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Golden Sun with No Swords Part II
May. 26th, 2024 10:47 pmAfter moving my Wii U into my office related to my son's birthday party roughly a month prior, I thought I ought to capture from that Wii U and finish up the Golden Sun run with no swords that I had started in early 2020.
Naturally, it took me a little bit to get my bearings. I was starting at the Gondowan Passage, and I quickly realized I must have already done the Donpa/Dodonpa quest because I had the Cloak Ball and a nice, full list of djinn. I had no memory of who Iodem was, but I guess that didn't really matter? I proceeded south and ended up quickly at the Suhalla Desert.
I think I must've been remembering some other desert from some other game because at first I thought it was going to be one of those things where you'd have a heat meter and you'd keep getting hot and need to find ways to cool down, but instead the gimmick here is little tornados that block your path and you need to use Douse to get out. Using Douse also forces a fight with a Tornado Lizard each time, and they're a bit tougher than the normal fights here.
Isaac and Garet are both ninjas with their current djinn loadouts, so they had access to powerful attacks like Death Plunge that consumed a lot of PP but ended most fights quite quickly. In fact, I found myself impressed by the speed of this game in general, which I guess I hadn't remembered very well.
Eventually - and quickly, because of a lucky usage of the Reveal psynergy - I found the new Mars djinni Flash here. It kept running away which was pretty annoying and drained a fair bit of PP. I believe I got it on the third attempt.
I took a bit to figure out how to proceed. I wasn't sure whether to head into the cave behind Flash or what. Eventually, I fought both the real boss - the Storm Lizard - and the slightly harder optional boss - Tempest Lizard. The Storm Lizard was first. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about this fight, but I took screenshots of some summons.
Summons in this game are pretty cool. The whole basis of the gameplay, at least after a point where you've got a good few djinn, becomes "use djinn to put them on standby, summon them to move them from standby to cooldown, and then hope you can recover". It's not really deeply strategic but there's serious risk and reward at play, and there's some real interest in the way your characters classes are constantly changing even mid-battle.
The Tempest Lizard seemed a little bit harder? I think I came in a bit worse prepared and paid for it, but it was okay. I used mostly the same tactics. You can see my PP was starting to get pretty low.
We blew through this area and it really didn't feel like we were missing swords at all. I'd really say the novelty of playing was more the fact that I picked up a 4-year-old save game rather than the restrictions on equipment.
Next was Suhalla Gate, where there were a bunch of ledges you can jump down and I lucked into the correct one on the first try to end up at a new Mercury djinni.
With this, I reasoned that I had every djinn in the game except three... and I knew there was one in the final dungeon, and one in the bonus dungeon. That left one unaccounted for. I ended up finding it in the game's final town, Lalivero.
Lalivero also had a few equipment upgrades. Given the very large gap since I had played, I wasn't very aware of what equipment my team had, so it took some analysis to ensure I was getting the best stuff. However, the upgrade from Isaac's War Mace to Righteous Mace was... righteous. Mia getting a Crystal Rod was also a gigantic improvement. Nobody has ever used a sword.
Drown turns out to be a pretty cool unleash effect: basically just a really good instant death attack.
At this point, unfortunately, I was a bit lost. I had gone right past the Carry Stone, it seems, and I wasn't able to do too much in the Babi Lighthouse. Well, that's not entirely true. I got the final Jupiter djinni, leaving just one remaining on Crossbone Isle.
However, I really didn't know the path forward! But it was time to be done. Next time we'll need to get the Carry Stone and, since we're up to the game's final area we may as well complete Crossbone Isle, too.
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Naturally, it took me a little bit to get my bearings. I was starting at the Gondowan Passage, and I quickly realized I must have already done the Donpa/Dodonpa quest because I had the Cloak Ball and a nice, full list of djinn. I had no memory of who Iodem was, but I guess that didn't really matter? I proceeded south and ended up quickly at the Suhalla Desert.
I think I must've been remembering some other desert from some other game because at first I thought it was going to be one of those things where you'd have a heat meter and you'd keep getting hot and need to find ways to cool down, but instead the gimmick here is little tornados that block your path and you need to use Douse to get out. Using Douse also forces a fight with a Tornado Lizard each time, and they're a bit tougher than the normal fights here.
Isaac and Garet are both ninjas with their current djinn loadouts, so they had access to powerful attacks like Death Plunge that consumed a lot of PP but ended most fights quite quickly. In fact, I found myself impressed by the speed of this game in general, which I guess I hadn't remembered very well.
Eventually - and quickly, because of a lucky usage of the Reveal psynergy - I found the new Mars djinni Flash here. It kept running away which was pretty annoying and drained a fair bit of PP. I believe I got it on the third attempt.
I took a bit to figure out how to proceed. I wasn't sure whether to head into the cave behind Flash or what. Eventually, I fought both the real boss - the Storm Lizard - and the slightly harder optional boss - Tempest Lizard. The Storm Lizard was first. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about this fight, but I took screenshots of some summons.
Summons in this game are pretty cool. The whole basis of the gameplay, at least after a point where you've got a good few djinn, becomes "use djinn to put them on standby, summon them to move them from standby to cooldown, and then hope you can recover". It's not really deeply strategic but there's serious risk and reward at play, and there's some real interest in the way your characters classes are constantly changing even mid-battle.
The Tempest Lizard seemed a little bit harder? I think I came in a bit worse prepared and paid for it, but it was okay. I used mostly the same tactics. You can see my PP was starting to get pretty low.
We blew through this area and it really didn't feel like we were missing swords at all. I'd really say the novelty of playing was more the fact that I picked up a 4-year-old save game rather than the restrictions on equipment.
Next was Suhalla Gate, where there were a bunch of ledges you can jump down and I lucked into the correct one on the first try to end up at a new Mercury djinni.
With this, I reasoned that I had every djinn in the game except three... and I knew there was one in the final dungeon, and one in the bonus dungeon. That left one unaccounted for. I ended up finding it in the game's final town, Lalivero.
Lalivero also had a few equipment upgrades. Given the very large gap since I had played, I wasn't very aware of what equipment my team had, so it took some analysis to ensure I was getting the best stuff. However, the upgrade from Isaac's War Mace to Righteous Mace was... righteous. Mia getting a Crystal Rod was also a gigantic improvement. Nobody has ever used a sword.
Drown turns out to be a pretty cool unleash effect: basically just a really good instant death attack.
At this point, unfortunately, I was a bit lost. I had gone right past the Carry Stone, it seems, and I wasn't able to do too much in the Babi Lighthouse. Well, that's not entirely true. I got the final Jupiter djinni, leaving just one remaining on Crossbone Isle.
However, I really didn't know the path forward! But it was time to be done. Next time we'll need to get the Carry Stone and, since we're up to the game's final area we may as well complete Crossbone Isle, too.
< Previous | Index | Next >
