Reminder that if no new Golden Sun game is announced at E3...

Reminder that if no new Golden Sun game is announced at E3, Dark Dawn will have gone longer without a sequel being announced than The Lost Age did.

I like Golden Sun
with no irony or ungeniune speech, I played it in my childhood and it's just as good as I remember.

I actually do want a sequel, despite Dark Dawn being a bit lesser then the originals in gameplay and story.

I loved how mixing up djinn would create new classes with different spells and stats. Always fun to experiment

I tried to play dark dawn but promptly quit when they stopped me from psi pushing the rock to send me into a tutorial about to psi push a rock.

For the best, probably.

Dark Dawn felt like they were trying to hold your hand for the majority of the experience and massive plot contrivances galore that crapped on what was previously established. Unneeded lengthy tutorials, constant points of no return, whole countries that didn't exist and non-established areas springing up in a matter of what appears to be close to two decades in a state of advanced establishment with long histories.
Probably just my autism, but I felt the creators didn't put as much passion and effort as they did the last two installments.

Only redeeming thing I liked about the game were the puzzles and the roaming and activating of the old machinery in the different ruin locales.

Dark Dawn felt like it had so many flaws to just irk prior fans that I speculate as to whether Camelot even wanted to make another Golden Sun game anyhow. They seem pretty content to have Nintendo just put them to work on Mario sports titles (which is odd given their RPG focus back in the day with Sega).

They need to do one more and explain if Piers fucked Nowell. And if Felix fucked Sheba or ran out of this shit like a fag. I also want to fight Alex goddamnit. The thing is who would be the party, Takeru/Nowell/Mars Adept/Jupiter Adept is the only idea so far.

you have a better chance of him becoming an Assist Trophy in Smash Bros Switch than an actual new Golden Sun game.

Mia is prettiest gs girl

shiggy diggy

Karst is better.

Obviously Dark Dawn is not as good as the previous iterations. The spritework was sublime and the potato models were compelte shit

The other two had a much more intrinsically interesting story and cleaner pacing despite the atrociously long translation dialogue.

I would love to see a Golden Sun sequel in spritework, 60fps, and elaborate on the battle system to have a deeper meta besides cookie cutter djinn compositions.

I was actually thinking about that recently.

I'd like to see a sequel, but I'm not sure if I trust Camelot anymore to do the series any justice considering how much they messed up with the overall game design and plot in DD, not to mention all the blatant nostalgia pandering and lack of any significant changes to the gameplay when the combat desperately needs a breath of fresh air and some serious rebalancing.

Really, the visuals were about the only thing that Dark Dawn got completely right. It's easily the prettiest out of the almost hundred DS games that I've played.

Actually, now that they fucked up the lore with Dark Dawn, forget about sequels - they should instead remake the GBA ones into a single massive 3D game.
If by chance they launched it on the Switch, I dare to say that it would be a system seller similar to what Zelda BotW is expected to be.

I wish someone would retranslate the originals so we wouldn't be stuck with the butcher job amtower did to it

Learn Nipponese

Oh does anyone have an English script dump of Dark Dawn?

I've been wishing for this for years. Take the first two games, cut out a lot of the more painfully slow dialogue, put them both in a single cartridge (removing the need for those stupid codes), and make it 3D (or hell, don't, just upgrade the sprite quality), and I'd preorder it as soon as it was announced. Doesn't even need new content or new changes.

Dark Dawn felt so bad it was like they were trying to get people to stop asking about the games, though.

Im ok with that. It was a good game, good length, excellent graphics and design, and at the very least original story which I liked. It literally explored the entire world, there's no need for a sequel that would only ruin what it's built on. DD is not canon

Stop
They only have to use the modern memory increase to put more (different) textures and better sound quality, improve the menus and remove the air rock. Just make the world prettier adding more kinds of generic textures and villagers

This is actually NoA's fault. They expanded some one word questions into entire paragraphs.

That's good to know, actually. I was kind of curious about that.

There was only two golden sun games; the series ended with TLA.
I wish someone would do a retranslation of the games to cut down on the B^U tier dialogue in the western releases

I think someone looked it up and it was the same director for DD as the originals, so I'm not sure where it would have gone wrong, either. Camelot isn't a bad developer.


I feel like I'm the only person who isn't bothered by this. It gave the characters personality to ask about things and expand on topics. It was also interesting to read instead of constantly just having one line dialogue like I've been hearing in FAIYA EMBERUM. Seriously, the retranslation of that game uses multiple words to replace certain phrases in different contexts and not hearing the same phrase over and over is nice.

Maybe that's the problem.

Also, does anyone else here gets irked by the strange lack of official/concept art on this series? I swear we only get a couple of individual pictures at best for each character, a few promotonal posters or whatever (with very low resolution in the case of the first two games) and not much else. Why do they never release more scenario/enemy/NPC art, earlier sketches and such? That legit has been bothering me for a long time now.

I think Dark Dawn is better than Broken Seal aside from the shitty points of no return

I wonder if it's because there's not a lot left after they had shipped the games, or if it started life as another game and they're not allowed to show any of it because of weird Nipland copyright reasons.

Filthy. Air Rock is an iconic place, akin to the Water Temple of OoT, for instance, and is part of the series identity and legacy.
I dare to say that the relief you feel when beating it is extremely gratificant, and was sure something that you remember everytime you recollect the game.

If that were the case the same thing wouldn't have happened with Dark Dawn, I think.

if these last years have taught me anything, it's that good things are better off dead while they are still good.

That a location is incredibly tedious and drawn out isn't a good thing. If my memory is right, the water temple isn't even that long. Air rock is just tedious as hell and feels like it never ends.

Seriously, that everyone's reaction is "I'm finally done with this horrible fucking place" isn't a good thing. That's like saying everyone should eat a platter of shit just because you'll be happy that you're finally done afterwards.

Not unless DD started as another game and Nintendo forced them to change it.

Admittedly, that's highly unlikely, but you never know. It could also be that there isn't much in concept art or maybe they just don't like showing it. I am baffled by the lack of fan art and other pieces of official art, though.


Again, I feel like I'm the only person not offended by it. Granted the last time I played it was years and years ago, but I don't remember it being unbearable or tedious to me.

At least you can find character/concept art for Golden Sun, even if there isn't much. Can't say the same for certain other JRPGs (Tsugunai for example; all I can find is the cover art, though judging by manual scans it has to have official art somewhere out there).


At least the series does get some fan art, though admittedly it seems to be a case where, Dark Dawn aside, the heyday of the series was back before art upload places like boorus were big. Wouldn't surprise me if a fair amount of fan art it did see has been lost to time, and considering the series is pretty dormant (if not dead) it hasn't had that much to keep it relevant in the eyes of fan artists, the way something like, say, Tales is (where even older entries like Phantasia and Destiny have seen a lot of art; Eternia though seems to get a tad forgotten). At least Orioto did an image for it last year.

Still annoys me that a fucking tumblr of all things has actually been one of the better repositories of Golden Sun art, but that happens at times.

FUCKING
THIS
It felt like an entirely new setting with Golden sun references peppered here and there, and the cliffhanger was the worst part

I want a "heavy armor" type Jupiter user that parallels what exists for other classes (guard/flame user, squire/miko, etc.)
Felix/Sheba would be the best way to introduce one.

Yeah, it does seem a bit odd that the Jupiter default party members never had a an equivalent, though maybe Sveta was meant to fill the role of a physical Jupiter adept? Or perhaps they just decided that a tanky wind adept might be hard to work with.

They didn't even acknowledge Felix in Dark Dawn if memory serves (Mia, Piers, Jenna, and Ivan all at least got mentions even if not shown). Kind of doubt they'd suddenly bring him back for a potential GS4 after that sort of treatment/slipping of the mind.

Other issue that I think presents itself for a possible GS4 has to do with the party: with Golden Sun, you only had four characters, and could transfer their levels, djinn, gold, etc to TLA, which had a main four member party of it's own prior to them merging, totaling eight party members by the end. With Dark Dawn though, you've got a full eight party members in a single game. Strikes me that if they did want to work with that "To be continued…?" they'd either have to make the maximum party size even bigger (if they wanted to use a new cast again) for a full merger by the end, somehow delevel at least Matthew, Tyrone, and Ivan's daughter if they wanted to reuse them from the start, or automatically set a high default level for the characters in GS4 (IE: starting at 40 or so with the endgame being 80, or something) as a level playing field. And then there's the issue that I'm not even sure if you could readily get data from a DS game readily transferred to a 3DS or (if they abandon the 3DS) the Switch, so carrying data over might not be possible anyhow. That said, the latest Nintendo systems I have are a DS and Wii, so I'm not sure what sort of connectivity the 3DS has in relation to other systems (beyond at least being able to play DS games; doubt it has the same dongle function the DS and DS Lite had though).

They could go really crazy and make it a Tactics game that justifies a huge party (Camelot did make Shining Force).

Yeah, but it would be really unusual to do so for a main series entry if you ask me, especially in a series with a continuity between entries. I mean, usually those sort of things are left as a stand-alone or side game that could perhaps become its own subseries. Trying that with a main series entry and you risk a bit too much difference for what prior players expect (as I think was the case with Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter; while the west dropped any numbering, in Japan it was outright Breath of Fire V).

Sveta can fill almost any role in battle, really. Best girl is easily the most overpowered character in the series.

I'm still annoyed that she pretty much ate up the bulk of what character development the game had (being Golden Sun I suppose that's no saying much), to the point that Himi joins next to last minute and gets no development, and pretty much admits she has no good purpose aside from helping Sveta get special armor.

I doubt it, Camelot are releasing a compilation of Mario sports next month, It sounds like a pretty big project too, it's Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, Mario Sluggers and 2 other sports game in one. Camelot is a pretty small studio last I checked, there's just no way they have Golden Sun 4 in the works, it's probably Mario Sports for Switch.

I haven't played Dark Dawn, just the first two, Dark Dawn didn't feel like it had ended part way through like the first one did it? Just realized I last played Golden Sun 2 over a decade ago and can barely remember the series.

Himi having 0 personality is actually just a sneaky throwback to the cast of the first two games. :^)

I'll admit I can at least appreciate "creative" roadblocking, compared to just an "I don't need to be going here right now" text.


Yes and no. While the major plot is self-contained, it also introduces a lot of shit that doesn't get resolved and then ends on a massive fucking cliffhanger hook for a sequel that isn't happening.

Oh, and you still don't get to fucking fight Alex.

Dark Dawn was a good game. Not a good Golden Sun game, but still a good one.

Also, the verbosity of the series was a-okay. I actually like that some of the scenes are nonstop exposition dumps. In a normal JRPG this would fucking kill me since the world at-large is usually very tiny and shallow, especially the portion of it that you can really explore, so an attempt to expand lore and setting runs mega ultra giga counterintuitive to the gameplay itself, and thus the incongruence rings hollow. This is not so in GS, where you're a goddamn globetrotter. Fleshing out the world with fuckhuge textwalls is okay, in that sort of setting.. Or so I feel.

Now that I think about it, using whatever made the people from the lost age seal the alchemy would make a good game. Just not like dark dawn did it. I havent played it yet, but just the concept along with everyone saying it's trash doesnt make it too appealing

It should have been set ages after tla, at least a few centuries not directly one generation after tla. Free access to alchemy leads to war (like it's said that happened before) with all kinds of war machines, flying ships, geological attacks a la venus lighthouse, etc. So you begin the game trying to stop the wars, maybe defend your homeland, carrying out a mission to stop an evil nation, etc. At some point the evil guy uses forbidden stuff, turns inmortal/omnipotent like the people from old did (the wise one, deathbeard, babi, etc) maybe whatever he uses also destroys the world, so the new party stops him. It could be alex using that knowledge and the few drops of golden sunnyd he got to live longer and develop his plan
Maybe that's what happens on dark dawn, kudos to the writers but it was clearly not well executed

Also why cant you see the old characters on dark dawn, why would they set it just a generation after the previous game if they are not showing old characters. And speaking of old characters, if there's a world wide danger I'd expect at least isaac and garet would go grab the rest of the crew to solve it themselves. How old are they, seventeen plus maybe twenty years? Some of them are even younger, one of them lives thousands of years, and kraden was young enough to travel the entire world by foot

And about the heavy exposition. See this guy muh deepest lore is the main appeal of the franchise, and if anything the game needs more dialogues. Some places had small chats about everyone's opinions or something, helping to build their character, sometimes they stopped on a puzzle to try and solve it on different ways, but most locations are completely mute. Granted, whenever they stopped to talk they had lengthy conversations, but it would make a huge difference if they stopped on a city and they added some fluff like a character who wants to have a square meal or visit the local temple. This happens on the first game to some degree, but the second game's party is sadly mute

Nigger the air rock was like 2 dungeons in one, two incredibly dull and repetitive dungeons. Climbing it is enough, you do all the puzzles you do inside and at least you get pretty scenery. The interior should be removed and just have the reveal item on the top of the rock


There is fanart, just not really good. It's mostly da amateur character fanart, which is a shame since gs landscapes are really beautiful on the game, imagine how they would look on a (digital) canvas. See pic. There's also a lot of weird stuff

The sprites is actually the part I hate the most about GS. I've always hated those pre-rendered sprites that they used to use to try and get around the limitations of old systems. Both hand drawn sprites and actual 3D look better.

Just compare this mess with a previous Camelot game that uses traditional sprites.

There's decent stuff if you know where to look. But yeah, not a whole lot of environment or scene art, mostly character art.

Golden Sun looks better.

What can I say, I liked it. The battle graphics are awkward yes, it was meant to be watched on a gba screen like this and it was really good for what it was (a handheld snes game). The exploration graphics are the best part anyway. It might be nostalgia blinding me but everything looks really natural and it blends perfectly on a single environment instead of different pieces of graphics put together. Like the completely opposite you'd feel from watching a rpgmaker game

Isnt that game supposed to run on a psx anyway

Gotta view GS in its original resolution for the sprites to work well in my opinion. When I saw these sprites for the first time I really liked the battle sprites.

GS sprites are a work of art. They look awkward on PC because they were meant to be seen in a tiny GBA screen, where they emulate 3D greatly.
You can always use filters in your emulator as well, and although most of them are shit, 2xBRZ is excellent.

They looked awkward on the GBA too. I remember hating the way they look even back then.

This thread is great. Golden Sun is one of my favorite game series (mostly due to nostalgia, I won't deny that) that I never see getting much love. There is just a charm to the games I love, even though it's a fairly generic RPG. I did always think the Djinn system was a pretty interesting idea I've not seen in other games.

The fact that this thread was posted on my birthday makes it even better

Happy birthday user.

A DD sequel should have time travel back to the "golden age" like Baten Kaitos Origins had

...

I agree. Air Rock the first time was like "oh my god it is still going" but completing it just gave such a relief. Plus, the setpiece and puzzles in it are great. I have come to enjoy the location after all this time.


I think the only thing I truly wanted was for battles against normal enemies to be more engaging than "attack with all units, watch the weapons unleash". Also, while at first I did not like how there was little attrition damage against bosses because of how cheap healing was I realized it would become a battle of enduring the onslaught and using good djinn at the proper times. The games are great, and there was a real feeling of going on a big, fun adventure in them. I still have the cartridges with me - I might play them again soon.

Happy Birthday user

Found some Golden Sun wallpapers.

Why haven't you played Shining the Holy Ark yet?

It's better than Golden Sun and has the same battle engine.

Unless I've missed something, there's quite a bit of difference. And some people can't into first person Dungeon Crawling. And Saturn emulation is still less than stellar.

I still can't figure out how to actually play Shining Wisdom, so I gave up, but Holy Ark is great with a 6 button pad. Playing fighting games pays off.

Because my sega saturn refuses to read the only copy I have ever found

Thanks guys

That's very true. I recently played through both games again and made a point to use Djinn and Psynergy more in random enouncters because they were so nothing. It really got me to appreciate the variety in classes and combinations you can have. I kind of wish the games had gotten some kind of remastered version, the art looks so good but as said earlier in the thread the in battle sprites did not hold up. Especially when you play it on an emulator or the Wii U VC. I do recommend going through them again, you might find something new. There's a few things you can do out of order and get different dialog.


Because I've never heard of it, will definitely check it out.

Don't die on me.

i really hope they dont call it smash bros switch and return to the "fighting" naming formula

You can skip learning Force entirely in the first game. I was surprised the devs even took it into consideration at the time.

Yup. I would have done that, if I hadn't gotten stuck a little later and looked up a guide.


This is true. If only the games had been more popular, we'd have more art of her

Guess they were too busy writing original (and boring) paragraphs of text to do basic consistency checks.

You don't need the codes if you have two GBAs, which at this point I'm not sure how you don't, damn thing sold how many millions and OGs go for cheap because "Wah no backlight"

How do they even mess that up? Those are both English.

NoA was never good.

My favorite part of going out of order is Going to the forest before Mercury Lighthouse. It makes the forest a little more challenging and gives everyone a little more experience which makes taking on Sataros easier.

Man, I miss these games. I think I'm going to replay them at some point.


They both look the same though (from the icon), what would they translate to?

The first one is Ryuu no Tate (Dragon Shield in Japanese), the second is literally just Dragon Shield in English (doragon shirudo).

Isn't that how it should be in the first place? There is a noticeable difficulty spike if you ignore Kolima and go for the lighthouse straight away - namely Sarturos is HARDER than Tret. Plus, Mia is stronger than your party is you go straight for Mercury. Also, if you didn't know about Tret if you complete Mercury first… you have to treck all the way back to the lighthouse to fill it with water if you hadn't done it before or used it already.

Hell I started to do Mercury Lighthouse BEFORE Kolima because of it in later playthroughs.

Okay, I must be retarded, why would these be translated any differently then? They both roughly mean Dragon Shield. They have the same icon. Actually, why wasn't NoJ consistent in naming them?

Because they are two different items?

Is it? I think on my first playthrough I got Mia and then went back to Kolima. I remember the game acknowledging if you have Mia in the party when you go to Kolima the first time, though.

…but they aren't? The icons are the same, the rough meanings are the same, why wouldn't you translate Ryu = Dragon, Tate = Shield and then when NoJ makes another Dragon Shield but spells it differently, you call it Dragon Shield… because that's what it is. If they called it something else, you'd be buttmad that NoA didn't translate it faithfully.

But the icons aren't the same, they are a different color. They have different stats too.

Isn't the first image from GS1 and the second from GS2? Methinks it was the nips changing a few things, but you can't translate the different syllabaries into an alphabet like we have. What did you want them to do, translate it as "SUPER DELUXE ULTRA DRAGON SHIELD V2?"

They could just use Dragon Shield Ex for the stronger one or something. Or Dragon Buckler for the weaker one. There are a number of better ways to handle it.

Progression is more natural if you go Kolima first… from a level and gameplay perspective. Ironically, from a story perspective of course the first thing you would do is bumrush the lighthouse because that is where you know Sarturos and Menardi are headed.

Wyrm Shield
Drake Shield
Drago(n)skin Shield

...

What if she was generic innkeeper
Which reminds me

In Nipponese the Wise One's name is "Wiseman". In Nipponese the Philospher's Stone is called 賢者の石, literally the Wiseman's Stone. That's where the big floating stone with super powers came from

Oh speaking of Dark Dawn's encyclopedia, there's an unused image of Anemos

You can also use the retreat glitch to get Iris as early as the western sea part of The Lost Age opens apparently.

I always thought either the weapon vendor's portrait made it look like Carl from ATHF got a job.


To be fair, if it was between games, they might not have been that aware of when the TLA would be out in Japan, or what equipment names it might have, and it's more in retrospect that the first one would warrant a weaker name compared to the second. Personally I'd say something like "G. Dragon Shield" or something might work for the latter to better symbolize it's improved stats, but I'm not sure what the character/line crunch for the name would be like.

One last bump for her, but there's not much else to discuss

If I was talented in any way I'd get the originals and give them a modern face wash (change nes ff1 menus for something better, improve sound quality, improve dungeons since almost every dungeon room except the entrance is just empty, maybe add some dialogue fluff around…)


I always thought he used the stone at some point to become a god, not that he was the stone. Oh well


Which is a shame, since any gs character has enough moves to make a real fighting character instead of what they do with most characters already in smash, they just have their signature move and the rest is filled with generic land/air punch/kick

I forgot:

I always thought the correct order story wise was to go the forest, defeat the boss then go to Imil to find a cure. It doesnt make much sense now that I think about it since your goal is to defend the lighthouses and mercury is the closest. That explains why the forest was always so hard and saturos so easy

The movesets they make up for characters are generally nice. The real problem is wasting time and effort that would literally be better spent on anything else with filling the roster with clones nobody asked for and having third-party caharacters that have barely anything to do with Nintendo take precedence over some first-party ones.

Sakurai is a fucking shithead.

I think most people find Kolima first, actually. A lot of people don't know where Imil is, so they go exploring and find Kolima first, which then can lead them to going to Imil to find a cure. But yeah, I went straight to Imil for a lot of my playthroughs, because you're chasing down people who seemingly want to end the world and have kidnapped your friends.