturos and Menardi. And as mentioned above, while you have ready access to towns full of Adepts for most elements (Vale for Venus/Mars, Imil for Mercury), we can count the total number of Jupiter Adepts we've seen so far on one hand. Felix's outburst here just fundamentally doesn't make sense if he's going to support Saturos and Menardi, and by that same token Saturos and Menardi have nothing to risk by letting Felix escort Sheba to the ship (especially not with Alex there to confirm if Felix ditches them).



Meanwhile, if you go by the original text, referring solely to mandatory elements, we have maybe talked all of two lines with Sheba and are working with her captor. Going by that, the only reason we'd want Sheba free is just to keep the pro-Babi status quo going. I can buy us wanting to protect Felix, if only because childhood friend, although why Ivan of all people would bring that up is just bewildering. Also, uh... stop them lighting the lighthouse? Rescue Jenna and Kraden? Those sound kinda important, right?



Anyway, ignore all three of those screenshots. Let's get even dumber.



Now, in the original text, there's one very minor plot hole here, which is WHY WOULD SATUROS BARGAIN FOR THIS USELESS THING WHEN HE COULD BARGAIN FOR THE MARS STAR? Getting something which has been from day one a problem for the antagonists, and which Saturos KNOWS WE HAVE, seems like the far smarter trade than getting a rod that he thinks we might have and which could possibly help him access a lighthouse he already mostly can access anyway. Hell, the only reason he knows it is because in the original, they bully Sheba into using a power which detects the Shaman's Rod from a distance, and which fails because our minds are veiled or something, so they don't even know it for sure anyway.

So instead of just letting that waltz through unexplained, it's way easier to just have our party put their foot down and say "no, you don't get the Mars Star". Again, I want to make it so Saturos has to make this substandard bargain: since our party's already proven they could defeat Saturos before, he can't just bum rush us and grab both the Mars Star and the Shaman's Rod. With Menardi on his side he'd probably be confident enough to take us on, but Felix as a rogue element (an actual one, not just a "it's my turn to babysit Sheba" one) complicates matters.

Also, those of you over the age of ten can probably see a loophole in Saturos' wording here, which Ivan as I've written him would not be anywhere near dumb enough to fall for, not for something this momentous to his life. Let us assume that isn't there, for now.





Hooray we have saved Sheba and now we can all go back home and not light any more lighthouses right?



Nope.



Relying on the same tactics that failed original-text Garet back in Sol Sanctum, Saturos flexes his pedantry, pointing out that we only traded the rod in exchange for Sheba's safety, not her custody. This one is a really stupid idea on all accounts: why would Ivan or any of our party not catch that stunning bit of legalese? Why would Felix be okay with this scam result? If he is okay with the scam result, why would he risk a possibility of giving Sheba away to his enemies, when he's not even comfortable with his allies having custody of her? Given Saturos basically instantly launches into an attack on the party afterwards, why not just launch the attack now rather than wasting time on a scam? (That one I can half-answer with the above scene: to test Felix's loyalty. This is immediately invalidated by the previous two points in this list.)



As much as this entire scene is just stupidity and plotholes, I like this bit here.



Note that Felix isn't present in this fight, since he's basically getting Sheba out of the blast radius the fight will entail.

I tried, guys. I tried to rewrite that scene into something better, and while I think I partially succeeded (I did, at least, explain away the fact that they didn't even try to bargain for the Mars Star) half of what I did was just cutting out loads of text, letting the escalating tensions carry people way the hell past the actual deal.

And again, the deal doesn't even matter in the first place, since from the very onset Saturos and Menardi are pretty much intent on fighting Isaac's group anyway. It helps to arrange the item distribution for the next game (which at this point Camelot was very much intent on making) which is a STUPID AND TERRIBLE REASON. The actual thing everyone is there for is the lighthouse: Saturos and Menardi are there to light it, Isaac and co. are here to stop it, there was literally no possible outcome there other than us fighting (which in turn is born from a failure to communicate, even before the scam).



Anyway the fight itself. Saturos' capabilities are all but identical, so Menardi is the only mystery. Flare Storm is her weakest attack Psynergy.



Saturos' only real change is upgrading Fireball to Inferno, but thats old news by now.

Menardi takes on a supporting role with decidedly non-Mars Psynergies such as Resist and Wish, making her the priority target.



Oh wait no, Saturos can also cast Break. I don't really care.



Our strategy for this fight is the exact same as for every fight except Saturos.



Like Mia, Menardi DOES have one threat with her Death Size attack, capable of telling someone exactly how big or small their death is going to be and causing them to fall unconscious as a result.



Also: Supernova.



That said, these guys aren't nearly as imposing as the entire game has utterly failed to build them up to be. By this point, we have multiple area healers, multiple revivers, access to several buff types, and generally excellent stats and equipment across the board. Hell, even if we'd ignored Crossbone Isle we'd be fine.



Here's the final Volcano line Psynergy, Pyroclasm. Needs more camera pans.



The only real annoyance is that Mia can't cure status effects, which is only somewhat trivial in this fight but an actual issue in the next. OF COURSE THERE'S A SECOND PHASE WHY WOULDN'T THERE BE.



Extremely useful item.



And then we beat Saturos without the help of a lighthouse! Woo game over let's all go home and have cakes.





So, normally, Felix remains just as hostile to you now as before, and swears to light the lighthouses anyway (and to keep you from taking Sheba, despite that you both just want her safe). When dealing with Saturos and Menardi, I can buy this failure to communicate, since they're terrible people, but that excuse doesn't cut it for Felix. So here we have no choice but to reveal a plot element that only comes up like halfway through the second game.



Or at least, I have to give you a minor hint at it.



Even if they can stand, Saturos and Menardi are on their last legs.



But then, in one last desperate move...



Saturos chucks the Venus Star into the lighthouse, barely making it in.





Okay, even by Camelot's standards, this is just pulled clean out of thin air. This second fight doesn't need to exist at all, and the justification is incredibly threadbare, to the point where Garet of all people raises a complaint, and rightly so. And for the record, the Venus Lighthouses provides Isaac (and Felix, while we're at it) no major boon, nor does it impede Ivan or Sheba in any way whatsoever.



Lightshow begins.







Time for the big fun.



FUSION DANCE!



HA!



So, the final fight of Golden Sun Book One...

Big enough to shatter the screen...



Say hi to the Fusion Dragon, kids! The Fusion Dragon is the topmost argument outside of a Tales game against multi-phase bosses.

Like, okay, I can get the appeal behind them, as a way to shake up an established pattern and bait a new player into overextending on the first phase. But unless there's an actual reason for the fight in the first place, the system just serves to aggravate players who expected that all of this talking would be DONE by now.



To be fair, the Fusion Dragon is perhaps more of a threat than Deadbeard, although like all the endgame bosses it has access to Break, which is still as meaningless as it was before.



The Fusion Dragon has a few reskins of existing Mars summons. Here it duplicates the level 3 summon Tiamat, for example. But in functionality they're all basically just Mars element moves.



The main way the Fusion Dragon poses a threat is with its ability to use Evil Blessing and Deadly Gas, breath weapons that inflict Haunt and Deadly Poison respectively.



My goal for this fight is to try to figure out WTF Haunt actually does.



I don't think the Fusion Dragon has much in the way of actual healing, just this waste-of-a-turn Drain Bite.



Deadly Gas is the biggest problem here, solely because the only party member who can use Cure Poison, Isaac, is last in the turn order, so the poison is guaranteed to get at least one turn to damage our team. And since it can hit multiple targets, it basically puts more pressure on Mia to heal instead of using High Impact or attacking (and with the Fusion Dragon being weak to Mercury, Mia's physical attack isn't half bad).



Outer Space is another Mars summon reskin, this time being the level 4 summon Meteor.



So the basic strategy for this fight is simple. Garet just mashes his axe at the enemy every turn because duh (Planet Diver doesn't do appreciably more damage here because of the Fusion Dragon's Mars resists). Mia either heals with Wish Well, stacks High Impact attack boosts if everyone's at high health, or attacks if enough boosts are in play. Ivan does basically the same thing except with Resist instead, giving him more chances for Sonic Smash. Isaac is basically on Cure Poison duty, but when that's taken care of he can either area heal or use Cutting Edge or his normal attack.



Getting pounced on by a Fusion Dragon hurts, guys.



Oh, perfect. If we're right about this, this means that after an ordinary attack, Haunt has a chance of doing 25% of the damage dealt to the attacker. We may very well be wrong as hell, but I don't feel like looking up the fine details anyway.



This may be a factor.



Anyway that's it. Bye guys.



In you go...



And in you go.

For those of you keeping track of villain tropes, no, they don't come back. Saturos and Menardi are very definitively dead as hell now.





Slight problem, that.



WELL WE CAN'T HAVE THAT NOW CAN WE?





WELL, WE CAN'T HAVE THAT, NOW CAN WE?!



So the game never took the time to explain how the ELEMENT ORB that constitutes the lighthouse makes it to where it is, did they?



Well, here's your answer.



Two out of four.



As it happens, drastically splitting lighthouses aren't too safe to stand on the edges of.

The tectonic activity is indeed a mess, way worse than Mercury Lighthouse.





And with that...



Sheba drops to the seismic mess below.



Felix, of course, does the quite reasonable thing here...



And nosedives right after her.

For all the rigmarole they had to do to keep Felix and Sheba up here, when Sheba in particular and Felix as a secondary had no real reason to be up here? This is a good scene. This is a damn good scene. This scene is better than your coffee.

But again, we get barely any info on Sheba prior to this point, and she doesn't need to be up here. For all Felix's grandstanding against Saturos and Menardi, in the original he's just as hostile to us and equally has very little reason to still be up here. In a much-better written game, this could be up there with moments like your female lead getting backstabbed from the rafters, straight up murdering the scheming councilor at midnight, learning you're a sleeper agent programmed to obey a three-word-phrase... But in Golden Sun, it's just undercut by the quality of everything around it. I'm sure my editor's notes are ruining it too.



Case in point: more Golden Sun fans probably remember the fact that Isaac spoke three exclamation points here over the impact of this scene. Never mind that in the second game Isaac speaks a mouthful and is an asshole.





Garet brings up another point and...



wellwecanthavethatnowcanwe



Thankfully, even Camelot knows when it's appropriate to just skip ahead on rare occasions.



Back at Lalivero, let's go over the facts.





So once you beat the game, you can still mess around in Lalivero for a bit, although you're locked in for the endgame. But we'll get to that in a bit.









And with that, Iodem heads back in.

Ignore Garet's line about the ocean, because HELLO HE WAS ON TOP OF A LIGHTHOUSE LITERALLY OVERLOOKING THE OCEAN AND ACTIVELY SEARCHING FOR LEMURIA. This is about as close as I can get to justifying Iodem's character at all. aturtledoesbite suggested the possibility of him being childhood friends with Faran to explain why Faran doesn't just go straight for the jugular upon seeing him, which... I guess that's as sound an explanation as the Mythril Bags preventing Sol Sanctum from going berserk. Have fun with it, I guess.



EXTREMELY IMPORTANT POSTGAME GARBAGE



I don't think keeping your ship submerged when not in use is a great idea, Babi.



But hey, it comes up with a single use of the Black Orb, seemingly unscathed, so good for us.



The party has a few last discussions between themselves about how things will go, nothing I feel like repeating from above...



Gets on the boat...



And sets off.

ITS OVERRRRR

Despite how much I complained about literally every aspect of the game, I really do like Golden Sun and its sequel. It had some really clever ideas and a fair amount of charm, it just... didn't really have as much attention as it needed to make it truly great. You compare this to any other landmark JRPG and it'll fall short. But it could've been a contender, and that upsetted me enough to attempt to rewrite almost the entire thing.



Once you watch the credits, you'll get to save your clear data, which carries over the stats and Djinn and other garbage for your four characters from this game to the sequel, the Lost Age.

I will be LPing the Lost Age, or at the very least plan to. But it won't be immediately. I have a lot of work to do at home, and even outside of that, I want to attempt the same five-update backlog before I begin that this game had. Without going into much detail, the Lost Age's story is way more... let's call it backloaded, than this game. Considering the story in this game happened at the start, the end, and literally nowhere in between, that's saying a lot.



Anyway, post-credits-and-clear-data-save stinger. Welcome to Idejima.





In the normal text, Alex is not. Mentioned. Once in the proceedings on the lighthouse or in Lalivero post-lighthouse. Not even when Garet is all "I totally forgot about Jenna!" because the idea of a plot twist for Camelot writers relies on the player not having a concept of object permanence. (For more on this, please look forward to my write-up on Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, coming never.)



We get something a little better here, though.



WHAT A MYSTERY AND A CLIFFHANGER? WHATEVER COULD THEIR AMAZING TALE BE?



Gimme forty bucks.

Next Time: Hermione Granger and the Collapse of Tectonic Plate Geology

Case in point: Those of you who remember when I tried LPing it; I got over halfway through the game and accomplished exactly one (1) thing of note: i got a boat.

FINALLY catching up on my let's play reading. about halfway through this one.

Kalir, I just wanted to say you did a REALLY GREAT JOB and I'm enjoying reading it very much!

I HAVE NOW READ THE ENTIRE THING

KALIR YOU DID EXCELLENT WORK! THANK YOU FOR THIS!

Glad you enjoyed it. Hope my thread about the sequel is up to snuff, too.