freshfeeling | Entries tagged with golden sun

In my first post about my Golden Sun with No Swords playthrough, I gave quite a bit of background information including the fact that it was born of hype for adding characters into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. It's funny, because it was 2018 and Smash Ultimate was already out but there remained quite a bit of hype as the DLC characters were being gradually revealed. I was really excited for #GoldenSunday on November 11, 2018 and posted a ton on Twitter that day.

Twitter has changed since then, and since starting this blog ~15 months ago I've deleted all of my Twitter accounts. I don't have a lot of record of what I've posted, but I figured since I discussed posting a bunch of ideas related to an Isaac moveset I ought to share those here!
I remember most of the ideas, but the exact posts are lost... so I'm kind of re-constructing it here. Thankfully I naturally had a Google doc where I stored a bunch of links to ideas and images back in 2018, too.

General Characteristics and Gimmicks

There are two main gimmicks in play for this version of Isaac.
The first is that Isaac has a focus on earth- and ground-based attacks. When Isaac is in the air, several of his moves are different and generally weaker.

The second is that Isaac has consumable djinn (as I've designed this, there are 6), and his power for most purposes decreases very slightly as these are used. For most moves this would make a difference but not a huge difference: the downside is that Isaac has some psynergy-series based moves like Quake, Gaia and Spire: if Isaac uses 2 of his 6 djinn, he loses access to the highest charged version of these, and if Isaac uses 5 of his 6 djinn he loses access to the middle charged version of these. However, as in his games, the more djinn that are used give access to stronger elemental summons, which are Isaac's final smash.

This would end up having an interesting "feel", almost a bit like the Golden Sun games: using your power prepares you for summoning, but also weakens you, and the recovery process creates its own risk. Banjo & Kazooie have a mechanic of a purely finite resource; Isaac's would be recoverable, but with an inherent sort of risk to it. If you don't have a chance to break a smash ball, using djinn is risky.

Specials

Neutral Special: Djinn. This is Isaac's single most complex move, by a lot, tying into his general gimmicks. By pressing B, Isaac can press directions to activate some of his Venus djinn. The options are as follows:

Left/Right: Flint or Echo. These use a move similar to a side smash attack, but with additional power.
Up: Granite or Iron. These two are defensive djinn. These grant momentary immunity and a short period (~5 seconds) of significant knockback resistance.
Down: Ground or Mud: These two djinn drive a nearby opponent into the ground, as a Pitfall Seed.

As noted above, djinn used in this move are consumed and are restored only after a Final Smash.
The animation would begin with a djinn materializing overhead for all of these. If you maintain a B-press by holding it and are fully neutral / non-tilt for about 1 second - or if you have no djinn remaining - Isaac uses his signature Ragnarok psynergy instead, and the animation changes the materializing djinn into the sword projectile. Ragnarok is thus very slow to use. The version of it that would be called when Isaac has no djinn available would be significantly weakened.

Side Special: Move. As Isaac's assist trophy, basically, although perhaps slower since his assist trophy is on the strong side. Only one hand could appear at a time.

Up Special: Quake. This is entirely based on the wonderful illustrations that roydgriffin posted on Reddit in 2014. A chunk of earth would pop out below Isaac, propelling him into the air. If in the air, he would materialize it, which would have a lesser effect but still be functional as a recovery. Both would have hitboxes as well.
Because of this version of Isaac's djinn mechanics, it would be stronger depending on how many djinn Isaac had available, starting as Quake Sphere, then Earthquake, then Quake.

Down Special: Gaia. Gaia is just a burst of rocks and magma from the ground around Isaac, although obviously this wouldn't be as strong materializing in the air. As an advanced offensive psynergy, this also has its strength vary depending on available djinn: it starts as Grand Gaia, then reduces to Mother Gaia, and then Gaia. It would hit an area around Isaac when used on the ground, and would have a bit of a slow startup to compensate for its generous hitbox and reasonable power.

Final Smash: Summon. As noted above, Isaac's final smash would depend on how many psynergy are available.

Ramses is a non-cinematic final smash, used when Isaac has consumed 0-1 djinni. It is a strong, high-knockback attack in a forward direction from where Isaac is.
Cybele is a non-cinematic final smash too, used when Isaac has consumed 2-3 djinni. It is a very strong, multi-hit, high-knockback attack in an upward direction that hits just in front of Isaac's position.
Judgment is a cinematic final smash targeting characters in front of Isaac marked by some kind of dirt cloud. It is used when Isaac has consumed 4-5 djinn. It is very strong, providing damage that knocks the enemy to either side of the screen with power similar to other cinematic final smashes
Catastrophe is basically the same as Judgment but stronger. This would require Isaac to have used all 6 of his djinn.

All of these have deviations from Golden Sun's actual gameplay, notably in the number of djinn available and, in Catastrophe's case, the type. Sakurai's okay with that.

Smashes

Side Smash: Attack. A short-hop jumping slash, as his normal attack from the games.

Up Smash: Planet Diver. A short jump upward into a downward, fiery slash. I really thought about Death Plunge for this but I think Planet Diver fits the theming better. It could be either, they're pretty similar.

Down Smash: Spire. As in this art by laetranger on DeviantArt, columns of stone shoot out in both directions. One could also use vines but this is nice.
This could also be affected by Isaac's quantity of djinn that have been used, since Spire is a psynergy series. It could start at maximum as Stone Sphere, then Clay Spire, and then regular Spire. I think laetranger's art probably most resembles the minimal Spire version. It doesn't match particularly well with the Golden Sun games though, where the Spire series is more like stalactites striking from above rather than stalagmites from below.

Neutral, Tilts, etc.

Jab. He would punch, where some of the rapid punches are replaced with rocks and/or yellow psynergy hands.

Dash: Attack. This would closely resemble his side smash, like a normal attack from the games.

Side Tilt. A sword swing. Or, hey, maybe a mace swing!

Up Tilt: Punji. Bamboo spikes would quickly rise up directly on Isaac and slightly in front.

Down Tilt: Tremor. A minor rumbling earthquake hits enemies directly around Isaac for minimal damage.

Aerials

Neutral air. Kind of like Gaia or Rockfall, or perhaps resembling what Aang did in his battle with Fire Lord Ozai, small rocks would float and circle around Isaac in a band.

Forward air: Cutting Edge. A slash with a big blue energy wave; for Smash purposes, this should not be as projectile-like as it appears in the game.

Up air: Cyclone. A small, weak tornado surrounds Isaac and moves up slightly before dissipating.

Back air. A cloud of dust is released behind Isaac for minor damage in a large hitbox.

Down air: Rockfall. A boulder is released downward. It cracks upon contact or crumbles after a short distance.

Grabs and Throws

In general, the large, yellowish flashing hands are used in Isaac's grabs. The hand is materialized as his throw. As a tether recovery, if there is no valid target and a ledge in range, the hand will form a rope and effectively use Lash. Most of the other functionality of grabs and throws is also based around Isaac's utility psynergy. For pummeling, the hand would grasp and squeeze.

Forward Throw: Force. The fast-moving fist hand strikes the enemy forward.

Back Throw: Scoop. A hand forms a scoop and throws the enemy backward.

Up Throw: Carry. A second hand appears and they pinch the enemy, lift them upward and then drop them.

Down Throw: Growth. Vines pull the gripped fighter to the ground. Growth is also a psynergy series, so it could be affected by Isaac's number of available djinn. It could also not seeing as the regular Growth psynergy is a utility psynergy that can be used by anybody with a specific equipped item. If it were designed to work based on unset djinn, the strongest version would be Wild Growth, the medium is Mad Growth, and the basic one is just Growth.

Taunts, Entry, Victories

Taunt 1. Isaac gets a exclamation mark

emote over his head like in conversations in his games.

Taunt 2. A Venus djinn appears and bounces around.

Taunt 3. An idea stolen from laetranger, a utility psynergy hand appears and does a thumbs up.

Intro. A spire of rock pops up and Isaac breaks out of it.

Victory 1. Levitates some tiny rocks around above his open hand.

Victory 2. Pose with Garet, Ivan and Mia.

Victory 3. Swings sword, generic action pose. Or it could use the psynergy hand thumbs up gag again.

This final play session proving that Isaac is not an anime swordsman was played on May 29, 2024.

Watch on YouTube

Because of my preparation, including the majority of this run completed four years prior, all we were doing was the game's final dungeon and beating the final boss.

The first thing I did for a little bit was attempt to get some more interesting djinn loadouts and classes enabled. I remember Dragoon and White Mage being awesome, so I did a bunch of experimentation and ended up with Isaac as a Ninja, Garet as a Dragoon, Ivan as a Ranger, and Mia as a White Mage. This all seemed pretty great other than Ivan.
Ivan and Garet swapping some djinn.

I found my way through Venus Lighthouse effectively. I didn't remember any of these puzzles specifically, and only felt a little bit lost on one occasion... and it turned out I wasn't exactly lost, but rather confused about how backtracking from pitfalls would work. The statue thing I had encountered had worked out so there were no real barriers.
Here's an arbitrary puzzle I solved.

Well, there was one: I couldn't remember that I had to Mind Read in the room with the five coloured statues. If I bothered to think about it, I would've figured that out, but I thought there might've been some kind of password earlier in the game.

The enemies were... not really a big deal. Some of them were big HP walls, but nothing was particularly threatening. Many of them were downright easy at this point. Although many enemies here offer unique and interesting drops I didn't have that kind of luck.
An arbitrary battle. Yay.

The treasure was okay. Mia got an Oracle's Robe, and Garet received a Thunder Crown which I was excited to give him since he already has the Cleric's Ring mostly nullifying its curse. This was an enormous defensive boost for him! I gave his Lucky Cap to Mia who actually still gained some benefit from that.
Garet has a Thunder Crown.

I got the Gaia Blade and just dropped it. No swords!

I enjoyed these Move puzzles that work sort of like Pipe Dream or a circuit. I didn't need swords to do them.
Sparkly!

I wandered into the point-of-no-return and the final two battles without even realizing it, although I had saved immediately beforehand by coincidence.
These people talk a lot.

This is such a funny-sounding threat to me.

The fight with Saturos and Menardi was actually pretty tough. For one thing, Ranger seems to kind of suck, and Ivan generally had little to offer. Worse, I decided to use a bunch of djinn and then save the djinn on standby for the next fight, which was me underestimating Saturos and Menardi. I really should've unloaded all of them and then just used even more for the next fight, which would've done huge summon damage and left me with much better classes. In brief, I played like an idiot here.
Attacks like Pyroclasm are rough!

It worked out, but took ages. Characters did get knocked out occasionally. I kept buffing and thought I was being strategic, but Saturos uses Break to remove buffs pretty often. The game's simplistic AI was working well against me. Eventually I took out Menardi, which naturally made things easier but even Saturos on his own was no free ride! Ivan was down at the end of the battle.
We defeated Menardi!

We defeated Saturos, after he defeated Ivan.

A whole lot more slow dialogue later, and we were in the final battle against the Fusion Dragon!
Fusion Dragon appears.

I really like this enemy's attacks. The attack called Outer Space that is a re-skinned Meteor looks awesome.
Fusion Dragon used Outer Space.

I opened with a barrage of summons, as planned. Then my characters were re-applying djinn over the next several turns and getting stronger. This fight was generally very manageable except for one point where Mia - who was healing with a Wish spell every turn - was low on PP. Garet was holding all of my Psy Crystals and I planned for him to restore Mia's PP. That very turn, the Fusion Dragon used Severe Attack to reduce Garet's HP to 1, and then hit him a second time to knock him out in the same turn. It took some time to get back on track after that. Ivan was, once again, of very little use in this fight. I need to remember that Ranger doesn't work for me.

Anyway, we didn't use swords, and we won!
We defeated the Fusion Dragon!

Although I'm glad to have played this game - because it's good - playing this game with no swords is on the boring side. It's incredibly easy... which I suppose actually does sort of make the intended point that Isaac is not an anime swordsman. He doesn't need a sword to be effective in the least!
However, Isaac also features in the next game, and if Isaac were in some other game Felix could reasonably be an alt-skin of some sort, so I suppose at some point I'll need to do the same thing in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. I'll probably need this 6-page password, eh?

Not an anime swordsman!

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This second play session of 2024 related to proving Isaac is not an anime swordsman was played on May 28, 2024.

Watch on YouTube

Arbitrary battle image from Venus Lighthouse.

The first thing I did was backtrack to the Venus Lighthouse entrance, realizing I had bypassed the Carry Stone. I got it quite quickly and also proceeded to a statue that matched the one in Babi Lighthouse that I didn't know how to proceed from last time; I believe this statue gave me the hint I will eventually need.
One of the statue's hints.

I just kept heading backwards in the game from there; it wasn't too far to get back into the edge of the Suhalla Desert where I jumped into the non-Doused pink tornado to get a ride to Crossbone Isle. This isn't really any more or any less important than it would be if I were allowed to use swords, but it's important to me to get the final djinni and the Cleric's Ring, at least.

Crossbone Isle Entrance:
The puzzle outside wasn't in any way challenging, but it did require climbing the vines again and again and again.... so that was fun.
Entering Crossbone Isle Cave.

Crossbone Isle Floor 1:
Once inside the cave, we fought the Hobgoblin and its buddies. I forgot to do any particular preparation but the battle was quite easy regardless.
Fighting the Hobgoblin.

Inside there was one of those puzzles with tiny platforms and stump-like thingies that had to be moved using the Move psynergy. Like the entrance area, this wasn't hard, but I did have to leave to reset the room several times.

Crossbone Isle Floor 2:
Here, for the boss, we fought two Grislys and a Succubus. I thought the Succubus was the main boss and the Grislys were the minions, but nobody seemed particularly stronger than anyone else. It was a rather trivial fight.
We hit bears with sticks.

The puzzle was also trivial - a dry-land log rolling puzzle - but I enjoyed it. For the sake of speed it would be sort of nice if they were all this easy, but I suppose that would make for a rather boring game. This dungeon level included a chest with a Mystery Blade but, since we are never using a sword, it is just going to be sold later.

Crossbone Isle Floor 3:
By this point I was more properly in the rhythm for preparing for the boss fights. By setting several djinn to standby before the battle, I could open with a barrage of powerful summons at the cost of my characters being quite a bit more vulnerable for the first few turns of battle - sort of a glass cannon affair. Open with a big blast and then try to survive. It worked out well.
I figured out the puzzle pretty quickly: use the Catch psynergy to get keys to access the treasures. I actually got the red key that opened the path forward first and then decided to return to get every possible treasure.

Crossbone Isle Floor 4:
The bosses here were two Gryphons who had quite a bit of HP. The starting summon salvo still simplified the scenario soundly.
We beat some Gryphons using a big tree fella.

We beat some Gryphons using a big tree fella.

For the puzzle part I realized I had to use Halt pretty quickly, and eventually realized the shadows were an indication that I had to use Cloak to stealth my way around this floor's statues. Quick and fun.

Crossbone Isle Floor 5:
The boss here is a Lizard King who comes with a bunch of enemies that I've already fought as normal encounters. I knew that the additional enemies would go down quickly to my opening summons, and the Lizard King wasn't really much tougher.
We beat the Lizard King's weird minor goons.

We beat the Lizard King's weird minor goons.

The puzzle here was a log rolling puzzle but with one option to change the water level. I was able to visualize my path to the Ninja Garb and then the exit pretty quickly. It was fun.
The path to the Ninja Garb.

Crossbone Isle Floor 6:
The boss fight was Chimeras. These fights were feeling pretty boring.
Here are some Chimaeras.

What is up with the spelling of Chimera anyway?

The puzzle room, however, was pretty neat, with a mixture of pushing columns manually and with mind bullets!, using ladders on three different levels, and chasing down my final djinni, Bane.
We are absorbing the power of Bane..?

I also got the Demon Axe here but didn't equip it due to its curse. The final chest in the middle was pretty tricky to get to though I wasn't stuck for long, and it felt good to get it.
We did this neat puzzle.

Crossbone Isle Floor 7:
There were some Earth Lizards at the door this time. They took a lot of damage from Meteor, but otherwise they may have been one of the more interesting fights down here since they have a very powerful (badly translated) Acid Blessing.
We hurt these lizards.

This was also perhaps the hardest puzzle, with it taking me a couple of door resets and some experimentation to loot all of the chests. This is the floor where you need to use Carry to pass, and I wasn't super used to how it worked... but I think I am now! The best treasure here was the Wicked Mace which is going to end up being perhaps my best weapon in this run - at least for this game.

Crossbone Isle Floor 8:
There was a Poison Toad here. It wasn't hard but the deadly poison status actually necessitating restoration was still sort of new and different.
We fought a Poison Toad.

The puzzle was stupid. It was using Frost and pushing things but in a very precise order - like some of the earlier puzzles, not the least bit challenging but a bit time consuming. It required me to reset the room a couple of times. The only noteworthy prize was the Cleric's Ring. I gave it to Garet, along with the Wicked Mace from the previous floor. The Wicked Mace is cursed, but it allows Garet to occasionally use a really strong deadly poison unleash effect. It's also really important because the Cleric's Ring, which is the only way to equip cursed items with no major drawbacks, doesn't exist in this game's immediate sequel, and getting it here allows it to be transferred over.

Crossbone Isle Floor 9:
The boss of this floor was a pair of my favourite type of bus: a Cerebus. It is puzzling to me how this weird, context-ignorant translation has persisted over the years, but whatever.
We fought Cerebral Busses.

The fight didn't seem very hard, and then we got to do a log rolling puzzle. While I lost track of the solution briefly I think I got it done quite quickly, getting the (useless) Muramasa sword.

Crossbone Isle Floor 10:
And then there was Deadbeard! Actually, there was a mimic first. It legitimately surprised me but it was easy at this point - which is good, because I had already un-set a bunch of djinn.
We fought this Mimic.

Although I have played through this part before nearly 20 years ago, I didn't remember it well, so it was very surprising to me when the battle with Deadbeard begins with no dialogue or cutscene. Before I even stepped onto the pirate ship. and before the Mimic, I had put 15 djinn on standby - I decided not to do it with 4 Jupiter djinn because Judgment clearly wields swords that he may or may not actually be using.
My djinn loadout for Deadbeard.

I opened with all four characters using their strong summons. I thought this was going to decimate Deadbeard and allow the battle to end quickly, but we legitimately struggled to survive for a long time as our djinn gradually reset.
We encountered Deadbeard.

I used a few buffs, and I was surprised to see that Deadbeard would use Break to remove some of them, and that Deadbeard himself had some buffs. Even though his buffed physical attacks were nasty, it was definitely his whole-party-targetting psynergy attacks that were the bigger concern. When he used two of them in a single turn, it was rare that Ivan and Mia could both survive. I probably used about 5 of my rare Waters of Life.

Eventually I realized that Garet - now a Samurai when his djinn were all set - had a nice resistance buff available, so that may have helped. And once Ivan and Mia both had enough djinn to access their Wish spells, our survivability improved, allowing Isaac and Garet to use their maces with powerful unleashes. Mia also used her Mars djinn so that Garet could summon Meteor again, which had proven to be my strongest attack.
Garet summoned Meteor... twice.

The ultimate prize in this place is the Demon Mail, which isn't actually particularly good.

I got back to Lalivero - annoyed that I still had to Douse the tornados in Suhalla Desert again, etc. - and sold the Mystery Blade, the Muramasa, and the Demon Mail. I think we're completely ready for the final area now.
Garet enjoying his new gear.

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After 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.

Watch on YouTube

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.
No, who are YOU?

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.
There was a lot of Death Plunging.

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.
This battle ended in the guy running away.

This battle ended in the guy running away.

Stupid thing! You're supposed to be easy!

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.
Garet summons Meteor.

Meteor does 482 damage. That's pretty high.

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.
We beat the Storm Lizard.

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.
Ivan summoned Chris Hemsworth!

The Tempest Lizard is feeling the power of... no swords!

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.
We beat this guy.

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.
We got the final Mars djinni in this game.

We got the final Mars djinni in this game.

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.
Isaac is not being an anime swordsman.

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.
We stabbed this cute djinni with bamboo.

We stabbed this cute djinni with bamboo.

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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As hype was building for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in mid-to-late 2018, and continuing as DLC characters were being teased and introduced, I was very much an "Isaac stan", if there was such a thing. My Twitter timeline was abuzz with support for Isaac from Golden Sun as a playable character, with him and Shantae being my top picks to appear in the game.

I was a big fan of the "Grinch leak" during the short period where that was a thing!

I took the concept of fandom perhaps the furthest I've ever taken it on November 11th, 2018 for what the Golden Sun community on Twitter called #GoldenSunday. I posted reviews of some theorized Isaac movesets for Smash Bros. that had been proposed by fans across several communities, as well as my own take on a potential Smash moveset for Isaac.
I also wanted to refute the most common criticism of Issac in Smash that I had heard: Smash doesn't need another anime swordsman! And it's true, really, Smash is loaded with anime swordsmen. But I had considered Isaac very much as an earth-element master first.

As part of #GoldenSunday, I posted, "This gives me an idea for a fun challenge play, actually: Golden Sun 1+2 with no swords of any kind! Anyone done it?"

Without reply, eventually, I started... quite a bit later, in March of 2020. As of this writing, just over three years later, I haven't finished it nor even picked it back up for ages. I was playing on Wii U Virtual Console and lost my mojo for it (citing Animal Crossing New Horizons; can you blame me?). I think I may come back to it. It's not super easy to record or screenshot from a Wii U though.

The rules are: no character can use any sword in battle at any time. If there's ever a situation where a character is forced into battle with a sword, they can only use non-weapon-based actions. The Ragnarok and Odyssey psynergies are also banned, since they summon giant swords.

In terms of what I already did...

On March 16, 2020, I posted that I had started! "I’ve started this over the last few days, up to Xian. It’s not hard, but it’s slow. It sucks missing some early swords like Arctic Blade and depending on Battle Axes for a long time."

On May 24, 2020, I posted: "I played through Colosso and then got distracted by #ACNH. But Colosso was the most interesting part of Golden Sun with no swords! It meant doing the final opponent with only psynergy and items, which was a super close call!"

On Feb 24, 2021, I replied to something about non-sword-wielding characters in response to @theWellRedMage. "I have wanted Isaac for a long, long time. He wields swords, but uh can also use maces or axes, the sword isn’t necessary. I even did a Golden Sun 'no swords' run! And then he just won’t use his iconic Ragnarok attack. It’ll be fine!"
This was a bit of a lie, I think, as I don't remember going any further than Colosso.

At this point, about 3 years later, Colosso is the only thing memorable about the run so far. Colosso is probably a bit more than halfway through the first Golden Sun game, and you have Isaac alone and he's supposed to try to win a battle contest. The contestants race through an obstacle course, optionally picking up advantages of different sorts along the way, and whichever contestant reaches the battlefield in the middle of the arena first claims the most useful advantage - in the second round, it's a weapon. This is sort of a Hunger Games-like situation where you enter with nothing, and can choose to be direct and opt for violence... or gather a variety of assets with risk of your opponent entering the match with a strong weapon. Well, the weapon available in Colosso is a sword, of course, so I collected everything else and then attempted to win these solo battles using only Psynergy. I don't remember the details but I very much remember that last battle coming down to the wire!

What I can say about this so far is: while Isaac does have access to a variety of weapons, his game is very much designed around the use of swords! Avoiding swords isn't particularly challenging (besides Colosso, so far), but it certainly feels different. The next part of the game where I would expect to truly feel the impact of this limitation is near the end, as some of the highest-tier weapons in the game, such as the Gaia Blade and the Kikuichimonji, are swords.

Here are my stats at the Gondowan Passage, having never touched a sword: