History Headscratchers / GoldenSunDarkDawn

** Golden Sun never really was about challenging fights save for the BonusBoss. The GBA games weren't that much harder to begin with or maybe we just LevelGrind too much and make the game easier without realizing it.
** Yeah, with the exception of a handful of Bonus Bosses and the final boss of ''The Lost Age'', I never found the originals to be hard at all, at least not in terms of battles. (Some of the puzzles on the other hand...) Maybe the NostalgiaFilter has made the older games seem more difficult in hindsight, or you're just much better at games now than you were then?

** [[FridgeBrilliance That actually has some merit.]] A quick glance on Wiki/TheOtherWiki shows that samurai-equivalent lady warriors (onna-bugeisha) did exist in feudal Japan, but trained in different weapons and combat styles from their male counterparts, and were usually the ones to keep the home front while men traveled to war. Himi's inability to access the Samurai class just might be a reference to the gender differences of the warrior-nobility.

** Also, I need to look at this stuff again, but I'm pretty sure Kraden said some interesting stuff about the sun and moon rooms in the Sol Sanctum somehow being important, but not really knowing how. Oh my god they thought of everything. Not a Headscratchers/JustBugsMe, but [[FridgeBrilliance oh my god]].

** Especially if, like Amiti, [[CrowningMomentOfFunny you've been raised to revere talking trees as gods]]...

** Also, I need to look at this stuff again, but I'm pretty sure Kraden said some interesting stuff about the sun and moon rooms in the Sol Sanctum somehow being important, but not really knowing how. Oh my god they thought of everything. Not a JustBugsMe, but [[FridgeBrilliance oh my god]].

** [[FridgeBrilliance That actually has some merit.]] A quick glance on TheOtherWiki shows that samurai-equivalent lady warriors (onna-bugeisha) did exist in feudal Japan, but trained in different weapons and combat styles from their male counterparts, and were usually the ones to keep the home front while men traveled to war. Himi's inability to access the Samurai class just might be a reference to the gender differences of the warrior-nobility.

* Why does every reaction toward one of your emotive comments (when you can choose how you feel about something) seem so blown out of proportion? Like at the start, Isaac would be like "Matthew isn't fit enough to order around veterans like us" and then I'd choose the happy option (far left) because I'd interpret it as "Yes, I agree with you dad. It wouldn't make sense if a teenager like me was ordering around experienced adults like you two." but then Karis would be like, "Why are you acting so chipper? He just said you're not ready!" and I've noticed that every reaction toward an emotive response always seems to take it to its most extreme, as if like Matthew literally said nothing and just smiled.

* If the beastmen were created due to the Golden Sun (except for the werewolves at Garoh, which isn't even near Morgal), then how is it possible the Morgal beastmen built the Apollo Sanctum and why does the Umbra Gear can only be worn by beastmen?

*** Air's Rock and the influence of Anemos (moonlight causes the transformation; Anemos is the moon). Personal {{Fanon}} here, Maha became permanently beastman because he mastered his powers to a point where he was generating his own alchemical influence.
*** If this were true, you'd think that ''someone'' would have at least mentioned it--if not along the course of the main narrative, then discussed by NPC characters. It isn't. And if it were the case, what happened to the beastmen when alchemy got sealed? Did they all just spontaneously turn into humans or animals? What determined who turned into what? This seems way too much like an AssPull to sit right.
*** Yes, they did turn into humans and animals. Who turned into what was determined by genetics or whatever, and their descendants carried those same genes, and so were still "beastmen" despite being humans and animals. Then alchemy was unsealed and their genes activated.
*** Addendum to the above: If you talk to/mind read beastmen, some of them will mention that they used to be animals (or, for that matter, humans).

*** Discounting the fact that they both have Megiddo is a pretty big thing to discount. Come to think of it, how did the Titan Blade get where it was? What, did Isaac just decide to throw the sword into a different thematically-appropriate dungeon? I know it's difficult to return it to the Venus Lighthouse at this point, but still.
*** I'd like to think that any weapon found in a dungeon isn't canonical to the story. So in regards to the Sol Blade in TLA, we'll just have to go with the notion that Felix and co. never got it, and Matthew and co. were the only ones who did in DD. Well, if GS4 brings back the Sol Blade to be wielded by Takeru then all of this is quite absurd and inconsistent.

* The guy at the enterance to Harapa says he knows you are a warrior because your armor is dented. There is no metal armor at that point.

*** She also kind of thought he was [[LeftForDead dead]].

** Honestly, the battles were never the main focus of the games, all the work went into Psynergy puzzles.

*** And even before that, Isaac mentions [[spoiler: the "negative energies" and how to counter them]] in Tanglewood, and Karis [[LampshadeHanging points out]] that we should "remember this, because you never know when it will be handy" or something like that. How's ''that'' for a BrickJoke, guys? ''They even lampshaded it!''
*** Plus, there was Isaac's journal, where he seems ''certain'' that the Mourning Moon will reappear. The game initially looks like it will be a fairly quick trip to get the Feather, and then the rest of it will be you trying to stop the Mourning Moon's return. At the end, it appears that [[spoiler:that is ''exactly'' the case. It's just that the trip for the Feather got sidetracked like ''whoa'', such that the "rest of the game" needs to be is own game.]]

* Nowell bugs this troper. The first and only time we see her is when her ''younger brother gets kidnapped.'' And her excuse for being written out of the plot? "Oooh, I'm in love with a man who is several decades my senior." Rief might be an adept and in a good group of them, but shouldn't Nowell at least be concerned enough about her brother to see for herself that he's okay? This and her somewhat haughty attitude made her come across as a {{Jerkass}} to me.

* Okay, so I realize that Camelot couldn't just recreate the Weyard from the previous games, but it bugs me just how there's suddenly a bunch of new nations and peoples and wars and ancestors and historic ruins where there weren't any before. I mean, taking the Endless Wall, for example, just how is it that it's designed to connect to the ancient Apollo Engine thingie, manage to remain invisible for the duration of the first game, AND survive the Golden Sun event? And the big ancient engines, for that matter? Given how much emphasis the game places on the events of the previous games, it seems that they overshot the mark on this one aspect.

*** Probably. Luna Tower was physically buried deep underground, after all.

*** Even Sveta's status as an outlier may be in debate. There's [[WildMassGuessing a theory in some circles]] that her late human-hating father was Master Maha of Garoh.
**** But given that in the original Japanese, Maha and the people of Garoh are [[OurVampiresAreDifferent VAMPIRES]]...Yeah.
*** And another theory has been suggested that Sveta's late mother was ''[[TheCassandra Feizhi]]'', since she uses a martial arts combat style and comes from near the China-analogue nation.

* WHY are Isaac and Garet the only Warriors of Vale to return?!?! This troper demands to see how the others look now that they're older, and hopes that a sequel will rectify this problem.
** And Garet didn't even get any concept artwork.

* Is it just me, or does this game seem shorter tha the previous two? I only vaguely remember Lost Age but this game barely took me 24 hours (combined) to beat, and Lost Age has a lot of time clocked in.

*** Hmm well I (the OP) figured that Tyrell's pretty much the same as Eoleo, so there's no reason to use Eoleo at all, and while I'd like to use Sveta more, I feel like I need Karis out for her healing spells. I beat the game at a fairly low level (around 43), so at that point, Rief knew the Wish series and Amiti didn't, and I figured that while Himi seems like a great, versatile caster, it'd be better to use Matthew because of his physical strength. I pretty much only used the characters in their main classes (no djinni outside of their respective elements), so in my next run through I'll swap around classes and see how that changes things. But I just felt like I had no incentive to use the later characters at all.
*** There's your problem right there. You're only comparing them to their own counterpart, rather than everyone else in the party, and in their base classes no less. Tyrell may be better than Eoleo (that's actually debatable, but I'm just using it as an example) but that doesn't mean that both Tyrell and Eoleo aren't better than Rief. With the proper combination of Djinn, the Wish line can be placed on any character, which makes Karis and Rief much less valuable. This combined with the damage of most spells not scaling with level means that characters who rely on physical damage like Sveta and Eoleo will generally be superior to casters like Rief and Himi. Of course, in the end it all comes down to personal preference, with the right Djinn setup you can make any combination work.
*** I for one happen to like the [[RuleOfCool sheer cool value]] of a [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot laser-shooting psychic fire pirate]]. Who can also fly.
*** On the other hand, [[spoiler:the final boss]] can and will use Djinn Blast on one of your party members, resetting them to their base classes. Suddenly Rief with Pure Wish (can already be accessed in his base class) is actually viable...

** Well, his hair looks a bit whiter, so I guess he did age somewhat. As for Isaac and Garet... female fanservice?
** Isaac and Garet didn't biologically age as much as it appears. They wore different hairstyles and grew facial hair to give the appearence of aging.

*** Agreed. It's easier to notice aging in a 20-something thsan a guy who's seventy. Plus Isaac and Garet are apparently living active lifestyles (is it just me or does Garet have a beer belly?), so they've changed with the working out. Plus the facial hair helps a lot.

** Even in olden times, it wasn't unheard of to have people living into their eighties, but then that would mean [[FridgeHorror that she's not long for the world]].
*** She's 30-year-old Eoleo's ''great-grand-mother'' and she already looked older than sin in TLA. She's just the contrary of TooCoolToLive - ''too badass to die''.

*** Can't check right now, but isn't this mentioned in an encyclopedia article? If not hers, her children's?
*** There's definitely a reference to Mia in one of the books in Kolima:
-----> The Goddess of Imil: A priestess in the village near Mercury Lighthouse is truly holy. Thanks to her tireless devotions, the old and sick of Imil never suffer from their ailments.
** Remember, this is Rief, the same kid who didn't even remember to ask about his own sister when she mysteriously didn't turn up with Kraden.

*** You apparently missed the part about [[spoiler: the Lighthouse being dark while it was in the shadow of the eclipse.]]
**** [[spoiler: Do Harapa and Pasaaj also look dark on the World Map despite the Alchemy Machines powering their devices? If so, then the same logic can be applied to the Lighthouse, since it's also an Alchemy Machine. And even if not, being one of the Ligthhouses, it's bound to be more powerful than the Forge and Well, so it would be weird to see it succumb to the Eclipse while the other Machines were able to keep running and protecting their areas.]]
*** I'm more inclined to believe it's the epic-level Mercury Adept and her two apprentices.

* Not really a JustBugsMe, but rather something I'm curious about. What exactly would [[spoiler:the Grave Eclipse]] mean for the Anemos, since we know that there are still people up there thanks to Sheba's existence? Do they just put on extra-strength sunblock, or something?

*** Or worse, ''[[spoiler:[[KillItWithFire they all burned to death from the moon absorbing so much light]]]]''.
**** [[spoiler: It's the Tower absorbing light, not the moon. Though we don't know how the moon plays into this, really--did it just follow the sun around? Then why didn't the shadow move? Was the moon even needed for starting/ maintaining the Eclipse? Was there a moon before Anemos flew off? I think they just call it an Eclipse because it looks like one, what this the giant circular shadow. In reality, (I think) the giant circle of shadow is just thearea that the Eclipse Tower is sucking light from.]]

*** Perhaps it's closer to Weyard's main mass. One imagines the Anemos people would still need to breathe, so leaving the atmosphere is unlikely.
**** Maybe they just moved their city TO the moon, instead of becomeing it?

* As much as I loved ''Dark Dawn'', one thing really bugged me. Why do we never get any exposition on what is happening ''presently'' until it's ridiculously late into the story? Okay, yes, we all guessed that [[spoiler:Arcanus was Alex]] but the heroes didn't know that. Neither did they know that [[spoiler:the Umbra Clan]] existed until the last twenty minutes. Seems to me like we could've gotten this information earlier.

*** Let's give him credit: possibly, he had more of an idea of what Arcanus' plans were and it's a case of WeWouldHaveToldYouBut... ... ... Or not.

*** Unfortunately, ''Dark Dawn'''s sales kind of sucked, probably because of how they handled the plot, so now it's not likely any of those {{Sequel Hook}}s are ever going to get resolved. [[RunningGag Again.]]
*** You don't know that. You're just being insufferably pessimistic.
*** Half a million is still pretty good for an [[EasternRPG Eastern]], non-''Franchise/FinalFantasy'', non-Pokemon turn-based RPG, so unless Camelot is stupid and take those numbers at face value, the franchise won't die any time soon. Plus, while I won't say that word of mouth on the plot didn't damper some sales, you're acting as if that's the ''only'' it didn't sell as much as the previous two. The genre itself is dying out in popularity, and the [=DS=] itself has a compounded problem of being a slowly dying handheld (yes, even at the time of ''Dark Dawn'''s release) that people pirate ''the hell'' out of.
*** On a personal note, I absolutely hated Dark Dawn. I was always a fan of the originals, still herald them as my favorite games despite barebones mechanics (the story and concept earned that), and I do not desire another game. Chalk it up to the DS falling out of favor, but I'll continue to chalk it up to poor execution and a story with few redeeming qualities. Not to mention its painful and effortless easiness. Couple that with several handwaved inconsistencies and it just doesn't establish itself well. To this day, I prefer to think of the events of the game as non-canonical solely because of the way it chose to handle the entire concept. Definitely not insufferably pessimistic.

*** Alright. Also, What happan to Frost's Utility? In fact Why did Frost got replaced by Douse?
*** Maybe it's a gender thing? All the playable Water guys have had Douse by default; Mia didn't, but she's the only playable Water girl in the series to date, so maybe Water girls get Frost/Snap/equivalent as their default utility spell and have to learn Douse...
*** The Psynergies got changed a bit in an effort to balance stuff. For one, you don't need to give Matthew a Fire Djinn to get Growth, which makes way more sense since Growth is such a basic sort of Venus Psynergy, plus it gets used a lot.

* Himi can't be a Samurai, Why is that?

*** [[FridgeBrilliance That actually has some merit.]] A quick glance on TheOtherWiki shows that samurai-equivalent lady warriors (onna-bugeisha) did exist in feudal Japan, but trained in different weapons and combat styles from their male counterparts, and were usually the ones to keep the home front while men traveled to war. Himi's inability to access the Samurai class just might be a reference to the gender differences of the warrior-nobility.

*** Snake motif? What snake motif....All I see is that GS Coatlicue has undergone a transition from a [[ShrineMaiden Japanese shrine maiden]] who resides underwater to water-bearing Aquarius.

*** The parents are probably people we never even heard of, for one thing. For another, the relationships (most of them) may not be very happy or even meaningful, when you take into account the slower aging process of the Warriors of Vale - for all we know, considering it's been 30 years and the kids aren't even 17, our heroes (exempting Issac and Jenna) married people considerably younger (say, 10 years?) than them to try and mitigate the process. Being demi- or quasi-immortal has a habit of rending apart 'normal' relationships after all.
*** Not to mention the part where Jenna's brother [[HeroWithBadPublicity seems to have gone down in history as a villain]], while Isaac is universally admired. That ''could'' put some stress on a marriage.

* Okay, how the HELL does the Eclipse Tower work?
** [[spoiler: Okay, so it starts at dawn, except the Eclipse shadow is a circular shadow, as though the noon sun was being eclipsed, instead of a big ol' black bar across the world, like it would be if the dawn/ morning sun was being blocked. Or possibly an elipse, but no, it's a circle that doesn't move.]]
*** [[spoiler: The explanation I came up with is that there is no actual eclipse going on, it just looks like there is. Basically, the sun is shining normally but the Eclipse Tower is absorbing all the sunlight in a certain radius (Kraden sort of says this). This has the side effect of making it possible to look directly at the sun, as per a real eclipse (a child NPC mentions that he can look straight at it). It's also important to note that the Eclipse Tower is apparently only absorbing sunlight, or else Harapa and Champa would be screwed out of their magic light and fire.]]
*** Also, what happened when natural night fell? Did the Tower absorb starlight too, which would somehow be enough to keep those monsters at bay otherwise? But why didn't they show up on cloudy nights?
** Another thing--was the moon even necessary for starting or maintaining [[spoiler: the Eclipse? It was a full moon the night before, but the sun and moon weren't in the correct positions for an ecipse when it happened at dawn. I can't remember if the cinematic showed the moon moving into position in front of the sun....]]

* If the flying city of Anemos is the moon, and Anemos didn't disappear until the Lighthouses were extinguished, why the hell is there moon symbology everywhere? Maybe the Sol Sanctum was modified afterwards to house the Elemental Stars, hence the moon stuff, but the Alchemy Well used the Luna Mask and was definatley built DURING the golden age, while Anemos was still on Weyard. They didn't HAVE a moon back then!

*** Obaba has a line specifically indicating her affinity is for "fire and the forge", so she's Mars.

*** Izumo is more aligned to the likes of Garoh, both being near one of the elemental giant rocks that some residents have gained the corresponding Psynergy. On the other hand, a closer guess could probably be the ruins underneath Babi Lighthouse. I think at some point they're even referred to as the ruins of the Venus civilization, so they're more likely to have been the Venus-aligned place.

*** Nah, Venus is associated with death and darkness as well IIRC. Death Curse? Haunt? Condemn? Annihilate? Call Demon? Charon's shadow attack? The Venus summons tablets (except Crystallux) are demons/underworld creatures too. Probably the original Venus Clan were banished into the underworld by the ancients or something...
** Regarding the OP, don't forget that this issue comes from the same game that makes almost ''nothing'' weak to Venus-based offenses.

*** He can also fly and teleport.

*** Cloak is a Mercury Psynergy. Also, with all that Magitek, couldn't Alex have placed a tracking device on Rief when he was tied up?

--> "It sure takes the fight out of you to be strung up like a piece of meat, I guess."
----> NPC Guard in Belinsk Castle, paraphrased

** I chocked it up to "Wow, it wasn't ''complete'' bullshit", given how... inaccurete the training grounds were..

*** Especially if, like Amiti, [[CrowningMomentOfFunny you've been raised to revere talking trees as gods]]...

* Why does every reaction toward one of your emotive comments (when you can choose how you feel about something) seem so blown out of proportion? Like at the start, Isaac would be like "Matthew isn't fit enough to order around veterans like us" and then I'd choose the happy option (far left) but then Karis would be like, "Why are you acting so chipper? He just said you're not ready!" and I've noticed that every reaction toward an emotive response always seems to take it to it's most extreme, as if like Matthew literally said nothing and just smiled.

*** Half a million is still pretty good for an [[EasternRPG Eastern]], non-FinalFantasy, non-Pokemon turn-based RPG, so unless Camelot is stupid and take those numbers at face value, the franchise won't die any time soon. Plus, while I won't say that word of mouth on the plot didn't damper some sales, you're acting as if that's the ''only'' it didn't sell as much as the previous two. The genre itself is dying out in popularity, and the [=DS=] itself has a compounded problem of being a slowly dying handheld (yes, even at the time of ''Dark Dawn'''s release) that people pirate ''the hell'' out of.

* I don't really care about this game's difficulty (especially since I'm doing a blind run) but WHY everything legitimately difficult and intimidating in this game are only weak to Jupiter and resist Venus? All Jupiter-aligned monsters (sans Jupiter Djinn) also have the same issue. The fact that they ''really'' went their way to make Sveta as broken as possible doesn't help matters. There's the Sludge, Mountain Roc, [[spoiler:Chaos Chimera, Ancient Devil, '''Dullahan'''...]] and that's just the bosses.

** Regarding the OP, don't forget this issue comes from the same game that makes almost ''nothing'' weak to Venus-based offenses.