I don't like the font

Golden Sun play log post #1 - opening

So I was in an EB Games a few days ago, shuffling through their handheld-game bargain bin, when I ran across a copy of Golden Sun for $7.99. This might be just memories of the NES days where *every* game cost $50-60, but that struck me - an RPG for less than $8? No way! The catch - it was loose; no manual or box. I'm the type who always reads the manual from cover to cover and check out every piece of literature that's packed in, right down to the Nintendo Power subscription cards, but then I thought, why not? Just jump in - it'll be immersive; the adventure and exploration will feel more real. So I've playing as I go, with no idea of what the play mechanics are or what the Golden Sun is.

Unfortunately, I think I've gotten for what I paid. I thought the game started well, following a child refugee in a storm, in a town on the verge of a natural disaster that may or may not occur. A local landmark is about to collapse, and it'll level the town if it does; the local adults are keeping it at bay, but their strength is waning, and the young hero pitches in not by bashing monsters but by fetching help, herding refugees, etc. At the end, though, the story takes a turn for the cliche - young Boy with Sword trains to avenge his father's death. The climax is well-rendered - the horror is depicted in half-glimpsed flashes, and there's a point where you wander briefly about, talking to others in shock, and no one knows what to do - but it's sad to have all garden paths lead to the same well-worn road. Post-crisis, the three leads really aren't defined beyond Hero, Hero's Best Friend, and The Girl; there's a drawn-out sequence involving and the hero's mother and some roof repair that should have been charming given some personality but which I found interminable with the knobs we had.

Another thing that makes me wary is the total absence of an artistic style. The characters are nondescript dots; the anime portraits are as generic as art can get while still describable as belonging to a particular school. The biggest thing that game has going for it visually, the sharp resolution, is courtesy of the system and not the designers.

Also - all the characters have this little dit-dot "patter" sound effect when their dialogue boxes pop up. It's pitched higher for the young girls, lower for the mother, etc., and is supposed to substitute for lack of real in-game speech, I guess, but anything that makes every character sound like they're an adult from the Peanuts universe ("wahwah wah wahwah") is an ineffective characterization device. I've played the game for less than an hour, and it already grates my nerves every time.

There're about ten yes-or-no questions in the intro, and yet your answers don't seem to have any impact on the game. If I said I wasn't ready to go, my mom dragged me along anyhow; if I said I couldn't get to the evac center by myself, the game kicked me back to the original question prompt with a "come on, now, you're a big boy" admonition. (I haven't checked all the questions, since they are so frequent, but that leads to another, more personal frustration; as a completist, I'd at least like to see what happens in each case had I picked the *other* answer.) Again, a feature meant to make the game more realistic turns out to be annoying.

One thng that impressed me - at the start of every battle (there are a couple encounters in the prologue), there's an impressive swoop around the battlefield to showcase some scaling effects. The backdrops are quite colorful, too.

I mentioned the text. Everything's in Italics. Maybe they think that make everything look Olde.

I just got Animal Crossing today, so who knows how long I'll be keeping up on this, but I'll try some more tonight.