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Golden Sun: The Lost Age
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Golden Sun: The Lost Age | |
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| Developer(s) | Camelot Software Planning |
| Publisher(s) | Nintendo |
| Release date(s) |  28 June 2002  14 April 2003 19 September 2003 |
| Genre(s) | RPG |
| Mode(s) | Single player, 2 player using GBA link system. |
| Rating(s) | CERO: All Ages ESRB: Everyone PEGI: 7+ |
| Platform(s) | Game Boy Advance |
| Media | 128-megabit Cartridge |
Golden Sun: The Lost Age is the second installment of a console RPG series by Camelot Software Planning, released in 2002 in Japan and 2003 in North America for Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance. The previous game in the series, Golden Sun, was released for Game Boy Advance in 2001.
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Golden Sun: The Lost Age, as a direct sequel and continuation to Golden Sun, features the exact same base game mechanics as its predecessor (Please refer to the Golden Sun article for information on these mechanics). The new and expanded features as they pertain to The Lost Age are covered below.
The player will embark on a second quest that by itself roughly clocks in at 1.5 times the length of the original game, on average. The player will assume control of an entirely new party at level 5, and he or she will start off at the finale of the first game (at Venus Lighthouse). In addition to walking and running on land, much of the game’s travelling time takes place on a sailing ship in the oceans of the game world, and much later on, the ship gains the ability to hover above the surface and access more new areas. About 3/4 through the game, the player’s party joins up with the original four characters of the previous Golden Sun and makes it to the final location, the Mars Lighthouse, where the finale to The Lost Age brings a good portion of the initial Golden Sun story full circle but leaves several plot elements unresolved.
The physical game world of Golden Sun: The Lost Age consists of an enormous Mode-7 overworld of which a large percentage is ocean, alongside several continents and many islands surrounding the main continent where the original Golden Sun took place (refer here for a map of how the world is laid out). This continent is mostly blocked off, meaning that the player is unable to revisit locations from the first game. (However, a glitch in the design allows one to walk through the overworld area of the first game, but one cannot find and enter any of the towns and caves from the previous game because their code was taken out.)[1]
By far the most advertised feature of the Golden Sun: The Lost Age game cart is the ability to transfer the original characters developed by a player in his or her Golden Sun game cart into the second game. A description of the actual workings of the feature are as follows.
Upon completing the first Golden Sun game and saving it as a “Completed” data file, the player is instructed by the second game’s manual to open up the file in a special way (which is by holding the R shoulder button and left directional button on the keypad while pressing Start to bring up a secret “Send” option). Once that is done, the player has two alternatives: If two Game Boy Advances and a Game Link Cable are available, the player can simply transfer data between carts. Otherwise, a very complex password system awaits. In the password system, the player can opt for three levels of password detail, dictating which aspects of the characters will be transferred. In the simplest (Bronze) level, only the character levels and Djinn collection are transferred, but in the largest (Gold) level, all items, coins, and statistics boosts in the party are transferred as well.
In The Lost Age, several important effects take place as a result of the password:
- The password dictates the power levels and inventory of the four original Golden Sun characters when they enter your party late in the game so that it matches exactly their level of development at the end of the original Golden Sun. In many cases, this is actually not a huge effect, because without the password each character is started at a relatively strong level (28) with inventories consisting of mundane equipment such as Great Swords.
- The password allows for the complete collection of seventy-two Djinn by the end of the game. Without the password, when the original characters join the party, they each have five of the original game’s Djinn instead of seven, meaning that some Djinn would be missing. For this reason, some view the password as very important because The Lost Age features an optional dungeon accessible only when all seventy-two Djinn are collected, and it contains the strongest Superboss in the game, Dullahan, alongside the last two Summon Tablets containing the two most powerful Summons in the game: Charon and Iris.
- Depending on actions taken in the previous game, the password allows for additional events involving NPCs from the previous game. It is only through these events that the player can gain the Golden Shirt, Golden Boots, and Golden Ring.
Golden Sun: The Lost Age takes place on the same fantasy world as its predecessor. The world of "Weyard" is a massive earth-like environment with several major continents and many oceans, and it is a setting modeled off the Flat Earth idea of the world; it is a flat, vaguely circular plane whose oceans perpetually spill off the edge of the world's entire perimeter into an endless abyss. The plot progression of Golden Sun: The Lost Age spans all the oceans and smaller continents surrounding the two large continents where Golden Sun took place. Weyard is not necessarily a high fantasy world like many other "traditional" role-playing games. Humanity is the only sentient species located throughout the world's continents, and they have not thoroughly colonized most of these landmasses, instead located in the odd settlement here and there throughout. There are a few additional humanlike races that exist, including a colony of dwarves, a race of humans who assume the forms of werewolves when looking upon the moon, and an original race of imposing, scale-skinned humans who have settled in the world's harsh northern reaches and who antagonists in both games hail from. Perhaps more abundant than any of the humanlike races, however, are a sheer variety of wild animals that reside throughout the lands.
Weyard is a world governed by its own set of physics based on magic. Four base fantasy elements comprise all matter in the world: Venus (Essence of rocks and plants), Mars (Heat, fire, and lava), Jupiter (Wind and electricity), and Mercury (Water and ice). These four building blocks of reality can be manipulated by the omnipotent force of Alchemy, which used to reign supreme in the world's ancient past. Alchemy was sealed away in the past, however, and the world in the present age has become seemingly devoid of all magic. Various individuals throughout the world, however, each demonstrate an adeptness to manipulate one of the four elements through a chi-like form of magic called Psynergy, and these wielders of Psynergy are referred to as Adepts.
The force of Alchemy was sealed away within the confines of a mountain sanctum called Mt. Aleph because it was abused as a weapon of mass destruction in Weyard's ancient past. It is possible to release Alchemy to the world once again, however; situated throughout Weyard are four great towers named the Elemental Lighthouses, with each Lighthouse representative of an element. There are also four corresponding magic jewels named the Elemental Stars. If an Elemental Star is cast down the throat of its corresponding Lighthouse, that Lighthouse will be activated, and if all four Lighthouse beacons have been lit, the force of Alchemy will be returned to the world from Mt. Aleph. When The Lost Age begins, two of the four Lighthouses, the Mercury and Venus Lighthouses, have been lit. Also, there are 4 mountains throughout the world: Magma Rock, Air's Rock, Aqua Rock and Gaia Rock, each related to an element, where there is a great concentration of Psynergy.
The characters of Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age were designed and illustrated by Shin Yamanouchi of Camelot Software Planning.
The story of the Golden Sun series revolves around the efforts of two opposing parties to restore/prevent the restoration of Alchemy to the world. The previous game's protagonists consists of a group of four young Adepts, one for each element, and they are the Venus Adept Isaac from the town of Vale at the base of Mt. Aleph, the Mars Adept Garet also from Vale, the Jupiter Adept Ivan, and the Mercury Adept Mia. Isaac's group was tasked by the guardian of Alchemy's seal, a powerful boulder-like entity known as The Wise One, to prevent the game's antagonists from activating the Lighthouses and restoring the potentially devestating force of Alchemy to Weyard.
The previous game's antagonistic party consisted of a pair of immensely powerful and seasoned Mars Adept warriors from the settlement of the Mars clan to the far north, Saturos and Menardi. Their aim was to restore Alchemy to the world by activating the four Lighthouses, and they were assisted by the mysterious and powerful Mercury Adept Alex, of the same clan as Mia, and the Venus Adept Felix, Isaac and Garet's former friend from Vale. Felix was believed to have perished along with his parents and Isaac's father in a tragic incident three years ago, but Saturos and Menardi saved him so that he could serve their interests. The four had raided Mt. Aleph to steal three of the Elemental Stars necessary to complete their quest, but fate saw Isaac receive the fourth Star. Since then, Saturos' party hastily traveled across the world to light whatever Lighthouses were closest, with Isaac's party in hot pursuit to stop them. Saturos and Menardi were vanquished by Isaac's party at the end of the previous game.
Other characters include several that were taken prisoner by Saturos' group in order to advance their objective: Jenna, a female Mars Adept that is none other than Felix's younger sister, and Kraden, an elderly, sharp-minded scholar studying Alchemy's secrets, were taken hostage by Saturos for Isaac to follow because they were the only possible bargaining chips for Isaac to hand over the fourth Star that they lack. Later in Golden Sun, Saturos also captured a young female Jupiter Adept named Sheba as well, so that they could enter Jupiter Lighthouse in the future. New main characters to the series include a Mercury Adept named Piers, hailing from the lost, Atlantis-like land of Lemuria itself, and a second pair of powerful Mars Adept warriors from the same settlement as Saturos and Menardi before them, Karst and Agatio. This pair has sworn to exact vengeance on Isaac for his slaying of Saturos and Menardi.
As Felix, the player is to guide the remaining members of Saturos' original band, including Jenna, Sheba, Kraden, and newcomer Piers, across the world of Weyard in a journey to complete Saturos' original objective to activate the remaining Lighthouses and restore Alchemy to the world. However, the previous game's heroes, led by Isaac, make their strongest attempt to thwart Felix's objective. And Alex, who has split up with Felix to band with Karst and Agatio, may have motives of his own in play through all this.
Golden Sun: The Lost Age begins moments before the finale to the previous game in the series at Venus Lighthouse, but from Felix and Jenna’s shared perspective. When their holders Saturos and Menardi are slain at the aerie of the newly activated Lighthouse by Isaac and his party of Garet, Ivan, and Mia, a series of cataclysmic, chaotic events drive Felix, Jenna, and their partners Sheba, Kraden, and Alex away from the tower upon a floating peninsula that eventually crashes into the foreign continent to the south. Alex leaves for himself while the remaining allies gather and postulate their next courses of action; Since the remaining two Elemental Lighthouses on their journey to restore the omnipotent force of Alchemy to the world lie in the Great Western Sea and in the far north of Weyard, they will need to find a ship somehow in order to sail to these locations. Felix, Jenna, Sheba, and Kraden form a new traveling party and set out on a great journey of their own, the search for a ship being the first order of business.
Early in their search for a ship, Felix’s party comes across Piers, a man who is revealed to be not only a Mercury Adept, but a former resident of the legendary hidden society of Lemuria, located within a secluded area in the middle of the Great Eastern Sea. Piers was driven out of his home by a tidal wave caused by the spontaneous appearance of the mythical entity known as Poseidon near Lemuria, and it is his objective to sail back into his home. Felix agrees to join Piers in his quest in hopes of getting a ship from Lemuria for his own objective afterwards. The journey that ensues becomes an extremely lengthy expedition across the entire eastern half of the world of Weyard, as Felix’s party traverses many exotic and arcane locales in search of pieces of the legendary Trident of Ankhol, the only weapon that can effectively combat Poseidon.
During their exploration, however, Alex reappears, and he is accompanied by some new characters hailing from the Fire Clan of the north: Karst, the vengeful younger sister of Menardi who Isaac slew at Venus Lighthouse, and her imposing partner-in-arms, Agatio. Karst takes this opportunity to make it clear to Felix that she plans on exacting her deadly revenge on Isaac for his sin, and that she will not tolerate Felix coming to Isaac’s aid once that time comes, regardless of how close Felix and Isaac were as kids earlier in their lives. Alex also takes this opportunity to “persuade” Felix’s group to keep the task of lighting the Jupiter Lighthouse as their priority because, since Felix is the one with the Jupiter Star, Alex does not appreciate Felix undertaking any time-consuming distractions that would cause him to stray from their mutual goal to return Alchemy to the world of Weyard.
After successfully battling and defeating Poseidon in front of Lemuria with the Trident, Felix and his party proceed to enter the ancient society of Lemuria and meet with its great king Hydros. Felix and Kraden explain their objective to restore Alchemy to Weyard, and Hydros in response displays evidence to support his long-standing suspicion of a shocking revelation: The landmasses of the world have been waning and shrinking into the oceans and the life force of the world has been diminishing over the ages, all on account of the absence of Alchemy. Therefore, Felix’s journey to activate the Lighthouse beacons that will break Alchemy’s seal proves more important than Felix had ever imagined. With this revealed, Hydros tasks Piers to accompany Felix and his friends on the rest of their journey to restore Alchemy and save the world from eventual collapse. Thus does the party depart in the direction of the Jupiter Lighthouse in the Great Western Sea.
Felix trades the Shaman's Rod he took from Ivan for the Hover Psynergy spell necessary to climb Jupiter Lighthouse. When he starts climbing the structure, however, he and his party witnesses Isaac and his own party fall in defeat to Karst and Agatio. Felix decides to step in and force the pair to spare Isaac on condition that he activates the Lighthouse for them, which he does, but this act of defiance causes Karst and Agatio to brand Felix a traitor and attempt to slay his whole party. Before one side can kill the other, however, Alex appears and persuades Karst and Agatio to flee while they have the chance because Isaac's party has revived itself and is coming. They depart with the Mars Star in their possession as Isaac's group encounters Felix's group, and the two groups agree to make an offical meeting with each other and discuss each other's motives in a nearby town.
Felix explains to Isaac the truth about Alchemy as it was revealed to him in Lemuria, and Isaac is thunderstruck by how he and his party has been operating contrary to their purported objective to save the world. Then Felix explains fully why he was supporting Saturos and Menardi's original objective to restore Alchemy in the first: three years ago at the time of the supposedly tragic accident at Vale, the pair had not only rescued Felix from death, but Felix and Jenna's parents and Isaac's father as well, and they were all brought up to Saturos' hometown of Prox to the north, and Saturos promised Felix that he would free his parents if Felix joined their effort. Having come to an understanding about their common goal to both save the world with Alchemy's return and reunite with their parents, Felix and Isaac join forces to form a traveling party of nine (including Kraden), and they thus head north to Prox to find the Mars Star and activate the final Lighthouse.
Crossing into the northernmost reaches of Weyard, Isaac and Felix’s party makes it to the settlement of Prox, the main settlement of the race that Agatio, Saturos, Menardi, and Karst belong to. Isaac learns why the people of Prox sent Saturos and Menardi out to restore Alchemy in the first place: the edge of the world up north is steadily creeping closer to the settlement, and it will soon be the doom of the Proxean race as well as the rest of the world unless Alchemy is restored and the world is resustained. Isaac realizes the noble intentions of the Mars Adepts he slew at Venus Lighthouse and swears to join Felix in fulfilling Saturos' original objective which he was ironically trying to prevent before. The full party of Adepts proceed to enter and climb Mars Lighthouse. During their expedition, however, the group battles and dispatches two hulking Flame Dragons, but the dragons are revealed to be the ruined bodies of Karst and Agatio, both near death. Karst explains that some mysterious force came in their way and turned them into dragons, preventing them from activating the Mars Lighthouse with the Mars Star, which Karst gives to Felix before dying. With the Mars Star back in their possession, Felix and Isaac head upward to the top of the Mars Lighthouse.
At the aerie of Mars Lighthouse, the Adepts come face-to-eye with none other than the Wise One, the entity responsible for pitting Isaac and Garet against Saturos and Felix’s effort to restore Alchemy to the world from the start. The Wise One is irate at Isaac for disobeying his command, and warns the Adepts that Alchemy, if returned, would inevitably bring conflict to the world. The Wise One reveals a terrible truth: Alex has duped them all, having carefully guided and influenced everyone involved in the effort to restore Alchemy so that when Alchemy is returned at Mt. Aleph, Alex would be there to absorb and gain unimaginable power. While everyone, especially Alex’s clanmate Mia, is thunderstruck by Alex’s underhanded tactic for self-gain, Isaac knows that whether their quest accomplishes Alex’s aim is negligible; restoring Weyard’s sustenance and stability outweighs all else regardless. But the Wise One makes the Adepts battle the gigantic, three-headed Doom Dragon for the right to light Mars, and the full party wages and conquers their fiercest battle of all. Like what happened with Karst and Agatio, however, the Adepts find that they have destroyed none other than their own parents, the ones they hoped to reunite with in Prox after completing their quest. Though everyone is grief-stricken, Kraden, knowing that the end of their journey is at hand, convinces the Adepts that the sacrifice of their parents should be taken as the price that was necessary to save the lives of millions throughout the world, and Felix agrees and therefore casts the Mars Star into the Mars Lighthouse well.
The Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Mars lighthouses are lit, and their beacons merge their lights into one focal point in the airspace of Mt. Aleph, forming a sphere of Alchemy-based energy called the Golden Sun. In turn, the Golden Sun shoots out a ray that enters the mountain below and unleashes Alchemy across the world, in effect saving the world from its eventual collapse. Standing at the peak of Mt. Aleph in the center of the Golden Sun's ray, Alex gains drastically increased power and near-limitless life, and he is all too eager to test his power by trying to summon a storm to attack the town of Vale at the mountain's base. To his considerable surprise, Alex is unable to do this, and the Wise One appears and explains to Alex that he has not gained the entirety of the Golden Sun’s power, and therefore total mastery of the building blocks of reality, thanks to a precation the Wise One took to ensure that the remaining part of the Golden Sun is in the possession of Isaac. Gravely disheartened and enraged that Isaac and the Wise One have robbed him of his dream, Alex attacks the Wise One with the power he has, but is quickly defeated by the guardian. Then the mountain and the surrounding landscape suddenly collapse and sink into the earth, and the Wise One abandons Alex, saying that they may encounter each other again someday if Alex survives his apparent fate of being drawn into the earth itself.
Meanwhile, the intense energy let loose by the Mars Lighthouse causes the miraculous revival of the Adepts' parents. They all return to Prox and recuperate as the parents are nursed back to health. The people of Prox pledge their eternal gratitude to the Adepts for saving their race and bringing about a new golden age of Alchemy to Weyard, even as they feel remorse for the fates of their fallen heroes Saturos, Menardi, Karst, and Agatio. The Adepts depart from Prox and return to Vale; however, they find both the town and Mt.Aleph have seemingly been wiped off the map by Alchemy's return. This apparent tragedy is not what it seems: the townspeople of Vale, including Isaac and Garet's families, have survived the return of Alchemy because the Wise One evacuated them out of Vale before the town was destroyed. Everything has turned out for the best, and Kraden is able to figure out what the Wise One's motives through all this truly were; Because of Alchemy's nature as a necessary evil for the physical world to survive, the Wise One subjected Isaac and all of his friends to the trauma at Mars Lighthouse as a test of their resolve and willingness to sacrifice what they most hold dear, and this test was meant to prove that the Adepts would possess the strength to ensure that what happened with Alchemy in the world's ancient past will not be repeated again in this newly introduced age. In terms of proving themselves capable of this great responsibility, the Adepts have fully succeeded.
Golden Sun: The Lost Age generally received the same optimism as its forerunner, with most calling it both an improvement and a more hefty challenge [2] [3]. It won the 2003 Nintendo Power award for best graphics on the GBA.[citation needed] It was ranked 78 on IGN's Readers Choice Top 100 games ever, higher than its predecessor Golden Sun.[4]
Since 2003, many fans hoped for another sequel, especially when a Camelot representative announced that "the current status of a third game ... is still up in the air" [5]; however, there has been no confirmed announcement for its development or production.
- Golden Sun: The Lost Age and its instruction manual
- Notes
- ^ GameFAQs list of Golden Sun: The Lost Age glitches"GameFAQs.com" URL Accessed December 9, 2006
- ^ Rotten Tomatoes review page "Rottentomatoes.com". URL Accessed July 13, 2006
- ^ Metacritic Game Rankings page "Metacritic.com". URL Accessed July 13, 2006
- ^ [1]"IGN.com" URL Accessed October 10, 2006
- ^ Next Golden Sun in the Works? "Gamespot.com". June 2, 2003, retrieved November 12, 2006
- The Official Nintendo Golden Sun Site
- The Official Camelot Golden Sun: The Lost Age Site
- Golden Sun Universe: The Golden Sun Wiki - A Wiki devoted to Golden Sun
- The Golden Sun Realm
- The Golden Sun Soundtrack, hosted for Golden Sun Realm
- "Home of the Golden Sun 2"
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Golden Sun video games
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Golden Sun • The Lost Age |