28:15 Until the second game when you find out that the world is literally ending and you have to unleash alchemy in order to save it, but yeah. 32:42 It's really cryptic and hard to find, but in Dark Dawn, there is some explanation for what the Wise One is. He is a "Philosopher's Stone" that was created by the last of the Jenai (the term for the Ancient Adepts of the Lost Age) when they sealed Alchemy away in the Lighthouses after a massive war between the Jenai almost destroyed Weyard (revealed in Dark Dawn to have been over the Apollo Lense and Alchemy Dynamo), in order to prevent people from learning of the existence of the Elemental Stars and their purpose to reignite the Lighthouses. Some of what few Jenai remained founded Vale with the express purpose of creating an entire culture of people who would be born and raised to prevent people from getting the Elemental Stars. In fact, you can see this in the OG Golden Sun. If you talk to some of the villagers after unsealing the Stars, they are very cold and sometimes outright hostile towards the party, even though both Isaac and Garrett are very popular members of the village, because they unsealed it to begin with. The Wise One aided in the creation of this culture, modifying it to extend to a prohibition on the use of Psynergy as well. This is why Isaac and Garrett are so surprised when Ivan and Mia are so open about using their Psynergy. They are literally taught you are never supposed to use Psynergy around or on anyone who isn't also an Adept. You can see this in that Isaac and Garrett have no overworld skills that can be used on NPCs (that one "tree" in Kolima being an exception). 1:27:12 Speaking of that Tree, plexa doesn't save her (Saving her was donation incentive in his run at GDQ last year), but in the actual game, you can save her by using the Move Psynergy on one of the trees and moving her so she gets caught on the rocks. If you don't she ends up dying because she turns back into a human while still in the river and you can come back later and talk to her friends who are both sad that she got swept downstream and drowned. Canonically, Isaac saves her as described because you get to talk to her in Dark Dawn where if you read her mind after doing the story quest in Kolima she mentions that Matthew looks like the boy who saved her when she was a kid, and Matthew is Isaac's son. 2:23:00 Not only did he steal it, but he dicked his partner over and left him behind to face the consequences for his actions. Those consequences also included that the Lemurians stopped making the Elixir of Life entirely, which also led to Piers' mother dying while he was on his journey. Another maybe not fun fact about Lemuria is that by Piers agreeing to join you on your journey in TLA, he basically exiles himself from his homeland thanks to the Senator dude being an asshole. This has no consequence in game as you can still talk to and come back to Lemuria, nor is it ever elaborated upon in Dark Dawn, where Piers is one of only 3 playable characters from TLA to show up (the others being Isaac and Garrett who are living alone observing the conditions at Mt Aleph. Its highly implied that Jenna and whoever Garrett ended up marrying left them because of this).
The menuing is the main reason I adore this game as a speedrun. I love any RPG speedrun to begin with because of the sheer optimization mixed with story, but the menus in GS are just so fucking clean
This game came out when i was 12, it was my birthday and mid party i realised i had enough money to buy a GBA and Golden Sun. So i begged my father to drive into town to the gameshop to go and buy it. I started playing in the car and didn't stop, i got motion sickness and had to stop playing, i remember laying in bed too naucious to play, just waiting for it to pass a bit so i could continue playing. Then when i got home i would sit at my desk and play it under the desk light, i took the jack from my computer and used it for the GBA, i was lost for hours and hours on end playing Golden Sun, hearing the magnificant soundtrack through my speakers. Years later i bought the GBA SP so i could now play Golden Sun The lost Age in bed without any light, without my parents knowing. Till this day i play Golden Sun on the GBPlayer on the GC, it is by far one of the best RPG's ever made, The story is great, the djinns make re-playing the game a lot of fun, the dungeons are SO much fun, the soundtrack is amazing, the way you could swap character in The Lost Age to change the battle theme was * chef's kiss* (Jenna's the best one). I wish there was a game (new) that was like this (that is a RPG and not a puzzle game) with puzzles and dungeons with dead ends where you'd have to return later, remember where those dungeons were, actually think about how to solve puzzles with the options available at the time. I have nothing but praise for this game and it is well deserved.
Golden Sun is a game I never managed to get through the puzzles in Sol Temple 21 years ago, as I was only 8 and didn't speak a lick of English.. So happy to see it here, explained, ran and showcased! x3
@@orphious885 But it itself ends on a cliffhanger. Great game, but a very sad experience for a Golden Sun fan since (in all likelihood) we will never return to this series.
Great game series, i at one point redid the drop RNG item drop for all needed items, cause the ones at the time were long. Took many tries as to make them consistant and spot on. Not the same on TLA, all first encounters there are random, so takes many resets to get the right manip encounter, still great games. Here is hopin for re-makes and continuation of the 3rd series.
I was watching during the part that you said I wouldn't be watching since it's after the fact and I'm DEEPLY offended I watch every second of these things I love watching you dudes :
its ABSURDLY optimized. And Plexa is the one who discovered something like 75% of the tech for it, like all his channel on UA-cam is is him discovering glitches and breaking the game. Golden sun is basically this man's fucking life, and its always been notoriously hard to get into marathons and the such due to its length. I couldn't believe he managed to get a Lost Age run into SGDQ last year, not even kidding. By his own admission, TBS (The original Golden Sun, which in Japanese is called "To Break The Seal") is very hard to get good times in simply because it has somewhere in the are of 30-45 minutes of dialogue at the beginning of the game.
@@Aleph3575 Late to the party, but yes, Eliss is correct. This is a really hard run to optimize because there is consistent RNG throughout the run. The console WR isn't very optimized but the Emulator WR is very good (held by ollie_). Using no cutscene patch as an estimate, there's really only about 2 hours of gameplay dispersed among 1.5hrs of cutscenes. I will give a shoutout to RPGLB for being the first marathon to feature TLA and been a consistent friend to the speedrun community. And to ESA Marathon which has featured Golden Sun over the years (including Dark Dawn!).
![Golden Sun: The Lost Age [Any%] by Plexa - #ESAWinter23](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/S8M9OV1Ocy0/mqdefault.jpg)
![Golden Sun: The Lost Age [Any%] by Plexa - #ESAWinter23](/img/tr.png)
Run Start: 2:08
28:15 Until the second game when you find out that the world is literally ending and you have to unleash alchemy in order to save it, but yeah.
32:42 It's really cryptic and hard to find, but in Dark Dawn, there is some explanation for what the Wise One is. He is a "Philosopher's Stone" that was created by the last of the Jenai (the term for the Ancient Adepts of the Lost Age) when they sealed Alchemy away in the Lighthouses after a massive war between the Jenai almost destroyed Weyard (revealed in Dark Dawn to have been over the Apollo Lense and Alchemy Dynamo), in order to prevent people from learning of the existence of the Elemental Stars and their purpose to reignite the Lighthouses. Some of what few Jenai remained founded Vale with the express purpose of creating an entire culture of people who would be born and raised to prevent people from getting the Elemental Stars. In fact, you can see this in the OG Golden Sun. If you talk to some of the villagers after unsealing the Stars, they are very cold and sometimes outright hostile towards the party, even though both Isaac and Garrett are very popular members of the village, because they unsealed it to begin with. The Wise One aided in the creation of this culture, modifying it to extend to a prohibition on the use of Psynergy as well. This is why Isaac and Garrett are so surprised when Ivan and Mia are so open about using their Psynergy. They are literally taught you are never supposed to use Psynergy around or on anyone who isn't also an Adept. You can see this in that Isaac and Garrett have no overworld skills that can be used on NPCs (that one "tree" in Kolima being an exception).
1:27:12 Speaking of that Tree, plexa doesn't save her (Saving her was donation incentive in his run at GDQ last year), but in the actual game, you can save her by using the Move Psynergy on one of the trees and moving her so she gets caught on the rocks. If you don't she ends up dying because she turns back into a human while still in the river and you can come back later and talk to her friends who are both sad that she got swept downstream and drowned. Canonically, Isaac saves her as described because you get to talk to her in Dark Dawn where if you read her mind after doing the story quest in Kolima she mentions that Matthew looks like the boy who saved her when she was a kid, and Matthew is Isaac's son.
2:23:00 Not only did he steal it, but he dicked his partner over and left him behind to face the consequences for his actions. Those consequences also included that the Lemurians stopped making the Elixir of Life entirely, which also led to Piers' mother dying while he was on his journey. Another maybe not fun fact about Lemuria is that by Piers agreeing to join you on your journey in TLA, he basically exiles himself from his homeland thanks to the Senator dude being an asshole. This has no consequence in game as you can still talk to and come back to Lemuria, nor is it ever elaborated upon in Dark Dawn, where Piers is one of only 3 playable characters from TLA to show up (the others being Isaac and Garrett who are living alone observing the conditions at Mt Aleph. Its highly implied that Jenna and whoever Garrett ended up marrying left them because of this).
That last fact was actually kinda depressing ngl
The menuing is the main reason I adore this game as a speedrun. I love any RPG speedrun to begin with because of the sheer optimization mixed with story, but the menus in GS are just so fucking clean
This game came out when i was 12, it was my birthday and mid party i realised i had enough money to buy a GBA and Golden Sun.
So i begged my father to drive into town to the gameshop to go and buy it. I started playing in the car and didn't stop, i got motion sickness and had to stop playing, i remember laying in bed too naucious to play, just waiting for it to pass a bit so i could continue playing.
Then when i got home i would sit at my desk and play it under the desk light, i took the jack from my computer and used it for the GBA, i was lost for hours and hours on end playing Golden Sun, hearing the magnificant soundtrack through my speakers.
Years later i bought the GBA SP so i could now play Golden Sun The lost Age in bed without any light, without my parents knowing.
Till this day i play Golden Sun on the GBPlayer on the GC, it is by far one of the best RPG's ever made, The story is great, the djinns make re-playing the game a lot of fun, the dungeons are SO much fun, the soundtrack is amazing, the way you could swap character in The Lost Age to change the battle theme was * chef's kiss* (Jenna's the best one). I wish there was a game (new) that was like this (that is a RPG and not a puzzle game) with puzzles and dungeons with dead ends where you'd have to return later, remember where those dungeons were, actually think about how to solve puzzles with the options available at the time. I have nothing but praise for this game and it is well deserved.
Great run! Also my first donation ever to RPGLB!!
Really happy to see Plexa showcase this series again, nice run
Golden Sun is a game I never managed to get through the puzzles in Sol Temple 21 years ago, as I was only 8 and didn't speak a lick of English.. So happy to see it here, explained, ran and showcased! x3
Brilliant run. Here’s hoping Nintendo returns this game to us some day
Agreed!
Did you try the third game? It's a sequel to the first two that takes place after the kids grow up and start families. It's on the DS.
@@orphious885 But it itself ends on a cliffhanger. Great game, but a very sad experience for a Golden Sun fan since (in all likelihood) we will never return to this series.
Great video. Love it. Golden sun ftw.
Great game series, i at one point redid the drop RNG item drop for all needed items, cause the ones at the time were long. Took many tries as to make them consistant and spot on. Not the same on TLA, all first encounters there are random, so takes many resets to get the right manip encounter, still great games.
Here is hopin for re-makes and continuation of the 3rd series.
I was watching during the part that you said I wouldn't be watching since it's after the fact and I'm DEEPLY offended I watch every second of these things I love watching you dudes :
I love this game so much
Golden sun is the bomb❤
Gameboy player + Gamecube + Golden Sun Cart = no emulation.
such a long run and getting so upset about fights taking one more turn. how optimized is the wr for this game.
its ABSURDLY optimized. And Plexa is the one who discovered something like 75% of the tech for it, like all his channel on UA-cam is is him discovering glitches and breaking the game. Golden sun is basically this man's fucking life, and its always been notoriously hard to get into marathons and the such due to its length. I couldn't believe he managed to get a Lost Age run into SGDQ last year, not even kidding. By his own admission, TBS (The original Golden Sun, which in Japanese is called "To Break The Seal") is very hard to get good times in simply because it has somewhere in the are of 30-45 minutes of dialogue at the beginning of the game.
@@Aleph3575 Late to the party, but yes, Eliss is correct. This is a really hard run to optimize because there is consistent RNG throughout the run. The console WR isn't very optimized but the Emulator WR is very good (held by ollie_). Using no cutscene patch as an estimate, there's really only about 2 hours of gameplay dispersed among 1.5hrs of cutscenes.
I will give a shoutout to RPGLB for being the first marathon to feature TLA and been a consistent friend to the speedrun community. And to ESA Marathon which has featured Golden Sun over the years (including Dark Dawn!).