At last, Nintendo is bringing two of the Game Boy Advance's best RPGs to Nintendo Switch Online. Stand up, Golden Sun fans, because we're finally getting Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age on the service next week, on January 17.
The lighthouses in particular are really enjoyable dungeons, but some of the puzzles are just terrible when you take a step back and look at them critically - either obvious from the slightest glance and just busywork, or annoyingly obfuscated in a way that leaves you resorting to trial and error.
Similarly, the way the map is huge and apparently open makes exploring it exciting, but it's actually very segmented and linear - even with a boat on the open sea there are all sorts of blockades to progress that require you visit locations in a specific order.
And yet it's fun. I can't explain it as just nostalgia, as I have just as much fun seeing it torn to shreds (LPArchive has an incredibly critical let's play of the first 2 games) - I think it's something about the creativeness of the ideas that went into the game. Like you said, it put a lot of detail into how you could use magic to affect people and the environment, and it adopts an interesting perspective, first as heroes, then as their villains, who have their own heroic motivation. The story explores interesting ideas, even with all its plotholes and "..."'s. Even the class system is interesting in how you can change your abilities and power up or power down by using Djinni. It's like it throws so many good ideas at the wall that you don't mind that none of them are actually done well.
The lighthouses in particular are really enjoyable dungeons, but some of the puzzles are just terrible when you take a step back and look at them critically - either obvious from the slightest glance and just busywork, or annoyingly obfuscated in a way that leaves you resorting to trial and error.
Similarly, the way the map is huge and apparently open makes exploring it exciting, but it's actually very segmented and linear - even with a boat on the open sea there are all sorts of blockades to progress that require you visit locations in a specific order.
And yet it's fun. I can't explain it as just nostalgia, as I have just as much fun seeing it torn to shreds (LPArchive has an incredibly critical let's play of the first 2 games) - I think it's something about the creativeness of the ideas that went into the game. Like you said, it put a lot of detail into how you could use magic to affect people and the environment, and it adopts an interesting perspective, first as heroes, then as their villains, who have their own heroic motivation. The story explores interesting ideas, even with all its plotholes and "..."'s. Even the class system is interesting in how you can change your abilities and power up or power down by using Djinni. It's like it throws so many good ideas at the wall that you don't mind that none of them are actually done well.