Hmm, so this is a discussion thread AND an EC thread? Now that's consolidation!

The little guys you equip are Djinn, btw.

@GameDadGrant

I usually dump the stuff over here after we're done with it, and for the folks that were still working on it a place for them to finish it / discuss it (kinda like when a sporting event runs over and another show starts on another station or something..) without interjecting over the Main Event (Chrono Trigger), though I'd never complain too hard about that. But yeah, I can't believe there wasn't already a Golden Sun thread!

Ah yes, the Djinn. Did you like the mechanic? It reminded me a little bit of the Espers from Final Fantasy III.

Yeah, the Djinn were fine. Honestly, the only thing that was kind of irksome was how much menu navigation was necessary for battle, exploration...and just about everything else, lol.

I love the GBA Golden Sun games. I haven't played the DS one yet.

@GameDadGrant

With the Djinn, I didn't like how some of them were seemingly RANDOM, in terms of encountering them on the Map. I didn't really have a problem because we basically used a walkthrough in the EC, but geez. I can be frustrated by that, knowing that the only reason I got that was because someone told me exactly where to go. I get "hard to find!," and it being a challenge for some people, but some of those were bonkers. And kinda breaking the rules of finding all of the other ones.

@WrathOfSamus777

Did that one just drop on the VC, or was that the other GBA one?

I tried the first one out recently on the Wii U Virtual Console. Why I can't relay say anything bad about the game I never got to into it. For one it felt to simple and I felt like I was doing the same thing over and over again plus the story felt relay short. I never got to understand the Djinn mechanic very well and I think that's partly the reason I never fully grasped the game.

The "worst" part about the game is that they really do not explain the Djinn mechanic all that well. They rely on the player to experiment with different combinations, but the main problem behind that is the 4 characters have a certain trait associated with them and lining up all the Mars Djinn with Garret just seems "right". You get a really limited, basically super basic (basic-ception) core group for the entire game and everyone is pretty set in hard roles. Garret is just straight up fire and that's that, for example. You can beat the game doing that, I certainly did my first time through, but once you start getting into "dual" and "tri" element classes and start diving down that rabbit hole you get some truly incredible characters out of it.

For example, if you give Isaac a bunch of Mars/Jupiter Djinn in the first Golden Sun, he can become a Ronin which gives him access to the "Quick Strike" psynergy which is one of the most powerful single target spells in the entire game. There's a lot more combinations out there, you do have to look them up unless you just want to spend a lot of time switching in game. It really changes up the flow of the game when you knock the 4 out of their hard-defined roles.

@Mr_Mustache
The other GBA one I think. I have it on cartridge.