What do you all think of Golden Sun while we are at it?
I do see that its mediocre RPG is thrown around sometimes.
My favorite parts are battle system, sound track, and world setting.
With something like Final Fantasy 7, its a great game, but the battle animations really slowed down the gameplay. Golden Sun is super fast paced because it gives you the option to speed up or skip battle animations. Its also basic and easy to pick up but the djinn system adds just enough variety and depth.
The sound track is great of course, motoi sakuraba is a great composer. I would love a melody of his works on the Golden Sun stage, from Tales of to Dark Souls...
The setting/world building is probably my favorite part. All the different psyenergy and cultures that parallel real ones made me interested in maps and history as a kid and introduced me to a lot of vocabulary. Its the only RPG where I felt like I explored the earth's ancient places instead of a mishmash of either European or Asian places.
---
Graphically it hasn't aged well is the only complaint I can think of. And the story doesn't really have any twists and turns.
The common complaint is that its safe, that there's not a lot of innovation. But that's what makes it great. Its vanilla, but really good vanilla. Makes it stand out on the GBA which was filled to the brim with more unique style JRPGs.
The Golden Sun series to me is a flawed masterpiece. Golden Sun isn't even my favorite RPG, believe it or not and I don't think it's the best RPG of all time either. However, it has all of the elements required and even more to be a greater sum than its parts.
Many RPGs attempt to be immersive, but come short. Golden Sun does it seemingly without breathing. The world and the setting have an intangible quality that intermixes itself with all of the game mechanics. The reason it feels so immersive is because everything you see and everything you do plays into the lore and head canon to the entire game. From the very first screens, you're introduced to psynergy and alchemy. Then you use them to solve puzzles, to battle, to interact with the world in general. Then you find out that it also matters greatly to the journey you go on and the objectives you have to complete. The game is all about staging from smaller to larger chunks for the character to consume and take in, but it also does it at a rate that is not too slow like other RPGs.
A fantastic example is a comparison with Suikoden V, if anyone else has ever played it. I consider it to be better than Golden Sun, but it actually doesn't do as well of a job at pacing. The beginning of the game and the story take a long time to get going and many players actually feel bored before they ever get into the meat. Golden Sun never suffered with that.
Yes, the dialogue in GS is long-winded. Yes, the game can be a little too easy at times. Yes, the story is really basic. I can acquiesce to a lot of the common complaints that the game gets bashed for.
At the same time, it's all forgivable to me and not due to nostalgia. I'm actually replaying the games now and it holds a lot of its merits still. There are too many elements that are unique just to this series that other RPGs could only hope to achieve, and I don't say that lightly.
A basic story doesn't even feel like an argument if it's done well. If it was more convoluted, would people be complaining that it's convoluted? The Lord of the Rings also has a basic story. Are people bashing that for having a basic story? What about half of the Final Fantasy library?
The main reason people are so dedicated to this franchise is that the developers really made a mistake not following through with their momentum. There is insane amount of potential here, rivaling any game I've played to date. The concepts could be expounded and fleshed out to no end. I mean, seriously imagine a Golden Sun game that got the treatment that some series like Fire Emblem, Xenoblade and the Legend of Zelda do. All of them now have games that have done exactly that: made a more vibrant and realized system than their origins had originally conceptualized. Golden Sun was always lightning in a bottle that few people see and fewer people appreciate.
). That are different opinions based on the fact that he is in the game. You like his size. I dont. Simple as it can be 
