So before we can start the game it’s time for the one moment that I’ve been dreading ever since I made the decision to liveblog this series: the data transfer password. You can actually transfer over the data for Isaac’s party between games, and if you had a link cable, a second GBA, or a friend who was willing to lend you one or more of those items this process is simple. If you’re like everyone else and don’t have access to that method, we have to generate a password instead from a clear save file in Golden Sun, write it down, then input it in this game when booting up a save file at any time before a certain point. These passwords come in levels of bronze, silver, and gold.
Problem is, they are long. If you want to transfer over everything (levels, Djinn, items, money, etc.) you want the gold password which is…drum roll…260 characters long. Yes, you read that right: two-hundred-and-sixty characters long! That comes out to about seven pages of forty characters each, save for the final one. And they don’t just use letters and/or numbers, they use numbers, letters (upper and lower case), plus other symbols on the keyboard like %, #, and $. So you have to take this monstrous leviathan of a password down, double and triple check to make sure no mistakes were made in the transcription process, then input into the game itself, once again double and triple checking for errors, and the whole thing just takes forever. Back when I was first playing this game as a wee lad of 13 it took me a half hour on average to finish the damn thing, and while I’m faster at it now, it’s still crazy.
Once that is finally out of the way we once again have the option of changing Felix’s name and those of the other party members if we know the trick to it, then we have to sit through a fairly lengthy summary of the setting’s background and the events of the first game. How Alchemy was sealed away when it began to threaten the safety of the world, the theft of the Elemental Stars from Vale and Isaac’s quest to retrieve them and save Jenna and Kraden, etc. This is set to the main theme of the series, so it’s pretty much like the classic Star Wars opening crawl, only much longer since it’s almost a blow-by-blow account of each step of Isaac’s and friends’ journey across Angara, and it makes it sound more dramatic than it actually was to boot. Finally though, it ends with saying that our new tale picks up just before Venus Lighthouse was lit…
And so it does. The Lost Age properly begins with Felix, Jenna, and Kraden within Venus Lighthouse, in that room with the electrified floor that separated the two halves of the tower. Felix uses Move on the statue to deactivate the trap and then wordlessly heads upstairs leaving the two one-time hostages alone. Jenna tells Kraden that she’s having second thoughts about leaving the lighthouse since once they go down the stairs the trap will reset and prevent them from going back. A third voice says that it’s very unlike her to be so concerned and in pops our friend Alex (literally, he appears out of nowhere as he is wont to do). There’s a bit of a small back-and-forth where Jenna does the tsundere thing of getting all bent out of shape at Alex over the implication that she’s insensitive until Kraden tries to steer the conversation back to more important matters, like the fact that Isaac and his party have also entered the lighthouse and that he and Felix will certainly come to blows if they meet on top of the aerie. And my, how casually Kraden and Jenna are being around Alex. Why, you’d almost think that they were on the same side or something! Hmm…
In fact, one of Alex’s next lines is that Jenna and Kraden now want to see the lighthouses lit just as much as he does, and when Jenna asks why he’s so pleased at that the Water Adept replies that as they know mankind used to flourish and work great wonders in time past when Alchemy freely flowed in Weyard. He merely wants to see that world, which Kraden calls “the lost age of man”, restored. As for the time being, he’s confident that Isaac and his friends won’t be able to defeat Saturos and Menardi (huu huu) so there’s nothing for the three of them to do but leave the lighthouse and wait for Felix at the agreed-upon rendezvous point. Kraden and Alex walk into Jenna and with one last look up the stairs she heads downstairs, resetting the trap and blocking the path to the aerie.
We now have control over Jenna. So, I actually played this game before the original one, so the long narration crawl and this conversation over Felix and Isaac and the lighthouses and everything else was all in media res to me. Coupled with the fact that instead of that grating track the triumphant, grand Venus Lighthouse
track from the upper levels plays all throughout now, my young impressionable self felt like I stepped right into a tale that was much more grand than it actually was. Anyway, the mission here is simple: we just have to leave the lighthouse, and there are no random encounters to slow us down, which is good because they’d paste Jenna instantly. Since we don’t have Reveal either we can’t enter any of the hidden passages in this part of the lighthouse, but we can reach the treasure chest that used to contain the Lucky Cap. It’s empty now, but there is an Herb inside that Isaac apparently overlooked, heh. Outside the lighthouse the trio encounters a large mob of Tolbi soldiers and workers from Babi Lighthouse, apparently sent as backup for Iodem for all the good that’ll do. Especially since Alex effortlessly blasts two of them over the horizon with geysers of water and scares the rest away. He splits off from Kraden and Jenna to go tackle more of the reinforcements himself, leaving the other two to head in the opposite direction towards Idejima.
Just as we’re about to exit the screen though we get jumped by a thug who stayed behind, confident that he can handle an old man and a teenage girl, and we get to promptly prove the Ruffian wrong in the first battle of the game. Jenna apparently managed to sneak in some minor level grinding during the trek across Angara as part of Saturos’s group for in addition to Flare she now knows a new spell called Fume, which shoots a small dragon-headed plume of fire onto one enemy, and this spell is enough to one-shot any Ruffian that accosts us during the trip to Suhalla Gate (there’s no world map here - exiting the Venus Lighthouse area brings us directly to the Suhalla Gate cliffs). Once we reach Suhalla Gate we have to pass through that small cave at the base of the cliffs that contained a Psynergy Stone (getting jumped by a new monster, a Punch Ant, in the process - Fume is still enough to one-shot it) in order to reach the familiar peninsula of Idejima.
Saturos and Menardi’s Lemurian ship is still there and Kraden gets all excited over it but ultimately determines that it lacks the “thingie” to power it that Saturos apparently had, which we now know is a black crystal. Again, it is never, ever explained just how the two of them happened to become the owners of a Lemurian ship. It certainly doesn’t sound like they ever visited Lemuria itself, so did they just like find a wreck somewhere and restore it? Who knows! Anyway, it doesn’t take long for Alex to arrive and he, Kraden, and Jenna all turn to look in the direction of Venus Lighthouse while they wait for the others, Alex commenting that it seems to be taking quite a while for the beacon to be lit. Naturally as soon as he says that on the world map screen we see the aerie of Venus Lighthouse start to glow, so this is right around the time that Saturos and Menardi turned into the Fusion Dragon for the final boss and subsequently perished. As soon as the beacon light fades the massive earthquake kicks up, Kraden comments on how this is quite a different reaction compared to Mercury Lighthouse, then with a terrific tear Idejima is torn from the coastline of Gondowan and to the surprise and alarm of everyone but Alex and begins to nonsensically float out to sea as if it were an ice floe. Cue cut to black.
Cue fade in to The Stinger that played at the end of the first game, of Jenna and Kraden marooned on the impossibly-adrift island bemoaning their misfortune until Alex shows them that Felix and Sheba have actually washed up on shore. Continuing from where we last left off, Sheba regains consciousness first and once she gets her bearings back and is brought up to speed on how everyone ended up in this predicament she tells the group that Saturos and Menardi are no more, defeated by Isaac’s group. As she’s telling them that Felix saved her when she fell from the lighthouse he regains consciousness himself but doesn’t say anything even though the others still address him as if he was. The Lost Age enforces the classic Heroic Mime trope by making Felix a mute this time around now that he’s playable. The only other game I know of that pulled this trick between sequels was the Persona 2 duology. It’s not much of a loss here but eh, to be honest I’ve never really been fond of that trope in primarily story-driven games. Plus the justification of being able to put yourself in the character’s shoes has never worked for me since the opportunities for player input (beyond regular gameplay stuff) is usually so limited, especially since here the only choices you have outside of selecting battle commands is saying “Yes” or “No” to simple questions every once in a while that do nothing but change the next line or two of dialogue.
But I digress. The group’s been reunited, but they’re still stuck in the middle of the ocean. However, Alex soon spots land, or even better than that, a whole continent! Unfortunately it looks like Idejima is just going to continue drifting on by, when suddenly a great churning is heard and the camera pans to show a tidal wave, or at least as much of a representation of one as simple SNES-style graphics can manage, bearing down on the island, likely triggered by the earthquake’s aftershocks. There’s another fade to black as everyone gets doused, and when it fades back in we gain control of Felix this time as he pulls himself up off the ground again and is given the option to wiggle his limbs around to make sure they’re still attached. Idejima has been smashed up into the new landmass and Jenna, Sheba, and Kraden are lying around unconscious until we go over to rouse them.
The only one who’s missing is Alex, but Kraden doesn’t seem all that concerned, thinking he just set off ahead on his own already to search for a ship (Saturos and Menardi’s mysterious Lemurian vessel is nowhere to be found), since there are no more lighthouses in this part of Weyard; in order to reach the remaining two they’ll have to travel to the Great Western Sea, and Jenna drops the line that their parents’ lives depend on it. The parents who are supposed to be dead. Hm. Kraden is reluctant to bring Sheba along with them, but she insists that she join the party and that this quest is her “destiny” or something like that. More practically, she points out that since Saturos and Menardi kidnapped her for her Wind Adept powers they have no choice but to take her with if they want to light Jupiter Lighthouse. Jenna says she understands, though she doesn’t understand what the other girl meant by “destiny”. Kraden replies that he’s sure that Sheba will reveal all when she’s ready, so for now it’s high time they get moving and see if they can’t catch up with Alex and find a new boat.
And so, after a lengthy prologue, the second leg of this grand quest, now to ensure that the four Elemental Lighthouses are lit rather than preventing it, can finally begin.
Soundtrack
- The Second Book
- The new start-up screen BGM, though players are unlikely to hear the better parts of it.
- Moving Worlds
- At least the music you're stuck listening to while inputting that infernal password is good...until it keeps going for fifteen+ minutes and becomes a Brown Note.
- Battle! Jenna ver.
- Jenna gets a nice little upbeat, bubbly battle theme to herself during the prologue. Only plays for four very short battles, but can be made the default one much later on if one chooses.
- Trouble's Brewing
- "Incident Occurrence", we meet again my old friend...
- Traversing Weyard
- This is an okay world map theme, but I prefer the first game's and its intro could be stronger.
