Remembering Golden Sun: The Broken Seal (1)

It's Back, my Golden Sun ramblings post, enjoy all ye gamers or despair!

My God have mercy on our souls!

All right hopefully I won't ramble on for ever as I did building up my own hype for Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, which incidentally just felt flat. Heck, I didn't even try to review it just saying it was good and that I would play it again (which I did). So maybe I should go back, try the series again and see if it still holds up, like 13 years after release. So I bought the first game again at the same time I could upgrade my newly bought Wii U. Started playing and somewhere at the end I stopped playing until this Friday. At that moment I was level 28 and standing outside Suhalla desert trying to get the droppable armour Aura Gloves. Probably did something wrong with the RNG-method as this time it worked without a hitch. First a little explanation, the RNG-method is a way to fool the game into letting it give you droppable items and equipment as if you hard reset the games it goes back to zero and doing certain actions you can hit the desired RNG-value over and over again, giving you the best equipment in the games. Now, is this cheating? In a sense yes, as you exploit something in the games to make it easier for you to win the game (or in some cases be more fun, as grinding for certain weapons and items can take forever, especially since they only exist as droppable). Then again, they should have made it so simple to exploit that even I could figure the system down and replicate it over and over again for favourable results.

Well, that sounds just like me!

Really, without that exploit getting the best weapons, which incidentally I didn't know about until I researched the games in forums back in the day, you can hardly get them. Doesn't help that certain items like the prophet's hat disappears after certain event (interestingly they don't mention that in the link so did that ever happen?). Interestingly, while grinding my level 28 to 42 that I did for 10-12 hours, I actually received the best weapons and armours completely legit for the first time playing this game. Also, I was originally gonna grind my level up to level 56 since that is as I got on my cartridge. Luckily I can't check how many hours I wasted grinding since the problem is that at the most the encounter in the final dungeon gives around 1000-1500 (with some going as 2000) exp. So in a bout 20 encounters for a single level at level 42. Now, back in the days I used to battle the first phase of the final boss over and over again which gives 6000 exp (with possibilities of over 7000 exp). The trick being that if you get defeated at the second phase (which doesn't give you any exp) you are transported to the nearest sanctum and could do it again. Sounds profitable... until I did the calculation yesterday. Now, the exp isn't bad... if it wasn't a very story crucial moment which drags on with plot and characters in which I could fight smaller encounters and earn more than the 7000 exp I could at best get. And I did that up to level 56, that is 14 more levels. So I said screw that and finished the game.

S Club 7 never tried to grind for the end levels of an JRPG

The sickest part of this? I read somewhere that one person actually grinded up to level 99 in this game (which given the 1 1/2 year until the sequel hit the store is probably a good time frame). So why is it such a chore? The split game that continues in the sequel. This wasn't meant to be the end game of the story and therefore the enemies reflect on it. Also, there is hardly any reward for leveling beyond 56. With reward, beside the stat increase, I mean getting new psynergies to devastate your enemies with. At level 54 you run that well dry so all you grind for is numbers... that still are above the final bosses of the Lost Age (of course, there I grinned up to level 89, but you could play a New Game + with intact levels if you restarted). Really, the game is fun and I should probably talk more about the story and other gameplay elements in a forthcoming post, but the level system is a bit flawed and took a bit longer to talk through... and incidentally I just learned that the lizard at Crossbones Island gives over 1700 exp per encounter and it is triggered meaning it is guaranteed. Damn, be back later!

17, 18, 19... level up!... 1, 2, 3,