Messages

About the Intro...
Intro of Golden Sun 1 is much better than Intro of Dark Dawn, in Golden Sun they put you almost directly in to the action, your town is in danger, rocks are falling, you have to escape, at one point you find a man aparently wounded and you fight monsters, then you have to find someone that can helps a kid trapped in the river, then a giant rock falls aparently killing everyone in the house of the river, then you fight two mysterios persons that defeat you.

Golden Sun Dark Dawn dont balance correctly the text lenght between the play time during the intro, you have to read what happened in the other games (which is not necessary at all because in the game it explains it correctly in other forms) then you read even more text... Then even when a tense situation starts you have to keep reading, during that time i was: oh come on! Your son has fallen in a dangerous place, there is nothing to talk about, MOVE ON! But no, you have to keep reading...

I have nothing against text, but this is not the type of Intro you want to use to catch players in the game.

I was thinking about the similitudes of both series or the references in Golden Sun of The Legend of Zelda.
*When a character obtains an item in GS, it shows it with emphasis, like Link does in TLOZ.
*An sprite that resembles Link.
*Main character that dont talks.
*Ocarina of Time Deku Tree and Tret in Golden Sun, both of them are giant trees with personality and a face, both of them are sick and also they are dungeons inside.
*Both games feature dungeons with puzzles in where you need to pull blocks, logs, box or a column to reach determinate place.
*Golden Sun have automatical jump system, like some Zelda games have.

Can you find something more?

Well recently i was listening the theme used in the Karagol Sea and then i remembered that the same song was used in the E3 of 2009.
I decided to watch the E3 video and i noticed that the protagonist there seems to be different from Matthew, different colour scheme even different design of Hair, who was suposed to be him? A prototype of Matthew or another character? Does anyone knows more about this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BrBpdPLeRA
Or perhaps im just crazy, but i see him different.

I dont know what to say, we are in an era that is more friendly to Action Rpgs than to Turn based rpgs.

Is it worth making a new thread discussing how Golden Sun could benefit from advancements made in other RPGs?

I think that current RPGs do develop further the personality of characters and now all the RPGs are mostly Action RPGs and turn based RPGs is a subgenre that is dying.

[from the perspective of the story]

Good question, sometimes Dark Dawn makes me think that it would be better to have no-sequel.
But well, at this point i think that Dark Dawn was determinant and there is a reason for the existance of the game, though i can not explain this much better.
Now in regard to your question, GBA Golden Sun games needed a sequel?
Not necessarilly a sequel, but we needed something more of Camelot.

There are plenty of options:

-Prequel, Weyard history seems to be really intense in the past with many conflicts for power.

-Another game, with another history, and it takes place in an different world or in an alternative Weyard, Golden Sun, could be the name for a game series   that they are not connected aparently, just like Final Fantasy to put an example.
-Spiritual Sucessor of Golden Sun, a game that it shares similar mechanics and aesthetics with Golden Sun without being a Golden Sun.

-Remake of the original games combined adding new content. And the online mode.

-And finally a Sequel, but a better one. I dont really think that it was THAT HARD, but checking this:
http://killstreakmedia.com/2013/04/26/will-there-be-a-golden-sun-4
Specifically this:
"Speaking personally from the perspective of the story, I think that honestly it may not be so likely because Golden Sun really requires a full effort to be put in. But of course, if there are enough people saying that we really must create another game, then we may just have to listen to them. Still, you would need to give me a bit of time to work on ideas for the story before we could release a fourth game in the series."

If that statement is real and looking how Dark Dawn was in history, i think that they dont really should make fourth game at all.
Because, sorry for my possible arrogance, but i think that i could think a better history to a Golden Sun sequel.

Here is a list of my preferances if Camelot decides to do something about Golden Sun and RPG:
1º Remake and Expansion of GBA.
2º Spiritual Sucessor, a different game with similar gameplay and aspect.
3º Golden Sun in a different world or an alternive Weyard with a different history.
4º Prequel to Golden Sun.
5º Second attempt to sequel to Golden Sun ignoring Dark Dawn (unlikely).
6º Sequel to Dark Dawn, if they improve the gameplay i will forgive the issues of History, promise.

For many others, including me is not that we didnt played or we dont care about Dark Dawn. Is simply that we didnt liked Dark Dawn at all. Golden Sun GBA (both games) was part of my childhood and is a game that even today i can enjoy and that i replayed many times. I really expected a sequel for long time and when Dark Dawn was anounced i was really happy, checking internet each day for new scans or news. At the beginning when it was released it didnt passed much time when the first complain of Dark Dawn appeared, the points of not return. But i actually decided to wait, to play the game for myself in a neutral position.

That was impossible, im biased to Golden Sun and I TRIED to like the game, but each 5 minutes aproximately i found things that were out of place.
I know that Golden Sun GBA is not perfect, but Dark Dawn have flaws in almost everything, but the flaws that i consider most important to mention are of the history and Gameplay, one of things that annoyed me a lot is the persistance of Camelot to include many new elements (civilizations, kingdoms, races...) that were not part of the original games, they didnt continued Golden Sun they distorsioned Golden Sun and the plot was schizophrenic, with your characters wandering around with no sense at all. Thats something that someone that didnt played Golden Sun GBA would not notice and the gameplay it can be summarized in two things: Too easy, points of not return.

At the point of the Grave Eclipse i was already really dissapointed with the game and i though that i couldnt go to worse, but then Himi appeared to proof me that i was wrong. Dark Dawn is a game that i could have done with 4 characters.

You know that a character is so pointless, when the own character knows that its existance is unnecessary, so it doents bother to talk to waste your time reading completly useless dialogues, thats what i think of Himi, since outside of those "trances" there were situations in where she doents @#$%&*! talk, really i remember a situation in where all the party was being introduced, with the exception of Matthew that cant talk by itself, but the other 6 characters had a part of dialogue, but Himi nothing, literally she didnt even said "ey, im Himi". If the intentions of Camelot was creating a retarded character, then, congratulations they did it perfectly.

In all, trying to find things that i actually liked of Dark Dawn is something challenging but here is a list of all i can found:

*Each Djinn have his own design, something that i really liked.
*The Sun Saga books ware cute and nostalgic at the same time.
*The use of Psynergy outside battle was probably one of the few things that Dark Dawn improved sightly although at the end it didnt maked a great use of it, but thats another history.
*I found Sveta interesting in gameplay, she is different from the other characters.
*The Ancient Devil is my favourite boss of Dark Dawn, explaining why: Demon sign is a move that controls one of characters and the only way to take back your character is killing it, at the end if you defeat the Ancient Devil with one of your characters under the possesion of the boss, that character counts as a death character and it doents earn experience, although that is not a big deal in Dark Dawn. I reacted like "no way, you are not going to do that to me" so i turned off the DS and i decided to beat the Ancient Devil with all my characters alive meaning that i had to kill my own characters and revive them many times, the situation was funny and at the end i completed the challenge.

Just like i said in cbox i know a group that is working on GS fan game, though the other day in conversation they give me doubts about if the project is going to continue, they have potential to do decent graphics but...

I would like to have harder puzzles, but to keep the game accesible to everyone and also i think that it would be good, dungeons need alternative routes, so if for example if you are stuck in one puzzle you can try to find an alternative way, though this may causes to miss better treasures or djinn in the hard and longer option, also players like me would actually explore any route possible, so this would make Golden Sun a more exploration-friendly game.

Can you say what you consider a Human?

Actually something makes me thing that the Djinn can change of size and form.
Not only because of the Djinns being big in Gameplay and Small in the oficcial Art (but that could be justify by this).
Actually we can see djinns with the form of Energy spheres in Sol Sactum.
And something makes me thing that Djinn could actually be absorbed in the essence of the Adept.

If we use the animation of summons and the reflect of Garoh as a reliable fount of source of information. We can determinate that the distance between Weyard and the Weyard moon is much longer than the distance between the Earth and the Moon. We can also conclude that the Weyard Moon is bigger than the Earth Moon, and also clearly bigger than the anemos hole.

I dont think that the moon being Anemia makes Ayn sense. It is crear that Anemos is smaller, it hace the size of an Island. And it seems that the moon is something ole, arterial all you can find representations of it in some parts. But I dont know.

I do actually know a person that did a post based in a another forum relationing personalities and the 4 "elements" and the level of compatibility between the different personalities of the elements and many descriptions of the personalities of those elements. However all that post it is written in Spanish.

Have similar twists. GS1 and GS2 came as a pair, but had different protagonists.  So would GS3 and GS4 mirror that structure?

Actually you can can transfer your characters of GS1 to GS2. So, in GS1 you have 4 characters and in GS2 you have 8.
The nintendo DS game dont have any method to transfer your characters.

parallel? what you mean?

That's really cool.  Were they ever given an origin story?
And what caused the werewolves?  Are the beastfolk related to them, or completely separate?

I can not say much abot that, Proxians are basically the Mars clan or descendents of this. That means that they are the protectors of the Mars-Fire lighthouse and they are also adepts of this element. They live in the northern part of Weyard, they had different tones of skin, pink, green, blue and scales, and are connected to dragons.

I actually find disrespectfoul the poor mention and appearance that Proxians characters had in Dark Dawn, those were amazing.

Dwarves state that they come from the north, but it is unlikely that they are connected to Proxians, they emigrated to find better land for mining.
They dont show any use of Psynergy.

Werewolves are not related to Beastmen, the werewolves of Golden Sun are just like normal humans all of the time except when they are exposed to the full moon light that transforms them involuntary, because of this they use hoods in order to prevent the exposition. There is an exception, certain character is "trapped" in his wolf form, and that conflict seems to be caused by a psynergy. Aparently Werewolves dont have psynergy inherent to the specie, but just because the place in where they live is near to a source of Psynergy, the wind rock, they acquire jupiter powers.

Beastmen in other hand are a specie of half human-half animal that can use voluntary a wilder form, and it seems that they are connected to Psynergy.

Yes, there is a moon in Weyard, you can see the reflect of the moon in the water once in TLA.

Can someone refresh my understanding of how the planet, atmosphere, sky stuff in GS works?  Is there a guide to the geography of that world out there?  or has someone theory crafted a good version?

Actually, i dont think that something like that exist. Dark Dawn features some kind of astronomy that i can not figure at all what it means.
In other hand Golden Sun is mostly a platform with some irregularities, there are continents and those continents move over the platform. water falls out of the platform in any place with the exception of the north and the south in where water is frozen. It is a mistery is there is something beyond the water falls.

Actually something that you can consider is that Beast mens are not part of the original Golden Sun and the appeared for no reason at all in Dark Dawn, despite that Sveta is the best character of Dark Dawn anyway even being out of place.