It’s time for another Review, this one for Golden Sun for the Game Boy Advance. I will be grading on a scale from 0-10, with 0 being the lowest. And yes, this Review came after the sequel came out, so I’m not going to be griping about the story cliffhanger. Even before it came out, I knew there was going to be a sequel, so I didn’t care. So I laugh at all you naysayers who claim that a cliffhanger is bad! HA!

Graphics: 9.0
The graphics are absolutely astonishing, better than most N64 games. I thought that a 32-bit system would blow up trying to handle these kinds of graphics, but the GBA continues to amaze me. Of course, every silver lining has a cloud. The battle graphics look great, but the Field Mode leaves something to be desired. Can’t beat those anime faces, though.

Sound: 8.5
The sound effects are pretty good, at least for the GBA. In Field Mode, there are all sorts of nice sounds, especially one particular beep (that’s right, a beep) that sounds very pleasing. Unfortunately, the battle sounds are all pretty much the same, and there’s one hit sound that seems to be used for everything. No voices either, although with the amount of dialogue in this game, a Cube game couldn’t hold all those voices.

Music: 10.0
All of the music in this game is AWESOME! As I’m writing this, I’m listening to the overworld theme MP3, my favorite song from the game. This game has some of my favorite video game music of all time. The overworld theme music, as a matter of fact, is in my top three favorite video game songs ever, up there with some Mario songs (can’t decide which Mario song is the best) and a Zelda song (ditto). All the other music is good too, perfectly fitting the setting and never getting repetitive. Amazing.

Story: 8.0
A good story, with an excellent plot and believable characters. The story never gets stale, with plenty of new characters and stuff to keep you interested. It goes something like this: there’s a big storm when you’re 14, which kills your father, your friend’s mother and father, and her little brother. Three years later, you go up to the mystical mountain where the storm began, and it turns out your friend’s brother never died, and his accomplices kidnap her, steal some items called Elemental Stars, and go off to light the Elemental Lighthouses, which will allow them to rule the world. Of course, you must stop them with magic called Psynergy. The only problem with the story is that it lacks a big plot twist like its sequel and it has way too much talking to advance the story at times.

Controls: 9.5
Since this is an RPG, you need about two buttons in the end: the talk button, and the move button. The controls are very simple, and it helps that the Field Mode Psynergy can be put on shortcuts so you don’t have to trudge through a billion menus to get to the most commonly used one. The Battle Mode is equally simple, for you just have to have the D-pad and the A button.

Battle Mode: 9.0
The Battle Mode is very simple, and lacks any gimmicks or stuff like that, save the Djinn (more on them later). Unlike the Mario RPGs, where there’s all these complicated action commands, in this game, your stats determine how much damage you give and receive. Also, there are the Djinn. These are little creatures a bit like Pokemon, only there’s only four kinds. However, for every four kinds, there are seven differently named ones, each doing something different (mostly).  You use their power, then can use them to summon powerful creatures. After that, they rest for a turn or two, and then you can use their power again. It is a very simple system, and doesn’t take much getting used to. Unfortunately, you run out of Psynergy for attack quickly sometimes, which gets annoying in long battles since there aren’t many ways to replenish it.

Field Mode: 8.5
In Field Mode, there are all the puzzles, traps, etc. There’s nothing wrong with this mode, except that in certain parts, the puzzles are nearly impossible. But that only happened once to me. Also, in this mode, you get to do one of the most fun parts of the game: Mind Reading! One of your party members can use his Psynergy to read anybody’s mind. Anybody you can talk to, you can read their mind, as well as some things that you can’t talk to (dogs, anyone?). However, the battles are a little too frequent, which gets irritating at times.

Overall: 9.0
This is definitely a good game, and is underpriced: the $30 for it isn’t nearly enough to reward Camelot for this game. It won the best GBA game for 2001 in the Nintendo Power awards, so that’s got to tell you something. By the way, don’t tell anyone that I said that it’s underpriced. ;-)

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