So were's the sequel?
This time we tackles the story. The game is set 30 years after the Last Age and the world has been reshape due to the Golden Sun event and new places have appeared while others have disappeared. Meanwhile psynergy vortexes appears that causes havoc and every 10 year a really big one appear, dubbed the Mourning Moon. Apparently they suck the surroundings dry of psynergy. To combat this Isaac and Garet have set up camp to watch over the ruins of Mount Aleph while Ivan has helped them build a Soarwing so that they can access Sol Sanctum and speak with the Wise One. All this planning is crumbled as Garrets son Tyrell decide to take the machine for a spin and crashes it so Isaac's son Matthew have to lead Tyrell and Ivan's daughter Karis to Morgal to find Mountain Roc feather.
Not even his father likes Tyrell
And here is the first problem with the story, I don't like Tyrell. As his father put it, he's a brat. He destroys the machine as he wants to fly, he almost burns down a store (which he burnt down before) and he's stupid. Yes, Garret was portrayed as rather dimwitted at times, but he was loyal to a t and followed Isaac when Isaac overruled him. He could argue against it and often grounded that in the task at hand (stop Felix for example). Heck, he has the same attitude here. Garett was reasonable, Tyrell you have to smack around so he doesn't do anything rash and the one that does the smacking is Karis. This makes Matthew just appear as a figurehead for the real brains of the operation that is Karis. Not to mention the kids are 16. Isaac and Garett was at least 17. Let's continue. So you set visit a couple of places which tells you what happened to Vale and Vault and how the survivors copped with this new world. You meet people like Carver and Patcher all the while reinforcing the story of the Mourning Moon and the destruction caused by the Psynergy vortexes and how the non-adepts perceive adepts and such. Great set up for something big. Meanwhile you have to follow Kraden to a ruin to reach Biblibin since the bridge at Carvers was destroyed by a vortex. Inside you are attacked by Tsuparang soldiers led by Blados who kidnapps Rief, Kraden's apprentice and son to Mia and brother to Nowell. There you also meet Arcanus who... it's Alex. It's freaking Alex, but let's assume we don't know that.
The Phantom of Weyard
So Matthew and co has to split with Kraden and rescue Rief. Meanwhile Blados blew up the exit creating the first PoNR. Hope you got the 3-4 djinni before exiting the cave. So now your objective is to cross the mountains to reach Morgal. To do this you must activate 2 alchemical machines hidden in these lands. The land being the former Lamakan Dessert, but no Xian or Altin. Here you meet the ruthless King Wo who wages war against Passaj and Ayuthay to establish himself before reclaiming his homeland Sana from the benevolent Emperor Unan. The cities being the homes of the alchemical machines that you need to fix in order to take the cloudpassage from Passaj to the Neox capital at Craggy Peak. They also pick up prince Amiti in Ayuthay who everyone believes to be a messiah, born without a father and such, but apparently a water adept came by 20 years ago fixing their machine and created an oasis paradise. Gee, I wonder who the mysterious water adept can be.
You get it running and traverse the mountains and enter one of the most interesting dungeons in the game, the Craggy Peak ruin. It has 12 rooms associated with the zodiac and you must solve all 12 puzzles to be able to leave. After that you reach a mountain village were you are "greeted" by two Sanan nobles, the younger one being a spiritual twin of Tyrell, boy, two of them. His story is that they fled the beastmen uprising in Morgal while there father, the governor and brother to Emperor Unan, was killed. His sister unfortunately was captured and he and his mentor tries to save her. Traversing yet another mountain ruin you encounter Sveta, the sister of the current Morgal king Volechek and she agrees to help you pass the mountain and gives you information of the Mountain Roc near Kolima forrest (that has moved for some reason). Here you also finds out that Eoleo, son of the Pirate leader Briggs who appeared in the last game has also been imprisoned and Briggs ask for your help to rescue him. No other choice you agree while on the way to Kolima forrest to see the elder Tret. So after saving Kolima... again you meet Tret who gives you information on to enter Berlinsk and rescue the prisoners. Also this little hint is dropped:
Hmm, interesting! Besides that the Sanana noblemen joins you in climbing the mountain and at the top confronting the Roc to get the feather, at the same time as Blados and Chalis drops the hint that you must start the machine below Belinsk to save the prisoners. The Sananas steals the artefacts necessary from you and bolts. You follow them and enters the ruin below the city and meet up with Sveta and the Sananas as you start up this third alchemical machine. This one summons the Eclipse tower that cast an eclipse over a large part of Angara summoning monster that slaughers the innocent. Apparently Volechek had been duped by the Tsuparang as he was told it was a weapon he could defend his land from the Sanan empire and the power hungry Biblibin. So the party rescues the prisoners and flees on Briggs ships, but not before Briggs have been killed by the shadow monsters. And this is the third and last PoNR (the second one being Craggy Peak which you can't return to after leaving). You can't enter Belinsk, Kolima, Port Rago or Border Town or even the mountains again. Instead you can return to the south of Angara again and see what calamity the Grave Eclipse has caused. Which I really like. Consequences. People you met have died, important NPC's like the generals of King Wo actually died during their siege of Ayuthay. The people of Ayuthay and Passaj survived most of the destruction due to the alchemical machines that powers the Eclipse Tower and as you will find out they also powers the machine to stop it, the Apollo Lens. A gun powered by solar energy atop pretty much the great wall of Angara. But first you need to gather the 3 orbs to open the road and the Umbra gear so that Sveta can survive the intense light at the machine. Sailing the seas also takes you back to Izumo... kinda. Izumo was destroyed, but the villagers fled after a vision from their leader Uzume who died upon leading her people to safety. Makes me think of Moses for some reason. Here you meet Susa and Kushinada from the last game and their daughter Hima that has fallen in a coma which you wake her from with an artefact that gives her a third eye. So now the parties is complete, you gathered all the gear and traveled up to the Apollo Lens. Where you are confronted by Tsuparang again, but this time Arcanus helps you and unveil his true name Alex, although he still goes with the High Empyrors plans, but Blados and Chalis have betrayed Tsuparang and are from the Umbra Clan... which is what Tsuparang is and they turned Volecheck into a Chaos Hound and... fire the damn thing already!
Moonstone Cannon! FIRE!!!
So the tower is turned off, the blast caused human-born beastmen to turn into light adepts and Alex escaped while Sveta became queen. And our heroes got the feather and returns home. A job well done, although I can't help but think we forgot something, what could it be?
Oh... Oops!
And that is the end. No "The End?" or "To Be Continue", just "The End". On a freaking cliffhanger again. And that was 5 years ago and still no Golden Sun 4. God dammit. So, what was good with the story? The ideas of the Eclipse Tower, Apollo Lens and Alchemical machines. The set up of the psynergy vortexes and a more present antagonist compared to the last games were frankly they hardly showed up. The bad? The whole games main driving point is a fetch quest for a feather while you by chance stumbles upon the bad guys that decide to use you (if not somehow the Tsuparang are behind the vortex cutting the bridge at Carver's home and intercepted Kradens note as to know they were coming... dammit, if that's the case it would be a rather good twist). Even if the feather isn't a huge problem the fact that we did drop any hint toward the psynergy vortexes after the first dungeon and reintroduce it at the very end feels a bit... cheap? It sets up the setting so good, the continent has shifted, the psynergy vortexes appears and every 10 year a massive one erupts. Also, people complained that we didn't see any of the new cities in the last games, but I chalked it up to that they weren't important and the game itself states that due to the shifting landmass some of them came to prosper like Tonfon that lied on a mountain top, but now had fertile soil to grow into the Sanan empire (within a 30-year time frame, but somehow the game states they were both peacekeepers and warmongers although the former Emperor Ko established the empire and it was just recently Unan took over so how that worked beats me). But we shift story as we stumble around in the world trying to reach the Roc and then accidentally starts this domesday machine and has to fix it. It feels like two games was mashed together. The beginning and the end feels as if they are completely separate from the middle portion and it feels they were tacked on to try to explain why the middle happened. Other things that is irritating is that they still don't develop the characters. It's even less since Isaac at least felt he had to take responsibility, but here the fault lies with Tyrell and does he learn? I don't know, we don't mention it at least. And the silent protagonist. At least both Isaac and Felix spoke in either game while Felix also said some words in the end. I believe they tried to fix that with a 4 kind of emotional responses, happy, ecstatic, sad and angry. Fine, more than yes or no, but it's hard sometimes to see if what I'm responding to. Is it the question I'm given or the answer I'm giving? And it still doesn't matter for more than one or two lines.
So should I be happy due to winning or sad for using violence or angry to show some gusto? What does it matter better chose ecstatic than I'm both happy and have gusto!
So... is it bad? No, it's a decent game and Camelot still put in a lot of care and thought into it. And all of this might be salvageable in case a forth game ever continues on this and tying all this together. I think this game more was hurt by expectations. Everyone wanted a big game like the Lost Age, what we got was a retread of the first game with a bit of new settings in the old setting. We only saw what, a 1/5 of the whole of Weyard? The few things people wondered wasn't addressed at all like Sheba's heritage, Tolbi's leaders after Babi, did Dodonpa reform. Things I discovered in my last playthrough was also the hatred between Atteka and Hesperia that Felix speed up. Also, what become of Lemuria? Could Piers return or is he still exiled and how did they react to the unleashed Alchemy? One of the few things that was mentioned was Susa and Kushinada's son that would help Isaac one day which is mentioned when we meet them, but he already left and some speculate he is with Piers and Nowell, which frankly is setting up one way a potential sequel could start where you play as him as the main protagonist since he is a Venus adept. Really, of all of this we only answered one question and that was if Alex survived the Golden Sun. Now we have even more questions like the deal with Tsuparang, who is the High Empyror (really creative naming there guys), the umbra clan and the light adepts. Will anything of that come to play? Also of all the characters in this game, will Amiti figure out who his father is? And it's been 5 years already. There is some small talk about a 4th game here and there with a petition some years ago. I hope the series doesn't end like this, but I will probably be cautiously optimistic until at least 2 years... or 5 years... or 10 years... It will never end this pain of disappointment, will it?
At least Isaac was in Smash Brother! Right Guys and Gals?
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