Video Game / Golden Sun

"Ages ago, or so the stories tell, the power of Alchemy ruled over the world of Weyard..."

—Prologue of Golden Sun: The Lost Age

Golden Sun is a series of Eastern RPGs from Nintendo and Camelot Software Planning, who you may recall also made Mario Golf and Mario Tennis as well as Sega's Shining Series.

Golden Sun, subtitled The Broken Seal in Japan, tells the story of Isaac, a teenager from the village of Vale, gifted with the power of Psynergy, and his journey to stop a dangerous group of antagonists from releasing the ancient power of Alchemy and to rescue his friend Jenna. The resulting journey takes him and three companions through many lands and cultures to the Elemental Lighthouses, the seals preventing Alchemy's release.

Golden Sun: The Lost Age, released in 2003, is a Perspective Flip starting at the end of The Broken Seal, centered around the least dangerous of those antagonists.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, released in 2010 for the Nintendo DS, takes place thirty years later and stars the children of the characters from the original game, who are collectively called the Warriors of Vale.

The games, in addition to an enormous (if somewhat underdeveloped) cast of main characters, support characters, and recurring antagonists and villains, feature large, vibrant worlds, a deep character class system, superb music, clever Zelda-style puzzles, and some of the best graphics and sound to be found on the Game Boy Advance. Definitely worth a look for fans of the genre.

The game's battle system revolves around the presence of Djinn, elemental manifestations of nature released from the Sol Sanctum, where the Golden Sun lies. They, like the adepts who wield them, make up the different elements: Mercury for water and ice, Venus for the earth, plants and death, Mars for fire and magma, and Jupiter, for wind and lightning. There are a number of Djinn scattered throughout the gameworld (28 in the first game alone), and you Gotta Catch 'Em All. Once you have them, you equip them to your characters, which alters their Character Class depending on how many Djinn of which element you gave them. Of course, in battle you can also deploy your Djinn for burst damage, Status Buffs, etc, and if you had enough unattached Djinn floating around, you could then use Summon Magic for extra beat-down. ...Of course, deploying Djinn removed them from your character, reducing their stats and even changing their class mid-battle, so there was a trade-off involved.

There is a character sheet, which all are invited to add to help out in.

Each game in the series has its own page. Please keep this in mind before adding tropes that only apply to one game on this page.

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Tropes within the first duology:

A — K

• Ability Required to Proceed:
  • Various psynergy powers are required to solve puzzles or remove barriers. Most notable is Grind from the second game, which is almost never used after its first use to break the rock barriers that separate the oceans.
  • Similarly, Lift is used maybe once or twice to get into Magma Rock, which the first used quite a bit more.
  • In addition to Lift, Force was used a lot in the first game for various reasons. Here, its only use is to acquire a djinni if you intend on entering Anemos Sanctum, which you're locked out of if you don't transfer data with the Force Gem
• Absurdly High Level Cap: The level cap in each game is 99. A complete playthrough of the first game will end with your party in the high 20s to low 30s, the second and third will end in the low to mid 40s, and there are no Psynergies to learn beyond level 54.
• Aerith and Bob: The antagonists, especially: you have Alex and Felix alongside Karst (the most normal of the others), Saturos, Menardi, and Agatio. Though it's somewhat justified as they're a slightly different civilization from a distant corner of the world, and possibly not even human to boot.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: The Fire Clan have skin and hair of various odd colors, assuming that's even supposed to be skin and hair on them. Official art implies they may have scales.
• Anime Hair: Largely averted, the more outlandish hair styles and colors belong to Adepts which are the minority in the series.
• Another Side, Another Story: The first game takes place through Isaac's perspective, as he chases down Felix. Meanwhile, the second game takes place through Felix's perspective, as he's chased down by Isaac.
• Anti-Frustration Features: In some of the larger rooms that require you to run around a lot in order to complete the Block Puzzle, Random Encounters will be turned off for that room.
• Anti-Villain: Saturos, Menardi, Karst and Agatio, ruthless in their aim to release the potentially dangerous force of Alchemy to the world but motivated by the fact their hometown, and eventually the world, would deteriorate and collapse over time if they didn't.
• Automatic New Game: Both games start by prompting the player to name the character, before proceeding into a New Game.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Weapon unleashes are this by default. They get increasingly more dramatic and powerful as the game goes on but are random, making them increasingly unreliable to use against boss level enemies also. Their main purpose is to end random encounter battles more quickly without using up the psynergy, djinn and items better spent on more unique foes. However, if a player knows how to use and gets enough unleash rate boosting equipment, they instead become Boring, but Practical, making everything else almost pointless.
  • Iris, the game's ultimate summon, simultaneously completely heals your entire party (all eight, including dead party members) AND deals an insane amount of damage, more than three times as much as a level four summon. The drawback? It requires 13 standby djinn (9 Mars and 4 Mercury) to unleash. If you don't set them to standby outside of battle, you'll need a minimum of three turns dedicated solely to setting up for this summon. And don't forget that setting djinn to standby temporarily gimps your characters' stats. Also factor in three turns of recovery after doing the summon before your stats return to normal, and you've got an incredibly high cost summon that, while nice, isn't nearly worth the effort when you could accomplish the same thing with mundane but effective healing skills. Adding to that, the only way to earn Iris is to defeat the secret superboss. There's nothing else to use the summon on except the final story boss, who has a slight resistance against it.
    
    However, Iris still has one effective way of using it in the final battle, as it revives all members of the party, including inactive ones. So if you prepare the Djinn of your second party to immediately summon Iris, you can easily revive your first party as soon as they are defeated. But that is pretty much the only use this summon still has at this point in the game.
  • The Wings of Anemos on your ship. While you do indeed need it in order to bypass a few obstacles on the overworld, its other use is to move around the world quicker and avoid random sea battles. However, doing so drains the PP of your entire party in order to stay aloft. Useful, but only if you're impatient.
  • Pure Ply, which is generally available to Mercury-aligned adepts at around mid-level 30's. Heals about 1000HP, give or take depending on their Mercury power and costs 12PP to do so. Awesome, but it targets only a single adept and is pretty expensive for a single target heal. While it IS very useful for targeting a single warrior adept and bringing them back from near death, the likelihood of your heroes breaking over 1000 max HP without abusing the massive HP boosts of some of the more special classes is pretty slim without excessive level grinding. As a result, typically the lower Ply spells or even Cure spells will function just as well while Pure Ply will hardly ever see much use, especially if you're abusing the multi-target healing spells.
• Badass Normal: You fight several non-Adept humans in each game, and they are quite challenging, being devoid of Psynergy but having no elemental weakness and possessing mundane yet effective means of gaining the upper hand, such as throwing smoke bombs (the Thieves), calling allies to gang up on the enemy (Briggs), using flares to dazzle and incapacitate Djinni (the Dragon Generals) or just being extremely good warriors (The Gladiators).
  • Taken further in Dark Dawn as by that point, psynergy is more well-known and commonplace, meaning advancements in fighting Adepts. For example, the Tuaparang soldiers, non-adepts themselves, carry Psygrenades to reduce your PP to prevent you from casting psynergy.
• Bag of Sharing: Averted; each character has his/her own inventory.
• Barely-Changed Dub Name: Some characters had vastly different names in Japanese (Felix was Garcia, Kraden was Sclater), while others are less extreme: Mia (Mary), Matt(hew) (Muto), Tyrell (Terry), and Eoleo (Leoleo) in Japanese.
• Batman Gambit: Common in this series...
  • Alex is full of these, always seeming to be one step ahead of everyone else, knowing more than anyone at any time, and with plans for himself that go farther than anyone else is ever aware of until it's effectively too late.
  • It's confusing at first, but by the end of The Lost Age, you discover the entire first two games was one of these concocted by The Wise One. Knowing that the seal on Alchemy would spell Weyard's doom, but not telling Isaac any of this and simply insisting he chase after Saturos and Menardi and eventually Felix as they continue to light the Lighthouses and restore Alchemy in hopes that Isaac will slowly understand the state of the world and both the dangers it presents...but also how necessary it is for the world to survive. At Mars Lighthouse, he tests the combined party's resolve and dedication to their cause and the responsibility they'll assume in restoring Alchemy by forcing them to fight their parents merged as the Doom Dragon, knowing that even if they succeed, their parents will be safe with Mars' reactivation. And finally, he was always one step ahead of Alex, infusing the Mars Star with power so that Isaac would inherit power of the Golden Sun and not Alex way back in the first game, outgambitting the chessmaster himself.
• Battle Theme Music: Isaac, Felix, and Jenna each have separate battle themes associated with them. Once they join up in The Lost Age, Felix's plays if Felix is in the front party or none of the three are, Isaac's plays if he's in front but Felix isn't, and Jenna's plays if she's in front but neither Venus Adept is.
• Begin with a Finisher: By holding enough un-equipped Djinn, a character can unleash a powerful Summon attack, at the cost of those Djinn becoming unusable for several turns. An effective strategy for bosses throughout the series, up to and including Superbosses, is to un-equip all the party's Djinn before the battle and fire off every Summon available to take the boss down on the first turn. (However, since equipped Djinn provide stat boosts and abilities, any boss that isn't overwhelmed by the Summon barrage can easily take down the weakened party - and the final bosses of each game have multiple stages specifically to block this strategy.)
• Behind the Black: Frequently pulls the old, "Door the protagonist should really see but the player can't".
• Betting Mini-Game: Lucky Dice (Dice-throwing for coins) and the Lucky Medal Fountain (tossing coins and Lucky Medals into a fountain for equipment) are introduced in Tolbi in the first game. They return in different towns in the second with a new game, Super Lucky Dice (random dice-throwing and betting on if the value would sink or rise).
• BFS: The aptly named Huge Sword from the second game and its Unleash effect, "Heavy Divide". Also, Felix and Isaac's Ragnarok/Odyssey Psynergy spells. And the colossal sword held by the multi-elemental summon Catastrophe. And the Excalibur's "Legend" unleash. And the Gaia Blade's "Titan Blade" unleash. And the Darksword's "Acheron's Grief" unleash.
• Big Bad: Remarkable only in that it is ultimately averted. While there are malignant forces at play, such as greedy politicians or violent pirates, most of the evil monsters are only cruel out of madness or the deterioration of psynergy throughout Weyard. There is a Big Bad Wannabe, but Alex ends up being an Outside-Context Problem, since his whole plan relied on the heroes winning anyway and Isaac was a Spanner in the Works against Alex's plan the moment he got involved. No one even fights him - he effectively beats himself. This causes the series to focus more on exploration to solve a general threat, with White-and-Grey Morality being the major issue for the heroes to deal with in regards to humans and other sentient creatures they come to blows with.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • While the Western release lacks the overt Cthulhu Mythos reference, the Tomegathericon is still a neat treat. "To Mega Therion" is Greek for the Beast, as in the one in the Book of Revelations.
  • The city of Contigo has a Meaningful Name. "Contigo" is a Spanish phrase meaning "with you". In Spanish-language versions, the city's name is changed to Mitdir, from the German "mit dir" with the same meaning. Contigo/Mitdir is the city where Felix's group and Isaac's group finally settle their differences and team up with each other for the final parts of the game.
  • The name of the werewolf town in Lost Age, "Garoh", is possibly derived from the French "loup-garou", meaning werewolf.
  • The emblem on the antagonists' armor can be seen as the kanji for "fire", fitting their element.
• Bittersweet 17: At age 14, Isaac's father and Jenna's parents and brother are lost, when thieves break into the village sanctum and set off a trap that causes a giant boulder to fall. Three years later, the thieves return, stealing the Elemental Stars and kidnapping Jenna (Felix now working with them). Isaac and his best friend Garet are sent out to retrieve them, leaving the village for possibly the first time.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation:
  • Similar to the "Fire Bracelet/Breath" issue from Final Fantasy, there are several enemy moves in the first game called "Blessings" (Fire Blessing, Water Blessing, Evil Blessing), where the foe would spout said "Blessing" from its mouth. These were properly translated as "Breath" attacks in the second game.
  • Menardi's "Death Size" attack. This was fixed for Karst in The Lost Age, who used the exact same attack.
  • The Lost Age had Dullahan's Fulminous Edge attack mistranslated as "Formina Sage", and his Dark Contact attack mistranslated as "True Collide". Both were corrected in his appearance in Dark Dawn.
  • The Venus Psynergy "Fear Puppet" is translated as "Fire Puppet". Its attack sequence shows a ghost projecting out of the user to induce fear on the enemy, not spitting fire.
• Block Puzzle: A lot. Several Psynergies are introduced to remove blocks in various ways.
• Blow You Away: Ivan, Sheba, Karis, Sveta, and all other Jupiter Adepts have wind Psynergy as one of their main abilities. They can cast spells such as the Whirlwind series, which conjure one or more tornadoes (that are charged with lightning) to attack enemies or clear away leaves and sand, or the Slash series, which launches blades of Razor Wind. Also, the Jupiter Djinni Gale deals damage and has a chance to literally blow the enemy "far away!", removing the enemy from battle.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Due to certain pieces of equipment having the capability of boosting Unleash rates (certain combinations allow up to one hundred and four percent chance to Unleash, normal attacks generally outclass attack Psynergy (with the exception of psynergy such as Astral Blast, Planet Dive, and Cutting Edge, which factor weapon damage into the damage of the psynergy) in terms of sheer damage. Especially deadly when combined with the Sol Blade's Unleash effect, which does three times the normal damage every time. Granted, many of the endgame weapon unleashes are even more fantastical (and outright necessary if you want to win quickly) than most attack Psynergy.
  • Passive PP regeneration items for mages are extremely unexciting yet highly valuable against most of the end-game bosses and the Arena mode.
  • Probably the most boring but practical strategy is to utilize shield Djinn. Flash gives you 90% damage reduction for one turn, and Shade gives you 60% damage reduction for another turn. Have two party members spend their actions alternating these two unleashes while a third heals any damage that you take, while the fourth party member chips away at the enemy's HP. You're essentially invincible against anything that can't mess with your Djinn, but don't expect this method to be any fun.
  • Learning equipment slots and making use of them all. Undershirts aren't very fancy (with the logical exceptions of the Mythril Shirt and the Golden Shirt in TLA), but give good stat boosts.
  • The default class (also referred to as mono-Type), as in only equipping djinn to the character of that element. They may not offer anything fancy, but they are pretty reliable when it comes to elemental power and psynergy. They are also the most recoverable against Djinn recoveries from either a summon or a monster's ability that wears out djinn like Djinn Storm.
  • Lighthouses refilling PP to the assigned adept. Go ahead and use as much PP magic that you need during the lighthouses because you won't run out.
• Boss Rush: The battle mode has a potential to turn into this, as it randomly selects creatures you have encountered during the main game. Sometimes, the game selects multiple bosses in a row. This can become very painful with an endgame party in The Lost Age, as you can potentially encounter multiple of the game's superbosses, all of which were difficult on their own, but almost impossible when fighting them without a pause.
• Bragging Rights Reward: Beating the superboss Dullahan rewards the player with the Iris summon, a ridiculouly powerful and impractical summon that has no use except as eye candy because you've already defeated the strongest enemy in the game to get it. After you earn it, you'll never encounter another battle where you need it.
• Broken Bridge: Several straight examples that occur in the overworld map and fix themselves later. Also done differently with a raised drawbridge, and the guy who would gladly lower it is unable to do so because the curse on a nearby town has transformed him into a tree.
• Buffy Speak: Kraden amusingly refers to the Black Crystal that controls Lemurian ships as "The thingie... that makes it go."
• But Thou Must!: In every cutscene you're presented several yes/no choices of opinion that don't affect anything other than the next two lines of the dialogue, except for once early in the game, where refusing the quest results in a Non Standard Gameover.
  • The Lost Age spoofs it if you answer no on every question up to a certain point.
  • There is one scene at the beginning of the first game where Jenna will keep asking Isaac the same thing over and over until you says yes.
  • The same goes for Flint and Echo, the first Djinni in each game. After enough refusals, the Djinn force themselves into the party anyways.
  • Double-subverted in Champa in the second game. When Obaba asks Felix to leave, the player can choose to say "Yes" and walk away without a fight. The problem is: The plot can't progress until after the boss battle at Champa, meaning that at some point, Felix will have to go back and refuse to back down.
• The Cameo:
  • The fairy Mia summons as her Ply spell is Primula from Shining Force III.
  • Additionally, in the Japanese version, the Superboss of the first game, Deadbeard, is called Talos, which is the name of a recurring boss from the Shining series (which would explain why he looks less like a pirate and more like a giant suit of armor).
  • The Lost Age has a sprite sheet for Link in game but unused.
• Changing Gameplay Priorities: In the early game, managing Djinn is very important and very difficult, because of the way the game assigns new Djinni that you find. Come endgame, you have enough Djinn to keep summoning various gods over and over again, and it's much easier to line up the correct numbers of Djinn for massive stat boosts.
• Character Class System: A very elaborate one based around equipping the Djinn— having more Djinn equipped unlocked more advanced classes, while putting Djinn in standby or recovery modes disabled the classes. Different combinations of Adept and Djinn produce different classes. Many players simply equip every party member only with Djinn of their own default element (default classes), which makes using Djinn for their own abilities more convenient at the expense of limiting the versatility of the characters, while others experiment to find classes suited to their play style, which could result in very powerful characters that get utterly ruined the moment they try to use a Djinni's power.
  • The Lost Age also has equipment items that, in conjunction with Djinn, can allow party members to access specific classes. These are useful because no matter how many Djinn a character uses they'll always be in some form of the item-specific class.
  • Piers suffers under the class system— Mercury Adept cross-class options are primarily mage-types, and he's a warrior-type character. Jenna is a mage-type Mars Adept whose cross-class options are mainly warrior-types, but she doesn't have it quite so bad, as she's more balanced than Piers.
  • Certain utility Psynergy, such as Whirlwind and Growth, are only usable by specific classes, hampering use of the class system. Dark Dawn addressed this issue by making these powers character-specific rather than class-specific.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Pretty much any time you see a puddle of water before you acquire your party's Mercury Adept (or the Frost Jewel in the first game).
  • The first game also has the heavy boulders that require the Lift Psynergy (acquired roughly halfway through the game) located in the first couple of towns. Usually returning once you have the appropriate Psynergy yields a bit of treasure, often including a Djinni.
  • The second game, however, has one of the prongs of the Trident of Ankohl, a plot-critical item, hidden in the very first dungeon, unreachable on your first trip due to Piers not yet being in the party.
  • The Wise One's action before Isaac takes the Mars Star in the first game finally becomes significant in the ending.
• Chest Monster: Played straight with Mimics in several areas in each game. They drop good items, though, so it's worth battling each one.
• Classical Elements Ensemble: Each game features a playable party of four with each member representing one of the four (fire, water, earth, wind) elements in the series and having the respective Elemental Power associated.
• Climax Boss: The first fight against Saturos in the first game and the fight against Karst and Agatio in the second game, both at the top of one of the elemental lighthouses.
• Color-Coded Elements: In general, the elemental affinities are treated this way. Adepts will have hair, eyes, and/or clothes that follow the color scheme for their element.
  • Mars/Fire is red, orange, or yellow— the "warm" colors. The main exception is the Mars Clan, though they do all have red eyes. Mars Djinn are orange with blue eyes.
  • Venus/Earth is yellow, brown, or plant-green. Isaac is also a Primary-Color Champion (as is his eventual son) while Felix gets green. The only exception is the Venus Lighthouse, which has purple decorations on pale green-grey walls. Venus Djinn, though, are straight brown and tan.
  • Mercury/Water is, of course, blue. Mercury Djinn have blue bodies with green thoraxes and pink tailclaws.
  • Jupiter/Wind is a strange case, since it's also the typical element Psychic Powers are associated with. As a result, Jupiter is predominantly purple, but sometimes paired with green. Jupiter Djinn are lavender.
• Composite Character: Some of the summons are a composite of deities from several myths; Atalanta is mixed with Artemis, Iris is a cross between her namesake in Classical Mythology and several solar deities, and Coatlicue's animation is inspired from Aphrodite's birth from the sea.
• Continue Your Mission, Dammit!:
  • In the first game, Layana tells Ivan off for trying to rescue Hammet from being held for ransom with the explanation that whatever quest he's on with Isaac & Co. must be more urgent, even though she doesn't know what it is. In the second, his sister Hama tells him off for trying to find out more about his birth family for similar reasons (though at least she knows what's going on).
• Contractual Boss Immunity: The Useless Useful Spell is anything but for most of the first game but status effects get progressively less useful as the second game chugs along.
• Conveniently an Orphan: Zig-zagged for all of the main cast.
  • Isaac's father and Jenna's parents and brother are killed off right in the intro. Then it quickly turns out that the brother survived and seems to be an enemy. Then in the second game, it turns out the trope is completely subverted: the parents and Isaac's dad also survived and were made hostages, and saving them is a big motivator to the quest. So the kids are not actually orphans... then they accidentally almost kill their own parents themselves near the end of the game.
  • Poor Isaac's mother has to almost force her son to keep going on his quest and is a source of worry, as she falls gravely ill in his absence.
  • Ivan is an orphan and his adoptive father is kidnapped as you meet him, but the trope is toyed with: you're told that you can't do anything about it and you should just leave the father behind, but Ivan worries a lot, and you get an optional sidequest to free his father and ease his mind; and in the second game Ivan's mysterious parentage is a plot point.
  • Sheba is also an adopted orphan and joins the group because she was kidnapped, but she's an inversion of the trope: in the second game, she refuses to drop by her hometown because her worried adoptive family would force her to stay.
  • Piers is a straight and extreme example: he spends the first half of the game trying to go home, then when he finally does, he learns that his mother just died and he quickly gets exiled.
  • Mia would be a straight example, having simply no mentioned family at all... but she is the one character who is sad to leave (she says farewell to her two young apprentices) and it's more a case of "conveniently rid of her town-healer duties". Dark Dawn implies that Mia and Alex are cousins, but since Alex doesn't live in Imil, the trope still applies to her.
  • And Garet is a complete inversion: he's the only cast member who has a large, living and functional family, but they all encourage him to leave the town and fatherless Isaac gets more angst (since he's leaving his mother alone); then in the epilogue cutscene of the second game Garet comes home, finds Vale destroyed, and thinks for a moment that they all died.
• Conveniently Coherent Thoughts: Mind-reading functions much the same as dialogue, typically adding to or clarifying whatever an NPC says. (This can be amusing if you read someone's mind before talking to him, and he thinks something related to a question you haven't yet asked him.)
• Cooldown Manipulation:
  • After Djinn are used to summon a spirit, they need to recover and are unavailable for use, becoming available one at a time per turn, in the order they were used. The Mercury Djinni Eddy resets one Djinni per character in a single turn.
  • The Jupiter Djinni Kite gives one character an extra turn on the turn after it's used.
  • The Superboss Valukar can use your own summons against you, after which your Djinn will need to recover. Thankfully he often uses this ability without waiting for strong, multi-Djinn summons to be available and his speed is nothing to write home about.
  • In the second and third games, some enemies have abilities that put Djinn in the recovery state one or two at a time. One of the (many) reasons the Dullahan is so feared is because he can force every Djinni on every character into recovery (an ability shared with the Final Boss), not only massively lowering their stats, but also depriving them of Summon Magic, group healing and revive spells.
• Cosmic Keystone: The Elemental Stars and their Elemental Lighthouses are a system that was created ages ago to seal away the power of Alchemy. It was sealed because people misused it to wage war, but Saturos, Menardi, and Alex want to unleash that power again. And as the second game establishes, the world is withering away without Alchemy. Undoing the seal is vital to prevent the world from undergoing a slow, painful death.
• Creator Provincialism: A variation that applies to character classes; the Ninja and Samurai classes gets the strongest and fanciest spells while having high stats for everything compared to the others.
• Critical Hit: Both normal critical hits and the special attacks each of the weapons may automatically launch on their own.
• Crossover Cosmology: The summons feature gods and creatures from Greco-Roman, Phrygian, Norse, Egyptian, Aztec and Chinese pantheon in addition to some demons to the measure.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: Sanctums (usually staffed by priests and monks) that drive away evil spirits, a Clan's worship and protection of its corresponding element/sacred place, calling upon pagan gods to smite thine enemies into oblivion...
• Cursed Item: In gameplay, curses from equipping this on occasion prevent your character from acting, and you cannot remove the equipped item in question unless you visit a sanctum.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: More like a heavy strap. If you have access to the Revive psynergy, "downed" characters aren't much of a problem, but during the first half of a game a fallen ally means walking all the way back to the nearest Sanctum to pay a hefty fee in order to bring them back. Waters of Life accomplish the same thing, but those are expensive, and very hard to come by.
• Deceptive Disciple: Alex. Exactly who he was disciple to varies by the translation. It's either Mia or Mia's father.
• Delayed "Oh, Crap!": When Isaac's party argues over Saturos's terms over Sheba's well being (they thought he would let her go, but he only said she wouldn't be harmed), Menardi points out that Sheba can't return to Laviero alone. Ivan insists that his party would escort her back, only for him to realize that Saturos and Menardi are going to kill them instead.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • The "Halt" Psynergy will work on just about every NPC you meet - and talking to them will cause them to suddenly speak slowly before wearing off. It will even work if you imported it into the second game.
  • In the Playable Epilogue, you can actually mind read various NPCs and they have dialogue. You can't do this in normal gameplay however - as Ivan and Sheba are not in your party.
  • There is a part in the second game wherein Piers leaves. But, however, the party will still be required to use the Lash psynergy without Piers. If the player had given the Lash Pebble to Piers, the game will have extra dialogue wherein the player is chastized for being beaten by a simple rope.
  • In the first game, it's possible to not pick up the Force orb before entering an area where it is mandatory. If the player does this, Garet will instead kick the item in frustration.
  • In the first game, it's also possible to go straight to Imil instead of Kolyma Forest - which is the event that prompts the player to go to Imil in the first place. The game will in fact have extra dialogue that will take this into account - and the player won't have to backtrack to Imil as they will already have a bottle of the water from when they went to the Mercury Lighthouse.
• Digitized Sprites: Almost all sprites were pre-rendered.
• Dishing Out Dirt: Venus Adepts. Isaac's and Felix's default class in particular has a lot of rock- and dirt-themed Psynergy spells, like the Spire series, which drops giant stalactites on enemies, or the Quake series, which shakes the ground so hard that it launches enemies in the air.
• Divine Race Lift: The Nereid summon is a turtle-riding Japanese princess in the first two games. The Lost Age also introduced Coatlicue and Ulysses summons, both who vaguely resemble Japanese shrine maidens.
• Doomed Hometown
  • Double Subversion. Golden Sun opens with a (mostly successful) attempt to keep it from happening to Vale, then the town is destroyed anyway after the finale to The Lost Age. And subverted again at that point since Mr. Floating Rock warned the villagers of the impending catastrophe beforehand, allowing them to stay out of town before it happens.
  • Also, an inversion when it turns out that Saturos and Menardi were motivated by the fact that their home town of Prox was on the verge of being consumed by an encroaching abyss, and only the restoration of Alchemy would save it.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: What the Wise One hopes will happen with Isaac's quest. It wants Isaac to be strong enough to defeat Saturos and Menardi and protect the world but not quite capable enough to pull ahead of Felix and find out the world would be destroyed anyways. It's possible that every miraculous event between Isaac defeating Saturos and Menardi and the beginning of the second game is nothing but the Wise One interfering to ensure that Isaac doesn't complete his quest perfectly.
• Dual Boss: Several times throughout each game, usually against whoever the antagonistic duo happens to be.
• Dub Name Change: Most of the playable characters (Robin, Gerald, Mary, Garcia, Jasmine, and Picard to Isaac, Garet, Mia, Felix, Jenna, and Piers. And those only for the English version. See the character sheet for details.), and several of the Psynergy, itself changed from Energy, to give a better idea of their functions (such as changing the debuffer Psynergy known as "Splash" in the Japanese version to "Break" in English) or to fit within the character limit ("Scramble Beam" in Japanese became "Searing Beam" in English, for example; also applies to several character names).
• Earth/Wind Juxtaposition:
  • As a game mechanic, Venus (earth and plants) and Jupiter (wind and lightning) are opposed to each other, with earth-aligned enemies taking more damage from wind attacks and vice-versa. Killing one with a Djinni of the appropriate element gives not only extra gold and experience, but increases the chance of it dropping an item.
  • However, the characters themselves have no problems with each other for the element they're most attuned to (apart from their resistance to the opposite element being only slightly lower than the ones they're neutral towards). If anything the Magic Knight Venus-aligned characters are protective of the Squishy Wizard Jupiters.
  • In the second and third games, summons can use multiple elements together, including opposites. One of the most powerful summons is Charon, who uses Venus and Jupiter, and can potentially take out enemies in a One-Hit Kill. It's awkward to set up and usually not worth using against enemies, which is likely why the Dullahan uses it against the party.
• Elemental Hair Colors: Venus Adepts have brown hair, Mars Adepts have bright red hair (unless from the Mars Clan of Prox), and Mercury Adepts have blue hair. Jupiter Adepts tend toward blonde (with overlap for light-haired Venus Adepts) or purple, but Dark Dawn gives them more variety.
• Elemental Nation: The Adept clans of Golden Sun fall into this, particularly the Mars Clan of Prox, the Mercury Clan of Imil, and the (functionally-extinct) Jupiter Clan of (vanished) Anemos. Lemuria would also qualify, being exclusively Mercury, though it doesn't identify as such as readily as the others. There's no sign of where or who the Venus Clan was, and Adepts of all four elements have been known to exist elsewhere.
• Elemental Personalities:
  • Fire Adepts are typically Hot-Blooded Fiery Redheads.
  • Earth Adepts are prone to laconic speech, leadership roles, and puzzle-solving.
  • Water Adepts are calm, generally keep to themselves or are outright secretive, and are intellectual, usually trained as medics. They're also frequently the resident Deadpan Snarkers, especially when it seems counterintuitive for them to be.
  • Wind Adepts tend to be mysterious and often have traditional Psychic Powers (mind-reading, clairvoyance, and precognition) in addition to wind and lightning powers.
• Elemental Powers: Virtually every major character except Kraden is an Adept of a specific Element, meaning he or she can use Psynergy of that element. A lot of monsters can use these too. Depending on Djinn setup, the characters can even use Psynergy they normally wouldn't be able to use otherwise.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Severely downplayed. Most monsters aren't identified with a specific element, and no "Element X does this to that" tutorial is ever given. The only even remotely obvious ingame sign of it existing is the punctuation used in the battle messages when enemies get hit by elements they're weak, neutral or strong against: the said messages will end with !!!, ! and ., respectively. In addition, elements are only weak to the opposing one (Fire takes and deals more damage to Water and vice versa), simplifying things. However, it's useful to know what enemies are weak to what element when you're farming for loot or experience, since dealing the death blow with an advantageous Djinni results in more Experience Points/money and better chances for rare item drops.
• Elemental Tiers:
  • The ultimate weapon in both games is earth-aligned. The Infinity Plus One summon is fire-aligned, but so very impractical (and seeing little use) that the Infinity Minus One summons are used (and more for their effects than straight damage).
  • However, about 80% of the enemies and bosses are weak against Jupiter and resists Venus including the Final Boss of the second game, making Venus-based offenses not worth using most of the time. The fact that most mid-to-end game weapons having powerful Jupiter unleashes also says something about said element's complete dominance in battles.
• Embarrassing Superpower: Inverted early on in the first game, where Ivan uses his Mind Read ability (he needs to touch the other person or at least be very close) on the heroes without asking for their permission. After he apologizes for it and the ability is used to capture three thieves... the game gives no penalty for using the Psynergy on other people (mitigated by the fact that non-Adepts can't feel or see Psynergy, but they seem unfazed about these teens with No Sense of Personal Space). Thirty years later in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, it's said he no longer uses the power, possibly due to A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read.
• Encounter Repellant: The Avoid Psynergy and Sacred Feather item lowers encounter rates.
• End of an Age: The results of sealing off Alchemy and letting the world waste away for centuries.
• Enemy Summoner: Several common monsters, and bosses like Briggs and Star Magician. The Superboss Valukar can even turn your own Summons against you, at the expense of your party's Standby Djinn.
• Engrish: The people of Xian have a few noticeable lines with odd grammar ("Using much armor is good for them") and use a number of 1- or 2-word sentences in sequence ("Relax. Stay long."). Thankfully, it is done pretty subtly.
• Enigmatic Minion: Alex. Saturos, Menardi, Karst, and Agatio fit as well, but we eventually do figure out what they all want and what their problem is. There is still a good deal of mystery surrounding Alex, other than that it's fairly certain his ultimately loyalty is ultimately to himself and only himself.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: The Elemental Lighthouses, sort of.
• Familiar: Djinn act mostly like familiars, enhancing or changing the abilities of their Adept master and granting Summon Magic.

• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Weyard is basically a loose analogue of Earth:
  • Angara is Europe in the West, with Tolbi a budding Roman Empire, and Asia in the East with Xian and the Fujin and Lama Temples connected to the west by the Silk Road. The Ankohl Ruins are obviously Cambodian-inspired.
  • Gondowan is Africa, with Arabic influences around the Suhalla desert and more stereotypically African influences further south.
  • Indra, east of Gondowan, is India, complete with a town called Daila for Delhi. Osenia's culture is a mixed bag, but it does resembles Australia geographically with Air's Rock in the middle of the central desert.
  • The Eastern sea features Polynesian equivalents on the various islets and the Apojii Islands, a Japan equivalent in Izumo, and Tundaria for Antarctica.
  • Finally, the Western Sea has native Americans in Hesperia, and a Mayincatec civilisation in Atteka.
• Fantasy Counterpart Map: The map of Weyard in Golden Sun resembles a map of Earth in the Late Cretaceous Period around 90 million years ago. Bonus points for the continents named Angara (after the ancient continent of the same name, now part of Siberia), Gondowan (after Gondwanaland, which includes Africa which corresponds to the same), and Indra (after the Indian subcontinent).
• Fantasy Landmark Equivalent: Air's Rock, a wind-themed dungeon that lies in the middle of a desert and gives the heroes the Reveal ability is heavily based on Ayers Rock / Uluru, a big sandstone formation in the middle of the Australian desert.

• Final Dungeon Preview: Inverted in that Venus Lighthouse is the final dungeon of the first game, while it's the starting location for the second game. This makes sense as the second game starts a little bit before the end of the first game's story.
• Flaming Meteor: 'Meteor' is the highest-level pure fire-element summon, which brings down a meteor the size of the screen into the enemy. The animation is even more complex in the third game, where it breaks apart slightly and is seen heating up in the atmosphere.
• Flat World: Weyard is a flat world that is eroding as water spills over its edges. It's up to you to fix that.
• Floating Continent: Mentioned in gossip in the second game that this world's moon is one of these. Source of many Epileptic Trees. And the main world itself appears to be a giant floating landmass above an abyss.
• Floating Platforms: Many dungeons feature these, sometimes justified by some wind generating mechanism, often times not.
• Food Porn: Looking in the ovens and stoves in both games can get you power-up food items or descriptions of what the people who live there are having for dinner. Some of these can be quite appetizing, others are a bit more exotic.
  Felix looked in the oven. It's lamb on the bone, broiled over an open flame. The lamb is golden brown and juicy. They'd probably notice if I took some... too bad.
  Felix looked in the oven. Ew! They're frying up bug larvae! It looks awful... but it smells GREAT!
• Foreshadowing:
  • If you have played The Lost Age and know Saturos and Menardi's true intentions, Jenna's actions in the Mercury Lighthouse suddenly seem a lot more like her trying to bring Isaac, Garet, Ivan, and Mia up to speed but being intimidated by Menardi (and being shuffled away quickly), rather than her attempting to warn them of Saturos hiding nearby.
  • A number of NPCs also hint of what is to come. For example, if you use Mind Read on a certain old man in Madra, he will mention in his thoughts about Poseidon and the Trident of Ankohl as early as your first visit.
    If the mythical sea creature has awakened, we're all in trouble... The legends say that only one armed with an enchanted trident can kill it.
• Fragile Speedster: The default classes of Ivan, Sheba, and Jenna are designed for striking first and hoping the recipient does not strike back. Karst is their counterpart on the opposing side.
• Friendly Fireproof: Many summons and a couple of weapon unleashes only affect enemies. Often times your party appears to be spirited to safety but as for the general environment? This becomes ridiculous in the first game when fighting the Kraken on the Tolbi-bound ship. You can use the Meteor and Judgment summons against it and said ship will not be damaged in any way.
• Funny Background Event: This happens quite a bit throughout all three of the games, mostly courtesy of NPCs.
  • In the scene before Isaac and Garet are sent off on their journey, two children are talking about it. In the background, first a dog runs around the shop behind them, and later the children notice a cat being chased by said dog.
  • Most of the people of Kolima are not happy (or at best philosophical) about being stuck as trees. On the other hand...
    "If I can't move, Mom can't make me go to bed!"
  • When Briggs is leaving Alhafra, with all the overt humour of the scene, it's easy to miss the amusing things the people on land are doing.
• Fusion Dance: Each of the games' final boss is a fusion of characters; Saturos and Menardi in the first game become a two-headed dragon, the parents of Felix and Isaac's dad are turned into a three-headed dragon, and in Dark Dawn, Volechek as the Chaos Hound, Blados, Chalis, and the Dark Adepts are turned into the Chaos Chimera.
• Genius Loci: Tret Tree in the first game, which doesn't just serve as the home of several creatures but can even talk to those who enter it/him. The Great Gabomba in the second is an obstacle course of sorts brought to life by a godly possessor.
• Going Through the Motions:
  • Basically every emotional reaction is represented by jumping up and down. There is even a scene in the first game where the two main-characters try to explain that the world is going to end and stuff by running around and jumping.
  • Luckily they still have Pictorial Speech Bubbles to express emotions with.
• Green Rocks: Purple Psynergy stones showered over the world by the eruption of Mt. Aleph change everything — wild animals becoming monsters, normal people gaining Psynergy powers, etc.
• Green Thumb: There are a few Venus Psynergy effects that attack with plants, but only Himi can use them without changing classes. Thorn, Growth, and their respective upgrades attack by rapidly growing thorned plants under the caster's targets.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • There are Djinn that are fought as Random Encounters on the overworld map in somewhat arbitrary regions that don't look like they could be hiding anything, and there's only a chance they'll appear in battles instead of the usual monsters when you wander in those areas. In The Lost Age, though, most people never realize that the fortune teller in Naribwe is a hint-system that gives a vague clue as to where the next Djinni not yet in your collection is. Just show him one of your pieces of armor.
  • Killing an enemy with a Djinni unleash of the element it's weak to will give you a major boost in XP, coins, and item drop probability. The game doesn't have any indication that this mechanic exists (except for the target monster glowing different colors and screaming twice as it dies), even though it's almost required to get some of the game's rarer item drops.
  • Some classes ended up relatively obscure. While classes like Brute, Hermit and Swordsman are intuitive, classes like Ninja and Samurai^note The best character classes in the game don't as they require a specific number and type of Djinn on a specific type of adept. Some players may figure out other classes outside of internet guides and manuals but the same usually cannot be said for those two.
  • Most players have a hard time even knowing about the existence of weapons and gear obtained through Rare Drops without a guide since the chances of getting such items are very low under normal circumstances.
  • There are no indications on what spells, weapon unleashes, and the two-element summons actually do in-game, especially the ones with fancy effects and damage multipliers. All you're given is a name for weapon unleashes and one sentence of flavor text for spells and summons.
• Happily Adopted:
  • Sheba. None of her family even mention that she's adopted, despite her unknown origins being a plot point.
  • Ivan doesn't even bother referring to Hammet and Layana as his parents, as he's fully aware he's fostered... but don't mess with them. Ever.
• Heroic Mime: Isaac and Felix. Possibly the most ridiculous example of silent protagonists in any RPG, because both talk like anyone else when they're not playable (Felix in the first game; Isaac in the second game). Even The Lost Age's ending has Felix give up the idea and talk to Isaac, Garet, and Kyle to reassure them. Although, at some point in both games, the playable character does make some form of expression. Isaac goes "!!!" at the end of the events in the Venus Lighthouse and Felix pulls the classic "..." on Piers after Jenna and Sheba bug him about his age. Felix also blurts out "Why?" when someone was explaining the rules to a competition he was in, but this is a slight mistranslation from the Japanese version text that is just "???".
  • This trait is inherited by Matthew in Dark Dawn, and yes, Isaac speaks just fine in that game too.
• Heal It with Water:
  • The water element healing spell series are the most potent, those being Ply for single-target and Wish for multi-target healing. Water is also the only element to provide status recovery spells, and one of only two to have a status recovery Djinni (Tonic).
  • The Water of Life item revives a fallen party member.
  • In general, Mercury (Water) Adept characters are slanted towards healing and support. Best exemplified by Mia, a water user who works as a healer and acts as the White Magician Girl. Egregiously, she and Piers (the other Mercury Adept in the party) are the only ones to attempt to heal Isaac's dad and Felix and Jenna's parents after nearly killing them as the Doom Dragon, despite over half of the party having healing spells in their base classes as well. Mia's son Rief shares her abilities.
  • The Water of Hermes is obtained after igniting the Mercury Lighthouse, and is used to restore Tret after his insane evil personality has been defeated and keep Imil's inhabitants safe from any disease. If reobtained, it can be used to fully heal a party member. It re-appears in Dark Dawn to restore Tret again, though only the one can be obtained.
  • Lemuria's inhabitants live multiple centuries thanks to the properties of the water from their island's fountain. Babi escaped the island with several bottles of the water, but his supply is running out after decades and he sends the heroes to get more.
• Healing Winds: The Jupiter (Wind) Djinni Breath is one of the first ones found in both The Lost Age and Dark Dawn, who heals 40% of a character's HP, making the early game easier to survive. Note that this association is absent in Japanese, where its name is Rescue because the healing always occurs at the start of the party's turn.
  • Dark Dawn also introduces the Fresh Breeze series for Karis, which heals the party and is the main source of healing until Rief, as noted in the entry above, joins the party.
• Hidden Elf Village: Vale is this, keeping themselves secret so knowledge of Psynergy doesn't get out. Shaman Village fits too—when you arrive, the inhabitants won't even speak to you. Garoh as well, because they're afraid of persecution for the whole werewolf thing.
• Hitchhiker Heroes: Ivan and Mia in the first game, Piers in the second game. Justified, as an adept of each type is necessary to enter each lighthouse. It's stranger that half of your party comes from the same town in spite of the fact it only produces two kinds of adepts. Though given the town is something of a Hidden Elf Village, it makes the hitchhiking nature of the party even more justified, in the first two games.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The prologue in the first game has a young Isaac and Garet being ambushed by Saturos and Menardi. You cannot win the fight. If you somehow do beat them (mostly through hacks or cheats), the game still proceeds as if you lost.
• Hostage for MacGuffin: Jenna and Kraden in the first game in exchange for the Mars Star, Felix and Jenna's parents in the second in exchange for lighting the Lighthouses.
• Ice Magic Is Water: Mercury adepts have abilities mainly based around water, but use ice for several of their offensive abilities, and start off with Freeze as a field move.
• An Ice Person: The Mercury Clan (including Mia, Rief, and Alex) and the Lemurians (such as Piers) all have an affinity for freezing Psynergy. Some spells available to Mercury Adepts include Diamond Berg, which encases an enemy in ice that the caster then strikes with their weapon; the Frost series, which freezes the area around up to three enemies; and the Prism series, which batter the caster's foes with a flurry of giant ice crystals.
• I'll Be Your Best Friend: Used in Golden Sun 2 by the first Djinni you meet, if you keep refusing to take him along with you. He comes along anyway.
• Immortality Field: The waters of the fountain of Lemuria greatly slow the aging process of those who drink it, allowing them to extend their lifespan for centuries. Only one outsider ever stole water from there, but as his supply ran out he mounted doomed expeditions to retrieve more, eventually dying offscreen between the first two games
• Informed Ability: Kraden says even a single one of the elemental stars would allow one to conquer the world, but you carry one around for the majority of both games with no gameplay-related effect other than having one inventory spot being taken up by them.
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: And not just the fences. Oftentimes your path is blocked by less-than-knee-high ROCKS.
  • As lampshaded by Feizhi, "Waah! Silk Road! Boulders block the road!".
  • Played with in the prologue of the first game, when Saturos and Menardi jump up and down cliffs without a second thought.
  • There's a Venus Djinni in Kolima walled-in by fences that might or might not be the same height as said Djinni. The only way to obtain it is to find a secret passage leading to said spot, and not simply climbing over the fence.
  • Another Venus Djinni near the Kalay Docks is trapped behind a landslide-which are around Isaac's height at most on the overworld.
  • Similar thing with the Living Statues - you see the Statue cast frost on a puddle, then proceed to jump up a precipice and onto the frozen pillar, rather than just jumping up on the other side...
• Invisible Means Undodgeable: To at least the people in universe who can't see Psynergy.
• Invisible to Normals: Psynergy cannot be seen by non-Adepts. This disparity naturally comes into play during a few different places during the story, for instance, when the party first meets Piers. However, if the Psynergy produces any physical effects, then anyone can see it. Whether or not they notice it...
• It's All Upstairs From Here:
  • With four lighthouses (technically five and a mountain sanctuary) between two games, expect to be doing a lot of climbing.
  • Compared to the lighthouses, the hugenormous Elemental Rock dungeons involve long stretches of literal mountain climbing.
  • And the three towers containing the Trident of Ankohl also qualify — though one of them had an elevator, so there wasn't as much climbing involved there.
• Jack of All Trades: The party leaders Isaac and Felix are quite well-rounded and can fit in various roles.
• Kamaitachi: While the critter itself doesn't appear in the game, there is an item (called Weasel's Claw in the translation) that lets the user attack with Jupiter (wind) Psynergy by hurling Razor Wind at enemies.
• Katanas Are Just Better: The Kikuichimonji and Muramasa in the first game, Masamune in the second.
• Keep It Foreign: A few of the Japanese names were actually typical Western ones, and got changed in Western releases to sound a bit more exotic. Notable examples include Robin -> Isaac, and Mary -> Mia.
• Ki Manipulation: For some reason, Ki and Chi are described as two different things on Weyard. A rudimentary form of former can be generated by your psynergy with, provided you can earn the appropriate item, but the latter can only be obtained through harsh training and you aint got time for that!
• Kid Hero: Most of the playable cast is 18 or under. The only exceptions are Piers, who is probably several hundred years old and Felix (who is 18), though most of the cast is 17 with implications that the journey has taken a year or more (it is stated to be winter when at Imil and winter to have just ended when in Contigo after lighting the light house with many references to months between the events indicating it is not the same winter, Colosso is mentioned to have taken place last year in the final stretch of The Lost Age), making Ivan and Sheba the only examples by the end.
• Kill It with Water: Most fire-breathing enemies are weak to water, including the Proxians. The most obvious example are the tornado lizards however. One does not need to kill them with water but your adepts cannot even harm them unless they get wet.
• Kill Sat: The Venus summon, Judgment, who is a giant knight that shoots a bolt of destructive energy from a lion head on one arm. Eclipse, a giant dragon who fires a breath weapon from low orbit, and Catastrophe, who's Judgment's Evil Twin.
• Kirin: The second Mars summon is a kirin that appears through a portal, gallops at full tilt towards the enemy and rams it to deal damage.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: As is typical for the genre, you barge into a lot of people's homes and steal all of their stuff.

L — Z

• Lava Magic Is Fire: Garet's highest-level fire-based Herd-Hitting Attack summons pillars of lava from underground underneath the enemy.
• Least Common Skin Tone: Averted amongst the NPCs at least — with its liberal use of Fantasy Counterpart Culture, the player will meet Africans, Middle Eastern people, Asians, Native Americans, and even Pacific Islanders (though the sprites are recycled from one edge of the world to another). The party members, however, all share the same ethnicity. Justified in that the majority of them literally came from the same hometown and general area.
• Leitmotif:
  • Babi has one in the original game.
  • Ivan does too, which is also used for Hama because, as revealed in The Lost Age, she's Ivan's sister.
  • Even though a dramatic track plays in the presence of the villains in the original, it's used for the game's Superboss as well.
  • Briggs has a laid-back one that plays during one scene, specifically during his getaway scene.
  • The sequel gives the game's villains, Karst and Agatio, one that's used more often (and unlike what their predecessors had, it's used exclusively for them), with theirs being a dramatic-sounding one that their battle music is based on.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards:
  • Played straight with healing Psynergy. Isaac's (the leader and warrior type of the team) healing psynergy exactly doubles whenever he learns another. Mia's (The Medic and White Mage of the group) healing Psynergy doubles and then pentuples as they are learned.
  • Inverted in the case of attacks, warriors are weaker than mages early-game but as the player progresses warriors get stronger weapons, superior weapon unleashes^note only if you're lucky and EPA Psynergies^note Stands for Elemental Physical Attack, a type of Psynergy where damage is calculated with the user's attack stat and since those who can access this class are mostly warriors(who generally have high attack stat) the damage output is way higher than other kinds of Psynergy while being cheaper to use as well while the mages are stuck with the inferior set damage Psynergies that are expensive to use but only deal relatively small damage. This is because physical damage scales with level (up to 99), while Psynergy scales with the number of Djinn attached to your characters (up to 7 in the first game, 9 in the second and third), of which there a finite number, and therefore, a finite amount of power increase.
• Lighthouse Point: They are called lighthouses, but they're really more towers that store magical energy. They also act as the Disc-One Final Dungeon and the Very Definitely Final Dungeon in each game.
• Lightning Bruiser: The Ninja class, with high stats in everything and two EPAs. The Samurai class is borderlining on Mighty Glacier with some traits of a Support Party Member but can be one once they reached a high-enough level to access their own EPAs Helm Breaker and Quick Strike. The only really useful spells they don't have access to are healing spells. Most of the other tri-element classes also qualify to a lesser degree, having higher stats and more diverse Psynergy options than the dual-element classes.
• Long Song, Short Scene: It's quite easy to go without hearing the theme for multiplayer battles more than once, because outside of that it only plays when Isaac's party has to outrun a boulder in the first game and only has the former usage in the second.
• Magic by Any Other Name: Psynergy is elemental magic with psychic trappings and design influences.
• The Magic Comes Back: The duology revolves around a deliberate attempt to bring back the magic, with the first game following those who think magic is too dangerous to restore, and the second following those who think it must be brought back. The heroes of the second game are right. Magic was a basic part of nature, and without its influence rising tides are slowly submerging the land. In addition, magic was the foundation of most of the technology in the setting, and without it, technology stagnated — as one character observes, no extant civilization has built or could build anything as impressive as the ancient ruins you spend most of the series trekking through.
• Magic Knight: Almost everyone who isn't a Squishy Wizard, since all the characters have access to attack magic.
• Magic Missile Storm: Several summons that take this form: Mercury hits the enemy with blasts of water, Jupiter with blasts of wind, Atalanta with hundreds of magic arrows, and Boreas with huge chunks of ice.
• Making a Splash: Mercury Adepts like Mia, Piers, Alex, Rief, and Amiti can use water-based Psynergy attacks like the Froth series, which involves conjuring a flurry of magical bubbles, or Plume Edge, which traps one target in a geyser to set up for a weapon attack.
• Manipulative Bastard: Alex knows a lot more about the plot than everyone else, except for The Wise One. Jenna and Agatio figure out fairly quickly that he's using them but to what end they know not.
• Marathon Level: Plenty to be found, and most are necessary stops on the way to completing the game. Air's Rock in the second game is by far the worst offender.
• Master of None: Putting Djinn of every element on a character gives much worse results that sticking to a single one. All classes are either based on a two-element structure (capping at seven Djinn of the other element and two of the character's own) or a three-element structure (capping at five of the primary added element and four of the secondary), with most of the three-element classes being considerably stronger than the two-element ones. Lost Age introduces classes which require equipping a certain key item and using an equal number of Djinn of every element except the character's own, though since there are only three of these items to go around, at least one character will be stuck as a Master of None if any of the item classes are used.
• Maximum HP Reduction: A variation: Stats and classes are mostly determined by what Djinn are on a character, and using them in battle cancels the stat boosts (including HP) until summoned or reset. Some bosses have abilities that "drain" the Djinn, causing loss of all stats until they recover. The Superboss and the Final Boss's last form have one that hits every Djinni on every party member, nearly guaranteeing Total Party Kill.
• McGuffin: For the longest time the four elemental lighthouses fulfill this role. It's not until late in both games that their true purposes are revealed, and in either case they could simply be swapped out for any other elementally significant object or location. Your goal in the first game is to reach the lighthouses before your enemy does-unsuccessfully, and lock it so that they can't light it. In the second game your goal is the same: to reach the lighthouses first (but with slightly different intentions).
• Mechanically Unusual Class:
  • The vast majority of classes depend on what Djinn are attached to the character (giving a Mars Djinni to a Venus character makes him go from Squire to Brute, for example). Most non-standard classes require all but two Djinn to be of the same element, but some like the Ninja, Samurai and Dark Mage require three of each. This tends to verge into Awesome, but Impractical territory, as Djinn can be summoned in battle as spells, which lowers stats and completely changes available spells.
  • In The Lost Age, there are items that can be equipped to change the character's class. These tend to be drastically different from the base classes made through djinn.
• The Medic: If you can be bothered to play around with the Djinn, nearly every character can be a healer. However, whenever someone needs healing in-story, it's usually provided by Mercury Adepts Mia and Piers, regardless of your current class setups.
• Meta Power:
  • Djinn are the basis for the game's class system, switching them around gives new classes and abilities, while stacking them in the right proportions increases stats, class rank and spell power.
  • Later games give some enemies the ability to neutralize some (or even all) the party's Djinn, making the odds of a Total Party Kill rise as the party's stats are drastically lowered and reviving and most multiheal spells are now unavailable.
• Metal Slime: Phoenix and its palette-swapped variants are very powerful and can wreck an unprepared or ambushed party. They're also very quick and prone to fleeing, so a prepared party still may not defeat them.
• Meteor-Summoning Attack: The 4-Mars-djinn summon is Meteor, which brings a giant meteor crashing down on the enemy. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn's summon sequence adds a constellation figure launching the meteor.
• Mind over Matter: Most non-combat Psynergy involves moving objects. Move lets you slide pillars around, while Lash will tie a coiled rope to a distant post, and Slap is a telekinetic attack.
• Mind Probe: One of the trademark skills of the Jupiter element.
• Mineral MacGuffin: The Elemental Stars are said to have great power, but all they really do is light lighthouses. A credit cards with specialized bar codes or blessed packs of matches could have easily replaced them.
• Minigame Zone: Tolbi in Golden Sun and Contigo in The Lost Age have several gambling minigames each.
• The Missing Faction: Several.
  • A lot is made about the Anemos tribe, of which (at least) two major characters are descendants and whose entire city apparently lifted off to become the Moon.
  • There are at least two elf-related artifacts in the first game. There's no sign of elves anywhere else in the series (unless you count the Mars Clan, who are more draconic).
  • While the Anemos tribe is at least mentioned, there is no explanation at all for the missing Venus Clan. Are they hunted to extinction, still in hiding or just vanished? Nobody in the game knows. Most conspicuously, Lalivero is the only Lighthouse-adjacent town without a single adept of the corresponding element.
• Mole Monster: The King Scorpion boss spends most of his time under the sand, and you have to force him out to fight him.
• Monster Arena: The Battle mode in each game, including elements of a Boss Rush.
• More Diverse Sequel: The game is set on a world map that resembles Earth before the continents as we know them were formed, although the Fantasy Counterpart Cultures are more or less those of Earth.
  • The first game's characters are from the equivalent of Western Europe (and one from Russia).
  • The second one has those characters and adds two more from the same area, revealing one of the first ones was actually from Atteka, South America's equivalent. Two remaining characters have no corresponding origin in reality: one is from Lemuria (essentially Atlantis, but in the Indian Ocean), and the other fell from either a flying city or the moon. Among the plot-important NPCs, several Gondowans (Africans) and Hesperians (North America) appear.
  • The third game adds characters from the local equivalents of Mongolia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Japan, the other four being the children of the first game's heroes.
• Muggles: A strong majority in Weyard. Usually can't even see Psynergy in action (though they can see its effects just fine), let alone use it. In Dark Dawn, an NPC discussing the Precursors of Weyard's peoples even mentions a racial group of ancestral Muggles called the Fori.
• Mundane Utility: Getting apples down from trees, tying ropes to protrusions across a gap...Utility psynergies in Weyard seem to be extremely specialised. Then you realise there's separate Psynergy for shaking things left-and-right and shaking things up-and-down, both of which are distinct from the combat Earthquake psynergy.
• Necromancy: For some odd reason Venus not only have powers over rocks and plants, but also have access to death curses and haunting spirits. The strongest Venus summon is even Charon, who creates a shadow attack that has a chance to instantly kill enemies. The "odd' part comes from how Venus have dominion over these powers yet are never alluded in game dialogue.
• Never Trust a Trailer: A chamber orchestra performing Peer Gynt is beset by monsters spawned from the architecture and fights them off using their instruments, culminating in the conductor stabbing a chandelier dragon in the face with her baton as some guy in the audience turns off his GameBoy Advance. Awesome? Yes. Anything to do with the game? Not until Dark Dawn made the chandelier dragon into a summon.
• Non-Elemental: Some Psynergies are not identified with any element.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: Defeating an enemy in a Golden Sun usually results in them turning to stone and them breaking into several pieces, but rarely is anyone or anything ever described as "killed" and indeed, several enemies reappear after the battle screen transitions back to the over world, fairly beat up but still alive and with their non petrified bodies in one piece.
• Noob Cave: Sol Sanctum in the original, which goes as far as to prevent grinding beyond a certain level and is inaccessible later. Kandorean Temple in the sequel, though it houses more advanced sections for returns.
• Not Helping Your Case: Everything the Proxians do. Those who stayed behind at the village apologize for the quartet being so extreme but couldn't do anything about it because they were the strongest of the village and they did ultimately believe they were doing the best for everyone, even every passerby they treated callously without provocation.
• No Ontological Inertia: Averted - killing Tret will not actually cause his curse to be undone, he has to consciously remove it.
• Oculothorax: The Wise One. A floating rock with an eyeball encased in it.
• Oh, Crap!: Quite a few actually.
  • Isaac gets one right before a giant boulder falls down in Altin mines and threatens to crush him. Should have taken the the sign more seriously, Isaac.
  • When Ivan realizes that Saturos and Menardi have not only tricked them into handing over the Shaman's Rod, but are also now going to try and kill them. Again.
  • Piers, similar to Ivan, when he realizes that Agaito and Karst are going to try and murder him and Felix after stealing the Mars Star.
  • Isaac and Garet, right when they realize The Wise One has been watching the whole entire time since the beginning of the journey. And then....
  • Kraden right before the Final Boss, when he realizes that the Doom Dragon is actually Isaac's father and Felix's parents, as The Wise One's final trap.
  • Alex, when The Wise One knew what he was doing. The Wise one easily defeats him so that the heroes don't have to do so.
• One Game for the Price of Two: The two games are technically standalone, but you'll only be getting half the story and, in the sequel, miss out on getting the most powerful Summon.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • The Crystal Rod's unleash, Drown, will sometimes cause this via suffocation.
  • Some of the darker Venus Psynergies tend to do this; there is the Thanatos Mace unleash (Heartbreak) which summons some kind of demon to literally tear out your enemy's heart and crush it in his hand, the Charon summon, the Death Card and Condemn to name a few.
• One Stat to Rule Them All: For warriors, it's unleash rate. Getting more unleash rate means you can trigger your unleashes more, and the game's strongest weapon will always triple damage dealt when unleashing. This makes unleashes the most powerful source of single-target damage in the game, meaning you really want unleash rate.
• Our Dark Matter Is Mysterious: Lost Age and Dark Dawn use dark matter as one of the rarest of crafting material, dropped by firebirds. The gear crafted from it is among the best there is, but it's all cursed (can't be unequipped without a priest, and occasionally stuns the wielder without a specific one-of-a-kind item).
• Our Hydras Are Different:
  • Several hydra variants appear, essentially giant three-headed venom-spewing snakes whose unique ability is a triple bite attack (the strongest one, the Pyrodra, breathes fire as well). One, somehow formed from several cuttlefish-like monsters joining together, is fought as a boss.
  • The Doom Dragon is the three-headed final boss of Golden Sun: The Lost Age. While it doesn't respawn heads, it has an interesting mechanic to let it counter the Disc-One Nuke summon rush strategy (where huge damage is done in one turn, but leaves the summoner vulnerable and greatly weakened for several turns) where every head is treated as a separate battle, meaning any extra damage done to one head is wasted.
• Palette Swap: Occurs frequently with many monsters in the Random Encounters, but this trope also applies to the Linked Battles where your friend's party appears as different colors to help distinguish themselves should you be using the same party and are dubbed with "Enemy" before their name, such as Enemy Isaac.
• Party in My Pocket: Your travelling companions, including the Djinn and Kraden.
• Percent-Based Values:
  • Every restorative Djinni works off of a percentage. Spring heals someone for 70% of their max HP, Spark may revive someone at 60% of their max HP, and Wisp restores 10% of everyone's max PP, among many others.
  • All stat buffs and debuffs that affect attack, defense, and agility also operate on percentages. The Impact spell increases someone's attack rating by 25%, while the Mercury Djinni Foam will cut all enemies' agility in half.
  • Summon Magic attacks factor the target's maximum health into the damage calculation. They all have a base elemental power similar to regular Psynergy, but they're also guaranteed to hit your target for anywhere from 3%^note the one-Djinni summons like Mars or Jupiter to 40%^note Iris, received as a reward for defeating the game's strongest Superboss of their max HP.
• The Philosopher: Kraden the Sage.
• The Phoenix: The Phoenix enemy line, consisting of the Phoenix, Fire Bird, and Wonder Bird. In addition to having multiple high-level Mars Psynergy attacks like Supernova and Searing Beam, they can also resurrect their allies. They also act multiple times per turn (and are the only non-boss enemies to do so) and have a high Experience Point yield. Adepts in the Beast Lord class can also summon a Phoenix to revive their friends.
• Planar Shockwave: Seen in quite a few Summons' attacks and weapons' Unleashes. Sol Blade's Unleash, Megiddo, is one of the more prominent examples.
• Player Versus Player: Both games have a two-player duel mode.
• Playing with Fire: Garet, Jenna, Tyrell, Eoleo, and seemingly everyone from Prox are Mars Adepts, allowing them to use spells like the Starburst series, which attacks with an explosion, or the Fume series, which conjures a giant serpentine dragon made of fire to crash into one target.
• Plot Coupon: This game has many a plot coupon. Most of them are a specific Psynergy that is gained by completing a quest (or series of quests), and are required to proceed to the next stage of the central story. However, the most notable example of Plot Coupon in these games is the Trident from The Lost Age. To obtain it, the player must first obtain the three prongs of the trident by travelling to 3 separate towers across a great sea. The Trident is then forged at a fourth tower and at the conclusion of an entirely separate story arc. The Trident's only function is to break the barrier of an otherwise immortal boss (called Poseidon) so your attacks can actually do damage. After this the trident is never mentioned and you never need to use it again (though you might as well, it's not useless by any means).
• Point of No Return:
  • A couple temporary ones in the first game: There's a point in Mogall Forest after which you can no longer return to Fuchin Temple or Kolima, and once you reach the end of Lamakan Desert, you can't backtrack to Lama Temple. However, once you reach Kalay, the Broken Bridge will be repaired, allowing you to return to Vault and from there, you can choose to circle around to find anything you missed. You'll still have to make a lengthy journey all the way through Goma Range and Angara's coastline, though.
  • Yampi Desert has a sandfall that you can't climb (yet). They are nice enough to put a sign warning you though.
  • Save early and often during "Dark Dawn", because you'll run into more than one of these.
• Poke in the Third Eye: Adepts can detect their minds being read, and respond in a way that interrupts the reading. Alex, for instance, asks aloud if you really thought he'd let you do that, while Karst notices and starts mocking and threatening you in her mind. Even Garet gets in on this in the first game, shielding his thoughts with mental complaints about Ivan reading his mind.
• Poor Communication Kills: The Proxians' goals are actually in the world's best interests and you end up siding with them in the end. If Saturos and Menardi had just bothered to explain, you would not have needed to fight and kill them. Unfortunately, they did try to warn the elders of Vale about the end of the world, and probably reasoned that Isaac, having come from Vale, wouldn't listen either. This finally gets averted when the 2 groups finally sorted things out in Contigo.
• Port Town:
  • Kalay, Lalivero, Alhafra, and Champa. The latter is not a typical example, as it's known to raid the others rather than for its own attractive commerce.
  • Lemuria seems to have been a more active port town in its heyday.
• Powers as Programs: Quite apart from the Djinn-based class system, many "utility" powers are gained from certain items — most Broken Bridges throughout the games are dealt with by finding the relevant item. With the exception of Grind, which is limited to Earth adepts for some reason, these powers can be used by anyone who equips the item (Dark Dawn changes this; all the psynergy-granting items - except the Slap Glove, which you only have for a single dungeon - are locked to certain elements like Grind was).
• Press X to Die: After the prologue dungeon, when asked by Mister Exposition if you are willing to take on this dangerous quest to save the world, you can just say no and walk out of the house, resulting in a Non-Standard Game Over where the game tells you that the world began drifting towards its end due to your choice.
• Psychic Powers: Psynergy, mostly In Name Only, though several utility variants of it such as "Move", "Lift", "Carry", "Catch" and "Scoop" are stylistic depictions of classical Mind over Matter psychic abilities.
• Punny Name:
  • The Mercury Adept sailor named Piers.
  • Air's Rock. It's a massive singular rock in the middle of a desert, on the Australia-based continent.
  • Hydros, the King of Lemuria.
  • Conservato, leader of the Lemurian Senate.
  • Steel, originally Kiss, steals the opponent's HP.
  • Tret Tree (treachery) in the first game.
• Purple Is Powerful
  • Much was released when Mount Aleph erupted, including many purple psynergy stones. These were the first of many agents that changed Weyard as alchemy became closer to being released.
  • Jupiter, represented by the color purple is the most effective element in the series from The Lost Age onwards, being super effective against 80% of the enemies and bosses. The same bunch of enemies and bosses are highly resistant to the intended strongest element (Venus) making said element's offenses ironically useless most of the time.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Or as Agatio puts it, "This is an unlikely bunch of ragamuffins."
• Random Encounters
  • Staple of the JRPG genre. You get into fights every few steps if your party's level is below or around the levels of the enemies. Being higher leveled reduces the encounter rate. Using a certain spell/item also helps reduce the encounter rate, depending on your level. One piece of equipment actually increases the encounter rate.
  • The piece of equipment in question, however, is incredibly useful near the end of the second game, because you will need to level-grind to beat the Superbosses, and the best place for doing so has a below-average encounter rate. Annoyingly enough, it's only available in the first game, so people who threw it away going "the encounter rate is high enough, thank you very much" (or didn't transfer data at all) end up having to spend even more time doing so than everyone else.
  • To the dev's credit, they do usually turn off random encounters (or turn the rates down) in rooms with particularly difficult puzzles, which makes it a great deal less frustrating than it would have been. If the puzzle in question spans the entire dungeon *cough elemental rocks cough*, you're out of luck.
  • Lampshaded by Amiti in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn when The Luna Tower is activated and unleashes dark monsters on the world. He complains that the party could not walk five feet without being attacked.
• Random Drop Booster: Killing monsters with the elemental Djinn they're weakest to gives more experience, money, better stat boosts if levelling up, and increases the item drop chance.
• Rare Candy: Peanuts, cookies, bread, apples, mint leaves, and... pepper. Each will boost a single stat.
• Rare Random Drop: The games use this, but it was discovered in the GBA titles that the random number generator used to determine drop rates wasn't really random at all. Thus, by making a specific party and conducting battles in just the right amount of turns and action orders, you can guarantee that an enemy will drop even the most powerful weapons, armor and materials in the game. So far no such methods are discovered for Dark Dawn, making obtaining such items near impossible.
• Really 700 Years Old: Babi and the Lemurians. This is played with in the case of Piers, the Lemurian sailor, who refuses to admit his age.
• Regenerating Mana: Walking around restores Psynergy Points.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: The Djinn. Some NPCs even keep them as pets.
• Run, Don't Walk: You walk so slowly outside of battle it is practically required to hold the B button down at all times.
• Rule of Three: Monster lines come in three variants. Though some only appear to have two, the third is present but unused.
• Sadly Mythtaken: Over and over. The way the elements are associated is hint enough of not following any mythology to a T. There are many examples, but some bizarre examples stand out:
  • It becomes very interesting when you summon Neptune against Poseidon. Poseidon, stop hitting yourself!
  • Coatlicue, the hideous all-devouring snake goddess of the Aztecs, is routinely portrayed in summons as a cute underwater-dwelling Shrine Maiden who heals your party. In comparison, Boreas the giant snow-cone machine doesn't seem nearly as bad.
  • Cybele is a dopey tree-horned frog who spits seeds at enemies.
• Save Point: Averted — you can save anywhere, anytime outside of battles and cutscenes. Once the final battle is done in the second game, the game refuses to save if you try to do it until after the credits are over.
• Saving the World: Yes, that's what they're doing. Or at least that's what they think they're doing. Felix's party is the one that is actually working towards that goal, although no one (not even Felix himself) knew it until Lemuria.
• Scarf of Asskicking:
  • Isaac. 17-year-old + bright yellow scarf = many dead monsters.
  • Menardi's Sash of Asskicking.
  • Felix, too, has an amazing cape that billows over his shoulder.
  • Isaac's son inherited the scarf and kicks just as much ass.
  • The Lachesis' Rule's unleash summons a heavenly maiden who uses her scarf to attack the enemy.
• Scenery Porn: Golden Sun was, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful handheld titles ever released if not the most beautiful at its time. One reason the game stood out a lot was the fact that you started off in a Medieval European Fantasy and spent it climbing mountains, going to Wutai, ending in Shifting Sand Land, and even parts that looked directly inspired by Africa and the Americas.
• Sea Serpents: The final Mercury summon is a huge serpent named Azul which attacks by trapping the enemy in water and then ramming through it.
• Sequel Hook: At the end of the first game, setting up the second. At the end of the second game, too, when The Wise One takes some of the power from the Golden Sun and seals it away in the Mars Star, not to mention the fact that the villain, though vanquished, did not technically die, setting up...over six years of waiting until Golden Sun DS was finally revealed at E3 2009. Don't forget that if you cheat, you can give Felix Mind Read and you can read the minds of the people in Prox. This is normally impossible, but if you do do it, you will hear thoughts that hint at a sequel.
• Shifting Sand Land: Two deserts in The Broken Seal, one in The Lost Age.
  • The Lamakan Desert is unnaturally hot, and so you need to use Reveal to find oases to cool off.
  • The Suhalla Desert has a sandstorm blowing over it caused by giant lizards, and you need to cast Douse to reveal them so you can progress.
  • The Yampi Desert is covered in flowing sand waterfalls, and you have to force the boss of the area to stop burrowing through the sand before you can fight it.
• Ship Tease:
  • What powers the above developed shipping fandom. Most of the major ships get a moment or two. I.e: Jenna blushing when Kraden and Sheba call her and Isaac an "item."
  • How about a Ship Tease for both Valeshipping and Mudshipping in the first game? Go back to Vale, and some of the NPCs will express alarm that you're traveling with a girl who isn't Jenna. Isaac, you old two-timer, you!
• Shock and Awe: Jupiter Adepts, including Ivan, Sheba, Karis, and Sveta, can cast spells like Ray, Bolt, and Plasma, which are all different variations on "strike the enemy with lightning".
• Shout-Out:
  • To... Monty Python? Yes. Amazing the Easter Eggs you can find with Mind Read... in Kolima, one of the NPCs is thinking the Lumberjack Song to himself.
  • If you keep telling the first Djinni in the second game "no", he'll eventually launch into a Billy Mays-esque sales pitch.
  • There's a mob in the second game called an Alec Goblin, which may or may not be a shout out pun to Alec Baldwin.
  • The Japanese version has a Captain Picard (Piers in English).
  • Due to Camelot's (then Sonic! Software Planning) involvement with the Shining Force series there are a number of nods to it. Beyond the the easily noticed graphical similarities in the interface, one injured person in the 2nd game thinks "Eyes... Shining in the Darkness... No! Go away!!!" and the final boss has an attack called "Darksol Gasp".
  • Mia's Ply power, the few times it can be used in the overworld, is represented by Primula from Shining Force III. Additionally, Deadbeard, the superboss of the first game, is referred to as Talos in the Japanese version (Talos is the name of a recurring enemy/boss in the Shining series).
  • One of the guards at the Lunpa gate will get pissed if you claim to be from Kalay but deny you're there to save Hammet: "You don't want to make me angry! You wouldn't like me when I'm angry!".
  • Ki is named Force in the West. Makes sense in context, and possibly was unintentional, but it was too funny to let it pass.
  • The Djinni Rime is found in Old Lemuria... home of the "ancient mariner".
  • The Excalibur is one to the famous sword wielded by King Arthur, but its status as a late game weapon and being Wind-elemental will bring Fire Emblem's Excalibur tome to mind.
  • The Lucky Medal Fountains have turtles and crabs that change colors and move faster when hit.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: In-Universe example: When Babi first came to Lemuria, he got so sidetracked by the Lucky Medal Fountain that when he returned home, he immediately had one installed in his home of Tolbi.
• Sinister Scythe: Menardi and Karst's Death Scythes, which in turn produce a second death scythe when they're trying to down one of your party in a single swing.
• Sidequest: Not too many, but some are long and most are important if you want 100% Completion.
• Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke: Being tossed into the sun and back, for those who linked up for the bonus dungeon.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: The Proxians seem to follow this trope, and it makes sense as well - look closely, and you realise that their arms are actually covered not in armor, but scales (with what seem to be jutting spikes on their shoulders). This is a fairly good hint towards their more draconian-than-human traits, too.
• Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration: While the game doesn't quite make everything mesh together, adepts do get a small boost if they are in an elemental lighthouse matching their element. For example, Jenna and Garet get a passive PP regen during battles inside the Mars Lighthouse.
• Sole Entertainment Option: Long lived or not, Lemurians might not be so bored if they had more than one game to play.
• Spell My Name With An S:
  • Some characters that appear or are referred to in both games have differently-spelled names, or different names altogether. The most notable are Hsu in the first game -> Ulmuch in the second, and Hama in the first game -> Hamma in the second.
  • One of Dullahan's attacks is called "Formina Sage". However, in Dark Dawn, this attack is called "Fulminous Edge", most likely the correct translation.
• Spider-Sense: Apparently all Jupiter Adepts develop this after a while. Hama is particularly good at it.
• Spiritual Successor: The Golden Sun series is this to the Shining Force series, at least as it was back on the Sega Genesis and Game Gear, when Camelot was the developer. Those original SF games were strategy RPGs instead of Golden Sun's traditional RPG style, but the plots, graphics, menus, and visual effects carry obvious similarities regardless. More directly, to "Beyond The Beyond", which itself was a Spiritual Successor to "Shining in the Darkness" and "Shining the Holy Ark".
• Spiteful A.I.: The Djinn you fight as random encounters plus the Phoenix type monsters will usually decide to run away from battle before you can finish it off. In dungeons, Djinn that flee can be fought again by just leaving the area and returning while those on the overworld map just have to be found in the area again. The Phoenix monsters, however, appear randomly like any other monster, but since they are Metal Slime type monsters, they give TONS of experience points.
• Squishy Wizard: Ivan and Sheba should be shielded should the enemy single them out, in their default classes anyway.
• Start X to Stop X: Restoring Alchemy might destroy the world, and will most likely cause wars. Not restoring Alchemy will result in the world's destruction eventually.
• Stealth-Based Mission: Lunpa Fortress in the first game, Kibombo Mountains in the second, both with Swiss-Cheese Security.
• The Stinger: The first game has this as a setup for the sequel. The second game has this as a setup for... nothing, for six years. Then Dark Dawn happened, but it still resolved very few of the Sequel Hooks set up in The Lost Age.
• "Stop the Hero" Twist: The first game has you pursuing the bad guys and their hostages to prevent them from lighting the Elemental Lighthouses, as doing so would cause the return of Alchemy to the world and therefore its destruction. The second game instead has you control said hostages and actively light the beacons until you're reunited with the heroes of the first game. Unbeknownst to the party of the first game, the return of Alchemy wouldn't necessarily spell the end of the world (it would certainly have the potential to do so in the wrong hands, sort of like going from no nation having nukes to every nation having them), but leaving it sealed will cause the world to crumble away. The villains of the first game are retroactively revealed as Well Intentioned Extremists whose village was threatened by the world eroding, and took a particularly ruthless course of action to save it.
• Strange-Syntax Speaker:
  • The people of Xian use some strange sentence structures (though not nearly as strange as some fanfic writers portray it), presumably to show that they normally speak a different language from the heroes. This is present even in the Japanese versions, as references to it are made in the 4koma Gag Battle doujinshi. Curiously, Xian's successor-nations in Dark Dawn are filled with people who speak normally. Master Hama also speaks normally, but that's because she's not from Xian.
  • According to the 4 Koma Gag Battle, becoming a Samurai class causes you to use Antiquated Linguistics ("This one shall summon Venus!").
• Stupid Evil: Pretty much everything Saturos and Menardi do in The Broken Seal qualifies for this. They never try to explain their motives or try to reason or negotiate with anyone outside their party, and repeatedly resort to extreme measures to accomplish their goals while being as randomly cruel and petty as possible. It's no wonder they get beaten by Isaac's party at the end of the game.
• Summon Magic: The Djinn. And, you know, the Summons themselves and some weapon unleashes. Also the magic provided by the class-changing Trainer's Whip and Tomegathericon items.
• Superstitious Sailors: Before the crossing of the monster-infested Karagol Sea, a sailor steals the captain's lucky anchor charm and hides it in the crows' nest so he won't risk being killed. When the captain finds out, he refuses to cast off without it. Isaac and crew find it and return it to the captain, allowing the ship to leave (the sailor goes unpunished).
• Takes One to Kill One:
  • While Jupiter and Venus are supposed to be super-effective against each other most enemies who are obviously Jupiter-aligned (e.g.; flying monsters with wind attacks) are only weak to their own element and highly resist Venus attacks, completely defying the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors that has been established in the first place. However, the same cannot be applied to Venus-aligned monsters (with the exception of Skeleton Warriors and Gargoyles) resulting in only a handful monsters being weak to Venus-based offenses.
  • Call Dullahan, a spell exclusive to the Dark Mage class series is super-effective against its namesake.
• Take Your Time: It's going to take a few years before the end of the world, yes, but take all the time you need to reach the next lighthouse before those other guys racing towards it. The order in which you arrive will always be the same.
• Teleportation with Drawbacks:
  • On the overworld, Teleport brings you directly to a town you've already been to. In dungeons and towns, it can only be used on some ritual circles which then take you to the paired circle.
  • Every main character has the Retreat power, which is basically an Escape Rope that teleports you back to the entrance of a dungeon.
• That's No Moon: Anemos is said to be an artificial moon, specifically a city on Weyard that was raised into the sky.
• Title Drop: The Golden Sun is a mass of energy that rises above Mt. Aleph in the second game indicating the restoration of Alchemy to the world. The Lost Age is dropped a few times, as well, being the 'age' that was 'lost' when Psynergy was weakened by the dimming of the lighthouses.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: Tomegathericon, a spellbook in the second game which gives you a demon-summoning character class. The Japanese version even calls it "Necronomicon". It lets you summon a Superboss as a Psynergy attack.
• Took a Level in Badass: Isaac and Felix, in different ways in The Lost Age:
  • Once he stops the Heroic Mime business, Isaac speaks like a kind but hard-cutting warrior, especially evident in the way he stands up to Karst and Agatio.
  • Once Felix begins fighting for himself instead of apparently letting Saturos and Menardi kill everything, it's very possible for him to be more powerful than Isaac when the two parties join up near the end of The Lost Age. It's not just Felix, either; each of his companions, sans Piers, were never exceptional warriors to begin with, but largely grow to eclipse the first game's heroes due to the tougher tribulations they go through. Jenna and Sheba go from being hostages to powerful combatants in their own right. From a gameplay perspective, it is entirely possible and downright likely that each Lost Age hero will outperform their previous game's counterpart.
• Too Awesome to Use: Waters of Life and Psy Crystals, although the second game is a bit more generous with the amount you can get (as random drops), but both are in bonus dungeons, the latter of which is in the Anemos Sanctum, needing all djinn from the previous game.
• Trauma Inn: Only for HP and MP though. All status ailments like poison and death must be removed either by magic spells, elixirs or antidotes, or visiting the town's Sanctum and paying for each individual cure. Note that being haunted by the Grim Reaper can be fixed with Restore. Being haunted by evil spirits requires a professional exorcist.
• The Unfought: Alex, through three games.
• Unnaturally Looping Location: Mogall Forest, a dungeon where one screen keeps looping unless you take the right corridor.
• Upgrade Artifact: Psynergy-bestowing equipment, Psynergy-teaching tablets in the Elemental Rock dungeons, etc.
• Useless Useful Spell:
  • Bosses in particular tend to shrug off status ailments in about a round or so. And your buffs are useless against the Fire Clan enemies, since they all apparently know Break.
  • Venus Psynergy are mostly useful all-around, but most of their status effects are flat-out worthless in your hands. Condemn and Death Card calls upon the Grim Reaper to perform an instant kill, but fails most of the time. Curse and Haunt are more reliable ^note Curse takes 7 turns to kill the target while Haunt is a randomized version of the Poison status, but who wants to wait for the effects to activate while normal attacks dispose enemies much faster? To add insult to injury, enemies and bosses with such spells will almost always be successful in using them.
• Utility Party Member: It's possible (but frankly stupid) to make one character hold all the non-combat Psynergy-bestowing items (such as freezing water into ice pillars or lifting boulders out of the way). Stupid because the game averts Bag of Sharing, every character has at least one non-combat skill that sees regular use, and mana is regenerated by walking around, making it more efficient to spread it around the party.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon
  • Venus Lighthouse in "Golden Sun", Mars Lighthouse in "The Lost Age". Initially, many gamers are disappointed to find the Venus Lighthouse battle is the end of the first game before The Lost Age is announced.
  • The Apollo Lens in Dark Dawn.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • You know that guy at the beginning of the game who appears to be injured, and asks you if he's going to die? If you say "no," he gets up and finds that he's not injured at all. But if you say "yes," he actually dies.
  • Likewise, you can completely miss the tree situation at Bilibin Junction, so Jill the tree gets washed away downriver. Either she never reverts to being a human when Tret restores everybody else, or she reverts to human and then drowns, or she washes ashore far away from her home and everybody she's ever loved, probably in monster-infested territory.
  • The Anti-Grinding mechanic in Sol Sanctum can be duped by getting Jenna KO'd. You can also loot her stuff before she gets kidnapped.
• Violation of Common Sense:
  • There is a sign, deep within the Altin Mines, that says, "Do not strike the walls! Rocks may fall!" Right next to it is one of those logs you keep knocking over with Force, positioned right by a wall... unfortunately Stupidity Is the Only Option in this case - using Psynergy on the wall/letting Garet kick it is necessary to advance further in the cave.
  • In the Apojii Islands you must jump off the edge of the world to find a hidden Djinni.
• Voice Grunting: Females get higher-pitched squeaks than males.
• Warmup Boss: The three thieves in the first game, the three gorilla Chestbeaters in the second.
• Warp Whistle:
  • The Teleport Lapis, found in the second game's last dungeon.
  • Retreat, a default power of the heroes, lets you escape a dungeon quickly, unless the plot actively wants to prevent you doing so.
• Waterfall into the Abyss: This appears here, which has a Flat World: the entire world map.
• Weak to Magic: Enemies attacked with elemental Djinn not only take more damage from the ones they're weak to, they give extra gold and experience if killed via Djinn rather than standard attacks or Psynergy.
• Welcome to Corneria: An interesting variation; all NPCs seem to follow this trope to the letter, but each one thinks a second static line of dialogue you can Mind Read for. Oftentimes, these reveal they're hypocrites.
• Western Samurai: Played for Laughs in the Golden Sun 4Koma: Isaac (a blond teenager from the game world's equivalent of the Alps) changes to the Samurai character class and gains a black Samurai Topknot and Antiquated Linguistics.^note Notably, both times you visit Izumo (the Japan equivalent) three decades apart, there aren't any samurai to be seen.
  Isaac: This one shall summon Venus!
• What Were They Selling Again?:
  • Golden Sun's commercials distracts the viewers from the actual product they are selling. The first one is notorious for this; it shows monsters rampaging in an opera house while being attacked by tuxedo-wearing musicians using their violins as makeshift bows as commanded by the conductor. Following the destruction of those monsters, a chandelier dragon storms into the place. After mostly avoiding the dragon's attacks the conductor finally uses her magic wand to destroy it. The real content of the game is only shown in the last five seconds.
  • While the setting is completely out of the games' timeline, said dragon is re-introduced in Dark Dawn as the new Venus summon Crystallux. An opera house is also featured in the summon sequence.
• Wishing Well: The fountains in Tolbi and Lemuria consist in a minigame where you throw a coin or lucky medal behind you and get coins/items based on where it lands (crabs and turtles in the drained fountain increase the chance of the toss going nowhere). In Lemuria the fountain also contains the Eclipse summon.
• World Sundering: Happens after Venus Lighthouse is activated. This is commented on by several NPCs.
• Wutai: Izumo, although it represents an older Japan than the standard trope. The first game plays this straight with the Chinese village Xian.
• You All Look Familiar: The shop and inn girls/dudes are the same in all locations.
• You Can Barely Stand:
  • Inverted. Four teenagers battle the extremely powerful Saturos on the top of Mercury Lighthouse about 25% through the game and would normally not be a match for him, but the location's influence on Elemental Powers lets the group manage to defeat him and render him in this position.
  • Inverted again after the second-to-last boss of the first game, where they do it again only without the bosses being handicapped. Of course, said bosses end up getting very creative with how they use the new fountain of Earth energy they just activated...
  • And inverted again in the second game, when Felix & co. do this to Agatio and Karst.
• You Can't Go Home Again:
  • Inverted; In the first game, after Isaac and Garet set out from their hometown on their journey after agreeing to the Wise One's instruction to stop the villains, they can return home at several points, and the villagers will even ask how things are going. This is double inverted because Dora apparently made Isaac promise (off-screen) not to come back before he has completed his quest, yet not only are you allowed to return to the home town, you are actually encouraged as there's a Bonus Dungeon hidden in there.
  • Quasi-inverted in The Lost Age. You can see the part of the world map where the first game took place (it takes maybe 1/4 of the overall map used in part 2), but it is surrounded on all sides by mountains and impassible barriers making it impossible to access in Part 2; however, there is a glitch somewhere on the western shore where if you angle your ship just right, you can exit and your character will spawn on the other side of the mountains letting you onto the Part 1 world map complete with towns and dungeon icons all the way to Mt. Aleph and Venus Lighthouse. However, again, these icons aren't linked to any actual towns or dungeons; when your character walks over them, he passes right through them without shifting from the world map. Still, even though you can't actually go home, it makes for a nice sightseeing tour.
• You Killed My Father:
  • Definitely invoked by Karst, with the variation that it's her sister who was killed, and Karst doesn't know she actually committed suicide.
  • Strangely averted when you would expect it: although they are blamed for the storm, no one confronts Saturos and Menardi for said storm having caused the death of Isaac's father and both of Felix and Jenna's parents. Well, they have to be stopped anyway, but revenge doesn't seem to be a motivation. Then again, all three are actually still alive... and held as hostages, but Isaac doesn't know that.

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