As most of you well know, I am a rabid fan of Golden Sun. It was one of the best RPG games I'd ever played and it helped bring the genre back into the spotlight after many years in the dark. Unfortunately, GS ended with a huge cliffhanger, and we never found out the answers to some of the burning questions in the game. But now, Camelot finally came through for us and released the second half of the saga: The Lost Age. While commonly called GS2, it's not so much a sequel as it is a continuation and conclusion to the first game. Most of the questions are finally answered, and this time around, we aren't left with an awful "To Be Continued" at the end!
TLA stars Felix, who was actually thought to be one of the bad guys in GS. Turns out he isn't, but his goal is much different from that of Isaac and that is why the two of them are on opposing sides. The battle mechanics are identical to the original, but there are some new classes, Psynergies and a ton of new Djinn to collect. Felix travels with his younger sister Jenna (childhood friend of Isaac and Garet from GS), a wind mage named Sheba, and a mysterious man named Picard, whom we later discover is actually from a lost civilization called Lemuria. The four of them seek to ignite the remaining two Lighthouse flames in order to save the world of Weyard from dying, but doing so may also cause the end of the world! Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place...
I would highly discourage anyone from starting the GS series with this chapter. The plot heavily relies on information learned in the first game, and if you don't transfer data from GS to TLA, you'll miss out a lot of big (and wonderful) secrets. Overall, this game is much bigger than the first, with many more sidequests, cool weapons, Djinn, and secrets. And the way it ties into the first game is rather unique. It certainly wasn't what I was expecting!
So what's bad about it? Well, as I mentioned, this game is really only fulfilling if you played the first one. The new characters, while fun in their own right, are also hard to adjust to. I found myself missing Isaac and his crew as I played TLA, and you don't get the chance to play with the GS characters until you're about 2/3 of the way through the game. (Granted, that last third is the most interesting, but still...why did it have to take so long for Felix and Isaac to join forces?) There are also a couple titchy plotholes that drive me nuts. For instance, we never find out what the heck Isaac was doing while Felix was running around the world, nor do we ever find out what happened to Isaac's boat. Small stuff, but I want answers, dammit! And the ending, while cute and basically satisfying, is a little cliche, and it still leaves a few big questions unanswered.
There's debate among GS fans if there should be a third game or not. Honestly, I haven't made up my mind on this. I'd only want a sequel if it starred the same characters, but chances are that wouldn't happen. Personally, I'd like a third game to simply follow Isaac's crew from their departure at Venus Lighthouse until they meet Felix at Jupiter Lighthouse! Doubtful that it's going to happen, but I'd still like to see it. Of course, the best thing of all would be to take the two games and make one big epic remake for the GameCube. Now that would be awesome!