History VideoGame / GoldenSun

** While the Anemos tribe is ''at least'' mentioned, there is no explanation at all for the missing Venus Clan. Are they hunted to extinction, still in hiding or just vanished? Nobody in the game knows.

* FissionMailed: After Isaac and Garet get wiped out by Saturos and Menardi in the prologue, the scene cuts to the title screen as if the game had reset (albeit with more somber music than the title screen's)... but then, "Three years later..."

** ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk is referenced with a random castle guard, who is thinking "Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry" when you mind read him.

''VideoGame/GoldenSunDarkDawn'', released in 2010 for the UsefulNotes/NintendoDS, takes place thirty years later and stars the [[SpinOffspring children]] of the characters from the original game, who are collectively called the Warriors of Vale.

** Iris, the game's ultimate summon, simultaneously completely heals your ''entire'' party (all eight, including dead party members) AND deals an insane amount of damage, more than three times as much as a level four summon. The drawback? It requires 13 standby djinn (9 Mars and 4 Mercury) to unleash. If you don't set them to standby outside of battle, you'll need a minimum of three turns dedicated solely to setting up for this summon. And don't forget that setting djinn to standby temporarily gimps your characters' stats. Also factor in three turns of recovery after doing the summon before your stats return to normal, and you've got an incredibly high cost summon that, while nice, isn't nearly worth the effort when you could accomplish the same thing with mundane but effective healing skills. Adding to that, the only way to earn Iris is to defeat the secret bonus boss. There's nothing else to use the summon on except the final story boss, who has a slight resistance against it. \\\

* BraggingRightsReward: Beating the bonus boss [[spoiler:Dullahan]] rewards the player with the Iris summon, a ridiculouly powerful and impractical summon that has no use except as eye candy because you've already defeated the strongest enemy in the game to get it. After you earn it, you'll never encounter another battle where you need it.

** The piece of equipment in question, however, is incredibly useful near the end of the second game, because you ''will'' need to {{level|Grinding}}-grind to beat the {{Bonus Boss}}es, and the best place for doing so has a below-average encounter rate. Annoyingly enough, it's only available in the first game, so people who threw it away going "the encounter rate is high enough, thank you very much" (or didn't transfer data at all) end up having to spend even more time doing so than everyone else.

** Mia's Ply power, the few times it can be used in the overworld, is represented by Primula from ''VideoGame/ShiningForceIII''. Additionally, Deadbeard, the bonus boss of the first game, is referred to as Talos in the Japanese version (Talos is the name of a recurring enemy/boss in the Shining series).

* BeginWithAFinisher: By holding enough un-equipped Djinn, a character can unleash a powerful Summon attack, at the cost of those Djinn becoming unusable for several turns. An effective strategy for bosses throughout the series, up to and including [[BonusBoss Bonus Bosses]], is to un-equip all the party's Djinn before the battle and fire off every Summon available to take the boss down on the first turn. (However, since equipped Djinn provide stat boosts and abilities, any boss that isn't overwhelmed by the Summon barrage can easily take down the weakened party - and the final bosses of each game have multiple stages specifically to block this strategy.)

** ''The Lost Age'' had [[BonusBoss Dullahan's]] Fulminous Edge attack mistranslated as "Formina Sage", and his Dark Contact attack mistranslated as "True Collide". Both were corrected in his appearance in ''Dark Dawn''.

** Additionally, in the Japanese version, the BonusBoss of the first game, Deadbeard, is called Talos, which is the name of a recurring boss from the Shining series (which would explain why he looks less like a pirate and more like a giant suit of armor).

** The BonusBoss Valukar can use your own summons against you, after which your Djinn will need to recover. Thankfully he often uses this ability without waiting for strong, multi-Djinn summons to be available and [[MightyGlacier his speed is nothing to write home about]].
** In the second and third games, some enemies have abilities that put Djinn in the recovery state one or two at a time. One of the (many) reasons [[BonusBoss the Dullahan]] is so feared is because he can force ''every Djinni on every character'' into recovery (an ability shared with the FinalBoss), not only massively lowering their stats, but also depriving them of SummonMagic, group healing and revive spells.

* EnemySummoner: Several common monsters, and bosses like Briggs and Star Magician. The BonusBoss Valukar can even turn your own Summons ''against'' you, at the expense of ''your party[='s=]'' Standby Djinn.

** Even though a dramatic track plays in the presence of the villains in the original, it's used for the game's BonusBoss as well.

* MaximumHPReduction: A variation: Stats and classes are mostly determined by what Djinn are on a character, and using them in battle cancels the stat boosts (including HP) until summoned or reset. Some bosses have abilities that "drain" the Djinn, causing loss of all stats until they recover. The BonusBoss and the FinalBoss's last form have one that [[ThatOneAttack hits every Djinni on every party member]], nearly guaranteeing TotalPartyKill.

** SummonMagic attacks factor the target's maximum health into the damage calculation. They all have a base elemental power similar to regular [[MagicByAnyOtherName Psynergy]], but they're also guaranteed to hit your target for anywhere from 3%[[note]]the one-Djinni summons like Mars or Jupiter[[/note]] to 40%[[note]]Iris, received as a reward for defeating the game's strongest BonusBoss[[/note]] of their max HP.

* TomeOfEldritchLore: Tomegathericon, a spellbook in the second game which gives you a demon-summoning character class. The Japanese version even calls it "Necronomicon". It lets you summon a BonusBoss as a Psynergy attack.

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* {{Feelies}}: Each game comes with a map of the game world, and a character chart on the flipside

''Golden Sun'' is a series of {{Eastern RPG}}s from Creator/{{Nintendo}} and Camelot Software Planning, who you may recall also made ''VideoGame/MarioGolf'' and ''VideoGame/MarioTennis'' as well as Sega's ''VideoGame/ShiningSeries''.

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* LeastCommonSkinTone: Averted amongst the {{NPC}}s at least - with its liberal use of FantasyCounterpartCulture, the player will meet Africans, Middle Eastern people, Asians, Native Americans, and even Pacific Islanders (though the sprites are recycled from one edge of the world to another). The party members, however, all share the same ethnicity. Justified in that the majority of them literally came from the same hometown and general area.

* GameplayandStorySegregation: During the final encounter with Saturos and Menardi they light the Venus Lighthouse in order to get their full strength back once you trounce them, as well as [[spoiler: become the [[FusionDance Fusion Dragon]]]]. The reasoning they give is that Mars and Venus have a special connection, so the energies of the lighthouse will restore them. However no such restorative benefit is given to your own Mars and Venus Adepts, Garet and Isaac, despite the two standing right next to the ignited well.

* FourElementEnsemble: Each game features a playable party of four with each member representing one of the four elements in the series.

[[folder: L - Z]]

* NotHelpingYourCase: ''Everything'' the Proxians do. Those who stayed behind at the village apologize for the quartet being so extreme but couldn't do anything about it because they were [[AssKickingEqualsAuthority the strongest of the village]] and they did ultimately believe they [[AntiVillain were doing the best for everyone]], even every passerby they treated callously without provocation.

* TheMagicGoesAway: Inverted. The end goal is to bring the magic back.

* FakeBalance: Jupiter in general. As an element, Jupiter clearly has the advantage in the ElementalRockPaperScissors system, being strong against the vast majority of enemies in the game. The classes offered by the Jupiter djinni are cleanly better than the alternatives. The Apprentice and Page class line is a MagicKnight that borders on being MasterOfAll, with powerful physical and magical psynergy, the Impact series, coupled with high stats in every area, has the notable advantages of a massive PP pool and extremely high agility stats. The symbiotic class lines available to the Mercury and Jupiter adepts are extremely useful, being buffers and healers who also get access to some of the strongest Mercury and Jupiter offensive psynergy available, essentially combining the best aspects of the Wind and Water Seer class series. The only disadvantage to the Jupiter classes is that their focus towards higher quality of offensive psynergy creates a massive gap between their psynergy progression, which is more than made up for by the higher base power of the spells, allowing them to be a strong option for a good chunk of the early game. Even the Ninja class series, commonly agreed to be the best overall class in the game, requires Jupiter Djinn. The Jupiter classes are so potent that its not an exaggeration to say that the game's overall progression is dictated by the amount of Jupiter djinni available at any given time, and the sheer advantages of the Jupiter element are already apparent in the first game, before [[SequelEscalation becoming even more dominant]] in ''The Lost Age'' and ''Dark Dawn''.

* FlatWorld: Weyard is a flat world [[spoiler:that is ''eroding'' as water spills over its edges. Its up to you to fix that]].

* CompositeCharacter: Some of the summons are a composite of deities from several myths; Atalanta is mixed with Artemis, Iris is a cross between her namesake in Myth/ClassicalMythology and several solar deities and Coatlicue's animation is inspired from Aphrodite's birth from the sea.

* CrossoverCosmology: The summons features gods and creatures from Greco-Roman, Phyrgian, Norse, Egyptian, Aztec and Chinese pantheon in addition to some demons to the measure.

** The city of Contigo has a MeaningfulName. "Con tigo" is a Spanish phrase meaning "with you". In Spanish-language versions, [[KeepItForeign the city's name is changed to Mitdir]], from the German "mit dir" with the same meaning. Contigo/Mitdir is the city where Felix's group and Isaac's group finally settle their differences and team up with each other for the final parts of the game.

** In addition to Lift, Force was used a lot in the first game for various reasons. Here, it's only use is to acquire a djinni if you intend on entering Anemos Sanctum, which you're locked out of if you don't transfer data with the Force Gem

* MaximumHPReduction: A variation: Stats and classes are mostly determined by what Djinn are on a character, and using them in battle cancels the stat boosts (including HP) until summoned or reset. Some bosses have abilities that "drains" the Djinn, causing loss of all stats until they recover. The BonusBoss and the FinalBoss's last form have one that [[ThatOneAttack hits every Djinni on every party member]], nearly guaranteeing TotalPartyKill.

* BittersweetSeventeen: At age 14, Isaac's father and Jenna's parents and brother are lost, when thieves break into the village sanctum and set off a trap that causes a giant boulder to fall. Three years later, the thieves return, stealing the Elemental Stars and kidnapping Jenna (Felix now working with them). Isaac and his best friend Garet are sent out to retrieve them, leaving the village for possibly the first time.