Format: Advance
Genre: RPG
Developer: Camelot
Publisher: Nintendo

Water-color big-headed-character kiddy anime is a descriptive phrase that could be used to accurately describe the Golden Sun 1/2 graphical style. Backdrops are detailed, and animation is sufficient, but for some reason- age, improving technology, heightening consumer expectations- the second iteration of Golden Sun doesn't impress as much graphically as the original. Still a nice looking game, but not worth of an A-range score.

Maybe I'm just getting sick of the standard-fare RPG in general, but despite the high quality of Golden Sun 2's sound samples, the soundtrack seems exceedingly cliche, past my threshhold of tolerance. Not only that, but the songs that were newly composed for this sequel are signifigantly shorter and, to put it bluntly, annoying compared to the songs from the original. A definite step backwards here.

Take Golden Sun, make the dungeons much longer but no more imaginitive, and you have Golden Sun 2. There isn't a single new concept present in this title. I will say that building on a foundation like the original Golden Sun isn't a horrible thing, but this isn't as much a sequel as it is a plot extension. And when you are approaching 50 hours on a single game that isn't that great to begin with, it gets tiresome.

As I mentioned earlier, maybe I'm just getting sick of traditional RPG's. The bar has been raised- blame it on Knights of the Old Republic- and those Final Fantasy-esque clone RPG's that we used to play during our childhood just fail to entertain. That said, Golden Sun 2 is still a B-quality title, but if you really have to play an RPG on the GBA, play the original instead.