Golden Sun General

Speaking of the weapons, I wonder why bows were so limited. I thought that they'd at least let Himi use them, but nope.

I did not notice experience being doubled, but I did not Matthew! was gaining levels shockingly fast.

Anyway, in most game of this type (such as Pokemon) I usually run from half the random encounters anyway but Dark Dawn is the first one in this series where I am usually not allowed to get away, to the point I do not even try if I know a monster is faster than anyone I have out (only have five...so)

What I really miss so far is the Player Versus Player arena. I am seeing complaints about 8 characters being too many but that alone would have let you put 8 people to use and experiment with classes and such. I would have gotten the game sooner if that had been a feature of it just so I could kill other people's teams. In a few ways I actually preferred Golden Sun's vs mode to Pokemon's (no E Vs, I Vs or Mewtwo/Garchomp). Getting Dullahan on every other single player attempt got old though.

You could ask the same of Eoleo and longswords.

In addition to the aforementioned difficulty and Reaction Shot complaints, I think the game needs more balanced Djinn distribution. When you fight Blados and Chalis the first time, you can have up to 11 Venus Djinn, but only 7 Mars and Jupiter per character, and 6 Mercury per character. I like being able to summon Judgment and Haures without worrying about whose class will suffer when the Djinn start resetting themselves.

If you're speaking of the introduction to DD, then oh gods yes, I forgot about how obnoxiously long it was. Almost like I was playing a Metal Gear game on a handheld or something. It's the kind of thing a better game would put in backstory logs.

Typically, if I'm using summons, I don't worry about class setups and vice versa. There's not really a good way to find a balance between the two, especially if your setups involve three elements or more. Besides, GS 1 wasn't particularly good about that either, what with the inundation of Mercury Djinni at the beginning.

If my DS Phat didn't lose power before it, I wouldn't be so bothered. But yeah. Also, the text beforehand? Let us scroll it faster. -_-

Moving on, I think they could've done better with the allowed weapons. Hime(the Venus Djinn Female) should've been allowed to at least use the Venus-only Weapons. I know she can't use Heavy Blades, but using either of those two as an exception would've been fine. It'd require a little more programming, but the game feels kind of rushed. Well, slightly. Maybe, I dunno. I have no idea if it was rushed or not. I mean, the plot is fine and makes sense. But the game really does encourage you to do things faster than the earlier ones, with the exp doubled and all...

One change I'd make is that weapons specific to a Psynergy is also usable by the equivalent user of that Psynergy. I could see an exception with Svetta, but I still think it would be fine if she could use a Bow(or whatever, depends the item specifically).

I know what you're getting at, and I don't see the point. Hime's stats mean she's not going to have near the damage potential on something like the Sol Blade that Matthew will. And it'd be kind of silly for Sveta to use anything but her knuckles given the beast form and whatnot. Otherwise, I don't think it'd be a significant enough adjustment to matter.

Another thing that annoyed me was that they made Crossbone Isle a post game dungeon. Super Bosses, I can understand, but post game dungeons that have all sorts of awesome equipment and abilities that you can't even use in a new game plus and have almost no purpose after you acquire them? Repulsive.

Oh, I don't care about the damage. I just wanted both weapons equippable at once. >_<

And I gotta agree with that. I was somewhat disappointed you couldn't transfer your GBA stuff to the DS version at all. I mean, even if it wouldn't do much, like giving Isaac only a few items, or something like that. It could've given easy bonuses depending which finished game you transferred over. There's 3 variations, after all. Golden 1, Golden 2, and Golden Sun 1 + 2.

That was never an intended part of the game. You're complaining about something the developers never wanted you to be able to do in the first place.

Favorite classes?

I am lways a sucker for extremely unique ones. Stuff like Ninja, Curse Mage, and whichever class let Sveta use her beast-mode psynergy in her normal form. That kind of stuff.

My main issue with the Mercury adepts in Dark Dawn is tha they're effectively the same character, classwise.

Rief and Amiti? No Amiti is definitely a bit different than Rief. I find him better myself and I like that he has access to bows, unlike Rief. Plu

Ninja/Disciple/Master is probably my favorite class. I like the Berserker/Chaos Lord class as well. Sounds badass and planetary looked pretty beast at least in LA.

One thing I hated in the first GS was how limited the psynergy was. And I swear I never got over level 35 in that game, usually at the end I'm in my late 20s to early 30s. I didn't even know the player characters could learn spark plasma/freeze prism/pyroclasm.

edited 12th Aug '13 11:02:26 PM by Vertigo_High

I find it slightly difficult to believe that they didn't intend people to take advantage of it, given that it sounds quite a bit more complex to program than just giving every item a set chance to drop or a set chance to be forged or every stat a set chance to increase on level up, etc. Oh, and the whole thing about enemies flashing rainbow when you kill them with the right Djinni that tips you off that you've manipulated it. If that's not a clear sign that they wanted you to do it, I don't know what is. And even assuming they didn't intend for it, was anyone really complaining about it?

Gotta agree, Sveta's Gladiator line was probably my favorite. It was completely awesome seeing her outdamage Master Matthew using Megiddo, even with both of them fully buffed. I also like Oracle for having a great combination of Psynergy, even if the stats aren't fantastic, and Protector for having all the best healing spells and Plume Edge on one character.

The the random things like items drops do just have a set chance to happen. But that random chance is decided by the RNG, which isn't truly random, which is why it can be manipulated. The game starts with the same number whenever it starts, and the number changes whenever an action is taken in battle. This is actually easier to program.

The items will always dropped on a certain number if you kill the enemy with the correct Djinn, so if you know how each action affects the RNG, you can end the battle with an action that sets the RNG to that number and insures you the item.

The enemy turning rainbow when you kill it with a Djinn has nothing to with RNG manipulation in itself, it's simply a feature in the game that if you kill and enemy with a Djinn it's weak to, it has a higher chance of dropping an item.

No, it does have to with RNG manipulation (at least from the guides that I've read), which is why some of more top tier items (things such as GS1's Kikuichimonji or Feathered Robe or GS2's Tisiphone Edge or Lachesis Rule) require you to take a certain number of actions and then kill with the proper Djinni since, based on the way the system works, they are literally impossible to get otherwise.

Every item that drops from a monster is given a class, which determines the number of actions you can take before it will drop. The lower the class, the wider the range of actions you can take. Killing a monster with the proper Djinni will cause whatever item the monster is meant to drop (if any) to go down two classes, meaning that there is a wider range of actions you could have taken to get the item, hence why doing so increases your chances. The items mentioned above are placed in a class where there's no specific number of actions you can take to make them drop, so they are impossible to get normally. By killing the monster that drops them with a Djinni, this puts them down two classes, which requires you and the monsters to have taken a number of actions with a combined RNG score of 32 and only 32 for it to be able to drop, where as a lower class might have you able to take 16 actions in addition to 32 to make it drop, etc.

What makes me think this would be harder to program is that they'd have had to assign numbers to all of your moves and each of the monster moves and a counter for keeping track of all of it and then assigning a class to each item, and then a function that detects and recalculates if you killed a monster with a Djinni instead of just assigning a chance to every item and using the same random number generator they use to calculate damage and whatnot to decide if the item is dropped. I don't know the first thing about programming, though, so I'm not going to assume I'm correct.

I think you are correct about it simply increasing the chances in DD though, if it's still there. I completely forget since I don't really bother going after monster drops there anyway, complete waste of time.

edited 13th Aug '13 7:14:30 AM by DeviousRecital

I'm already aware of all that. My point is more that the developers never intended anyone to figure all that out, making it just seem random to the average player.

If they really intended you to be able to manipulate it, I doubt they would have made it way harder to do in DD.

You know something? Faster level ups do explain why I seem to be getting through the game faster than I remember with previous ones. (got six or maybe seven characters now, not sure yet)

Or maybe it is because I have spent less time exploring with the sacred feather turned on to avoid battles?

Maybe its due to not having mind read? spirit sense does the same thing it seems

Or maybe its because of the two (three?) points of no return that got dropped on me.

I kind of see the complaints about the dialog events now. I realize the Golden Sun games did not have a reputation for deep characterization but I was honestly fine with that. Sometimes everyone does not need to speak up once there if they really have nothing more to add. I found the brief face off between the water adepts humorous though

Eh I thought DD did a better job of characterization than the previous games.

They all have the problem of overly long dialogue though. Kraden shut up already :P

If you were aware, then why would you say otherwise? And if they didn't intend for you to do it, why would they give you a visual cue that you've done so? I mean, yeah, the average player wouldn't know what it meant, but that's almost begging for anyone with knowledge of code decomposistion to check it out and make the whole thing general knowledge, which I'm pretty sure it was before TLA came out. I remember reading about this stuff that far back. They certainly didn't bother to change it then.

And yeah, I thought DD was better at characterization too. Two whole games, and I'm still not sure what kind of personality Ivan was supposed to have. Mia spoke up about as often as Himi after the whole deal with Imil. IIRC she only had one line at all in TLA. Not to mention that everyone referred to Karst and Agatio as if they were lacking in wits when they clearly weren't from my perspective.

It's kind of funny getting Sveta's speil on how mind reading is a curse of an ability, to be used sparingly... And then proceeding to use it on everyone living or dead anyway.

i just...

i just wanted mind read early.

was that so much to ask, karis? huh? huh!?

Oh, and Crystallux was the best summon idea.

You know, I never really got Kraden's appeal and never once forgot the whole game was more or less his fault. He was supposed to be the supervisor but has the kid in the candy store temptation and tantrum regarding the sol sanctum.

Dark Dawn did do a better job at hammering the point in with Tyrell but he's also the most concerned with fixing what he started while everyone else is getting sidetracked so I like him more. (that and he throws fireballs and stuff)

So why was move retconed into Venus psynergy? It would have made sense to send Tyrell out rather than ground him if he knew an essential field psynergy like Garret did.

It bothers me how the game never once tried to explain how Saturos and Menardi got a Lemurian ship, as seen in the second game.

Werent there two ships? One was Babi's and the other was Piers's?

Move's classification as a mars psynergy before seemed like Early-Installment Weirdness, considering how the adepts of izumo(who were Venus adepts) could use it naturally and Gaia Rock made heavy use of it. It definitely seems more associated with venus than Mars and I have no clue why it was Mars in the first place since every earth adept(before Himi) knew it as default while only Garet had it among the mars adepts.

There was a third one docked at the Idejima peninsula that they were apparently going to us to reach the Western Sea with. Kraden investigates it but can't do anything because Saturos has the orb needed to activate it, and later he mistakes Piers's own boat for it.

edited 13th Aug '13 10:24:41 AM by ComicX6