I came back to golden sun a decade or so after release and realised that it actually kind of sucks. It captured the feeling of bigger jrpgs on a handheld, which is why I poured so much time into it as a 12 year old, but it's riddled with potholes, cliches, and ellipses, and the battle system is nowhere near as deep as it thinks it is. If it had been released for full consoles it would have been considered unremarkable.
And then I bought and played Dark Dawn and enjoyed it anyway, because it does the feeling really well. Fucking dumb and largely incoherent plot that mostly consists of "...", but so inexplicably fun.
I think there are a lot games that we glorify when we played them as a child and later we think they probably not that good. I want to replay golden sun, but i can't tell you anything about the story, i played the game in english and can't really speak english back then. So i'm interrested to see the story the first time to be honest. I think what i have best in mind, that i like the dungeon design with it's riddles and you interact with magic to your soroundings. But even so, it could be not as fun as i expect it to be, well i will see.
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.
