Video Game / Golden Sun: The Lost Age

From top: Piers, Sheba, Jenna, Felix

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

—Prologue of Golden Sun: The Lost Age

The sequel to Golden Sun, Golden Sun: The Lost Age is the second game in the Golden Sun series and picks up the story in the immediate aftermath of the events at Venus Lighthouse. In doing so it changes the viewpoint to that of Felix, one of the enemies from the first game, and has you trying to release the same power you wanted to keep sealed in the first game, for equally good reasons. With Saturos and Menardi dead following their battle against Isaac's party atop Venus Lighthouse and Alex being rarely around to boss them around, Felix has to rally fellow "hostages" Jenna, Kraden, and Sheba in continuing the quest of their own accord. Sometime later, they rescue a mysterious sailor named Piers who volunteers to be part of the team in their quest, rounding out the group.

This game expands on the established gameplay features, increasing the Djinn capacity and Summon counts. Item Crafting is introduced where the player can send forging materials to a blacksmith so that he can create useful equipment out of it. The Lost Age also introduced superbosses, powerful enemies that can only be accessible very late game and provide challenging battles in return for valuable rewards. The characters get to explore the rest of Weyard not covered by Isaac's party, which were previously inaccessible back in The Broken Seal, with the areas from the previous game almost entirely blocked off^*There is a hidden path with a minor glitch that will let you get access to the map of the first game's subcontinent. All of that game's towns and locations are present on the overworld, but are inaccessible..

The Lost Age is succeeded by Golden Sun: Dark Dawn on the Nintendo DS, which takes place 30 years after the events of this game.

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Golden Sun: The Lost Age provides examples of:

• Ability Required to Proceed:
  • The game's first dungeon, Kandorean Temple, rewards you with the Lash Pebble you need to cross Dehkan Plateau and enter Osenia.
  • Tundaria Tower requires you to clear Aqua Rock and learn Parch before you can even enter.
  • Ankohl Ruins makes heavy use of the Sand spell you learn in Gaia Rock.
  • The Cyclone Chip is obtained from an out-of-the-way conversation you have to backtrack to Madra for, but you need it to clear Gaia Rock and Jupiter Lighthouse.
  • You can't enter the Western Sea until you visit Lemuria and learn Grind, as there's a giant rock in Gondowan Passage blocking your ship.
  • In addition to Cyclone, Jupiter Lighthouse also requires that you defeat Moapa in Shaman Village and get the Hover Jade from him. Hover, Cyclone, and Whirlwind are used a lot throughout the lighthouse.
  • Before you can start climbing Magma Rock, you need to join with Team Isaac and use the first game's Lift spell to move a boulder out of the way.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Agatio and Karst. To elaborate, after they are unknowingly killed by the player party in dragon form, both fully set aside their anger and beg Felix to light the Lighthouse for them. For Agatio, the whole situation's pretty darn depressing even though he is The Generic Guy, and Karst gets it even worse — her death involves Felix comforting her, warming her with the heat of his hands before finally heading off. Following all that, both of them vow to stay alive until they see the last lighthouse lit — it's unclear if they did, since it would have arguably revived them the way it did Isaac's dad and Felix and Jenna's parents.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: The game starts with controlling Jenna despite Felix being the main protagonist as it takes place at the same time as the previous game's final battle, which the latter is involved with as an NPC. Once Jenna and Kraden managed to escape the vicinity of the Venus Lighthouse, a tidal wave occurs and the player gets to control Felix from that point onwards.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Used near the end when the party is twice as large as the 4-member battle cap, the other four are a "backup team" that you can swap in one of each turn, and if your entire front party is annihilated your back party automatically switches in.
• Awesome, but Impractical: 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 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. By the time you get this summon, it is only used as a trump card in case you're in severe danger, which is very unlikely at this point. If you think of summon-spamming Iris against the final boss, good luck because it was intentionally separated into 3 different HP segments instead of 1..
• Badass Normal: Briggs, and Moapa (alongside Briggs and Moapa's unnamed "Sea Fighter" and "Knight" goons, respectively) lack any form of Psynergy. They are not noticeably less of a threat than standard bosses.
• Badass Family: Briggs's family fits the bill nicely, with everybody from Obaba to baby Eoleo doing some awesome stuff.
• Bag of Spilling: Averted in that a data transferring feature at the end of the first game (either by Game Link Cable or by a HUMONGOUS 260-character password) lets the party of the first game keep their equipment, levels, stats, and everything else when they are added to the new party near the end of the second game.
• Batman Gambit: Briggs pulls one on his own grandmother to get her to oppose Felix & Co. when they try to corner him in Champa. Backfires twice— once when Felix & Co. win, once when Obaba finds out about his shenanigans.
• Beef Gate:
  • Defeating Briggs is required to recruit Piers, your 4th party member. However, when you first are able to fight him, he will likely be very strong and durable, making it very hard to defeat him (and his regularly replenishing underlings). Normally, you are suppose to tackle Air Rock first before Briggs, but that dungeon in itself is rather long and infamous, and having a full party would be appreciated for it.
  • Poseidon bars the way to Lemuria and is 100% invulnerable without a certain weapon that you need to scour the Eastern Sea to find. Even with it, he's still quite difficult.
  • The Serpent is able to recover all of its HP each turn unless you solve the puzzles to expose it to light. And even after you do, he still regenerates quite fast if at least three of the four beams don't reach him. In a New Game Plus, it is possible to exploit game mechanics to defeat the Serpent before his first move (faster than he can regenerate).
• Boss-Altering Consequence: The Serpent is able to recover all of its HP each turn unless you solve the puzzles to expose it to light. And even after you do, he still regenerates quite fast if at least three of the four beams don't reach him. In a New Game Plus, it is possible to exploit game mechanics to defeat the Serpent before his first move (faster than he can regenerate).
• Boss Remix: Karst and Agatio's leitmotif is remixed when Felix's party finally gets around to fighting them.
• Boundareefs: The oceans are open for exploration, but landing on the previous game's continents or going up some rivers is prevented by big spiky reefs.
• Bragging Rights Reward: The Iris summon is acquired after defeating the bonus boss in the last Bonus Dungeon. She's Awesome, but Impractical due to needing 13 djinn on standby to summon her, and the only boss left to summon her on is the Final Boss... who has three separate health bars, rendering summon rushing useless.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Sunshine is a genius blacksmith who can make masterpieces in minutes, but bedridden from depression since he has no customers or materials.
• Butt-Monkey: The town of Madra, at least early in the game. As if the tidal wave isn't enough, it is also attacked repeatedly.
• Can't Catch Up: When Isaac's party joins Felix's, they may either be a significant ways behind Felix's party or completely outlevel them, so unless you're willing to grind your first or second party then they'll probably stay that way (the inactive party only gets half experience.)
• Chain of Deals: Involving the various islets in the Eastern Sea, which results in accessing a Bonus Dungeon containing a Superboss and a summon tablet on one of the islets.
• Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: At some point between falling off a lighthouse and washing ashore on an island, Felix switched out his old sprite (which made him look like he had stick legs when viewed from the side) for one with baggier pants and a blue cape.
• The Chessmaster: The Wise One and Alex. The latter is using both the heroes and the villains to light all four lighthouses so he can go to Mt. Aleph and gain ultimate power. It's not the most complex plan, but it actually works... or at least it would have if not for one tiny detail: the former altered the Mars Star and saved Isaac at the beginning of the first game so that the ultimate power would be split between two vessels, making Alex weaker than the Wise One. The former also arranged for a Secret Test of Character to ensure that the heroes were committed to their task and ready to complete it. That's how to win in just three moves, kids.
• Convenient Weakness Placement: The Tisiphone Edge (a late-game weapon with a Venus-aligned unleash) can be farmed from Cruel Dragons in the same dungeon the Superboss Sentinel resides in, who has a low Venus resistance. With a specific RNG-exploiting method (see Randomly Drops below) it is very easy to obtain multiple copies of said weapon and since it is a light blade it can be equipped by three-fourths of your entire party (five if Isaac/Felix is wielding the Sol Blade).
• Corridor Cubbyhole Run:
  • One of the puzzles in the Jupiter Lighthouse involves dodging a statue spitting whirlwinds at you.
  • Revisited in Mars Lighthouse, with a dragon statue spitting fireballs at you.
• Cruel Twist Ending: Triple subverted. At the end of the game, the heroes defeat a giant three-headed dragon as their final opponent. Then it's revealed they just killed a fused form of Isaac's kidnapped father and Felix and Jenna's kidnapped parents. Then they activate the Lighthouse, and the eruption of Mars energy brings them all back to life. Then they return home to find that Mt. Aleph has erupted, destroying their entire hometown of Vale and everyone in it, including Isaac's mother and Garet's entire family. Then it's revealed that the Wise One evacuated all of the inhabitants to safety, and everybody joyously reunites.
• Cutscene Incompetence: No matter how hard you level up Isaac and Ivan in the first game (and transferred the data to The Lost Age); they will always be beaten by Agatio and Karst at the top of the Jupiter Lighthouse. That said, both Isaac and Ivan put up enough of a fight that Agatio and Karst are too weak to take on all of Felix's party.
• Cutting the Knot: The boss of Gaia Rock, the Serpent, has a gimmick to its fight where its absurd Healing Factor will heal up to 2430 HP at the end of every turn ,which is over half of its health, effectively making it invincible. The player is supposed to go through the dungeon and solve puzzles to direct light onto the boss which will severely weaken its healing potency and make it easier to kill. However it is possible to bypass the Serpent's healing gimmick altogether by blasting it with Djinn summons which will raise the elemental power of the characters' subsequent summons and then blast the Serpent again with heightened power to kill it in one fell swoop.
• Damage Over Time: The warriors of southern Gondowan are said to be lacking in raw strength, and so make use of poison to defeat the monsters that plague their lands.
• Dig Attack: Inverted where the Scorpion King is found wandering the Yampi Desert under the sand needs to be forced above ground by pounding wooden stakes into its path.
• Divided We Fall: Felix's party and Karst and Agatio theoretically have the same goal - light the lighthouses and restore Alchemy to the world. However, Karst's murderous personal grudge against Isaac drives them to turn on each other.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Implied when Felix's party reached Lemuria and they were greeted by Piers' uncle, telling him that his mother had passed away during his absence. Note the fancy-colored bottles inside his house.◊
• Enhanced on DVD: While the graphics remained the same between the first game and the second, The Lost Age polished Judgment's and Atalanta's sprites since those two are crudely-drawn in the original.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Obaba, which is pretty much just Japanese for "Grandma".
• Excalibur in the Rust: You can find rusty weapons, which can be refurbished by the blacksmith Sunshine into pretty decent weapons at the earliest you can find them, but pretty quickly outclassed otherwise.
• Eyelid Pull Taunt: Briggs gives one to Felix after he escaped.
• Fake Difficulty:
  • Doom Dragon's final phase possibly performing Djinn Storm and then Cruel Ruin afterwards. Not only will stunning all djinn put all players at the lowest class, but Cruel Ruin will deal enough heavy damage to wipe out the entire party, even at full HP and level 99.
  • Dullahan freely using Charon summon against you. His Charon summon deals a lot of damage to all of your party, while having the additional effect of KO'ing any of them; it is possible that it could wipe an entire party due to the additional effect. In Battle Mode, being unlucky to face Dullahan has been the bane of everyone trying to go for the highest amount of battles possible in a row, only to have Dullahan nuke them.
• Fat Bastard: The Mayor of Alhafra is a greedy jerk.
• Flunky Boss: Briggs and Moapa, who are accompanied by Sea Fighters and Knights, respectively. The Star Magician, who happens to be a Superboss, also has "Ball monster" minions that fight alongside him.
• Frictionless Ice: Several puzzles are like this, particularly the icy ones.
• Get on the Boat: The ship gained about 25% into the game, which becomes the Global Airship close to the end.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Subverted and lampshaded. Just before the Final Boss, the Wise One says this:
  "I cannot stop you. But... what if some miracle were to occur, one that prevented you from igniting the beacon?"
• Go Wait Outside: The blacksmith will finish working on your commission once you leave the town, enter the sanctum, or stay at the inn.
• Grim Up North: The blizzard-ridden bleak setting of the final dungeon.
• Guide Dang It!: Getting into Lemuria. It involves learning a children's song in Yallam, which reveals the way to traverse the whirlpools and sail into Lemuria in the lyrics. However, guarding the entrance to Lemuria is Poseidon, a boss which needs a special weapon to defeat. This weapon is split into three parts, and hidden in three separate dungeons: Ankohl Ruins, Tundaria Tower, and Shrine of the Sea God (which you'd already been to before you acquired your fourth party member, Piers). However, to get through Ankohl Ruins and Tundaria Tower, you first need to complete two separate dungeons, Gaia Rock and Aqua Rock respectively, to acquire special Psynergy abilities required to traverse those dungeons, and Gaia Rock involves a long sidequest ending with ANOTHER hard to beat boss. And when you finally got all the pieces, there's still ANOTHER boss before you can forge it together in Champa. THEN you can sail into Lemuria. Try finding all that out without a guide. Sure, there's enough hints going on, but it's still quite difficult.
• Hailfire Peaks: Mars Lighthouse, a fire-based dungeon that has frozen over.
• Headless Horseman: The Dullahan appears as the Superboss to end all superbosses, but his horse is strangely absent.
• Healing Boss: The Serpent can be fought almost as soon as you enter the Gaia Rock dungeon, but doing so means it heals 2340 HP every turn, making it borderline impossible to kill. Completing the dungeon by letting light into its lair to weaken it reduces this to a much more reasonable 30 HP.
• Hero of Another Story: Humorously, Isaac is presented this way, at least until he joins your party.
• Hopeless Boss Fight:
  • The Serpent is apparently impossible to beat if you haven't lit any of the special lights inside Gaia Rock before fighting him. Given a sufficiently powerful character however (most likely New Game+), it's possible to kill the Serpent in a single round, completely bypassing its full health regeneration, and bypassing the zone entirely.
  • Poseidon can be one of these if you don't meet him on the right circumstances.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Agatio and Karst, though the latter isn't particularly tiny.
• I Did What I Had to Do: When you're faced with the very last boss, even if you may not have guessed exactly who it is, you probably remember that big dragons tend to be transformed people. And you've already got rid of all the baddies... so this can only be innocents. Unfortunately, Stupidity Is the Only Option. You're even asked afterwards if you knew what you were doing. Whatever you answer, though, be informed that Isaac knew that he was killing his father and your parents and still did it. Even considering the alternative would have been the end of the world, that's... rather cold.
• I Have Your Wife: Revealed to be Felix's and Jenna's motivations for helping Saturos and Menardi light the lighthouses; their parents and Isaac's father are being held hostage in Prox. Note that the Proxian duo didn't mention the whole world-saving stuff to Felix and Jenna. Or even about Kyle to Isaac.
• I'm Cold... So Cold...: Agatio and Karst, justified in that they're dying of hypothermia.
• I'm Standing Right Here: The workmen blocking Jenna's escape from Venus Lighthouse take offense when Kraden says they don't look very tough right in front of their faces.
• Infinity -1 Sword:
  • The Darksword, which requires Dark Matter to forge. While it has the highest attack in the game at 210, its unleash does not multiply like the other weapons listed below, making it less powerful overall. Oh, and it is cursed. At least you can deal some serious damage with the Dark Mage's Call Dullahan and a Cleric's Ring.
  • The Tisiphone Edge, dropped by a certain recurring enemy in a Bonus Dungeon. As a "light blade", the only people in your party who CAN'T wield them are Mia and Sheba. On top of added Venus power, its unleash has 3 different mutipliers, 1, 2, or 3. The multiplier of 3 can inflict the highest damage in the game that exceeds Sol Blade, but the chance of getting the multiplier of 3 is less than 50%, making it very inconsistent. Nevertheless, it is the best weapon for Ivan and Jenna.
  • Excalibur, which requires the Orihalcon to forge. On top of added Jupiter power, the Excalibur has 2 unleash multipliers 1 or 3. The multiplier of 3 can exceed the damage dealt by the Sol Blade, but at a 60% chance rate. On the more plus side, it is Jupiter-based, and the strongest enemies in the game are weak against Jupiter, including the Doom Dragon and Dullahan. Nevertheless, it is the best weapon for Garet, Piers, and whichever Venus Adept doesn't get the Sol Blade and is made available earlier than expected due to the Orihalcon being given in the reunion (assuming you transferred your game).
  • Lachesis' Rule, found in the Bonus Dungeon and Atropos Rod, which compete for Mia and Sheba's most powerful weapons.
  • The Nebula Wand, another Orihalcon product, is less powerful than the above mentioned Lachesis' Rule and Atropos Rod, as well as the Clotho's Distaff, but its unleash is water-elemental and restores the wielder's PP, meaning that it will serve Mia very well.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The Sol Blade. Sure, it may have the following "flaws". ^ExplanationThe Sol Blade is only equippable to Isaac or Felix. Only 1 is found in the full playthrough and it is in The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. It has the second highest attack below the Darksword, which has an average Unleash and is cursed. Its unleash does slightly less maximum damage than Tisiphone Edge and Excalibur. However, it is the most consistently powerful weapon in the game and should be equipped at all times once obtained.
• Informed Ability:
  • According to the Feelies, Sheba has the power of precognition. Aside from claiming that it's her destiny to help Felix light the Lighthouses, which she later admits was a lie, it never comes up.
  • Hama states in the first game that Ivan has the power of precognition. Ivan replies that it's news to him. Though by the time the parties meet up in the second game, both Isaac and Ivan point out how much the ability has developed since then. At least for short term predictions.
• Informed Flaw: Agatio is billed as the Dumb Muscle villain in Nintendo's strategy guide. This isn't entirely accurate.
• Item Crafting: A straightforward but entirely randomized setup (give the Blacksmith in Yallam a material item and buy whatever he decides to make with it).
• Kaizo Trap: Non-lethal example happens in the Jupiter Lighthouse. Near the end of the left subtower there's a collapsing floor puzzle, where standing on a weakened tile will result in it breaking underneath your party's weight. Once you finish it, a short corridor leads to the next room... with another weakened tile just before the doorway, potentially sending you back to the previous floor and forcing to solve the entire puzzle again.
• Karmic Twist Ending: At the end of the game, Alex is poised to obtain ultimate power, only to be screwed over in the second-to-last cutscene by the Wise One and cast into the earth.
• Last Disc Magic: The summons Azul, Daedalus, Catastrophe, Charon and Iris. With the exception of Charon (who doesn't have a guardian), they can only be obtained late in the game after defeating their respective guardians.
• Leaked Experience: Party members not in battle gain half experience.
• The Legend of Chekhov: While you're in Yallam, a group of kids will teach you a song and an oddly specific looking dance. A few dungeons later, you find out that the kids were teaching you how to navigate the Sea of Time and get to Lemuria.
• Lesser of Two Evils: Weyard's fate. The protagonists can light the elemental lighthouses or not. If they do, Alchemy will be released and possibly misused to wage war (which is what the ancient alchemists tried to prevent by sealing Alchemy in the first place). If they don't, the world will definitely wither and die. They choose to eliminate the certain threat over the uncertain one.
• Lethal Lava Land:
  • The outside of Magma Rock requires you to navigate a cliffside while statues spit fireballs at you. Once you enter, you need to flood and drain lava on three different floors so that you can move blocks around and use platforms that float on the lava to descend to its innermost chamber. And throughout the dungeon, you'll fight a horde of Mars-aligned enemies.
  • Initially, Mars Lighthouse is completely frozen. Once you recover the Mars Star and activate the lighthouse, the place becomes half-flooded in lava, and you need to watch out for flamethrower traps and giant dragon heads spitting massive fireballs at you as you progress.
  • A major part of Taopo Swamp's cavern involves you diverting a magma flow to access the final area.
• Little Miss Badass: Karst has a huge variety of attacks (including a One-Hit Kill), buff, debuff (including a Djinn nerf), and heal options, and is generally considered Menardi's Stronger Sibling despite being the younger sister. She's also usually estimated to be a teenager, with some guesses going as young as fifteen (the same age as Ivan and Sheba), making this a case of Gameplay and Story Segregation as towards the end of the game, Saturos and Menardi are outright stated to be Prox's strongest warriors.
• Little Professor Dialog: Eoleo, the son of the pirate Briggs, who is capable of Psynergy (and effectively uses it to break his father out of prison), seems to be unusually verbose for his age... when you read his mind, that is, since he isn't able to talk yet. Talking to the other kids in Champa reveals that none of them are impressed with his "grown-up attitude".
• Locked Out of the Fight: Agatio and Karst make use of one of Jupiter Lighthouse's traps to separate Mia (who they believed would be their most dangerous opponent, due to her healing magic and Mercury Psynergy) from the rest of the group. Garet ends up falling in as well, leaving Isaac and Ivan to fight Agatio and Karst two-on-two.
• Long Song, Short Scene:
  • Briggs has a leitmotif that is used in only one of the many scenes featuring him.
  • The cave under Mikasalla has its own music, but passing through the cave takes about ten seconds.
• Lost in Translation:
  • The island nation of Izumo is full of references to Japanese Mythology, like the story of Yamata-no-Orochi, or the dancing goddess Uzume, which are understandably lost on international audiences.
  • An accidental version in the Apojii islands, which the shopkeeper refers to as Garapas (the original Japanese name).
  • A literal case regarding forged items. A quirk in the translation leaves out their price tags in the script when you want to collect said forged item. The catch is you still need to pay for it.
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • Items forged by Sunshine are randomly-generated. However the randomness are heavily skewered against the player for the more luxurious materials, leading to unlucky players didn't even know stuff like Excalibur even exist in the game.
  • Due to the Sequel Escalation, weapon unleashes are the only practical offense method while the summons took turns to set while reducing your stats upon unleash and everything else deal Scratch Damage in the latter parts of the game. But unleashes are unreliably random and equipments to boost unleash rates are limited and difficult to find unless a certain RNG method is used.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Strangely played. The final boss, the Doom Dragon, is a monster the Wise One forcibly fused together from Isaac's father Kyle and Felix's and Jenna's parents.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The Daedalus summon is an embodiment of industrial military firepower. In a medieval setting.
• Marathon Level: Air's Rock is an infamous example. Despite being one of the first areas you visit, it is both longer and more complex than any dungeon in the first game — or, for that matter, any but the final few dungeons in this game, too.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: Alex getting screwed out of achieving god-like powers at the end of the game by a Chekhov's Gun that was set up at the start of the first game by the Wise One, who altered the Mars Star in some way so that part of its power would be given to Isaac if all of the lighthouses were ever activated.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Karst's name may or may not be derived from the Lithuanian for "hot" (karŝta). Since she's both Ms. Fanservice and Playing with Fire, this is completely appropriate.
  • Piers, the sailor. Also applies to his Japanese name, Captain Picard.
  • With a side of Bilingual Bonus: Contigo is a Spanish phrase meaning "with you". Contigo is the city where Isaac and Felix join forces. In the Spanish version, the city's name is instead the German "Mitdir" (mit dir), with the same meaning.
  • Also falls under Bilingual Bonus: "Garoh" is derived from "loup-garou", which is French for "werewolf". Guess what all the people who live in Garoh are.
  • The Apojii islands has a twofer: the general tropical theme for the Fiji islands, and apogee.
• Mistaken Nationality: After the Jupiter Lighthouse event, the heroes meet Hama in Contigo, Weyard's Mayincatec city, along with Garet and Mia remembered meeting her in Lama Temple. She is even accompanied with Xian's music theme while this scene played out. But suddenly she revealed that she was actually born and raised in Contigo. And also Ivan's sister. None of them saw this coming since she looks nothing like Ivan and more like her student Feizhi.
• Monsters Everywhere: Monsters are beginning to replace the natural fauna of the lands. This is bad news for the common man, as monsters are more aggressive, harder to kill and taste worse.
• Monster Town: Garoh, a town filled with hospitable werewolves, and possibly Prox.
• Morton's Fork: The twist of the game, that Weyard will wane and die should the seal on Alchemy remain. After playing the first game and this one up to this point with the notion of "Alchemy's release will sow destruction", this was a major twist on the plot. Isaac even points out when learning this that they're now faced with either the world MAYBE being destroyed if Alchemy is released or withering to death if they do nothing.
• Ms. Fanservice: Karst, a teenage Cute Monster Girl in a midriff-baring black leather micro-miniskirt with thigh-high boots. Everybody else in the entire series is dressed quite modestly, so she stands out even more.
• Mukokuseki: This is the reason why many players did not see "Hama is Ivan's sister" thing coming. The former founded a temple nearby Xian and looks Chinese while the latter lived in Kalay and looks European. But they are actually from Contigo.
• Never Mess with Granny: Obaba, Briggs' grandmother, who is a highly skilled smith/alchemist/Adept (and probably the oldest character in the game who isn't Really 700 Years Old), who summons a salamander to fight the party when Briggs convinces her that they want to rob their town, and, after learning about Briggs' pirating and giving him a good scolding, reforges the Trident of Ankohl.
• New Game Plus: There's a traditional New Game Plus which allows you to restart on "Easy Mode" with clear data, which just carries over your levels and money.
• Non-Indicative Name: Sunshine the depressed blacksmith.
• Not Completely Useless: Low-tier summons that were quickly outclassed such as Zagan and Atalanta are really helpful against Valukar, since they deal tons of damage to him while dealing small damage against the player (he has the ability to steal summons and use them). This is partly due to how the damage calculations for summons are handled (summons deal an additional damage based from the target's hitpoints), with enemies with tons of hitpoints receive higher damage.
• Not the Fall That Kills You…:
  • Played straight when Sheba falls off Venus Lighthouse and Felix jumps after her; both survive thanks to the sea miraculously rising up as they fell.
  • Sheba has a history of this. That crater by Lalivero in the first game? Yeah, that was her, falling from the sky as an infant. Kraden theorizes that, being a Wind Adept, Sheba can use her powers to break her fall with strong gusts of wind.
• Now, Where Was I Going Again?: After getting a boat and a new party member, you have to visit three dungeons and get an item from each one in no particular order. Two of them require you to visit other dungeons first so you can learn the Ability Required to Proceed with them. The game doesn't give any hints that the items you need to progress are in these dungeons, and one of them requires a fairly long on-foot trek across the equivalent of Antarctica to even see. If you come back to the game after a while, you might not know which plot coupons you have, as you can hand them in before you have all of them.
• Old Save Bonus: You can transfer party and event data from the first game for some really necessary bonuses.
• Omniscient Morality License: The Wise One, particularly for what it does to the entire group at the end.
• Our Dark Matter Is Mysterious: Dark Matter is a forgeable item, 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 Dragons Are Different: Excluding the random encounter dragons, the Proxians may well be "dragons". They tend to transform into dragons, plus have oddly colored skin, pointed ears and patches of scaly shoulders (though the last is only noticeable on official art and a few it is designed in a way that it may be mistaken for armor). They seem to have a higher adept ratio than any of the other modern civilizations around the Lighthouses (and the Mars Lighthouse mentions dragons as masters of Mars Psynergy).
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: The dwarves in the Loho mining camp. Additionally, some are historians, which is why the dwarves are in Loho, excavating the ruins there. However, they all have short statures, awesome facial hair and a love for digging and the only visible female in town is the human innkeeper, so they otherwise fit this trope perfectly.
• Our Genies Are Different: For one thing, they don't grant wishes; they just increase your characters' power, change their classes, and give them special abilities. For another, they aren't trapped in bottles, rings, or lamps. Though sometimes Muggles keep them as pets.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: They're psychic, and the result of Psynergy-stone exposure.
• Out-Gambitted: Oooh, you almost had ultimate power, Alex! Too bad The Wise One took a moment at the start of the first game to set up a plan to screw you over at the last possible second, huh?
• Pals with Jesus: "Isaac, since when were you on a first-name basis with the Wise One?"
• Parting the Sea: In order to gain access to the final room of Aqua Rock, placing the dungeon's MacGuffin jewel on a pedestal causes the water to pull back in a corridor. Inside the room is the Parch ability used by Piers, which allows him to drain huge amounts of water from certain areas.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • Accessing the last Bonus Dungeon (and thus the toughest Superboss) requires an Old Save Bonus where you collected, at minimum, 6 of the 7 Djinn of each element in the first game. If you fail to do so before the Reunion, you will never be able to open the entrance.
  • A minor one happens when you place the Black Crystal in its proper place in Piers' ship. You are no longer able to access the East Indra Shore, and if you didn't claim the Cookie hidden there, it's gone for good.
• Petal Power: Flora, an early-game summon in the second game.
• Plot-Irrelevant Villain: Almost verging on the point of No Antagonist. Alex is an antagonistic force, but keeps his distance and never directly interferes with the party. At one point he even assists them, and can assist them again if they lose to Karst and Agatio. Similarly, Karst and Agatio can be considered antagonistic forces, but they literally want the same thing the heroes do, and are really just brutish with their methods and seek the death of Isaac to avenge the deaths of Menardi and Saturos. Ultimately, the story isn't about Felix's party overcoming mad villains - it's about Felix's party righting ancient wrongs that have turned the very world into a ticking clock counting down to destruction, with the clock on the verge of reaching the point of no return with Mars Lighthouse's descent into Gaia Falls.
• Point of No Return:
  • Once you trigger the Reunion in Contigo, you can no longer update the transfer data from the original Golden Sun. If you missed any Djinn or special events in the first game, tough.
  • The final one happens when you trigger the cutscene that leads directly into the final boss fight. Once you do this and defeat the boss, you aren't allowed to do anything other than finish the game's epilogue. Fortunately, you can't save once you pass this threshold.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: You take on the role of Felix, who was a minor antagonist in the first game, and take on three new party members with him. Eventually, you run into the original party from the first game. They join up with you in Contigo after the conflict that occurs at Jupiter Lighthouse.
• Proactive Boss: A rare case in that it's not done to the player: Agatio and Karst trigger a trap that causes Garet and Mia to fall down a hole, leaving only Isaac and Ivan to fight. They're defeated by the time you reach them (no matter how high you leveled them up previously), and the true boss fight begins.
• Prolonged Video Game Sequel: While the first game has an average completion time of 22 hours (if you only bother with the main story), the sequel clocks in at about 31h 30min, nearly ten more hours. Makes sense, as the first game occurs in an (admittedly dense) area that takes up about 1/4 of the world's landmass, while the rest of it opens up in The Lost Age and has several worldwide fetchquests that are mandatory to progress.
• Puzzle Boss
  • The Serpent in Gaia Rock. Directly confronting it right off the bat is stupid and the game tries to show you it is stupid when another fighter is thrashed by it. If you forge along anyway you will find yourself up against an enemy that heals its entire health bar in no less than two turns automatically. A fight you are unlikely to win until you find a way to slow down or negate the ability completely.
  • There are accounts of level ninety nine parties trying and failing to brute force Superboss Dullahan and just as many of parties defeating it at level thirty. Ideally you should face it at level thirty five-forty but if you don't figure out some kind of strategy your efforts will likely be in vain.
• Random Drop: Many enemies in this game carry the best gear in the game as random drops; however, since the game's random number generation initializes at zero after a hard reset, multiple strategies have been devised by players to guarantee pickups for odds which are ordinarily 1/16 or 1/32.
• Red Herring:
  • In Lemuria, reading a dog's mind provides a hint to dig around for buried items. When the player uses Scoop near the dog, yields a bone — a completely useless item. The dog may have actually been referring to a rusty sword buried some distance away on the same screen.
  • The broken ship in Alhafra. It cannot be repaired until the appropriate Psynergy scattered across Weyard are obtained, yet the player can get another ship long before then. This other ship, owned by Piers, serves as Felix's group's permanent transport and is pretty much required in order to obtain all the Psynergy needed to repair the ship back in Alhafra. Once that ship is repaired, it gets stolen by the pirate group that the protagonists have subdued before.
• The Rival: Essentially, Isaac's party is this to Felix's party, with the latter worrying that if they happen to run into the first, a battle to the death may ensue due to their clashing beliefs putting Weyard in peril. Thankfully, when they do run into each other, things are clarified before things turn nasty, and Isaac's party happily joins forces to light up the lighthouses.
• Roc Birds: Rocs appear in the second game as common enemies, being merely man-sized birds.
• Sacred Bow and Arrows:
  • The Atalanta summon is a wind-elemental Rain of Arrows.
  • In order to progress through the Jupiter lighthouse, several statues that shoot arrows of light need to be turned on.
• Sand Is Water: Sort of. Felix's Sand spell dissolves the party into sand and allows them to travel through patches of sand, including moving freely against "currents" of sand and up cliffs with sand spilling over the edges. And through glass panels. Although, it could be argued that the glass panel didn't go all the way down to the rock, so they group could squeeze under the glass panel when they were in "sand" form. Also, since glass is melted-then-solidified sand (most glass panels are in front of a fireball-spewing dragon head statue), it's possible that you're actually merging with the glass itself.
• Secret Test of Character: The Wise One gives one to the Adepts at the end of the game in the form of tricking them into murdering their own parents before being able to light the last Lighthouse; when the heroes do light it, the parents are revived, and The Philosopher Kraden figures it was a test.
• Sequel Escalation:
  • The Lost Age takes everything from the first game and amps it up. The world is much larger, there are more summons, more weapons, more equipment, more characters to play as, more puzzles, harder puzzles, stronger enemies, more Djinn... and the game is quite longer, about ten more hours on average.
  • The final boss of the first game sees you fighting two targets with about 3000 HP each, then a single target with 5000 HP. In The Lost Age, you meet a boss with almost 5000 HP in the middle of the game. The final boss has three phases and a total of 13,200 HP. It's possible to beat the first Golden Sun decently equipped at level 24 — the second will push you at least to level 30 if you're fully equipped, otherwise you may need to go much higher.
• Sequence Breaking: Many players accidentally ended up fighting Briggs sooner than they should have just because Alhafra is the closest place to reach in Osenia. The other places south of Alhafra - namely Air's Rock - lack any bosses to fight but plenty of opportunities to level up the trio before fighting Briggs.
• Sequential Boss: Although you fight the Doom Dragon in one long battle, it has three forms with their own separate HP meters.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • A rather notorious scene has Sheba asking Jenna about the nature of her relationship with Isaac.
  • During Feizhi's transfer-data appearance, Kraden points out and openly supports her crush on Isaac, much to Feizhi's dismay.
• Sorry I'm Late: The fight against Karst and Agatio on Jupiter Lighthouse works like this—much to their chagrin since their original plan was to fight the group two at a time without their healers just like they did to Isaac and Ivan. By the time Jenna and Sheba arrive they know damn good and well that not only is their advantage gone but they're now in serious trouble. This is also the only boss fight that you don't have to win because, regardless of who wins, Alex intervenes before anyone can get killed then announces that Isaac and Co. are on their way up, forcing the pair to flee before they have to fight Eight adepts.
• Sound Test: There's a pretty well-hidden one as an Easter Egg, which requires talking to a specific NPC (the woman in the lower-left-most corner of the area) in the multiplayer Battle Mode lobby while holding the L or R button. The Sound Test only lets you play songs that you'd already heard on that save file, but using a completed save file unlocks every track.
• Title Drop: In the first scene, Kraden drops the phrase "The lost age" when discussing the world before Alchemy was sealed away.
• Too Qualified to Apply: If you use an Old Save Bonus where Isaac won Colosso in the first game, then there's an optional sub event where several of the other competitors track him down and accuse him of cheating by using his Psynergy, an advantage the other combatants didn't have. Isaac defends his actions by claiming there Ain't No Rule against using Psynergy (in fact, the tournament's sponsor deliberately slipped Isaac in to test his power) and that, as an innate ability, it fit with the Tournament's theme of relying on your own power rather than tools like weapons or armor.
• Turns Red: Doom Dragon, as it loses its heads. Each form is programmed to act differently and has its own HP meter, which causes summon rush strategies to fail.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: A few areas:
  • Averted. If you give the Lash Pebble to Piers and you go to Lemuria, when Piers will leave the party you will need to Lash once to enter the house of Lunpa. However, if you can't use Lash, Lunpa will insult you and throw down a rope instead, preventing you from getting stuck.
  • If your inventory is full after defeating the Flame Dragons, you won't be able to gain the Mars Star, thus unable to progress through the game. Hope you backed up a save before that.
  • When Briggs breaks out of prison, NPCs are moved to keep you in Alhafra until you go to the dock and see him take the ship back to Champa. However, it's possible to use the Sanctuary respawn trick (hold Start+L when you load your save file to spawn in the nearest Sanctuary) to get outside the blockade. If you do so, there's no way to get to the cutscene where Briggs leaves for Champa, no way to fix the Trident of Ankhol, no way to get to Lemuria, no way to get to the Great Western Sea, and no way to beat the game.
• Unnaturally Looping Location: The interior of Gaia Rock consists of a room with four entryways and a single plant growing in the middle. Walking into the doors at random will lead you back to the same room (except the bottom one which leads back to the exit no matter how many rooms you'd crossed), but using Growth on the plant will cause its leaves to grow into an arrow pointing the right way.
• Villain Episode: Subverted here; Felix's quest is just as heroic as Isaac's.
• Villains Act, Heroes React: Subverted again; your party acts, opposed by the Wise One. Inaction is what would end Weyard.
• Violation of Common Sense: In the Apojii Islands you must jump off the edge of the world to find a hidden Djinn.
• Vortex Barrier: The way into Lemuria is a permanently foggy shallows of volcanoes, currents and whirlpools. Going in without knowing the proper sequence of volcanoes to go around causes your ship to get kicked out (and going there without collecting the three pieces of the Trident triggers a Hopeless Boss Fight).
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Briggs can be a slap in the face to some players. Especially those who engaged in some accidental Sequence Breaking and got to him underleveled and underequipped.
• A Way Out of a Cave-In:
  • During the infiltration in the Great Gabomba Statue (a giant statue filled with giant gears and clockwork), a rat jumps onto a gear when it sees you before fleeing out of sight. It might come across as a Non Sequitur, but it's actually a clue that you need to move on top of the gears to progress.
  • Gaia Rock's interior is a maze of four-doored rooms with a plant growing in the middle. Like Mogall Forest, you can go around guessing at which sequence of doors is the correct one (but Mogall Forest only had one Wrap Around screen between rooms, good luck getting all 14 of them right), or cast Growth on the plant to make its leaves grow into an arrow indicating the correct path.
• Welcome to Corneria: Mostly played straight, but occasionally they lampshade it.
  Guard (when Mind Read): Look at these guys. They think they're so hot... I bet they think they're gonna get past me... They have no idea how long I can stand here saying the same thing to them, over and over.
• Wham Line:
  • When you meet Lunpa, Jenna drops a low-key line that completely throws everything we thought we knew about the prologue of the original game and Felix's motivations down the drain.
    Jenna: Our parents were kidnapped by the Fire Clan, far to the north. We are only firing the lighthouse beacons to gain their freedom...
  • Not even two minutes later, we find out exactly who's quest is going to save the world.
    Lunpa: If your theories [that the seal on Alchemy caused advanced precursor civilizations to decline and vanish] are correct, the world itself will wane and vanish... Won't it, Kraden?
  • After the Final Boss is defeated and separates back into its components, the group comes to a horrible realization...
    Garet: Isaac! I... I know that guy! That's your dad!
    Sheba: Then... does that mean... the other two are...
    Jenna: Mom... Dad...
• Whip of Dominance: The Trainer's Whip is an equipable item that allows a character to change to the Tamer class, which can use summoned monster to attack, as a nod to whips being used as a tool to control beasts.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Subverted. The Lemurians willingly keep drinking the elixir and could end their lives or choose to age normally at any time; a lot of them are simply supremely bored since they cannot leave the island.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Agatio and Karst try to pull this on Felix. It backfires if you win.
• You Meddling Kids: One of the Champa Pirates delivers the line if Felix and the gang visit them in jail.

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