Point of No Return

Been replaying the Golden Sun-series again, and it is as fun as ever, although it can be frustratingly slow at some portions when you almost know the speeches by heart after playing the oldest one for 10 years. Also you learn something new every time you play it, just look at the second game where you can transfer the data from the first game to the second. If you don't the bonus dungeon can't be reached and certain cutscenes with special items don't happen. Combine this with the ability to play the game over with the same level and stats at the end of a cleared game. Now, I replayed the game maybe 3 times, usually starting with putting in the password needed to transfer all equipments, djinni and so on. The thing is... it's 260 characters long for everything. So this time around, since I didn't do any adjustment to the final equipment of my characters in game one so I thought it was just to start the game over with everything remembered without having to use the password since, well, my old save must have memorized it right? Apparently not, cutscenes I expected didn't show up so I had to go back a little bit and then input the password... all 260 characters. I put them in and everything seems back to normal so I continue to play the game. I reach the point when the old cast joins your group after clearing 75 % of the game and what do I see? They have almost half the level they had at the save. Apparently the game interpreted my input that level 56 was alright compared to my level 90. It thought wrong so I pretty much rage quit and started up the old save and did some level grinding before beating the soul out of the end-boss. Irritating to say the least, but I at least know that till next time.

So after that I started up the third game and it has grown on me. After the mediocre first playthrough it begins to feel interesting. Maybe it has to do with much better controls since the DS Lite has almost no A-button left which makes it nice to just move around with the stylus. But their is still times when it feels like inferior to the original two games. First is the points of no returns. There is three of them, first after you traveled through the first ruin, second one after you reach the "lost city in the sky" (although you can travel back to everything in between those two points after the third point, but you can't revisit the city itself) and the third one happens when you set sail for the first time. These are kinda annoying since it makes the game feel rushed and makes one wonder if they didn't have time to fill the game with content. And this is a game series that had the quirkiness to let the NPC at the end of the second game have minds to read even though no one in your party at that time couldn't read them. The first one is the most annoying since it makes it impossible to travel back to the first area. The only reason why that would be the case is that would make it possible for the party to travel to Bilibin through an alternative route. How do they do it? The enemy sets a trap with boulders that block your path backwards. It would have been fine and all if it weren't for the thing that 5 second earlier the Scholar Kraden mentions that the psynergy vortex you encountered would block your path itself so you wouldn't be able to follow him when he went north and you south to rescue Rief. So what was the point of the enemy cave in? By avoiding that and just using the psynergy vortex would have made it possible to travel back to the first area and at the same time remind people about the threat of the vortexes instead of the almost out of the blue ending. 

This ties together with the weakest part of the game, there is no sense of urgency for the main characters. The only thing would be the psynergy vortexes since you are hinted about the mourning moon in the beginning and the destruction it causes, which would be a good thing in that it urges the player to continue before it is to late... if the plot thread wasn't dropped after the first ruin where the third vortex is spotted and only returns at the very end. They never mentions it between those two points. Personally this feels like one of the reasons I felt the second game wasn't as good as the first. The first one had you hunting the madmen who wanted to release the destructive force of Alchemy, they kidnapped your love interest and your mentor and possibly killed your parents. You travel across two continents following them as they wreck havoc, destroys merchant roads, kills and hurt soldiers and scholars until you finally corners them at the top of the second lighthouse and a battle to the death were you learn about a whole village of these people and their mantle is picked up by your childhood friend you failed to save at the beginning of the game as he plans to finish their work... and then the game ends. The second game picks up after that, but puts you in the clothes of that childhood friend as he fights to finish what they started. I didn't care that much when I first played this game since I waited two years for this, but now I wondered, what is the motivation for the player to finish this? Especially us who played the first game? Not until you reach Lemuria you get a reason why alchemy is in fact good, the world is being devoured due to lack of energy. Not until the 75 % mark when the other group joins you finally get the reason why it is urgent in a much more personally way, the enemy holds your parents as hostage in their village, a village that is threatened to be the first to fall into the abyss at the ends of the world if you don't ignite the lighthouses. There, a reason, but it felt a bit to late, although small hints are spread all around the game, but not only until I got the whole picture was I clear on what they meant. I miss that in the third game as I'm being pushed around by my enemies without much input on the story. I know it's wrong from the start since they can't be up to something good, but still I'm forced into it against my will. Better had been if I felt it necessary to reach my goals and there was no other way due to the urgency of my quest, but my quest is to gather a feather and the plot around it dropped after 1-2 hours. But it is still better than Children of Mana.