This game design is so intricate, yet intuitive in a way. At the start of the game, one is inclined to keep it monoelemental. But as you progress, you get curious of trying different combos. I bow down to the team designing this system.
I have to disagree. The way the classes are presented and accessed feels very unintuitive, especially given how they interact with the summoning system. I basically decided I was never going to experiment when I found out (in battle) that your breaker loses access to their heals if a summoning or djinn use makes an off-class djinn attach or detach from them.
I started playing the game yesterday but I fell in love with the Djinni class system, it's now my personal favorite class system in any RPG and I can't wait to play the sequel and see what a four element class looks like.
This game is for children and it's almost 20 years old but it's combat and class system is still one of the most complex and have more option that it's modern counter part. I love a game that rewards it's player for paying attention and learning, the fact that this game is made on a system that is a complete obsolete by todays standard is so impressive.
And yet, playing it without knowing any of the advanced stuff is still perfectly capable. All this time, and theres still more for me to learn and go back to see.
Really good explanation :D Just a few notes there: Those single target Psynergies are physical Psynergies. So if a physical Adept like Isaac or Garet use them, they are stronger. 20:43 These classes here are the best for the first game. Not only because Isaac + Garet become physical beasts and Mia + Ivan become support characters/healers but also these classes give the best overall stats in the game 😊
The problem with Golden Sun is that the game is easy enough and the battle system not properly explained so most players (like me) just went through the game no problem without needing to understand any of this stuff.
To be honest, im fine with this aspect. I dont think this system needs that much in depht explanation. Especially with some of the more obscure classes like Ninja and Ronin i think its fine to leave them up to discovery for players who want to try it out. Some of the basic class changes you will also discover automatically when getting new Djinns throughout the game. How ever I would partially agree with you, when it comes to the easyness of the battles. There are a few things especially in the psynergie department that are pretty underwhelming when compared to what the Djinn-Summon-System or Artifact-Weapons have to offer. Especially status or Buff/Debuff Psynergie
Exactly. If only there was a hard mode to push you to experiment with the class system. I imagine there exist some difficulty hacks nowadays, but I fear they'd change too much from the base game and not feel authentic enough to my living
try reloaded hack, rebalance all skills, limit summons per turn play, so now u can't summons rush 4 djin in turn 1, remake luck system so debuff are more relevant, boss are a lot harder, hit hard and have more hp and the best, there are reloaded hacks for both GS & TLA.
Haha this stuff completely eluded me as a kid, the closest i came to understanding it was religiously following a gamefaqs boss guide on djinn distribution and grasping 'huh putting wind djinn on earth adepts makes them better at earth bosses!'
Tri elemental class actually the most powerful classes available in the game, the drawback from it you can't use Djinn in battle or you gonna lose all benefits from that class.
My only thing is I wish the game would force the player to read that there are rare tri-elemental classes. Because I figured out dual elemental but never thought 3 of 3 specific elements for each character would give something. So something like a late game djinn (make it an optional one if you want) referencing to Isaac he'd make a good ninja if he paired that djinn with his fire and wind djinn friends. that would spur you on to one of them and then you could play around and find the rest. But as a kid I checked them one by one and figured I wasn't getting anywhere way too fast before landing on something like ninja. For the kids doing science with a notebook it was ok, but just something to point you in the right direction to find the recipe for one of them would help. Maybe a book in a bookshelf or something. "History of the ancient ninjas; champions of the three nations" type beat.
If it wasn't for your video, I wouldn't even have known the existence of Ninja class. That class is so different from the others. I really thought I knew the ins and outs but now I must check it out.
7:55 Or you could start with 4 each of your djinn on standby so you can summon right away. Or all if you're going for a rushdown strategy. Base characters are weak, but not helpless.
I bought both at launch. I was under the impression that sticking by the characters elemental classes, then things were given buffs. But it's still cool to see the moves you can only get mixing djinni
You said that for tri elemental classes there should be less symbiotic djinn but with 4 Mars and 3 Jupiter Isaac can become a samurai. I don't think it's because Jupiter is opposite to Venus as Garet can become one with 3 Jupiter and 4 Venus.
There's a lot of further nuance to the system than this video covers. For example, the reason dual element classes need 1 Djinni from the native element is arguably to balance elemental levels, since each character by default has the equivalent of 5 Djinn in their own element. My theory for the samurai class is that wind somehow enhances the symbiosis of fire and earth. A similar class can form where earth seems to enhance the symbiosis of wind and water.
The easiest way to explain it is like this: You want to balance the "Elemental Levels" on the Status Screen to achieve the stronger classes. You need a certain amount of djinn to unlock its full potential, because an Adept has a default ELV of 5. Each Djinn grants 1 ELV. Thats it. The more elements a character is working with, the higher the stats/stronger psynergy they get, but their Elemental Power/Resistance becomes more average, and you cant use djinni as easily without drawbacks. If the average level of djinn the party had increased, we'd have more options so long as you keep the numbers balanced. And quad element classes could exist if the Party had 15 djinn each... oh and speaking of the item classes, they work on that principle, only because they take the constraints of the total party djinn into account, the levels will never all be equal to 5, so they lowered the maximum class to Lv3 in all Elements.
Classes mostly work the same way across all three games. The second game adds a couple more classes on the top of the tiers because you have 9 Djinni instead of 7, and item-dependent classes. The third game just add a unique class which is activated in battle through a psynergy. If I get around to solving my mic issues I will touch on the item-depenent classes as I will do a Let's Play of the second game.
@@theFado96 Cool thanks man. I'm about 3 hours into the second game and didn't know a thing about the class system even though I beat 1 like 3 months ago lol. Was looking into this when I found the Tamer's Whip in Yampi Desert.
The way the item-class tiers up is this: you equip the item and you get the base class. For the higher levels, you need one Djinni of each elements that is not the adept's element. For example, if Felix equips the Tamer's Whip, you get the second level of the Tamer class by setting 1 Water 1 Fire 1 Wind. The third with 2 Water 2 Fire 2 Wind and the final with 3 Water 3 Fire 3 Wind.
Also have you made a part 2 for the sequel ones and even shown all the item dependent classes? The only item dependent class I remember was the beast tamer and a few others which was from the sequel I think.
It makes sanctums pretty much useless, but at the same time it's really annoying to get KO'd early on in this game because you only get 1 water of life before you get access to the Revive psynergy and having to backtrack all the way to the nearest sanctum really sucks.
It makes things immensely easier. And of you do a full transfer to the sequel it's straight broken. I was stupid good at this game as s kid. Essentially all you had to do was have buffs up which was easy via setting djnn. And you would just look op summons. Of you had the final one unlocked it was also a aoe revive (on all 8 members) and did massive dmg.
i wish the games were hard enough for and of this to matter. literally got through the whole game by just going in with all djinni unset and spamming the highest level summons
I'm assuming you're referring to the sniffs. That's an average day for me. I've always had problems of constant running nose due to some light pollen/dust allergies.
There's very little need to do an identical video for The Lost Age. It follows the exact same rules of the first game, adding only the three "item dependent" classes. Again for those you just need to set 1 of each Djnnni that is not of the element of the adept. For Isaac you would do: Equip item (no Djinni) --> Base tier 1 Mars, 1 Jupiter, 1 Mercury --> Tier 1 2 Mars, 2 Jupiter, 2 Mercury --> Tier 2 3 Mars, 3 Jupiter, 3 Mercury --> Tier 3 The class items can be found in Yampi Desert (final screen), the cave where the monks are near the start of the game, and in the dungeon below the Kibombo statue.
This is cool. Im glad they still made the default classes "good" though. It means you can clear PvE content, saving stuff like wizard and chaos lord for pvp things only.
I was a foolish purist while i played this a as kid. Somehow I always believed that monoelement is by default superior and so I never bothered mixing. Such a waste..
This system is so arcane and poorly explained that it makes me not want to interact with it, and I feel like that's the exact opposite of the developers intent.
I don't know about that, the way they tried to make you experiment with it was to force you to make a dual class to get the growth psynergy which is required for some puzzles. In the end though, you can play the game by not caring about Dual-Tri classes and just stick to mono. I've done that multiple times and the game in enjoyable either way. You could also make the argument that they didn't explain it at all on purpose so players WOULD try to mess with it to see what it can do.
I find myself feeling slightly similarly. But I being a preinternet kid, and one year, golden sun was the only new game I got. Being able to waste time delving into something unexplained helped stave off boredom and reletition.
Playing this as a kid I did not understand any of this. Now, as an adult, I still don’t. Thanks for making this!
You're welcome!
duuuude same hahah... fire djinn= fire adept character. that was my only battle plan lmao..
right I played this game and beat it numerous times just to now revisit it to understand more. Same as Star Ocean series 😂
Ninjas, sages, and berserkers are really good. Everything else is mid at best.
I was a moron and just left characters with whatever djinns they got when djinns were collected. The game is easy enough to manage regardless.
youtube recommended me this 3 years after it was posted, decades after the game was released.
still watching it though.
20 years late, but it'll do.
Someone's gotta do it
What a Scray Pfp i almost wetting myself..
@@theFado96 i appreciate it
I dunno man, pretty handy now!
I bet you feel silly now sir. It's right on time for NSO GBA.
This game design is so intricate, yet intuitive in a way. At the start of the game, one is inclined to keep it monoelemental. But as you progress, you get curious of trying different combos. I bow down to the team designing this system.
True. And like I said, there are no wrong classes, only wrong ways to use them in battle.
I didn't. I only saw numbers go down. I eventually tried samurai and ninja and such, but damage and nerfs weren't worth it.
@@theFado96 I love the fact that classes feel "balanced" with one another.
I never got curious lol.
Now i wish I did
I have to disagree. The way the classes are presented and accessed feels very unintuitive, especially given how they interact with the summoning system. I basically decided I was never going to experiment when I found out (in battle) that your breaker loses access to their heals if a summoning or djinn use makes an off-class djinn attach or detach from them.
I started playing the game yesterday but I fell in love with the Djinni class system, it's now my personal favorite class system in any RPG and I can't wait to play the sequel and see what a four element class looks like.
I’m going to start this game for the first time soon so I’m glad to have found this!
This game is for children and it's almost 20 years old but it's combat and class system is still one of the most complex and have more option that it's modern counter part. I love a game that rewards it's player for paying attention and learning, the fact that this game is made on a system that is a complete obsolete by todays standard is so impressive.
And yet, playing it without knowing any of the advanced stuff is still perfectly capable. All this time, and theres still more for me to learn and go back to see.
Really good explanation :D
Just a few notes there:
Those single target Psynergies are physical Psynergies. So if a physical Adept like Isaac or Garet use them, they are stronger.
20:43 These classes here are the best for the first game. Not only because Isaac + Garet become physical beasts and Mia + Ivan become support characters/healers but also these classes give the best overall stats in the game 😊
The problem with Golden Sun is that the game is easy enough and the battle system not properly explained so most players (like me) just went through the game no problem without needing to understand any of this stuff.
To be honest, im fine with this aspect. I dont think this system needs that much in depht explanation. Especially with some of the more obscure classes like Ninja and Ronin i think its fine to leave them up to discovery for players who want to try it out. Some of the basic class changes you will also discover automatically when getting new Djinns throughout the game.
How ever I would partially agree with you, when it comes to the easyness of the battles. There are a few things especially in the psynergie department that are pretty underwhelming when compared to what the Djinn-Summon-System or Artifact-Weapons have to offer. Especially status or Buff/Debuff Psynergie
Exactly. If only there was a hard mode to push you to experiment with the class system. I imagine there exist some difficulty hacks nowadays, but I fear they'd change too much from the base game and not feel authentic enough to my living
try reloaded hack, rebalance all skills, limit summons per turn play, so now u can't summons rush 4 djin in turn 1, remake luck system so debuff are more relevant, boss are a lot harder, hit hard and have more hp and the best, there are reloaded hacks for both GS & TLA.
The amazing depth of this game blows my mind. Great video thank you for posting this.
No problem. People appreaciated this video more than I initially thought.
Thanks for this. I remember playing as a kid and being so confused but now that it's on switch I can understand a lot better.
I love golden sun's class system.
It's so granular and meticulous, which is very very satisfying for me.
Haha this stuff completely eluded me as a kid, the closest i came to understanding it was religiously following a gamefaqs boss guide on djinn distribution and grasping 'huh putting wind djinn on earth adepts makes them better at earth bosses!'
Oh WOW, I had no idea there were tri-elemental stats. Good thing it just released on Switch!
Tri elemental class actually the most powerful classes available in the game, the drawback from it you can't use Djinn in battle or you gonna lose all benefits from that class.
My only thing is I wish the game would force the player to read that there are rare tri-elemental classes. Because I figured out dual elemental but never thought 3 of 3 specific elements for each character would give something.
So something like a late game djinn (make it an optional one if you want) referencing to Isaac he'd make a good ninja if he paired that djinn with his fire and wind djinn friends.
that would spur you on to one of them and then you could play around and find the rest.
But as a kid I checked them one by one and figured I wasn't getting anywhere way too fast before landing on something like ninja. For the kids doing science with a notebook it was ok, but just something to point you in the right direction to find the recipe for one of them would help. Maybe a book in a bookshelf or something. "History of the ancient ninjas; champions of the three nations" type beat.
Well, it's good to be back!
If it wasn't for your video, I wouldn't even have known the existence of Ninja class. That class is so different from the others. I really thought I knew the ins and outs but now I must check it out.
I found the ninja class messing around with different combinations but I never knew about the djinn alignments mentioned at the beginning of the video
Give Samurai->Ronin a try… it is worth it
good work uploading this for the GS fans and prospective fans
7:55 Or you could start with 4 each of your djinn on standby so you can summon right away. Or all if you're going for a rushdown strategy. Base characters are weak, but not helpless.
I bought both at launch. I was under the impression that sticking by the characters elemental classes, then things were given buffs. But it's still cool to see the moves you can only get mixing djinni
You said that for tri elemental classes there should be less symbiotic djinn but with 4 Mars and 3 Jupiter Isaac can become a samurai. I don't think it's because Jupiter is opposite to Venus as Garet can become one with 3 Jupiter and 4 Venus.
The class system in this game can be quite a task to break down.
There's a lot of further nuance to the system than this video covers. For example, the reason dual element classes need 1 Djinni from the native element is arguably to balance elemental levels, since each character by default has the equivalent of 5 Djinn in their own element.
My theory for the samurai class is that wind somehow enhances the symbiosis of fire and earth. A similar class can form where earth seems to enhance the symbiosis of wind and water.
The easiest way to explain it is like this:
You want to balance the "Elemental Levels" on the Status Screen to achieve the stronger classes. You need a certain amount of djinn to unlock its full potential, because an Adept has a default ELV of 5. Each Djinn grants 1 ELV. Thats it.
The more elements a character is working with, the higher the stats/stronger psynergy they get, but their Elemental Power/Resistance becomes more average, and you cant use djinni as easily without drawbacks.
If the average level of djinn the party had increased, we'd have more options so long as you keep the numbers balanced. And quad element classes could exist if the Party had 15 djinn each... oh and speaking of the item classes, they work on that principle, only because they take the constraints of the total party djinn into account, the levels will never all be equal to 5, so they lowered the maximum class to Lv3 in all Elements.
As a kid, I didn't realize the classes were what they were. I thought they were just titles.
Amazing video Ty very informative
Thanka lot! This video is apperantly so infomative and good that YT is running ads on it even though I'm not in the partner program anymore.
RUclips algorithm telling me to replay golden sun
This is amazing. Are you gonna do one for the second game? Or I guess there wouldn't be a point if the classes work the same. Thanks either way!
Classes mostly work the same way across all three games. The second game adds a couple more classes on the top of the tiers because you have 9 Djinni instead of 7, and item-dependent classes. The third game just add a unique class which is activated in battle through a psynergy. If I get around to solving my mic issues I will touch on the item-depenent classes as I will do a Let's Play of the second game.
@@theFado96 Cool thanks man. I'm about 3 hours into the second game and didn't know a thing about the class system even though I beat 1 like 3 months ago lol. Was looking into this when I found the Tamer's Whip in Yampi Desert.
The way the item-class tiers up is this: you equip the item and you get the base class. For the higher levels, you need one Djinni of each elements that is not the adept's element. For example, if Felix equips the Tamer's Whip, you get the second level of the Tamer class by setting 1 Water 1 Fire 1 Wind. The third with 2 Water 2 Fire 2 Wind and the final with 3 Water 3 Fire 3 Wind.
Thanks a lot, you helped me so much with this
It's so useful, RUclips decided to run ads on it.
That's nice, keep doing your video, I have a good first impression about you and your channel
Also have you made a part 2 for the sequel ones and even shown all the item dependent classes? The only item dependent class I remember was the beast tamer and a few others which was from the sequel I think.
Omg just seing that revive skills makes the game more interesting... Just knowing that you can just use psycenergy to revive
It makes sanctums pretty much useless, but at the same time it's really annoying to get KO'd early on in this game because you only get 1 water of life before you get access to the Revive psynergy and having to backtrack all the way to the nearest sanctum really sucks.
It makes things immensely easier.
And of you do a full transfer to the sequel it's straight broken.
I was stupid good at this game as s kid. Essentially all you had to do was have buffs up which was easy via setting djnn.
And you would just look op summons. Of you had the final one unlocked it was also a aoe revive (on all 8 members) and did massive dmg.
Sanctums punished you for being bad. The level makes you pay a lot of money at higher levels@@theFado96
Is there a modern day version of golden sun. I loved this game as a kid.
The gba switch emulator is dropping 1 and 2 on the 17th!
You can play both games now on the Switch!
thank you soooooo much
i wish the games were hard enough for and of this to matter. literally got through the whole game by just going in with all djinni unset and spamming the highest level summons
Back when games were not handholding.
Thanks for the video
I see Golden Sun and instantly hit like and subscribe
If only 10 year old me had a chance of understanding this lmao
True. But it's mostly an optional system to engage with since you can put everyone in mono-elemental and be fine.
Needed thus when I was 8
Bro ty
During elementary days i always play this on game boy
Were you sick when you made this?
I'm assuming you're referring to the sniffs. That's an average day for me. I've always had problems of constant running nose due to some light pollen/dust allergies.
Got one for The Lost Age ?? Those “one of each” classes were wild !
There's very little need to do an identical video for The Lost Age. It follows the exact same rules of the first game, adding only the three "item dependent" classes. Again for those you just need to set 1 of each Djnnni that is not of the element of the adept.
For Isaac you would do:
Equip item (no Djinni) --> Base tier
1 Mars, 1 Jupiter, 1 Mercury --> Tier 1
2 Mars, 2 Jupiter, 2 Mercury --> Tier 2
3 Mars, 3 Jupiter, 3 Mercury --> Tier 3
The class items can be found in Yampi Desert (final screen), the cave where the monks are near the start of the game, and in the dungeon below the Kibombo statue.
Bro was speaking way too fast at times but the info is good
This is cool. Im glad they still made the default classes "good" though. It means you can clear PvE content, saving stuff like wizard and chaos lord for pvp things only.
👍🏻
I didn't understand shit 😢
I was a foolish purist while i played this a as kid. Somehow I always believed that monoelement is by default superior and so I never bothered mixing.
Such a waste..
Adn yet, playing mono elemental is fine. I've done several runs as mono elemental.
This system is so arcane and poorly explained that it makes me not want to interact with it, and I feel like that's the exact opposite of the developers intent.
I don't know about that, the way they tried to make you experiment with it was to force you to make a dual class to get the growth psynergy which is required for some puzzles.
In the end though, you can play the game by not caring about Dual-Tri classes and just stick to mono. I've done that multiple times and the game in enjoyable either way.
You could also make the argument that they didn't explain it at all on purpose so players WOULD try to mess with it to see what it can do.
Agreed. Better than a full tutorial explaining every fucking word to the player, this game is awesome. @@theFado96
I find myself feeling slightly similarly. But I being a preinternet kid, and one year, golden sun was the only new game I got. Being able to waste time delving into something unexplained helped stave off boredom and reletition.
It's too bad the game doesn't encourage experimenting with this system at all.
Would be great if the game actually explained this shit lol. I still can't even figure out how to get the psynergy I want in battle
It doesn't matter, you can win all battles by spamming psynergy and summons.