Remember Golden Sun: The Lost Age (1)

99, 100... eh, fudge it, let's continue the story

After 40 hours of play I finished of this game, and it still feel as satisfying doing it as when I did it the first time back in 2003. It was a long wait back then, but I was hyped, especially after getting a promo CD from an now defunct Swedish gaming magazine that had clips from all kinds of games, including this one and if I remember right it was this one:

Listen to that music. That bombastic intro alone sold me on that this game was a much have. And now I played it on the Wii U. 40 hours more docked into that game. So what is better? It's larger first of. The original was rather railroaded as you had little choice to get anywhere else than the plot demanded, here they allow you free reins once you get the boat to do the elemental rocks in any order you want or tackle the trident towers (or whatever they are called). I guess the preferred order from the game designers where water than earth to be honest due to some dialog choices and needed powers, but it really doesn't matter.

Look at this map and you only visited the northern continent in the first game

Other improvements was forgeable items with a smith in one of the towns (rng based as well so you could fool it to give you one of the better weapons in the game). Also a lot more items to get from random drops so you know what that mean, ring-grinding. Although I think the designers realised their miss since it is harder to get the desired monster to appear since you need to cycle through them. If you find a correct spot that is. Also a lot more psynergies to use and some really useful ones like teleport (which took me a play through to realise that you could use outside of dungeons as well to get to any town on the map you visited). Also the world itself felt deeper with the different stories and legends you uncovered together with the ruins of the ancient world, the titular lost age of man. One of the better introductions was also the New Game + future that allows you to replay the game with your ending level. It clearly beats playing from scratch and level grind the hell out of low level monsters. And playing through it I can't say I didn't enjoy it and in many ways far superior to the original. And yet there is still some things I find disturbing me enough that I prefer the original over this. And they are all story related so I will bring that up in the story post on Thursday so I can collect my thoughts and better present them.

Well, except for the password, damn thing is 6 pages long and you can't even use the link cable like the original, if you had both games, two GBA's and above mentioned link cable. And if you had two of one game you could even duke it out!