Doubt it holds up today, with all the other JRPGs I've played, but this was a decent game. Definitely nails that 'classic/traditional JRPG' aesthetic, as you end up traversing through some nice locales like a haunted forest, a desert, a ship voyage, and a gladiator tournament. Feels like a legit adventure. Combat's pretty basic but finding all the Djinn and mixing up their assignment to form classes was a nice touch. The story itself is interesting but its hampered by awkward dialogue and just being too wordy in general.

idk how to start this but after 40 hours with this game, I can say ive enjoyed it thru to the end. I've had alot of issues myself like the beginning of the story being slow and forgetting that summons existed which caused me to rage for days cuz they are NEEDED for the final boss and makes em way easier than they seem to be but the presentation, gameplay, worldbuilding and everyone you meet are the most interesting and lovable cast I've seen in a rpg and Im really happy to have finally played this game.

+Unique Battle System
+SNES like quality on a handheld
+Challenging Puzzles
~Soundtrack is hit or miss / Repetitive
~Made as half a game
- Story is generic

It's hard to say much about Golden Sun, since it's a pretty traditional old-school RPG. Like many of the genre, it features a turn-based battle system, it's set in a medieval-ish land, it features characters with the ability to use magic and summon powerful monsters, etcetera... Its most unique mechanic is the ability to use spells on the overworld to solve puzzles and interact with NPCs (which is a lot of fun actually).

Overall, it's a fun but not particularly mindblowing game. Mostly recommended if you're looking for new RPGs to play.

Feels good to have finally finished this after wanting to play it for years. I remember back when I was in middle school trying to emulate this right when gba cartridges became harder to find and I had no credit card to order one for myself off of eBay, that because of the graphical limits pushed it was impossibly buggy and laggy, so it was really good to be able to play this on original hardware. The game also has one of the strongest and most gripping openings to a handheld RPG. Unfortunately, the scale and stakes of the game feel cut short as the rest of the game is made of brief visits to towns that rarely get returned to, and the 4 playable characters themselves mostly fall flat. The protagonist you play as is blank even more a blank slate, and besides the tragedy that he and Garet experienced in the village, background and development doesn't really exist. The game also ends on what by all means feels like a midpoint in every other jrpg. They literally tease you with a vessel that you think would open up the world to more exploration and perhaps revisiting the other towns, but I guess I'll just have to play the Lost Age someday. I can't imagine being a fan and just having to wait until that game came out and paying full price for what all means is a 2nd part to an unfinished story. Still, as a kid I can see that I would've gotten lost in the graphics, world, and combat of this game which still holds up as tremendously fun.

Taste is subjective, of course and this isn't meant to impugn anyone who likes Golden Sun, but even accounting for time and platform I can't for the life of me understand the high ratings for this game. The story is largely incoherent and bland, and both the characters and the world lack any defined personality despite the huge amount of text in the game—it feels like a bit like a cautionary tale about how more isn't usually better, especially considering how hollow traversing the large and empty map feels. It's not much better to play, either—the puzzles tend to be fairly similar, which wouldn't be a problem if there was any sense of increasing difficulty or iteration on them. The battle system is pretty similarly uninteresting, with summons doing most, if not all, of the work for the bosses—any regular enemy isn't much more than cannon fodder.

I wish I got it. But two Fire Emblems, the GBA Tactics Ogre, Superstar Saga, Ruby and Sapphire, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and Battle Network 3 came out no later than two years after this for the GBA, and while none of them are purely a JRPG like Golden Sun is, they all feel miles ahead of Golden Sun, which doesn't feel like much of anything.

It's probably not as good as I think it is, but I've played this game so many times. It was all the rage when I was in elementary school, and I love it so much. I can still hear the battle music in my head, and the pixel art was really incredible. I loved the idea of using your spells outside of battle to do environmental puzzle stuff, and I loved the djinni summon/passive/spell rotation system. It's very, very special. Just maybe not quite as special if you're coming to it for the first time now.

I know that it's a rpg series that doesn't do that much that SNES predecessors haven't already done, but i played this before those. The art is charming, some of the music insanely good, the characters are likeable, main villains intriguing, and you visit all kind of interesting places. The overarching story is a typical save the world affair, but it's done well (and like 90% of all rpgs come down to that in one way or another).That's enough for me to really like a jrpg.
If you have enough Djinn the combat can be played in a djinn set and summon only fashion, but i didn't mind that much. The summon effects were awesome even after spamming them for ages, i still remember all the rank 4 ones. I had to use a guide for my 100% playthrough, because a few of the djinn were in the open world on secret spots (not a fan of that). But most of them you discover naturally without to much chance to completely miss them.
I don't care that much for puzzles in a rpg, but that's a strong aspect in this game as well.

Honestly had too much nostalgia for this game and was a little bit disappointed when I finally completed it. The pacing of the story is terrible and barely any of it advances at all by the endgame point.
Dialogue is tremendously slow and barely anything of importance is said for how fucking much anyone talks, also the dialogue box disappears and reappears for almost every line that is said, with characters animations and emotes in between. It really makes it a slog.
The combat is also weirdly designed and too easy. If you can prepare 4 max level summons before a boss and nearly one-shot it in one turn maybe you should reconsider the game's mechanics.

What makes this game special is its presentation and puzzles. Music is gorgeous and it looks great, I particulary like the character's portraits. Puzzles are also pretty good. But even then it just can't carry a JRPG with such lackluster story progression and combat.