I've said it before, but it bears repeating - one of my favorite aspects of the Wii U was its impressive back-catalog of Game Boy Advance titles. Used to be I'd have to have bought a GBA and a physical copy of this thing in order to play it, which would have run me like a hundred dollars. Not worth it! But thanks to the Virtual Console? I dunno, maybe six bucks? Maybe it was even free. I don't remember.
Sadly, I also don't remember a ton about Golden Sun, a game I played a significant portion of two years ago and then just sort of abandoned. Gah, never a good sign! I did like this. Mostly. It was fairly unique among JRPGs in that it had a lot of field map interaction with objects in order to navigate dungeons, towns, and terrain. Not a platformer by any stretch, but a JRPG with some platformer-inspired mechanics, for sure.
Problem was, nothing here pulled me in. Or rather, nothing kept me invested beyond the first few hours. Once the novelty of the field map mechanics wore off, they were actually a bit of a pain. Burn this, levitate that, and so forth and so on. The combat system was also a little wonky and imbalanced. You found these little things called Djinn (plural) throughout the world and attached them to your characters, almost like equipping espers or guardians or whatever. And your characters' move set was based on which Djinn - namely, which combination of Djinn colors - you had attached. But using a Djinn in battle would temporarily extinguish it, which meant that your characters own abilities and moves would vary throughout battles. I understood and adequately abused this mechanic, but it never really sat right with me. And the story was... fine, at best. Nothing grand, epic, or sweeping - just a standard JRPG "save the world from evil" deal.
Actually, all in all, it sounds like I didn't like Golden Sun very much. But I did! Maybe my disappointment stems from wanting to love it, and merely liking it instead. Let's call it a textbook example of "three stars out of five" and move on.
Back in my early WA days, I remember Biron getting super drawn into this game. Me on the other hand... I did not. I think I've restarted this title on maybe four separate occasions and have still yet to get back the first quarter of the game, let's say.
ReplyDeleteI think the worst part about it was the fact that I struggled to make sense of the game mechanics. Using the Djinn and whatnot, it never really made sense to me. But, hey, other people clearly seem to love. Me? I'm fine letting the game sit at the bottom of my bag holding all the GBA and DS games I'll never touch again.
However, you said you played it on the Wii U. Did playing it on the big screen help make the game any more immersive?
Funny enough, I actually played it entirely on the Wii U game pad. (Another underrated Wii U feature!) I doubt playing it on a 50+ inch television would have helped make it more immersive though - it's a GBA game after all. But, yeah, I'm totally with you on the Djinn mechanics not really making a lot of sense to me or adding anything.
Delete